psf of Issacharian Daughters – ID039:
Monday, 21 May 2007Dear Girls,
Interview with Lindsay Schultz ??Part 3 ??Final
Lindsay Schultz is 25 and is thoroughly enjoying??Homemaker Bootcamp! ?? She has three younger brothers and helps to homeschool the youngest who was adopted from Kazakhstan. She is currently in charge of her oldest brother’s bookkeeping for his lawn maintenance business as well as assisting her mom in caring for her grandmother who has Alzheimers. She thoroughly enjoys cooking, making wedding cakes and playing music with her brothers, but most of all, seeking God’s will!
You have an inner strength and a confidence, a contentment, which radiates about you. To what do you attribute this?
Since I am a single woman, serving at home, I understand that God works through my parents. Growing up, my family was always so different than other families. We seemed to be constantly doing the opposite of what our friends were doing, for example, we decided to pull out of Christian school and to begin homeschooling. God slowly began to change my parents thinking to realize that homeschooling was what God wanted our family to do. As God began to show our family things in our lives He desired for us to change, I needed to know why God wanted us to have certain convictions and be able to explain our family’s convictions to my friends. Many friends did not agree with me, but in the end my parents were always there for me. My parents are my best friends. The Lord gave Mom and Dad wisdom to see there were certain people I should not hang out with. And so through the years the Lord has helped me to have faith and trust in them. I know the direction Dad is leading our family is the direction that God wants us to go. I have learned this from Scripture. I have faith in what God is doing through Mom and Dad even though, to the world, we are so different. But aren’t we supposed to be different? (Phillippians 1:20) I know the world doesn’t understand why I would want to be at home. I am not here to please man, but to please God. At the same time I can understand how the world feels, because I once thought of girls staying at home in the same perspective. God alone is the one who changes hearts. So if there is anything good you observe in me, it is God working through my parents, teaching me to trust, obey, and have faith in Him, and only in Him.
Tell me about the importance of the relationship that you have with your father.
God is all we need. And He has blessed me by giving me a Dad who is so Godly, so discerning and so steady. Dad allows God to direct him about things before he does them. He is not impulsive at all. For this I am grateful. He has always encouraged me to pursue Biblical excellence in all that I do. This includes relationships with other friends, courtship, going certain places, etc. He is my hero because he points me to the Lord.
What would you like to say to encourage girls who might see this interview, especially those who don’t have the strength, the confidence, the contentment that you have and maybe also those whose fathers are not supportive? What sort of thing would you be able to say to encourage these girls?
I would say first of all,??Have a good relationship with your mother. ?? You should have one with both of your parents, but in this situation it is particularly important for a girl not to neglect her relationship with her mother. If both your parents still don’t understand the vision, I think you should get counsel and encouragement from other Godly women, but they should always point you back to Scripture (Titus 2:3). Study Scripture and get books to encourage you to fulfill God’s role regarding young women staying at home. The Christian life is about being obedient. In order to be obedient, we need to know the commands that we need to follow (Deuteronomy 13:4). It’s important to meditate on Scripture (Joshua 1:8). Study it. Surround yourself with Godly people who have the same vision for staying at home. Simply pray and just be quiet. Allow God to work in your parents’ lives. Don’t feel like you need to be the one to change them. Be patient. Allow God to work. We sometimes expect God to work like a microwave, when in reality, we need to wait on Him.
Have you heard of Created to be His Help Meet by Debi Pearl?
Yes.
Have you read it?
Yes. Well…the parts that I could read as an unmarried woman.
I read that book before reading So Much More. It helped to give me a vision for the sort of wife I should aspire to be. It helped me to realise that in order to be that sort of wife ??a cheerful, submissive wife ??I need to practice being cheerful and submissive now with my own father. I can’t just expect to get married then instantly know how to submit to a man. If I can’t submit to my father now, how can I expect to be able to submit to my husband? Scripture says the way a Godly wife is supposed to submit to her husband is by winning him without a word, praying for him and not telling him what I think he should do (1 Peter 3:1,2). But simply pray and allow God to use his authority and work through him. Created to be His Help Meet allowed me to see this. Then I read So Much More, and the picture it painted of the daughter’s role worked together with what I had been learning about the wife’s role. Girls today are not being trained to be submissive wives. I believe that this is truly the key element to a happy marriage. But instead we are taught to be independent and to tell our husbands what to do. If he’s not doing the right thing, we are told we need to take the steering wheel out of his hands and take control. But that philosophy is so opposite to Scripture (Titus 2:3-5).
Sometimes a husband will drive into a ditch. I need to let him drive into the ditch and allow God to show him his failures and repent of them (2 Corinthians 7:10). I need to encourage, be supportive and learn to model for my children that I should still honor, love and support my husband no matter what. I can do the same as a daughter.
When you were growing up you used to get Brio magazine and you had posters of singers and that sort of thing up on your wall. Can you talk about the transition that you made from being that sort of a girl to removing those influences from you life?Yes. When I was growing up, my parents allowed me to listen to contemporary Christian music. At one time in my life my parents allowed me to subscribe to Brio magazine (a magazine, from Focus on the Family, for teenage girls). Many of the magazine’s articles were focused on various Christian singers. I began to idolize the contemporary Christian performers. Music became my life. I just wanted to be a professional, selfish singer. Truly! I wanted to be on the stage in front of people and be famous. As the years have gone by, I feel the contemporary Christian music movement is drifting further away from Christ and closer to the ways of the world: rich with a desire to look, sound and act like it. As a family we began to notice, as our walk in Christ grew, that the music was not what the Lord was leading us to listen to. That being said, my parents did not want me to listen to contemporary Christian music anymore. After I came home, I was able to remove myself from different musical influences. Because of this the Lord started to turn my heart to see the truth about this music, the truth about my goal, to see how selfish and self-consuming it was and how it would not benefit a family at all. My desire to sing was all about me (Phillippians 2:3,4). God changed my heart to where I was able to say,??Lord, my desire has been to sing, but I am completely giving it to You. I don’t want to touch it if it is not Your will. I’m giving this to You. I’m laying it down. ?? After doing this, I had a complete peace. I didn’t worry about being a singer anymore. When we decided I would stay at home, I became completely immersed in my family, concerned with their needs and somewhat separated from that music: it wasn’t important to me. After approximately two years the Lord started fulfilling one of the deepest desires of my heart, which was to write music (Psalms 37:4). The Lord started placing songs into my heart. It was such a testimony to His faithfulness. He knew that my heart had to be turned towards Him first. I am overwhelmed by His goodness.
Can you recommend any resources for young girls on femininity, womanhood, staying at home, courtship, honouring your parents or any of these sorts of things?
The CD What’s A Girl To Do? by Doug Phillips is the first teaching I had ever heard about girls staying at home and training to be homemakers. It helped my parents and me in the decision for me to quit school and stay at home. A great Bible study is Lies Women Believe by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. I remember how much it helped me to see many lies I was believing about my own Christian life. Created to be His Helpmeet by Debi Pearl is another great book. It is specifically for wives, so mothers should heavily censor it for their daughters. It helped by giving me a vision for what a Biblical wife should be, and how I can train for it now. If we aspire to be wives, then we need to train for wifehood! A man can’t just go out there one day ,decide to be a soldier and enter the battlefield, or he will be ruthlessly slaughtered. He has to go through boot camp first. When he does, he is prepared for battle. We daughters at home should be in a type of??homemaker boot camp ?? to prepare for the reality of being a wife and mother. Another book is Joshua Harris’ I Kissed Dating Goodbye as well as Heather Paulsen’s Emotional Purity. These would help a lot of people understand how corrupt the modern day dating system is. Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss is one of my all time favorite books. And of course So Much More by Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin. I say that not just because of this interview but because it has had the greatest impact on my life as far as girls staying at home and having a Biblical perspective.
Thank you so much Lindsay! I am very grateful to the Lord for this opportunity to interview you.
For those of you in Australia and New Zealand, you can get Emotional Purity, So Much More and Created to be His Help Meet from me. Send me an email to request my catalogue. What’s a Girl to Do? is available from Vision Forum (www.visionforum.com) as is So Much More. The other books are available through Amazon.
For the Greater Glory of God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
Genevieve Smith
Issacharian Daughter