Dr. DeeDee: When you can love yourself, you can be free to love others. And when we can teach a woman how to value who God has created her to be, then we can begin to value each other.
Victoria Osteen, Laurie Crouch, Dr. DeeDee Freeman and Rachel Hauck: Building Each Other Up Through Friendship – Episode #161
Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. Today’s guests are women who have seen the impact of bringing love and intention to our relationships with others, especially with our friends: the women of TBN’s Better Together—Laurie Crouch, Victoria Osteen, and Dr. DeeDee Freeman—and novelist Rachel Hauck.
Better Together is a new program on TBN made by women, for women. Their goal is to build a community of women committed to doing life together and making the world a better place. Today a few members of the Better Together team share why it’s not only important to seek friendship with those who share different experiences from us, but how we can create common ground by reading the Bible together, praying together, or sharing a devotional, like Jesus Calling.
Dr. DeeDee: I’m Dr. DeeDee Freeman. I’m married to Michael Freeman. We are the pastors of Spirit of Faith Christian Center. We have been pastoring for 25 years now, and I’m also a part of the Better Together team.
Victoria: I’m Victoria Osteen, and my husband and I, Joel, we’ve been pastoring for 20 years. Our ministry is celebrating our 60th year. [Joel’s mother and father] started the ministry 60 years ago, and when Joel’s father passed away, God led us to step up and be senior pastors of the church.
I am so honored and privileged to be a part of Better Together. This community of women that you’ve created, Laurie, is phenomenal.
Laurie: My name is Laurie Crouch—thank you, Victoria. My husband and I, Matthew, lead the Trinity Broadcasting family of networks around the world. And I am part of the Better Together team right here.
The Beauty of Diversity in God’s Kingdom
Laurie: Better Together has been something that brings us all together.
Victoria: And it’s so interesting because this group of Better Together is different ages, different backgrounds, different experiences. Some people were raised in church. Some people were not. Dr. DeeDee, you weren’t raised in church.
Dr. DeeDee: No, not at all.
Victoria: And now God has got you on this path where you and your husband are just preaching the good news.
Dr. DeeDee: It’s amazing.
Victoria: And so what I love about this community is to not only meet new women that I haven’t met, but really gleaning from them and their experience.
Laurie: Yeah, totally.
Victoria: And I think as women, that’s one of the most important things that we can do is to be—
Laurie: Open.
Victoria: Open-minded to one another. You know, so often the stereotype is that we just kind of judge one another. We sum one another up. We’re really not for each other. But I think that’s that’s in the past.
Dr. DeeDee: Yes.
Victoria: I think this is a new generation, and a new happening that’s happening among women is we’re realizing that we’re better together.
Laurie: Yeah.
Victoria: We’re realizing that when I encourage you, it encourages me.
Dr. DeeDee: Yes.
Laurie: Yes.
Victoria: We can all get together and learn so much from each other.
Dr. DeeDee: Absolutely. You know, I think one of the biggest lies that the enemy put in the church is what we have taken from the world to say, “Women can’t get along.” But we can get along. We can be here for one another. We can encourage each other. There are so many times when we come together as a community of women with a common purpose. You know, we get the joys of working together on a shared mission.
“One of the biggest lies that the enemy put in the church is what we have taken from the world to say, ‘Women can’t get along.’ But we can get along. We can be here for one another. We can encourage each other” – Dr. DeeDee Freeman
But there is always that potential when you have people from all different walks of life, you know, that we are not always going to agree.
Victoria: As women we need to open our hearts.
Dr. DeeDee: I agree.
Victoria: And be be the one who is the peacemaker.
Laurie: Yeah.
Victoria: And I think when we get practice overlooking an offense, we’re going to be so much better off as women, as mothers, as sisters, as wives. So I believe that sometimes it’s too easy to just take an offense.
Dr. DeeDee: That’s true.
Laurie: Right.
Dr. DeeDee: I have so many women in our ministry. And I have to be sensitive enough to know there are some things they haven’t been raised in [and] that their environment have shaped them to be totally different than I am. I cannot automatically come and just force my beliefs or my opinions or my ideas over how this whole community should look.
Victoria: And when you hear someone’s story, their challenge, what they’ve been through, it causes you to understand that person better. When I hear [those] stories, I think to myself, “Wow, [God,] You’ve just shown me something about myself.” Even if I haven’t been through that, somehow God always mirrors back something in your own life.
“When you hear someone’s story, their challenge, what they’ve been through, it causes you to understand that person better.” – Victoria Osteen
Dr. DeeDee: I believe the diversity of how we are is a representation of what Christ is. And so we have to learn how to come together, bring our differences together, and really share and look like what God intended for us to look like.
Laurie: You don’t always have to be right. And sometimes saving friendships and those close to you. It’s not about being right all the time.
Victoria: You don’t have to be right. We’re different, but [we can] find common ground.
Dr. DeeDee: Yes.
Victoria: You know we can agree to disagree, but if we find common ground—and what is that common ground? Respect.
Dr. DeeDee: Right.
“I believe the diversity of how we are is a representation of what Christ is. And so we have to learn how to come together, bring our differences together, and really share and look like what God intended for us to look like.” – Dr. DeeDee Freeman
The Power of True Friends
Laurie: I think it’s so important to find people you can pray with, and that can agree with you to lift each other up.
“It’s so important to find people you can pray with, and that can agree with you to lift each other up.” – Laurie Crouch
Victoria and I have been together in times where, man, I just had to tell her something, you know. And I knew she was the one to talk to because I knew what she was going to give me back. She was going to encourage me. She was going to pray right then and there. I knew it was coming, and I needed it. And DeeDee, the same thing with her. Just going through stuff in your life, you’ve got to surround yourself with people who are filled with the Holy Spirit, who love God, who aren’t going to bring you down.
Dr. DeeDee: Absolutely. You know, the beauty in all of our relationships is that we truly love one another.
Victoria: If women knew their worth, if they really understood their value in the eyes of God—and that’s where it starts. It’s not in the eyes of man, but it’s in the eyes of God—I believe we tap into a superpower.
Dr. DeeDee: Yes.
Laurie: Yeah.
Victoria: As women, we need each other. And one reason we need each other is that we’re talkers.
Dr. DeeDee: Yes.
Laurie: Yes!
Victoria: I know I’ve been talking to my husband before, and about 10 minutes later, I see these eyes just glazing over.
“If women knew their worth, if they really understood their value in the eyes of God—and that’s where it starts. It’s not in the eyes of man, but it’s in the eyes of God—I believe we tap into a superpower.” – Victoria Osteen
Laurie: Glazing over!
Victoria: Because [men] not wired like we are.
Laurie: Right.
Dr. DeeDee: Right.
Victoria: So to have women you can hold in confidence and really trust is such a gift.
Laurie: Yeah.
Victoria: And worth looking for.
Dr. DeeDee: Yes.
Watch and See What God Will Do
Victoria: You know, even doing Bible studies together and coming together and just having that girl talk, chit-chat, confidence time to confide in one another is just so important.
When my son was going off to college, I had worked to prepare everything we were going to take [for] his room and what I was going to put in it. He didn’t really care, but I did.
I remember when the time approached, I was all prepared to take him, but I had such a nervous, anxious feeling because I thought, It’s hard to release him out into the world.
So the Saturday that a friend of mine and I were going to take both of our sons to college—they were actually going to room together, and we’d been preparing all this together. I got up extra early because I knew I just had to spend time with God. I was just like, I don’t want to show [my son that] I’m anxious.
Laurie: Settle your soul.
Victoria: I just want to settle my soul.
So I got up and I prayed. I was just talking to the Lord, and I just felt like He spoke to me. And He began to talk to me about the essentials of faith, and how faith is those things that are not yet seen. That’s what faith is. It’s believing in something we haven’t yet seen.
And then I felt like he just impressed on my heart, “Just watch and see what I can do.”
So I was writing this down in my journal, and knowing my friend was as anxious as I was, I texted to her and I said, “I got up early.” And I told her the story. “And this is what God said.”
Immediately she shot a text back to me, and she had been reading in Jesus Calling.
Dr. DeeDee: Oh, wow.
Victoria: And the one she had read talked about releasing your children to God. It said, “Don’t keep them in your clinging hands. You’ve got to be able to release them to God.” And then it went on to say, “Watch to see what I will do.”
And so it was is if that Jesus Calling not only confirmed that “watch and see” to me, but it also confirmed to her that God was right there with us. And so it has become our, like, banner of victory. We’ll say, “Watch and see what God will do.”
And so just through this beautiful Jesus Calling [devotion], it gave us so much confirmation that God does speak to us as individuals, and He can confirm His Word through devotionals and through His Word. So it was just such a comfort in such an exciting time for me.
Laurie: He cares more than we do.
Victoria: And I think that’s so sweet because, you know, God speaks to us on so many different levels and in so many different ways.
Dr. DeeDee: At the right time.
Laurie: At the right time.
Victoria: It was such a confirmation that God was in this. He had our sons in the palm of His hand, and He was going to be faithful to all of our prayers. And so it’s interesting—did you ever get those slogans? So that’s now one of our slogans: “Just watch to see what God can do.”