S9.20 | Finding Purpose Beyond the Temporary with Laura Bailey
Welcome back to Affirming Truths! Joining Carla for today's incredible episode. is none other than Laura Bailey, an inspiring author and Bible teacher whose latest devotional, "Embracing Eternity," offers profound insights into living with peace and purpose. In this heartfelt conversation, Laura opens up about her personal journey through struggles and distractions, how she found hope and clarity in the book of Ecclesiastes, and the importance of shifting our focus from the temporary to the eternal.
We dive deep into understanding how our beliefs shape our lives and how maintaining an eternal perspective can help us navigate the valleys and challenges we face daily. Trust me, you won't want to miss it! So grab your favorite beverage, settle in, and let's get started
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Key Takeaways
Understanding Ecclesiastes in a New Light:
Laura Bailey shares how the book of Ecclesiastes, often perceived as a book of doom and gloom, is actually a guide to finding hope and significance through an eternal perspective.
Practical Tips for Daily Life:
Carla and Laura provide actionable advice for maintaining an eternal perspective, especially during tough seasons. Laura emphasizes the importance of staying grounded in the Word and seeking support from a community of believers.
The Role of Our Heart Posture:
The discussion highlights how our heart's attitude in everyday tasks, from mundane chores to significant roles, can glorify God and align with an eternal perspective.
Laura Bailey is an author and Bible teacher who encourages women to understand what they believe, why it matters, and how to apply biblical truths to their lives. Her writing has been featured in Proverbs 31 Ministries, Crosswalk, Guideposts, and other publications. She lives in Gaffney, SC with her husband and three young girls, where she serves as director of women's ministries at her church. Her passion is teaching the Bible to women, equipping them to live with an eternal perspective.
Facebook and Instagram: @LauraBaileyWrites
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TRANSCRIPT
Carla Arges [00:00:08]:
Hey, friends, welcome to affirming truths. I'm your friend and host, Carla Arges. This show is a safe place to share our struggles, grow in faith, and root our identity in Christ. My hope is that you will leave each episode feeling encouraged in your journey. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review. I am so glad you're here. Let's get started.
Carla Arges [00:00:36]:
Hey friends, welcome to this episode of affirming truths. I am so excited for our guest today. I'm sitting down with Laura Bailey, who is an author and a Bible teacher who really encourages women in what they believe in, why it matters, and how we should live in light of that. And I'm so excited for this conversation. She has a new devotion out called embracing eternity, and we're going to talk all about it. Welcome to the show, Laura. How are you?
Laura Bailey [00:01:09]:
I'm doing great. I'm so excited to be here. So thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak with y'all today.
Carla Arges [00:01:16]:
Yeah, I love it. So we're going to dive right in. I've interviewed lots of authors. I'm actually an author myself of a devotion. And I know that when God births, it's usually because we've walked through something. Your devotion, embracing eternity, is really looking at how we can live with more peace and purpose. You take us through the book of ecclesiastes, but what was your journey to birth? A book about perspective.
Laura Bailey [00:01:52]:
Yes. So it is always interesting when you tell people, I wrote, you know, you write a book, and especially they say, okay, what is it on? And I'm like, ecclesiastes. And people immediately are like, what? And so naturally, just that book itself, for a lot of people, evokes these feelings of doom and gloom. I mean, they feel like it is a book of, you know, despair. But for me, when you read it, and as for readers, it's the reason why Solomon originally wrote the book. It's not supposed to be a book of depressing, right? It's supposed to be a book about hope and how that shift of perspective gives us a hope. And where I was, I felt like, you know, I feel like all of us sometimes identify with different characters in scripture. And for me, I say identify with two.
Laura Bailey [00:02:41]:
One, Paul. You know, I always tell people, well, when I had my Damascus moments, I'd say, when I really kind of came to Christ, I was living this way. And then all of a sudden, I was living the other way. But I found myself that even as a new believer I was still struggling to be distracted by the temporal things. And so I was practicing this checklist, Christianity, but I wasn't feeling any different. So when people say, oh, I can feel the Lord working in my life, or I can see the evidence of the Lord work, I would be telling myself, well, I'm reading my Bible and I'm going to church, but why do I not feel the things that you're talking about? And one of those reasons why is because I was in my late twenties, and on the outside, I was my life. Checked all the right boxes. I should have been on this kind of emotional high.
Laura Bailey [00:03:39]:
I should have been excited. I was in the highlight of my career, just recently been married. You know, life was really good. But I was like, that duck. You know, the duck, how it's on the surface, it looks really. Everything is calm and it's floating, but underneath, what is the duck doing? It's paddling like this. It's trying to stay afloat. And so that's where I was.
Laura Bailey [00:04:04]:
And I started thinking, and I was asking myself is, why is it that even though I'm doing all the christian girl checklist things, why do I not experience peace? Why is joy eluding me? Why is, you know, why don't I just feel complete that that purpose? And ultimately, it was because I was focusing on the temporary things. I was distracted by what the world said would make me happy instead of what God says will make us happy, the eternal. And then I kind of not stumbled across because I'd read ecclesiastes before, but it was. I really did a deep dive in that season. It was one of those true God moments where I just was having a really tough day, weeks, but that particular day, and I just kind of opened my bible and I was like, you know, I'm going to read this thing cover to cover. And I was like, well, here's a man who gets it. Here is a man who tried everything under the sun, and what does he ultimately come back to?
Carla Arges [00:05:12]:
It's all futile.
Laura Bailey [00:05:14]:
It's all futile, right? And if you read it in the Hebrew, it's heavily, which means it's a vapor, it's a mist. It is here today, gone tomorrow. So basically he said, stop wasting your time on things that have no eternal significance, on things that do not matter. They will always come back. You will feel void. But it is when you shift that perspective from that, that temporary to the eternal. And that's why you start to realize and start living for the things that matter. And you let go of the things that don't.
Laura Bailey [00:05:46]:
And that is how you, your brain, that's when you start to think of, you're asking yourself, like, does this really matter? Like, I'm getting really upset about this. Does this really matter? Is this going to matter in the long run? Or you start asking yourself about your, where you spend your time, where you spend your money, where you spend your resources, like, are these things that are going to have lasting significance? And so I tell people, I say, ecclesiastes really is a book from, that shouts when you have that right perspective, it frees you from the burden of having to live an important life. Right. Because the only names it's going to remember is who's the Lord.
Carla Arges [00:06:25]:
Yep.
Laura Bailey [00:06:26]:
And there's freedom in that. We don't have to keep hustling and trying so hard to make a name for ourselves or to, you know, just exhaust ourself on that constant rat race. We can say, you know what? Like Solomon tells us, he said, I can enjoy a good meal. I can, you know, we have to work. Right? We understand. We know that was a part of God's originally plan. I say that humans, we are really good at making, taking a good thing and making it bad. Right.
Laura Bailey [00:06:55]:
But Solomon encouraged us to find joy in our work, experience that over a good meal with good friends and thank the Lord for our blessings and enjoy our time here on earth as we live in light of eternity.
Carla Arges [00:07:07]:
So that all sounds great.
Laura Bailey [00:07:10]:
I know, right?
Carla Arges [00:07:11]:
That all sounds great.
Laura Bailey [00:07:12]:
Yes.
Carla Arges [00:07:13]:
But when we have to practically live.
Carla Arges [00:07:16]:
This out, like, life gets hard.
Carla Arges [00:07:19]:
And I know a lot of my listeners are walking in valley seasons. They're in their wilderness. They're struggling with the everyday. They feel pain, they're hurt, they're discouraged. How do you in your valley seasons, what does it look like to have an eternal perspective when you're just trying to survive the day to day?
Laura Bailey [00:07:51]:
Yes. And, you know, I do, I do not take it lightly. And in the fact that, you know, this is a message that preaches easy lives hard. So I have to tell myself, my husband and I, you know, oftentimes we have this inside joke, and we say it stemmed from when we were, we had a friend of ours who was going through kind of the hard season, and we would ask some questions, and we were trying to generally ask him out of a place of care, but he was so overwhelmed in the moment that he all of a sudden just goes, it doesn't matter. And I was like, what? No, it does matter. And, but my husband and I, when we are getting overwhelmed in life, and we're like, when we're tempted to say it doesn't matter, we say, okay, take a pause. It does still matter what we're going through, but how and what we're going through, instead of having that kind of, that thoughts of defeat, how can we turn that in, that idea, it doesn't matter, into hope? And so for the listener who is walking through something and says, yeah, but you're talking about the future. I'm here and now, how I, I'm walking through something today.
Laura Bailey [00:09:09]:
I'm having difficulties today. And I say, you know, Carla, I wish I had these great answers, but a lot of times what I tell people is there's three main things that help us to live with that eternal perspective. The first thing is we get back in the word, because for me, when I am struggling the most, when I have lost perspective, when I have gone back to the distractions, because the world is filled with distractions, we're constantly walking away, myself included, I'm saying, okay, the first thing I have to constantly do is be in the scriptures. And I understand for somebody, because I'm a wrestler, while I 100% believe that God is real, I believe that our faith is real. It is not something that comes natural. So my daily prayer typically is, Lord, help me in my unbelief. So I understand. And as somebody who wrote a book about eternity, there were a lot of times in those days that I would say, I would be asking myself, like, I would have those doubts in my mind, and I'd say, lord, I'm trying to do this for you.
Laura Bailey [00:10:21]:
Why don't you just take away these doubts? Why is this going on? But it was in those moments when the times I wanted to flee from God's word is when I had to go back and really read the scriptures over and over. And there were certain scriptures that I had to literally repeat to myself out loud and speak that truth over myself even when I didn't want to. The second thing I would encourage people is finding a group of fellow believers that will push you closer to what the scripture says, closer to truth. Because when we're in those dark moments, oftentimes there's some sort of lie that we're believing, either about ourselves, oftentimes it's about God. You know, we're believing, oh, God isn't really that good. If God really loved me, he would free me from this. Or if God really cared. Whatever we're believing, typically we are, we're in some sort of lie that we're believing about ourselves and in that, then we start to feel shame.
Laura Bailey [00:11:22]:
So then we start to isolate ourselves, and so we're pulling ourselves even farther away. So I tell people who are experiencing this is that find. If it's just one person, then find one person. But if you can find a group that you can openly share your struggle with, who are able to say, hey, I understand, I see you. Who will pray with you? Who will encourage you? Those are probably the best two pieces of advice, and they're not over the top wow. Factors. But in those moments, that is what's helped me the most.
Carla Arges [00:11:54]:
Yeah, I agree. So much of our battle is in our mind, and our perspective is in our mind, and it starts from those core beliefs. What do you believe to be true about yourself? What do you believe to be true about God? What do you believe to be true about the world? And how do your beliefs actually align to the word of God? Because there's some work we got to do in those visceral beliefs that were shaped by our past and by lies. I love this idea of an eternal perspective, but what is the eternal perspective?
Laura Bailey [00:12:33]:
So much of the book of ecclesiastes kind of falls right in line with the book of revelation. People are probably like, what we're talking. We went from ecclesiastes to revelation. But I think both of these books and the reason why I'm bringing this up in terms of the eternal perspective is that people tend to shy away from talking about death. But the reality is, is that it, what was Franklin say? Death and taxes, right? Those are two things that are guaranteed. And it is when the eternal perspective is, is telling, is saying, okay, one day my time on earth is going to come to an end. And when it does, I'm going to stand in front of God, our creator, our savior, and we're going to have to answer for the deeds done in the flesh, and we're going to have to, you know, and those of us in Christ, fortunately, the response is going to be, you know, well done, good and faithful servante, and we'll enter into the gates of heaven and spend eternity with, with our savior. And so when you, when you think about it that way, and you say, okay, but see, that's not so often in christian circles.
Laura Bailey [00:13:48]:
It's like, I'm saved, I'm done. That's it. That's all. And while we are saved, right, by grace alone, through faith alone, we have to, ecclesiastes ask us to ask the question in light of that now, how are we going to live our life wisely, knowing that we are going to stand before the Lord and he is going to say, okay, you know, it says that we will give an account of our time on earth. What did we do with our time on earth? And the reason why I bring revelation into that is because for those of us before, you know, we see that the Lord tells us, excuse me, I get my words right. The Lord, the scripture tells us that ultimately there will be a new heaven and there will be a new earth, and we will live with him for all eternity. Which even I'll be honest, when I say the word eternity, even for me, it still blows my mind. I have young girls, and they're like, mom, how long is eternity? Like, how long are we going to live with Jesus? And I'm like, a really long time.
Laura Bailey [00:14:54]:
We can't even. We can't even fathom it. And so ecclesiastes, a book that is more is focusing on, okay, how are you going to live your life today knowing that one day that you're going to be with the Lord? And I think, and then we say the book of revelation is more knowing that we're going to be with the Lord on this new heaven and earth. It's the same concept. Right? It's like, it's this concept of knowing that ultimately, the only name, and I said this earlier, but the only name that is going to be remembered is that of Jesus Christ.
Carla Arges [00:15:24]:
Yeah.
Laura Bailey [00:15:25]:
And so it's not about us. It's not about. We are not. And ecclesiastes spends a lot of times, or Solomon spends a lot of time saying, like, you spend so much of your energy and your time trying to leave a mark, but for what? Generations come, generations go, the earth keeps spinning. The earth keeps moving. You are quickly forgotten. It says again, you're a vapor. You're a mess.
Laura Bailey [00:15:49]:
You're quickly forgotten. But those of us in the Lord, that we're okay with that. Why? Because, again, we know it's not about us. It's about the Lord. And so to me, especially in that season, because a lot of my lies, that battle in my brain are this concept of, I'm not doing enough. I haven't achieved enough, I'm not worthy, because I haven't done x, y, and z. It's very me focused. And so this message of ecclesiastes and this concept of, like, it's not about you.
Laura Bailey [00:16:24]:
You don't have to live a life that, that is about Laura. Instead, we get to live a life that points other people to Christ. And for me personally, that helps release a lot of those chains of just expectation, the weariness that I constantly felt about when I would lay my head at night of, like, did I do this, this and that. The shame of not achieving all of these things, it really just. That's why, for me, this book, it just helped kind of free me from those burdens and say, you know what? When I truly accept that, it is, it is in Christ alone, it's not Jesus. And my performance, it's not Jesus. And whatever we want to fill in the blank, it's just simply Jesus. I just get to live a life that points others to him.
Carla Arges [00:17:20]:
And I think so much of this is, what's your heart posture? So when we say living in light of eternity, what are you going to do with it doesn't mean that we're all called to be Billy Graham's and have large platforms. How are you having an eternal perspective with the right heart attitude when you're doing that 100th load of laundry, when you're cleaning up another mess that your kids made, when you're doing the homeschooling again, those moments are godly moments when we have the right heart attitude in doing them. And the eternal perspective is, how can this shape me to be who I'm made to be, which is to glorify God in all that I do with what he's given me to do? And we all have different assignments. They're not the same, and we can't compare them.
Laura Bailey [00:18:15]:
Yes, I also. The book, kind of the key verse that I use is ecclesiastes 311, and it says that God set eternity on man's heart. And it kind of explains that tension of the here and nothing yet of our faith. And so often, you know, once I've kind of have begun to live with this perspective and exactly what you're saying, it's when I start to realize that everything that I do, if I'm doing it for the glory of the Lord, like I am investing in his kingdom, I'm investing in the eternal. And it's when I started shifting, especially because I struggled. A lot of my story is that for ten years, I was in this kind of. This high power career that was everything to me. It provided my significance, my identity, financial comfort.
Laura Bailey [00:19:08]:
I mean, it was literally my world at the expense of my husband, my friendships. I mean, it was like, if you didn't fit in that world, then I wasn't interested. And so it was very jarring when the Lord got a hold of my heart at the beginning, because sanctification is a process, right? It's not a one and done thing. And so when I felt, felt being called to be at home and yes, talking about ripping the Band aid off, of having to say where, what is my purpose, Lord? What do you want me to do today? What. What assignment is today? Because you're right. Even though our purpose is the same, to glorify God and to make him known, we will have different seasons of our life. Solomon talks about seasons in chapter three. We will have different seasons also.
Laura Bailey [00:19:59]:
God created us differently. So just because you and I are in the same season and we have the same purpose, the way that we do, that is different. But what is so beautiful is that God, he looks at you mentioned Billy Graham. If we are both coming to the Lord open handedly and saying, not your, you know, not my will, but your will, what do you want me to do in this season for you? So that I am adding to the kingdom, I am co laboring with you. Harvest is plentiful. I'm here to work. Then God looks at us the same. He doesn't look at Billy Graham being out here and me reading the Bible.
Laura Bailey [00:20:39]:
Or let's just make it more, more mundane, me serving this, a meal to my family that maybe not even eat it. He looks at us the same because we're both saying, hey, Lord, I understand that my purpose is greater than myself. My purpose, ultimately, is to bring people to you. And the only thing I tell my girls, I said, the biggest decision you will ever make, the most important decision you will ever make in your life, is where you will spend eternity. Because eternity is forever. Most of our decisions, every other decision in our life, ultimately will go away. But where we spend eternity, that is the most important decision we can make. And so once we've made that decision, then we start to ask the questions and we start to talk about that perspective, okay? Is where I'm investing my time, my energy, are the things that I value.
Laura Bailey [00:21:37]:
Does my life share to the world that I care about people I care about where other people are going to spend eternity? Or does my life does? You know, I talk about this some in the book. Does my, if you open up your calendar, if you look at. Open up your checkbook, that tells a lot about what you value. And so you're saying, do I value the things of the Lord? Do I value what scripture tells me is important? Or perhaps have I gotten distracted by what the world tells me important? And that's the great, that's, that's the good news about the gospel, is that the gospel is not it's for every day. Every day we need the gospel message. And. And while, you know, we accept Christ, that's a one undead thing. But every day we've got to preach that gospel to ourselves.
Carla Arges [00:22:28]:
Yes.
Laura Bailey [00:22:29]:
That is ultimately where I say that that perspective is the perspective of. Okay, this is not the temporary. My girls laughed. I say we got to put our eternal goggles on. Like, how are we looking at this? We're getting really flustered about this. We're getting really upset about this. Like, does this have eternal significance? And sometimes it works better than others, I'll be honest.
Carla Arges [00:22:52]:
But that's a great question to filter things through. Does this matter in light of eternity? Does this warrant my time and my attention, my worry? That's such a great question. So this is a 21 day devotional embracing eternity. Where can people find it? Where can they find you? How can they get more of Laura Bailey?
Laura Bailey [00:23:15]:
Yes. So the devotional will be on Amazon. And I'm Laura Bailey. You can just search it up that way. And then I do have Facebook and Instagram, and I'm at Laura Baileywrites. And then I do have a website of Laura R. Bailey.com.
Carla Arges [00:23:34]:
And we'll put all of that in the show notes for sure. Wonderful. Thank you so much for being here. If there was one message you would leave for the audience today, what would you say to them?
Laura Bailey [00:23:48]:
How you live matters.
Carla Arges [00:23:53]:
That is so powerful. Thank you so much for being here. Guys, you've got to check out this devotional. I've gone through it. It is such a great way to check your perspective and allow God speak into your life and into how you are choosing to show up. Because ultimately it is choice, and this will reveal to you. Or maybe your choices need to change. Thank you so much, Laura, for being here.
Carla Arges [00:24:20]:
We appreciate you so much.
Laura Bailey [00:24:23]:
Thank you.
Carla Arges [00:24:30]:
Thanks for joining me today. I hope we're already friends on social media, but if we're not, come find me on Instagram, arlaarges orffirmingtruth. Can't wait to see you back here next week. Bye, friends.