Candace Nassar
Welcome, everyone. Today, I am very excited to have with me Christine Hoover. Christine serves as the Women’s Ministry Associate at the Austin Stone Community Church’s Northwest congregation here in Austin. She hosts the Ministry Wives podcast and has authored six books, including Messy, Beautiful Friendship, and How to Thrive as a Pastor’s Wife, as well as a Bible study, Seek First the Kingdom. Her latest offering, You Are Not Forgotten: Discovering the God Who Sees the Overlooked and Disregarded, will be released in April of 2024. Christine’s work has been featured on The Gospel Coalition, For the Church, and Christianity Today. In 2015, Christine wrote From Goodness to Grace, and in it, she shares the journey she went on to be freed from the confusion and pressure of striving for approval from God and others. She’s going to share about that today and I know it’s going to resonate with many of you. I know it did with me. We are so fortunate to have her with us. Welcome, Christine.
Christine Hoover
Thanks so much for having me, Candace. I’m glad to be here.
Candace Nassar
We’re so excited. I’m so excited. So, first of all, just tell our listeners that we’ve already bonded over a couple of things that we had in common. As I read your book, I felt in so many ways like I’d been on that journey with you. And I just know a lot of our moms are going to get so many good nuggets out of this journey that you’re going to share. But before we get started, let’s talk a little bit about what’s happening in your life right now. And it’s Fall, sort of. It’s a little bit cooler here in Texas.
Christine Hoover
Yeah, right.
Candace Nassar
You, just, when did you move here? About a year ago?
Christine Hoover
Yes, we moved from Virginia to Austin last August, so about a year. But we’re from Texas originally, so everyone keeps asking me, well, how are you feeling about the heat? And I’m like, well, we grew up here, but we were in Virginia for 14 years. My husband and I planted a church there. But we got to come home to Texas last August and we’re serving at the Austin Stone, like you said.
Candace Nassar
Yes, that’s great. And so I know Fall feels a little differently up there. But what are you most looking forward to this Fall here in Texas?
Christine Hoover
Well, it’s already started, but football, college football, watching my son play football. I love football season. It’s just fun.
Candace Nassar
Same here.
Christine Hoover
Having it on the TV in the house, playing on Sundays or Saturdays and watching it. So, yeah, football.
Candace Nassar
Oh, that’s so awesome. You know we’re big football people, too. I was raised in Georgia and grew up going to the Friday night lights just like you did. So, yeah, I love it. I love having it on TV. There’s something about the sound of it in the background. So, very good. I can totally relate. So why don’t you help our listeners get to know you just a little bit better and tell us about your family and maybe what you like to do when you can get a minute to yourself?
Christine Hoover
Yeah, sure. Well, I’m married to Kyle. We’ve been married almost 24 years. We have three sons. So my oldest is 20. He’s in college. My middle is a senior in high school, and my youngest is a sophomore in high school. So I’ve really enjoyed the teenage years. I like parenting the teenage years. There’s some high highs and some low lows, but overall, I really enjoy it. So, we love as a family to be outside when it’s not 105 degrees outside. And for me personally, I really like to read. I’m a huge word person, so I love to read words. I like to write words, and I like to play games where it involves words, like Wordle and that kind of thing.
Candace Nassar
Well, very fun. Very fun. Yeah, my family loves to play Scrabble, so I can imagine. And I can tell you love words because from reading your book, you are just a beautiful writer and paint just great word pictures.
Christine Hoover
Thank you.
Candace Nassar
Not surprised for you to say that. What’s your favorite all-time book? If I had . . .
Christine Hoover
Oh, so so so hard . . .
Candace Nassar
Loaded question.
Christine Hoover
Yeah. I really like a book called Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl. It sounds so weird, and it kind of is. When you start reading it, you’re like, what is this book about? And then it just all comes together at one point, and I just think it’s a beautiful book. So, if you’re looking for a little something different. Yeah. Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl. And then I also love The Hiding Place. That’s one of my favorites. Just Corrie ten Boom and her story. And I go back to that book a lot, and read it a lot, but also just remembering little nuggets that she shares in that book. So that’s been an influential one for me.
Candace Nassar
Yeah, I adore that book as well. That’s a very convicting book when we complain about anything, right?
Christine Hoover
Yeah.
Candace Nassar
Oh, my goodness. Yeah, she was so brave. Well, that’s cool. Thanks for sharing that. Okay, so speaking of books, let’s get started talking about your wonderful book From Good to Grace. I said goodness, itโs From Good to Grace: Letting Go of the Goodness Gospel. And so you say in your book, you start off by telling us that you are a goodness addict, right? Or maybe โwereโ a goodness addict, or I guess you’re always kind of an addict, right? Just reformed. So, tell us what you mean by that.
Christine Hoover
I mean by that that I became a Christian when I was eight years old. And I knew at that time that I was saved by faith through grace, that Jesus was the way for me, that I could not save myself. But after I became a Christian, I somehow, whether I didn’t hear it preached or whether I didn’t understand it, I don’t know. But I somehow got this idea that all of my spiritual growth, all of the spiritual fruit in my life was then
up to me. So, I was the primary actor in my Christian faith. And so I had to, I even remember sitting down, Candace, and reading Galatians 5 about the fruits of the Spirit and missing that it was a fruit of the Spirit and instead thinking, okay, today I’m going to work on being more loving, or tomorrow I’m going to work on joy, or going through those each day and thinking, if I just work on this, I can create and cultivate these things in my life. And one of those fruits is goodnessโthat I can do these things if I work hard enough at them. My spiritual growth is up to me.
Christine Hoover
My spiritual fruit is up to me. And so it became, I would say, this heavy weight on me that every day I wake up, how do I be a good Christian today? And eventually, it eventually morphed into, how do I be a good Christian friend today? How do I be, even later on, how do I be a good wife and a good mom? And it was all laying at my feet, just that I had to get up and do these things each day. And it’s an addiction in the sense that it would swing back and forth between this pride of, oh, today was a good day. I did these things well. My kids are behaving well today. I’ve done the checklist. I’ve read my Bible, I’ve prayed. I’ve done the things a good Christian does. But then on the days where I didn’t do those things or things didn’t go as well, I would swing from pride over to the other side, to the self-condemnation. I would say the mantra of someone who is a goodness addict is, โI have to do more. I have to try harder.โ That was every dayโI have to try harder, do more, try harder, do it better next time.
Christine Hoover
And so that just kind of was how I lived my life for many years, not understanding that that’s not at all what God was asking me to do.
Candace Nassar
And that’s such a heavy burden.
Christine Hoover
Yes.
Candace Nassar
You’re exhausted when you’re living like that.
Christine Hoover
Yes, exhausted. And I would say hiding. Hiding from people, because an outworking of that understanding for me was that I had to do the same for other people in terms of I wanted them to see the good. I wanted them to see good performance or good Christian action. But I was really hiding a large part of myself because I wasn’t good. I’m not good. I can’t do these things perfectly on my own. And so I
felt that there was this barrier between me and God, and there was this barrier between me and other people. And it was really because I was trying to perform for love and approval and belonging.
Candace Nassar
Was it hard for you to be vulnerable?
Christine Hoover
Oh, absolutely. Because really, I was focused more on impressing people or doing the right things in the right way. I wasnโt, I wasnโt connecting. You can’t connect with people unless you are vulnerable with them, unless you let them into, โThis is what I’m thinking about. This is what I’m feeling. This is what I’m struggling with.โ And I never told people I was dealing with this self-condemnation or, of course, you don’t tell people you’re feeling really good about yourself that day, that youโve got the checklist under control. And so, there was just a large part that was underwater, under the surface for me.
Candace Nassar
Yeah, I’m sure a lot of people can relate, especially in this world today, where social media, everything is put out there, is perfect. And it really resonated with me when you talked about your to-do list and just that sometimes you would write something on there just to cross it off because I have that same performance. I think it’s a struggle for a lot of women. And you talk about that in the book, how these struggles that you went through, the more as you started to deal with it and take it to God, he began to show you and you saw other people you weren’t alone.
Christine Hoover
Right. I think this is a very common thing. Very common. Because what happens is that you’re seeing on the outside if you were to interact with me, you would see really good things. You would see, this is a Christian woman who, she’s going to church and, you know, doing all the right things, quote-unquote, that we would look for as that this is a Christian, there’s fruit in her life. So, there can be an external, the external practices can look very similar for someone who is doing those things from the right motivation and then for someone who’s doing them from the wrong place, which was me. My goal, my motivation was to earn something from God and earn something from other people. But the external things that you saw would be the same as somebody who was doing it out of love for God and love for people.
Candace Nassar
Tell us how that distorts the gospel when you’re trying to earn it. I mean, we know grace alone and faith alone, and you knew that. And you talk about you saw grace for salvation, but not as part of your sanctification. Can you share about that?
Christine Hoover
Yes. So I think a major component I was missing was an understanding of, well, grace was a huge one. I didn’t understand, first of all, how the depths of my sin. Because I thought that I could be good. I never really meditated on just how not good I was and how much grace that I needed from the Lord just to be in right relationship with him. But then there was a second component I didn’t understand, and that was the Holy Spirit. I didn’t understand that, no, the true actor in the Christian life is God himself, indwelling in me, helping me to fulfill the commands that he’s placed on my life. I think of it now, I think before my mindset was I was like an actor on a stage and I was the only one on the stage and there was a spotlight on me and God was in the audience. And if you could see his face, it would be that he was kind of scowling and his arms were crossed and he was evaluating my performance. That’s not the gospel. The gospel is completely different where he has taken on the actor role and said, you can’t do it.
Christine Hoover
You can’t save yourself, you can’t remove your sin, you can’t make up for your sin. So, I’ll do it for you. I’ll send Jesus to die on the cross and raise him from the dead, and it’s for you on your behalf. But not only that, not only have I removed the sin, that your bank account is now zero, your debt is now zero. I’m going to add to that bank account, I’m going to give you the Holy Spirit, who will enable you to understand, first of all, what I have done for you, but to walk with me, to bear fruit, the fruits of the Spirit, all of these things come through simply abiding in him, knowing him, and he is the actor. And so I get to follow behind. I follow him in obedience and faith. And when I do that, he produces in me things that I could not produce on my own. And once I started understanding this, I noticed a huge change in the way that I related to people, not only with God. That obviously changed how I related to God because he was no longer in the audience, scowling at me. But I realized, oh, he loved me so much that he did this for me.
Christine Hoover
He’s for me. That’s what Romans 8 says. He’s for us, for people. So before this, when I was living in the old mindset, I remember, I mean, I was already married. My husband was a pastor. And I was really sinking under self-condemnation because I could not be a good enough pastor’s wife. And there were so many expectations I felt mainly for myself. But I remember thinking, I cannot love these people. I cannot love them because I was trying to love them and I was trying to will myself to love them because I knew that’s what I should do.
Candace Nassar
In the flesh.
Christine Hoover
Yes. But then when I started understanding God’s love for me, what he took ownership of, his responsibility and that mine was to obey. Suddenly I realized there’s this love that’s growing in me that I
could not have made on my own. I love them because Christ first loved me. So, before it was, I’m trying to love because Christ did this for me. I’m trying to get his love by loving him, whereas he already loved me. And when I knew that, then I love. It’s a natural outworking.
Candace Nassar
I can relate to that so well. I have struggled just from things that happened to me in my past with just feeling like I didn’t deserve love. And I think for me, my approval addiction was part of that, was just saying, okay, if I can make all these people happy, make God happy, then he’ll love me, and they’ll love me. And same kind of thing. When I really understood how fiercely and unconditionally he loved me, that he would leave the glory of heaven and die on the cross for me for nothing I’ve done and nothing I can ever do. That was an absolute game-changer. And you can’t love other people until you canโnot with, obviously, the Holy Spiritโbut even to truly allow the Holy Spirit to love through us until we understand God’s love for us.
Christine Hoover
Exactly. Exactly.
Candace Nassar
That’s so good. Love that, so thatโs basically what you’re talking about, you said how the grace, how understanding the grace of God also helped free you from your addiction. What else can you tell us about living under grace? That it’s helped you love people. What else has it done for you? I guess it’s helped you accept yourself.
Christine Hoover
I think that it’s given me, and what I’m learning is that this is something that I will spend a lifetime unearthing the treasures, the riches of Christ. And so it’s like seeping. The gospel keeps seeping into new areas of my life. But I do see, looking back over decades of having understood this and living from a different truth, is that I feel freedom to obey what God has asked me to do versus there’s all these expectations or there’s all this checklist, and the checklist just grows. The checklist never gets shorter when you’re living by this โgoodness gospelโ, but I feel freedom from that. It’s more of a day-to-day. I get up in the morning instead of the checklist. It’s a relationship with the Lord. I can be with him. I can cast my cares upon him, and I can listen for his leading and do what he asks for me that day.
Candace Nassar
Give the day to him.
Christine Hoover
Yes. Not my agenda, not what I think. Not what’s going to make me feel better at the end of the day that I did. But just what does he have for me today? And there’s so much more freedom in that than living by this checklist or living by, even sometimes that can make you different from the other moms, the other women around you, that what they’re doing with their children or what they’re doing as far as, like, work or whatever it is, that I can be free to be who God’s made me to be and to do how he’s asked me to obey his commands specifically with my children or with my marriage or with my gifts and my work.
Candace Nassar
That’s so good. In your chapter on receiving his freedom, I underlined almost the whole chapter, but I love how you were talking about freeing us from comparison and competition, and you even referenced the mommy wars in there. Which, you wrote this book in 2015, but I still see evidence of that. Just because with social media especially, we want to do what, okay, what are they doing? What are they doing? And comparing ourselves and never feeling worthy or good enough, and what a trap that is.
Christine Hoover
Yes. All of this was happening for me before social media. I feel for young moms these days who are trying to make wise decisions with their children, and then they have social media to deal with. And I would say that having an intimate, abiding relationship with God, where you are in the Word every day and you are going to him and saying, Lord, what do you have for me? Not going to social media and influencers. And there could be really good things that they say, but they may say, you need to do a certain kind of schooling with your child, when maybe God himself wants something different for you, and there has to be a going to him, a prayerfulness with him, and knowing what he wants for you. So I think the way I think of it is like, there’s an overarching command that we all have, and that is to train up our children to know and to love the Lord. So that’s the same for all of us. But the way that we do that is going to look very different across just the individual children that we have, the context that we live in, our marriage, our work, whatever it is, it could look very different from the person next to us.
Christine Hoover
But there’s freedom that we have in Christ. If we’re obeying that command, we are free to obey it in the way that he’s called us to obey it.
Candace Nassar
So good. I really love that. And then you also talk about being free from fear, and you describe the pamper pole, which I thought was hilarious.
Christine Hoover
Yes. You know what that is?
Candace Nassar
Yes, I read it. Yes. So tell us a little bit about the pamper pole and your analogy there, because I know a lot of people, a lot of moms and women struggle with those kinds of fears.
Christine Hoover
Okay. I have to be honest, I don’t remember what I said in the book about the pamper pole.
Candace Nassar
All right. It was a while ago. Okay. So your pamper pole was when you were in youth group or a counselor somewhere. You guys had to climb up to the top of this pole with stepping stones, but it was really high, and you had a harness attached to you that would catch you if you fell. And then you got to the very top of the pole, and you had to step onto the top of the pole, I guess, and often climb up without anything. I mean, you had the harness, but you didn’t have a feeling of being anchored to anything. And it was such a scary thing that you didn’t understand it looking from the ground up. But when you got up there and you saw how incredibly, how much faith it took to just step off of the climbing things and up onto the top of the pole. That’s what you’re saying. So much of what we’re doing is we live in so much fear, but we have the Holy Spirit as our harness. He’s telling us, and he’s guiding us, and he’s strengthening us. And in fear, really, without faith, it is impossible to please God. Right?
Christine Hoover
Yeah. And I love that thought of I remember being so afraid during that time where I realized . . . so what happened was I was actually married and doing ministry, and I was meeting with this college girl, and I was discipling her, and I said, I started saying something like, you know, โIf you do these things, then God,โ like, you are the actor, and then God responds, right? And she very, very respectfully said, โChristine, I don’t think that’s right.โ And she began to share with me what she had been learning. And it was as if the Lord just pierced me through her words. I mean, I just knew he was speaking to me and saying, Christine, you don’t know me in the way that I truly am, and I want to invite you to know me. And I started reading Galatians. That was the book that just changed my life. Every word was for me. And I remember thinking it was like, I have all this old wallpaper, like this wrong way of thinking about God, this wrong way of thinking about myself. And he’s just going to have to tear it down little by little. If you’ve ever taken down wallpaper, it’s just so hard to get down.
Candace Nassar
Awful.
Christine Hoover
And so it was a process of him showing me how I thought wrongly about him and about his gospel and about me, and then putting up new wallpaper. And now where I am, the new wallpaper is up. It’s ingrained in me. I understand the truth now. But in that in-between, where the wallpaper was still coming down, I had so much fear that I was doing it wrong. I was going to do it wrong, that I was releasing the checklist or, like, well, these are all the things a good Christian does, whoever taught me those things. And we could all make a list of what was on that list. To release that felt scary to me. It felt like standing on that pamper pole and trying to stand up and to jump off. What was going to hold me? And that’s where the Holy Spirit came in, as you mentioned. The Holy Spirit is God himself, helping me to know what’s true and to obey. He’s never going to lead me contrary to Scripture, contrary to what God wants for me. Those are the guardrails. He’s the guardrail. Rather than my own idea of what’s right or wrong or my own idea of the checklist and what should be on it.
Christine Hoover
I had to release myself to him and to trust that he had me, that harness. He had me and he was going to help me to . . . He was going to grow in me the things, the spiritual fruit, the sanctification. He was going to do it by releasing control of that to him, rather than me being the one who is in control.
Candace Nassar
Yes, absolutely. It’s not comfortable at all. And by the way, the reason it’s called a pamper pole, the reason they named it that I’m not going to say, but it has something to do with the fear of being up there and people might need some diapers, anyway. But yes, it’s very scary to change and release. But that’s what this is about, the goodness. When we feel like we can do things, even though we know we’re saved by faith, that we have to do things to make God love us or to earn whatever it is, that’s the problem right there.
Candace Nassar
But if we’re trying to do those things, easy to do, then we’re not going to live the abundant life that God has promised us. Absolutely. And we have to make those changes. And it’s scary, but he will help us. He will totally help us. Such good stuff. Is there anything else that you would want to share with our moms, our listeners, that you have learned over the years about just living under grace and in God’s unconditional love and freedom?
Christine Hoover
I mean, I think a question that often comes up when I talk about this is like, well, isn’t goodness and doing the right things, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? And I just want to highlight and reiterate that goodness is a fruit of the Spirit. He grows those things in us. It’s not something that we can control or manufacture. And so, yes, that is the outcome, but the way we get there is different than if we are. And really we can’t do it on our own. We may think we are, but. So I just want to reiterate just how much God
loves you, how much he loves us, and how much responsibility he has taken on for us, not just for our salvation, but for our sanctification. He is enduring us to the end, and he will hold us forever. And so he didn’t just do so much to save us. He is doing so much to continue us in our faith.
Candace Nassar
And thatโs just so hard for us to grasp that kind of love and sacrifice. And then I love how you close it. Like, you open talking about, why am I doing 416 loads of laundry a year?
Christine Hoover
Yes.
Candace Nassar
And I know our moms struggle with that. There’s so much drudgery sometimes to just being a mom. We want to do something that’s purposeful and a life that matters and all that sort of thing. But you clarify that God has a purpose in all of that, and we just have to trust him with it and remind ourselves of that right when we’re in the midst of those moments. Thank you so much, Christine. And I just appreciate your vulnerability so much and just sharing and going through this journey, sharing this with your readers so then they can join you on it. And I just think it’s a fantastic book. And I recommend From Good to Grace to our listeners. And, yeah, why don’t we close in prayer?
Christine Hoover
Sure. Thank you.
Candace Nassar
Lord, thank you for this time that we’ve had together. I thank you for Christine’s heart and how she has gone on this journey to allow you to transform her heart from trying to earn your approval and others approval, to basking in your love and in your grace and embracing the freedom that she has in that, so that she can go out and we can all learn to go out and love others and pass on that grace and pass on the hope that you give us in the gospel that we can’t be good enough. But you are. And we don’t have to try any harder because you have it covered. And when we trust you and your Holy Spirit, you’ve got us. And you will get us through it and enable us to live in victory and enjoy. We thank you so much, Father, for the amazing, amazing grace that you have given us in your son. And we ask that you, I just pray for our listeners that they would continue to ponder these things in their hearts as they go forth these next few days, that you would reach out to them and that they would be able to also embrace grace and go โfrom good to grace.โ
Candace Nassar
We thank you for Christine, and we thank you for this time. In Jesus name, amen.
Christine Hoover
Amen. Thanks for having me, Candace.
Candace Nassar
Thanks so much for coming.