Dorsey Ross Show
Hello, my name is Dorsey Ross, and I am the host of the Dorsey Ross Show. I am a minister and itinerant speaker. I started the Dorsey Ross Show to interview people of faith who have stories of faith and overcoming trials and difficulties. In this podcast, you will hear stories of all kinds. Some will make you laugh, cry, and even say I can connect with that story or that person. I would love to encourage you to check out these stories of faith, encouragement, and inspiration my guests share on the show. I hope these stories give you hope, to get you through your week and your life. Please share them with your family, friends, co-workers, and anyone who needs a little touch of encouragement today.
Dorsey Ross Show
Warrior Moms: Praying for Prodigal Children
What happens when a parent's deeply held Christian values collide with their child's life-altering decisions? Debrah McNinch faced this question head-on when her adult son announced he was transgender in 2017. The pain and isolation that followed became the catalyst for Battle Cry Moms, a prayer movement uniting mothers of prodigal children across denominational lines.
With raw honesty, Debrah shares the journey from devastation to determination, revealing how she navigated the tension between unconditional love and unwavering faith. "I couldn't hate my child enough to get him to heaven, and I couldn't love him straight to hell," she explains, articulating the delicate balance many Christian parents struggle to maintain when their children make choices that conflict with their beliefs.
The conversation tackles the uncomfortable reality that churches often fall short in supporting families through these crises. Many parents find themselves caught between two extremes - reject your child or fully affirm choices against your faith - with little guidance on finding a middle path rooted in both truth and grace. Debrah's experience highlights the urgent need for faith communities to create space for messy realities rather than perpetuating the illusion of perfect Christian families.
Battle Cry Moms now connects over 1,300 mothers worldwide through a private online platform where they can share struggles, find specific support groups, and most importantly, unite in persistent prayer for their children. The community stands on the conviction that while parents cannot force their children back to faith, they can stand in the gap through faithful intercession, armed with Scripture and unwavering hope.
Whether you're personally walking through the heartbreak of a prodigal journey or seeking to better support those who are, this conversation offers practical wisdom, spiritual encouragement, and a powerful reminder that no situation is beyond God's redemptive reach. Join us to discover how persistent prayer and unconditional love can become your battle cry in life's most challenging seasons.
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Hello everyone, thank you again for joining me on another episode of the Dorsey Ross Show. Today, we have a special guest with us. Her name is Deborah Minutes. She is the founder of Battle Cry Moms. Battle Cry Moms was launched in May of 2021. It exists for one purpose For moms to unite in prayer for their prodigal children. In June 2017, debra's world came crashing down when her son announced he was transgender. The days and weeks following his announcement were full of pain, tears and uncertainty as Deborah watched the Christian values instilled in him fade away. Out of the pain, she would make sure of several things. She would share her family's struggles to offer hope to others going through the same thing. She would build a community for other moms, like her moms, that believe that their prodigals will come home. She promised to never stop believing that God was a God of miracles and nothing was too big for him. She found a battle cry to be the answer to all those promises. Debra, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me and for having this important conversation.
Speaker 1:Definitely. Now I'd like to open up with a few, you know, lighthearted questions, and the first one is what's the most interesting place you ever visited?
Speaker 2:visited? Okay, well, you know, let me think about that. These questions always are so hard for me. You know you prepare for all of these and it's the ones you don't know are coming are the hard. You know we have traveled just a little bit, but I'm going to say my favorite place we ever went was Israel. We were able to take a private tour of the Holy Land about a decade or so ago and it was amazing as you can, and changed my life and so just it was so interesting just to see actually what is going on there now, what went on there thousands of years ago, and just to kind of make the Bible come alive.
Speaker 1:Now I hear, I read and I heard that you like to learn a new skill every year. Every year, what's a new skill that you would like to learn this year, in 2025?
Speaker 2:This year. I'm still kind of deciding on a couple of things, but I really want to get into fermenting things, and so last year we really took on canning learning, going deeper into learning how to can and preserve food, and I'm really kind of into the fermenting game right now, and so I really want to learn more about how to ferment vegetables and ferment things and put them up and all of that kind of good stuff. I also, you know, I want to learn. I want to keep sewing a little bit. I took up a board last year and I really want to continue that Just hand sewing skill. I think that's super fun. So, yeah, I just am all about learning new things, keeping my brain active, and I just like to be just like one of those people that say, yeah, I can do that. You know, it's just fun, I can do that, I can do anything.
Speaker 1:What is a photo from F-A-R-M?
Speaker 2:Yes, so a long, many, many years ago. I've always been a photographer and I really got to the point in my photography that I didn't enjoy photographing people as much as I used to, and so, but one thing I always liked to do was to build sets and collect junk. And so I teamed up with a dear friend of mine that owned a wedding venue and said, hey, would you like to have a photo farm on your property? And so what we do is we set up sets, different sets, and we they're very elaborate also. It's just, it's a lot. We are kind of over the top. We're known for kind of our over the top things that we do. But it allows other photographers, or people we call momographers, to come out and use our sets and take pictures, and so they basically they rent our set, and then people can come out and bring your own camera or your own photographer and use our stuff. So that's what a photo farm is.
Speaker 1:Okay, and you also mentioned in that last answer that you like to get vintage junk. What is the best vintage junk that you've gotten?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, I have a love for vintage chairs and vintage couches, and so you can find me with vintage furniture. Okay, so my vintage junk I love to collect. I am one of those that will be driving down the street and we'll see junk by the curb and you know I'm like stop the car, I have to get that. And so I always like to joke that I love to see the value in things that other people throw out, just like Jesus, only with more glitter. And so I like to like I. I can just see anything can be a transformation and there could be beauty in anything, and so I love to collect couches. I love to collect vintage couches. Um, vintage chairs. I have a thing for old wooden chairs Pretty much. If it's junky, I'm going to get it.
Speaker 1:What sparked your interest in what you do now?
Speaker 2:Okay, so as you said in the intro, my world kind of came crashing down about seven years ago when my son announced that he was transgender. And up to that point I kind of was living this life of. I had this kind of perfect little family and you know, I thought we were all, everything was just unicorns and rainbows and everything was just going great. And it wasn't until that announcement that I realized that I was facing something that was really big and really hard and I was all alone in that. And so at the time, kind of at that announcement happened. It really was still the beginning, kind of the beginning stages of the movement we see today, kind of more. It's more open and talked about.
Speaker 2:It really wasn't kind of back then, and so at that time I really didn't know anyone that was going through the same thing I was, and even as far as like having prodigal children of any kind. I really didn't know of anybody that had kids that kind of strayed from the path that was laid out for them. I know the church wasn't talking about it, I knew that it wasn't something on a Sunday morning pastors were really talking about, and so I found myself really just not knowing what to do, where to turn and who to talk to. And so I knew immediately that I was going to need to find other moms, moms like me that had hopes and dreams for their family and that those changed overnight. And now they were left to pick up the pieces and figure out is God still good, does God still love me, does God still love my child, and how can I go forward in the future?
Speaker 1:Can you give a little bit more in of a description of how you know how, what is battle cry, moms, and how do people find you? And you know, yes, um, about that yeah.
Speaker 2:So, as I said at the beginning, I knew I was going to need to find moms like me. So originally I joined a secular kind of Facebook group for people going through similar experiences and I discovered really quickly that I probably wasn't a good fit for that group because I had different values and was coming from a whole different kind of point of view. But I stayed at it for a long time because I needed that community, I needed to know that there were other moms going through the same thing. And so I started doing some research about four years ago to kind of figure out what that would look like, to build my own social media network. And I always just say it was God just opening up the doors and showing me where to go and when to go and all of that during that time. But I started Battle Cry Moms and how it operates is it's its own little, it's kind of like a Facebook, but it's its own private community. It has nothing to do with any of the major social media networks. It's its own little entity by itself. And I started that so moms like me would have a place to go and to connect and to believe together. And so within the group. We have the main group, but we also have subgroups, and it's amazing because we have it broken down for what people are going through. So if you have a child that maybe is LGBTQ and you're a Christian and you don't know how to handle that, there's a group for you. If you have a child that maybe has some alcohol drug issues, there's a group for you. You're going to find other moms going through the same thing that will be able to speak life into you and to be able to help you on this journey, and maybe you just have a kid that simply doesn't believe. We have a group for you. And so within our main group we have lots of subgroups and so there's going to be somebody that you can connect with once you get in. And so how you find us is we are battlecrymomscom.
Speaker 2:When you come to the main page, it will say like click to join, something like that, and then when you click that, it's going to ask you five questions. And then when you click that, it's going to ask you five questions, and I personally go through every request to join the group and I say yes or no, depending on how people kind of answer the questions, because we're a very private group. What we do in the group, we want to stay private and secure and we only want people there that have the same prayer concerns and the same values that we have going into what our kids are going through, and so we have over 1,300 moms right now that join us from all over the world. We have people from overseas that have joined us, but it's a very diverse group.
Speaker 2:We have all denominations we have anywhere, I always joke from Lutherans and Catholics to Pentecostals, and so we have all kinds of craziness going on in there at any given time, but we stay united. We don't discuss politics, we don't discuss current events. We discuss our children, and that's the focus of our group. We pray for our kids and we post verses and songs and different things to encourage each other all of the time, and that's where our focus is with Battle Cry Moms.
Speaker 1:I know a friend of mine. He had a son who was a prodigal and he is now home, and he's been home several years now and you know, I'm thinking to myself, man, I wonder if she had any type of support for any type of people that she was surrounded by to help her during that time.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I found in my case there were not really a lot of people that knew what to do. Nobody knew what to say to me. Pastors didn't know kind of what to do in my situation, and so there just wasn't a lot of information out there.
Speaker 2:We have started, a couple of years ago, a battle cry dads group, and so if you're listening to this also and you're a dad, there's a group for you. I will say it's very, very small. I cannot get the dads to join. The dads aren't joiners, like moms are joiners. But I know the Lord's got plans for that group, and so we just keep inviting people to come, and one day it's going to be a powerful group as well, and so there's power in having a group. I call them our mat carriers. It's like the story of the paralytic in the Bible when it took four friends to get this person down in front of Jesus. I need friends. I need people to help me get my child in front of Jesus, and so we need mat carriers in our life, people that are going to partner with us to get our kids back to the kingdom of God.
Speaker 1:Amen. What is it like being a Christian and the mother of a transgender child?
Speaker 2:That's a great question and it depends on the day, probably, how I could answer that question. But the right answer to say up front is my kid is my kid and I made the decision at the beginning that I heard the Lord clearly say to me it was my job to love my child and it was his job to save him, and so I have never wavered in my love and support of my child. But at the same time I have different values and I come from a different place and so I had to learn to find my voice where at the first I was really kind of full of shame and embarrassment and it wasn't shame and embarrassment, I always like to say, it had nothing to do with his decision the shame and embarrassment was that we go to these churches and we have to have the perfect little family and we have to pretend the perfect little family and we have to pretend like everything is okay. And then, when it wasn't okay, when I realized I had a child that now didn't really fit into the pew, like maybe he would have before, I was embarrassed because I somehow felt like people were looking at me like what did that mother? Do you know what? Where did she go wrong? She must have done something. And so it was a lot of like holding my head just trying to lift up my eyes every Sunday to see the Lord, with kind of the shame and embarrassment I felt like the church was kind of putting on me.
Speaker 2:And you know, at the beginning I write about in the book I wrote about, all of this is I found there were two camps in the church and there was the camp I call it door A that said what these kids are doing is wrong and you have to turn them out and you have to. You know, just love them from afar and let them go. And then there was this camp over here that said there's nothing wrong with what they're doing, just love them. Everybody, god loves everybody, you know, in affirming the decision. And so I found myself kind of stuck in the middle of these two camps going.
Speaker 2:You know, I love my child yes, absolutely. But to not talk to him and to treat him any differently because of this decision, that just didn't feel right to me. But to affirm and lie to him and say this wasn't going to affect possibly eternal salvation, that didn't feel right to me either. And so I had to just decide I couldn't love my child anymore enough, you know, to get him to heaven. I mean, I couldn't hate my child enough to get him to heaven. I couldn't like there was nothing I could do to like turn him out and hate him enough to like that was going to like somehow get him in with better with God, but at the same time, I wasn't going to love him straight to hell. I was going to tell him the truth. And so I had to find out how to love my child where he was at and be the hands and feet of Jesus, but sometimes do that through my actions and not my words.
Speaker 2:And so, and it's all about learning to lay our kids down, and I think that was one thing I wasn't personally taught, maybe with the church. I love to joke that we dedicate babies and pray Jeremiah 29, 11 over them. You know that they're going to have a hope and a future, and that really has nothing to do with high school graduations and you know, and baby dedications, but we use that verse. But what we don't know is that verse yeah, you know, jeremiah, he had a hope and a future. God was saying I have a, I have this for you but you're going to be in captivity for a while. And so we kind of failed to mention that to parents when we pray that verse over their kids.
Speaker 2:And so I had to learn how to lay my child down and I had to believe that God had a plan and that he was never going to stop pursuing my child, just like he never stopped pursuing me.
Speaker 2:And I had to learn just to let him go. Let him go and let God and just love my kid right where he was at. And I refuse to believe. I love the story in the Bible when it talks about Rachel and she refused to be comforted. I had to refuse to be comforted. There wasn't anything anybody could say to me that was going to make this better. There wasn't any little verse. I was just going to pray and I was just going to you know it was all going to go away. I had to refuse to be comforted and I had to stay in that place. And I have to stay every day into that place of just intercession, prayer and belief that God has got this and somehow some way he is going to make all of this right and that Satan. One thing we say in my group, a lot is. No one fights alone and Satan is not going to have our children. He's not, and we refuse to believe it that he's going to.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the two camps or two sides for the cookies. We even see it today. You know more and more. Even see it today. You know more and more. We see it today. Yes, and did you ever talk to, you know, a pastor, talk to church members or whatnot, to try to understand why there is that you know? Conundrum of the two sides Right.
Speaker 2:First, the side that you are talking about Right, you know, early on I made some contact with you know, my pastor and whatever, and was just kind of not given good advice and I just I've realized that I can pull right now. I could go to any church website and I could pull up where they stand on any issue that we're talking about and I could tell you if they think my child's going to heaven or hell and we have drawn the line in the sand, which is fine. I have no problem with churches preaching the truth and standing up for what is right. That's never been my problem. My problem is, if we honestly believe that these decisions are separating our children from eternal, you know, glory with our Savior, then what are we doing to pray them home? How come we're not on our faces every single Sunday at the altar crying out for these children? And that's what my kind of my problem became was I wasn't seeing any kind of prayer movement or any kind of like movement to believe these children are coming home. It was like we stopped at condemnation but we didn't believe that God could somehow transform them and there was no teaching, if you will, or instructing parents, because there's parents just like me, there's parents probably listening right now to this podcast, saying, gosh, I am going through the same thing, or I know somebody going through the same thing, and there's nobody talking about this. This is an issue the church is silent about, and so it's just time that we as a church the capital C church start talking about hard issues and start standing with our parents for the things that they're going through.
Speaker 2:And I know, at the beginning, one time I was at a Bible study and I was with people I had been in this Bible study for a while and I loved everybody in this Bible study, but I had never felt comfortable to tell my story.
Speaker 2:No one knew what I was going through. And one week the conversation went to LGBT issues and I started hearing things that these people that I loved and was sitting around the table with saying you know things like well, we send our kids to private school because we don't want our kids around those kids. And there was something in me that clicked that night when I heard the word those kids that I knew it was time that I had to get over myself and I had to stand up and be a voice for parents everywhere that are going through hard things, that want people to stand with them in prayer and to believe their kids are coming home, and so we have to get to a point that it's my kids and it's your kids and I want the best for your family as much as, hopefully, you want for my family, and we're not going to stop praying and believing until all of our kids are home.
Speaker 1:How old was your son when he had this discussion with you?
Speaker 2:He was an adult and, in my situation, an adult already out in the world doing his own thing, all of that. And so I think it's a whole different discussion. If maybe you have a child at home, that's a minor living in your house, I think that's a different kind of discussion from where I'm coming from. But in my case, you know, my child was an adult, made an adult decision, and so, as a lot of our kids do, they make adult decisions that maybe you're not going to agree with.
Speaker 2:And, as silly as it sounds, I I guess I really didn't. I laugh when I say it because it sounds so ridiculous I didn't realize like they were going to have a free will to do their own thing. It never occurred to me that like they would choose anything other than to like walk with the Lord. So that was my own kind of naive like oh well, this is the way they've been brought up, this is the path they'll follow. I didn't realize that there was an enemy after my children and after my family, and I wish somebody would have pulled me aside when my kids were little and said hey, do you know that Satan's after your kids? Because I would have been like what are you talking about? Because I really didn't understand that like I do now.
Speaker 1:And what type? I mean, obviously you're a Christian and you go first and everything. What was his walk with Christ like? Did he have one growing up and you know, did you have a discussion with him about that and say, hey, you know, this is wrong. What was that discussion?
Speaker 2:like you know, that's a great question, and I find that for myself, and even like a lot of the parents that are in my group, that they will all say we did the right things. We went to church, they went to youth group, they went to Christian school, they went to Christian college, they sang and worshiped bands, they did all the right things, and so you know the works was all there. So you know the works was all there. But I always like to say, if I could go back and do it again, I would say I would not take my kids to church. Well, what I mean by that was I wouldn't spend all of my time thinking that a Sunday morning and a Wednesday night, you know, or a Sunday night, that those were going to be enough things. I would really focus on taking my children to Jesus. And so I think that we have to get to a place that we're teaching them hard things. We're talking about hard things with our kids. We're talking about how God can, you know, can fix things and mold things and help you with things, when sometimes we just don't talk about those hard things. And so when the hard things come, they don't know how to process it and they don't know how to fix it because we haven't allowed them to go through hard things and let them see how the Lord can walk with them. And so, you know, we've had lots of conversations over the years and I will say that I believe my child's faith is strong.
Speaker 2:As far as I know, he still believes.
Speaker 2:I know he still believes. I know he still reads the word. I know that this is a struggle that he has and, you know, one of these days it's somehow God's going to take that word, because all of those things that we did, even though they may not have been enough from a standpoint where I'm at now, those were seeds that were planted into my child, and those seeds are going to come out and they're going to grow in due season, and so I just keep watering those seeds. One of the things we pray in our group is that, you know, god would remind our kids of every sermon they ever heard, every worship song they ever sang, every prayer, they ever prayed. That he would bring that to their minds, that he would remind them of who they are in Him, that they would never forget where their roots are. And so we have had lots of conversations about that and it's hard, but I do still see some fruit there. I just have to believe that in due season God's going to multiply that and bring it forth.
Speaker 1:Do you ever see any type of government from people, either in the church, your family or your friends?
Speaker 2:you know, I think everybody has an opinion on this. Everybody's got a different opinion and I'm going to be honest, I had a different opinion about it seven years ago. I had to, kind of. You know, I have always been the person that have. Um, I've always told God, you know that I'm going to let the theologians hash that out. I'm just going to love people. I don't want to think about it. I'm going to let. I'm going to let the theologians hash that out. I'm just going to love people. I don't want to think about it. I'm going to let people smarter than myself think about all those kind of hard things. I'm going to just love people where they're at.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't until that dropped into my lap that I was forced to kind of get in the fight and decide. And so I knew that, especially right now, kind of politically, you know, it's so hard because we talk about like things like bathroom issues and you know, transgender people going in the wrong bathroom and how people that stirs them all up so much and I completely understand that. But then at the same time, as a mom, I get worried about my child going in the wrong bathroom, also because of retaliation and violence against his lifestyle, and so it's really hard because there's people that think this, you know, and can just ignore it and go on. And then there's the people there's that strong kind of group of people that think this, you know, and can just ignore it and go on. And then there's the people there's that strong kind of group of people that think this and act violent toward this community, and so, as Christians, you know, next time you're, you know, scrolling social media and you see this issue talked about in an article go to the comment section and see the Christians and some of the things they say, and it's absolutely mind blowing, um, what, what we say and what we allow to come out of our mouths against, you know, children of God, and so, um, you know, I, I think I get it Like I understand the issue and I understand why people think the way they do, um, and I understand some of the rules and laws and things we have and I completely would agree with those.
Speaker 2:But at the end of the day, I think sometimes we all have to remember that there really are good people caught in some deception and a lie, and this seems to be the issue the church really likes to focus on they don't want to talk about. You know all the sins that we have on the inside. You know we don't want to talk about. You know all the sins that we have on the inside, you know we don't want to talk about. You know our obesity problem and we don't want to talk about. You know pornography and we don't want to talk about sex outside of marriage and those types of things. You know we only really like to focus on this one issue of the church. It's always kind of comical to me that that's kind of what we. That's the one thing that kind of, you know gets us all cranked up. And there's so many other things that we need to be praying about and worrying about too.
Speaker 2:But you know, I know I have come to a place that if I see, maybe, a transgender person when I'm out in public, and even if I see him in the wrong bathroom when I'm out in public, I have about a 30-second window to make a decision.
Speaker 2:You know I pray every day that God would put somebody in front of my child that would speak life over him, someone that would prophesy to his future, wherever he is at, that he would run into somebody that would see who he is in the Lord and he would prophesy that to him. And so when I see somebody, I could get mad and I could say some mean things about you're in the wrong bathroom, or I could take one minute to remind that person. God sees you, god is still chasing you down and you can't outrun his love. And I could take those 10 seconds that I have and speak life over that person. And so I think sometimes we have to get over ourselves. We have to close our eyes and forget the things we're seeing, and we have to see through to their hearts. We can't talk to their heads. We have to start talking to their hearts.
Speaker 1:What would you say? You know you said a little bit there that you know talking to the transgender person and saying you know God loves you and God, you know, has a plan. You know, whatever you say to that person, obviously you know we may not want to start off that way, we may want to build a friendship with that person, but once we get to that spot that we feel comfortable saying that to them, what would you say to the person that's speaking to the transgender person? If they get a rebuttal of, well, how can God love me if he's going to send me to hell for the lifestyle that I have? What would you say to that person?
Speaker 2:Well, I think I would say the same thing that I would if I was talking to a drug addict or an alcoholic. You know God, he forgives our sins as far as the east is from the west. We all know that that, and there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. And so it's all about surrender and and trust. And so, as a person, if I'm speaking to somebody, you know it's it's that, come and see. It's that, try and see. It's that. Trust me, do you trust me? You know, but God is saying that to all of us every single day. You know, do you trust me? Do you trust me with my plan for your life?
Speaker 2:And, like you said, it's about building a relationship. You can't speak into somebody's life without relationship. You can't. They won't hear it, but we can't get relationship if we can't get past what someone is wearing on the outside. And so we all have to do better about building relationships with people that look different from us and learning to love them and see them like God sees them.
Speaker 2:I often think you know, when God said you know he looks at our heart, he doesn't look at the outside, that verse is for this day and age that he is seeing people's hearts, that he's not stopping right here, he's not stopping with what's on the outside. He's going on through and seeing somebody's heart. And so you know, I think it's just about building a relationship and loving people right where they're at. I can't fix anything, and that's kind of the, at the end of the day, what I have to remember. If there was something I could say or something I could do or somewhere I could go that would fix this for people, I would already have done it. It's the Holy Spirit, it's the kindness of God that brings us to repentance, and so we have to introduce God in his kindness and his love. But if we're only telling people how much he hates them all the time, they're never going to know how much he loves them.
Speaker 1:You're married and you have other sons as well. What has that experience been like?
Speaker 2:been like. You know everybody comes from this differently, and you know I still. You know we're living this out in real time and so sometimes, you know, it's easy to talk about things and sometimes it still gets a little emotional kind of when you're, because I'm living it out in real time. These are real families caught in real problems, and so I think men handle it differently. My husband definitely has his own story.
Speaker 2:It comes from this at a different angle than I come at it, and I have two other children and you know they're divided One supports and one does not. And so you know you go from being this tight knit family to being this, where nobody talks. Well, what that means is, you know I don't have Christmas dinners anymore, I don't get, you know, vacations with my grandkids and my family, and you know all these things that we plan and think of those are things that I don't have access to anymore because my life changed in this moment, and so you know it's just hard. And so next time you know you're at church on Mother's Day and you're looking around at all of the beautiful families with their kids, you know, just know that there's some mob sitting on the back row. That's hurting. That doesn't have that, and I think we just all have to realize that there's a lot of hurting people out there.
Speaker 2:And Satan comes from one thing. We all know what that is to steal and to kill and to destroy, and we have to remember that we're not mad at each other. This isn't a fight against each other. This is a fight against Satan and his demons that come to steal, kill and destroy families, and we have to remember that we have authority over him and we're going to start taking authority in our families and casting him down the strongholds that he has over our families and our kids, because he has no authority in our families. Because, as for me and my house, we serve the Lord and I say that every morning.
Speaker 1:Amen. What would you tell another parent that has similar experiences with their child, regardless of your situation or another situation, with their prodigal child?
Speaker 2:Yes, you're not alone. That would be my first thing that I would say to them is you are not alone. That is a lie from the pit of hell that Satan has whispered to you that you're the only one going through this. You are not alone, and so we would love to have you join our group. We would love for you to have community with Battle Cry Moms and stand together with us as we pray for our families and believe for them to come back.
Speaker 2:You know it's just hard, like we talked about. It's hard because you know, when you show up on a Sunday morning, you look at all the other families and you realize yours looks different and it starts putting the shame on you. But it says in Revelation that we will overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. I would encourage you right now to be brave, to stand up. Go tell your pastor, go tell your friends at church, go tell them on a Sunday morning, say I need to tell you what we're going through as a family and I need this church to stand with me to believe my kid is coming home. Be brave and speak up.
Speaker 1:What do you think a church can do better to help parents that have prodigal children?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's a loaded question. I will say that I have lived in nine different places, nine different moves in different states, and I have been to a lot of churches and I can honestly say I have never been to a church that had a whole Sunday dedicated just to praying for the prodigals. And so first, if you are listening to this and you're a pastor, have a prodigal Sunday, have a prodigal Thursday, have a prodigal Tuesday, it doesn't matter what day of the week it is, but pick a day every month, every year, whatever it is, and pray for the prodigals. Give space for parents to come and say that this is what we're going through. Give space to people to share in their pain. Don't have that country club where everybody has to come and pretend their lives are perfect because they're not. People are hurting.
Speaker 2:Reach out to your community, reach out to other churches and say, hey, we have a support group here at our church that meets once a month and prays for the prodigals. Come join us, but we have to get in the game. So if I was talking to a pastor right now, I would say how are you in the game? How are you serving parents that have prodigal children? Serving parents that have prodigal children and then go from there. You can go on my website and I have a little group, I call it a Prodigal Sunday Pack, and you can order one for your pastor and I'm going to send him a book and I'm going to send him some resources and I'm just going to lay it out and say would you please have a Prodigal Sunday at your church? Could you commit to having a Prodigal Sunday this year at your church? And that is my goal is that every church in America and around the world will take one Sunday to pray for the prodigals.
Speaker 1:What is one key takeaway for listeners who have turned in this week?
Speaker 2:Again, I would say the one thing I want them to hear me say is no one fights alone and that you are not alone and that we're going to get through this, that there is nothing that is too hard for God, nothing is too hard for God. And so don't get stuck in the shame of the woulda, coulda, shouldas and what you wish you would have done differently. You know. Get stuck in praying for the future, get stuck in believing for great things, that God is going to somehow, some way, make this all right and that our children are coming home. We have got to focus on the prodigals. You know I always joke that one time God gave me this vision of a puzzle, and you know it and I know it. If you're doing a puzzle at your house and you get down to one, the last piece, and it's missing, what do you do? You are on the floor, you're crawling around, you're overturning the couch cushions. You're like where did that piece of the puzzle go? But the church is. That's exactly what's happening in the church today. We are all ready for the rapture. We're like, ready today to go to heaven? I know I am. I'm ready for the rapture, but we have got. We're looking at this puzzle and there's that one piece missing and we're like, oh, you know what, we can see it, it's close enough, let's just go and get out of here, but God is still. You have to put our kids back into that puzzle, back into that one missing piece. So we have to find the prodigals and bring them home. It is our job, that's what we're supposed to do and that's what we have to focus on.
Speaker 2:If there was one question that I could have asked you today, what would that question be and how would you answer it? One question would be when this first started for me, I knew that I was going to have to have a plan. I knew I was going to have to have a battle plan, and so in our group we talk about a battle plan and what that is. It's an easy five-step plan to pray for our children, and so that's what I would say is you're going to need a plan, and the most important step of that is the word.
Speaker 2:Find a verse to stand on for your kids. Maybe that's a verse that God gave you, maybe that's one of your favorite verses, maybe that's something somebody else said to you, but pray that verse every single day over your child. Pray that verse. That's all it takes is one letter of God's word, and it can change generations. God's word is that powerful that it just takes one word of it. And so find a verse today.
Speaker 2:Find a verse today. Memorize that verse. Write it everywhere you go. Write it in your bathroom cabinet. Write it in your dresser drawer. Write it on the bottom of your chute, it doesn't matter. Write that verse, write it everywhere you go. Write it in your bathroom cabinet. Write it in your dresser drawer. Write it on the bottom of your shoe, it doesn't matter. Write that verse down, memorize it and speak that over your child every single day. Give it to your friends. Write it on an index card. If you, if people ask how they can pray for your family, hand them that card and say here, I need you to pray this verse over my child.
Speaker 1:And so that's what I would tell people right now is find a battle plan, get a battle plan and get in the game. And where can people reach out to you again if they have questions for you or they want to join your group?
Speaker 2:Yes, so you can go to my website, which is deborahmcninchcom, and I have different resources there. You can link Battle Cry Moms and Battle Cry Dads on that. If you can't remember my name and if you think I can remember Battle Cry, that's an easy thing to remember it's battlecrymomscom or battlecrydadscom, battlecrymomscom or BattleCryDadscom and connect with me. I would love to just talk to anybody that needs a friend to talk to. I would love to have coffee with you. I would love to come to your church and tell my story.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much again for having this important conversation and just believe, never stop believing that our kids are coming home.
Speaker 1:Amen. Well, thank you again for tuning in to another episode of the Dorothy Ross Show. Please go and like Debbie's information and check out her website. And until, and please go and check out other episodes and my website as well, wwwdorseylawshowcom. And until next time, god bless, bye-bye.
