On this episode of the Denison Forum Podcast, Dr. Mark Turman sits down with author and speaker Mary DeMuth to talk about what it means to feel overlooked—both in Scripture and in daily life. They explore the challenges of being unnoticed, the biblical truth of Imago Dei, and how these experiences shape our relationships. Mary shares her own story of wrestling with being overlooked and offers practical wisdom on finding healing through community, prayer, and hospitality. They also look at how Jesus himself was overlooked and what that means for us today. The conversation touches on church hurt and how Christians can respond with grace and awareness. Tune in for a thoughtful discussion filled with biblical insight and real-life encouragement.
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Topics
- (01:19): Introducing Mary Demuth
- (02:07): The Problem of Being Overlooked
- (03:42): Biblical Perspectives on Overlooking
- (09:03): The Role of Women in the Bible
- (16:36): Jesus and the Overlooked
- (21:27): Church Hurt and Healing
- (36:32): Practical Steps to Notice Others
- (40:17): Conclusion and Resources
Resources
- The Most Misunderstood Women of the Bible
- The Most Overlooked Women of the Bible
- Pray Every Day Podcast
- Mary DeMuth’s Website
- Mary DeMuth Literary
- Mary DeMuth Art
- Mary DeMuth’s Latest Books
About Mary DeMuth
Mary DeMuth is a literary agent, daily podcaster at the Pray Every Day Show, Scripture artist, speaker, and the author of more than fifty books, including The Most Misunderstood Women of the Bible. She lives in Texas with her husband and is the mom to three adult children. Find out more at marydemuth.com.
About Dr. Mark Turman
Dr. Mark Turman is the Executive Director of Denison Forum and Vice President of Denison Ministries. Among his many duties, Turman is most notably the host of The Denison Forum Podcast. He is also the chief strategist for DF Pastors, which equips pastors and church leaders to understand and transform today’s culture.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, The Denison Forum Podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
[00:00:00] Dr. Mark Turman: This is the Denison Forum Podcast. I’m Mark Turman, your host for today’s conversation at Denison Forum. We want to equip you to think, live, and serve in ways that cultivate flourishing communities. We’ve been thinking about that in some fresh ways at the beginning of this year, and I want to focus a little bit on that last part of what I shared of flourishing. What does it mean to flourish or to thrive or to bloom? If you will, in a biblical way, we talk about that a lot at Denison Forum and Denison Ministries. We talk about it in terms about wanting a world to be a place where our lives are inspired and instructed by faith rather than driven by fear we want it to be a place where the qualities of faith, hope, and love dominate rather than lesser qualities or even destructive qualities. And so we’re having conversations around that. And we’re going to have a conversation today about noticing each other the way God notices and knows all of us. The problem we’re going to identify. With my conversation partner is the problem of being overlooked and how the Bible helps us to think through that in some important ways so that we will build better relationships with each other.
And so my conversation partner today is Mary Demuth. She has an enormous amount of talents. She is a podcaster and author. She’s a speaker. She’s also an artist, just to name a few. You may have encountered one of her resources already, and let me just call out. You can find more about Mary at Mary Demuth.
That is Marydemuth.com. In case you’re not familiar with her, marydemuth.com, and she’s been doing some great thinking on this whole idea of being overlooked and how that’s an issue that God wants to help us with. And so Mary, welcome back to the podcast. She’s been with us before and we’re excited to have a conversation with her.
Welcome back, Mary.
[00:02:04] Mary DeMuth: Great to be here. Thanks for having me on.
[00:02:07] Dr. Mark Turman: So let’s talk about and try to frame this problem as best we can, or the opportunity maybe depending on how you’re looking at it. But just what drew you to the idea of, you know what? People are often overlooked both in the Bible and in just everyday life.
So frame up the problem. What kind of drew you to this idea and why did you want to try to work on helping us understand it better?
[00:02:33] Mary DeMuth: Yeah, my own personal story, there was just a lot of overlooking in my childhood where I just wasn’t, I felt like I was a wallflower and not noticed. So that just drove a lot of, you know, probably problems in my life and all of that.
But interestingly enough, the Lord often will test me in the message of the book that I’m writing. And when I was writing this book and completing it we were meeting with our former church and They basically said to my husband and I that they wouldn’t be using us in any possible way and that anything that we brought to the table they didn’t want and that to me was a pretty hard lesson. But it also had that feeling of being like, definitely overlooked. And, you know, having empathy for even older saints in the church who may have experienced this as well, where you suddenly become obsolete. Just by sheer fact of aging. That’s kind of like my past story and my present story.
And so I think overlooking weaves through the whole thing.
[00:03:42] Dr. Mark Turman: Do you think it’s something that most people or all people both men and women, children age, you know, young, young and old. You think this is a pretty prevalent problem of just sensing that you’re being overlooked?
[00:03:55] Mary DeMuth: I do. And I think today it’s even harder because I don’t know if I would call it overlooked as much, but with social media, I don’t think we’re actually really looked at.
We have projected an image of ourselves that may be overlooked. You might have 100, 000 followers, you might have four followers, and the 100, 000 follower person could feel overlooked too. But in a sense, it’s like you’re being overlooked for an image, not for who you are. And so there’s this deeper issue of, I’m not really known.
I the persona of me is known who I actually really am can be constantly overlooked.
[00:04:36] Dr. Mark Turman: And you see people sensing this reality in a lot of different ways. A lot of writers Jonathan Haidt got a lot of attention last year on his book about the anxious generation and how how young people, particularly those between the ages of 10 and 25, they may have a large.
activity and presence, but they still don’t feel like they belong or that they seen or that they’re seen or that they have a community. And, and then the New York times columnist and writer, David Brooks wrote a book called how to know a person, the art of being seen and seeing others. Well, really popular work that came out last year.
So others are sensing this topic as well. Mary, what do you sense are Some of the problems, some of the injuries maybe that happened to people and how do communities suffer when we are overlooking each other?
[00:05:27] Mary DeMuth: I think it gets down to the root of just really good or bad theology of the fact that we are the Imago Dei.
We have the image of God implanted in every human being because God created every human being. of late, we have begun to marginalize whole groups of people and somehow thinking that they don’t have God’s image in them. And that’s when you other someone like that, we think about, you know, the very common, idea of Nazi Germany.
When you make someone an other, then you dehumanize them, and they no longer are a human anymore. And then, therefore, if you take that leap, you can do all sorts of things to them. So it begins by overlooking the humanity of somebody else, and then it ends in some really bad things. So in terms of society, We have to get back to, in the church, we have to get back to believing that every human being on this earth is precious in the sight of their creator.
[00:06:34] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it’s, you know, supposedly a part of, you know, the fabric of our country. We often go back every year around the 4th of July to this idea that, begins the Declaration of Independence that we are all created equal and that we are endowed with these inalienable rights. But even that phrase, if you go back in history as I understand it, that idea of saying that these are inherent realities, that we are all created equal, even to know that that was written by a man who owned slaves is just incredibly astounding really.
And just in, amazing to think, you know, that he could pin those words, but not really live those words in very profound ways. And part of the story of our country that we just continue to try to figure out ways to reconcile. But that’s not the only direction. It’s continued to be that way. Mary, what have you learned as far as This being an expression of our sinful fallen nature when I was reading through some of your work on this topic, it just made me think about that, that idea that we run into, you know, that we, we are often in our society as consumers, we love stuff and we use people.
When we’re supposed to be loving people and use stuff how is things like consumerism and other parts of our brokenness, our sinfulness kind of driving this tendency to overlook people?
[00:08:01] Mary DeMuth: I think part of it is as Christ followers is an ignorance of the word of God. And what I mean by that is we’re very quick to judge the nation of Israel as they’re wandering around in the wilderness being like, Oh my gosh, they chased the idols and they didn’t conquer those kingdoms.
But they were a direct result of their, the cultures around them. And who are we to think that we’re any different? And same with penning the, you know, the declaration of independence or the constitution, you know, when you’re penning those powerful words and yet enslaving another human being, I think we’re more a product of our environment.
Often, then we are in submersing ourselves into the actual Word of God and the ways of the Holy Spirit and the counterintuitive kingdom of God that Jesus talked about so often in the Gospels.
[00:09:00] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And so much. Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. I think. So much of your ministry, as I have kind of learned about you over the last couple of years, so much of it is focused on women.
Talk about that from the unique standpoint of, of a major part of our society, obviously, and some of your own story that you mentioned a moment ago is there a particular reason that. You tried to call this out in your recent work around women who are overlooked, both in the Bible and beyond the Bible.
What, what do you think is unique about how women are overlooked in our spiritual understanding and also in our current society?
[00:09:40] Mary DeMuth: I do think that, you know, if you look at history and you know that it hasn’t been too long that women have had a right to vote in this country. So it’s not ancient history.
So there has been a lot of history of misogyny and oppression of the female persons. But that’s not really the reason why I wrote this book and decided to look at the women characters in the Bible, although that’s underneath everything. I think a lot of us would acquiesce to that being the truth.
But I did it because whenever I listen to sermons Sunday in and Sunday out. Hardly ever do I hear about the women of the Bible. There’s like the, the, you know, popular women of the Bible, the Esther’s and, and the Elizabeth’s and the Mary’s and the Martha’s. Those are popular ones, but we don’t hear about.
these overlooked ones, and they have so much to teach us. I think the problem is, is that we, when we read the Bible, we tend to read it like a novel, and we think these are characters in a story, and that is true in the great redemptive story of God, but they’re actually living, breathing human beings that had worries and stresses.
They might be different things that they’re facing, but they’re human. Therefore, when we look at them, we can learn from them, and we can befriend them, and that’s why I wrote about all of them.
[00:11:06] Dr. Mark Turman: Do you think when you look at the stories of these women in the Bible, do you think that there is like an an arc of improvement that the story of how women are valued, how they’re seen, do you feel like that that?
Is a story that gets better across the biblical story and revelation from beginning to end? Do you think it’s getting better in our culture in some ways?
[00:11:33] Mary DeMuth: Yes. I, I read a book called Slaves, Women, and Homosexuality, which talks about a redemptive a progressive redemptive hermeneutic. And the point of that is that as you go through the Bible, you see this this, this redemptive thread that is progressing in a more redemptive way.
And so you can kind of see that how Jesus treats women in the New Testament is a little bit different than how we see them treated in other places. But I would also say that when we see the Garden of Eden prior to the fall, we see a flourishing couple who are you know, managing this beautiful garden and all was theirs.
And since the fall. We’ve all been kind of broken, men and women, and we’re all trying to find our way back to Eden. And I do think that you see it culminating in the end of Revelation, new heavens, new earth, where everything is going to be made right. And we, of course, that was inaugurated with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
And now we’re in that age of grace where we’re walking out a new kingdom where there is no June or Greek women, men, you know, all of that. So we’re in that. And I. pray and hope that we continue to treat each other with dignity but there are still some problems. And I am grateful to just shed light on a couple of those problems.
[00:12:57] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And, and to try to just keep moving forward in every good way. You guys, you were talking, it made me think of of a British theologian named Rebecca McLaughlin, who’s worked on this as well, and how she just does a great job of pointing out how Jesus is a great example, how he drew women toward himself and toward the gospel, how he discipled them and invited them even into the closer circles of his ministry, which was very, countercultural as a Jewish rabbi and then how he deployed them.
Even, you know, we’ll, we’ll hear the stories not only of Mary, but, you know, of the women being the first witnesses to the resurrected Jesus, that that was pretty intentional in God’s plan apparently. Because in their day and in their time, women were not even considered credible voices to testify in a court case and things like that.
And we just have to hope that things are continuing on that kind of trajectory of seeing and valuing and honoring women as every bit is important. And all these other groups as well. Mary, when you were working on this and working your way through various Bible stories, were there favorite women’s stories of being overlooked that really kind of became your favorite?
I noticed as you were working through your book, there’s actually more of these kinds of stories than maybe some of us would have first thought about. Some of them are like what I would call postcards. You get just a glimpse of this person. But did some of them just kind of become your favorites?
[00:14:28] Mary DeMuth: Yeah, I really, I really love Anna in the new Testament and she has such a little tiny story. But she, I can just see her as someone who’s been faithful her whole life and widowed for a really long time and being faithful in the temple and, you know, just being a part of seeing the Messiah with her own eyes.
It’s just such a beautiful story in a world today where we marginalize those who are older and where we dismiss, we, we equate somebody’s worth with what they produce. And I do think that is a capitalistic way of looking at things. How do you contribute to our economics? And when we don’t no longer contribute to economics, then are we valuable?
And she proves that. People are valuable at any stage and age
[00:15:27] Dr. Mark Turman: and love that even though she may not take up a whole lot of verses in the Bible she has this profound testimony makes me a little bit, makes me think of my grandmother my dad’s mom who became a widow in her mid thirties and never married again, raised three children on her own and, and just never felt led in the direction of marrying again.
And just what a consistent person and presence. She was even in that context. And and again, just calling us out away from consumeristic ideas and capitalistic ideas that devalue people. And turn them into something else and look at them in utilitarian ways or other ways that are contrary to what Jesus is telling us to do.
What do you think we learn from some of these stories about the nature of God and Maybe a second part follow up to that question, Mary, would be what would you, what would be two or three of the biggest ideas that you would want people to know about God and about themselves when it comes to their experiences of feeling or being overlooked?
[00:16:36] Mary DeMuth: You know, Jesus came to earth to show us. You know, that, that God is for us and with us and that, you know, he’s the great empathetic savior who walked through all the pains that we walk through yet without sin. And so we have in Jesus this beautiful part of the Trinity who deeply resonates and relates to us.
And so when we do feel like we’re not seen or we’re overlooked or we are, you know, stressed out or, you know, we. you know, don’t think anyone even notices us. The truth is the Lord does see us. He does notice us. He does walk alongside us. And sometimes that takes some faith to believe because in those darker times, we can kind of cocoon into ourselves and forget about the greatness of God to dwell with us through the Holy Spirit.
But I think, you know, the sovereignty of God has, his capability as storyteller is really important. And one thing I keep going back to that I look at my own story and I think he’s making something really beautiful out of some big messes. And I don’t always know it in the middle of the story. There’s a storytelling term called inmedius res, and it means in the middle of, and we often find ourselves in the middle of a story without perspective.
But the sovereignty of God and His storytelling ability reminds us that He’s going to make something beautiful out of it. It will astound us, and it will often be different than what we have envisioned and even what we’ve prayed. But he does have something good in store for us.
[00:18:15] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, and just holding on to that hope what, Mary, when you, when you work on a topic like this how do you sense that that, that your ministry is making a difference?
What, what kinds of things do you hope to see either? In small glimpses or even in big movements as we, you know, so much conversation in our society today about issues of justice and one of those things we love to, to try to talk about and, and to explain better from the Bible is what does the Bible mean when it talks about biblical righteousness and justice, those words have often been turned into a good day.
lightning rods in some ways. They’ve been mischaracterized in many ways by different parts of the society and culture. But what are you hoping to see when you work on a topic like this on behalf of women, on behalf of other groups that are being overlooked? What kind of gives you a sense of, okay, this is making a difference.
[00:19:15] Mary DeMuth: It’s always just receiving feedback. And that’s why I like to be a speaker because you get more immediate feedback than when you write a book and two years later someone writes you an email about it. So it’s always better to be in a room with someone. But the four words that the Lord gave me was are.
go first and me too. If I go first and I tell my difficult story, someone has the capability of saying, I thought it was the only person on God’s green earth that had this feeling. Oh my goodness, me too. And so really the ministry that the Lord’s given me has been a ministry of authenticity.
brokenness and all sorts of glamorous things like that. But in order to put words to pain that everybody on this earth has, and he’s gifted me to do that, which is all to his glory, but it helps me to frame experience for people so they can be able to feel not so alone in this world.
[00:20:14] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, and it’s that’s just really at the heart of how ministry goes, right?
And how how teaching and sharing how testimony and witness go. You know, I, I can even unfortunately just hear somebody possibly reacting to the term me too well. We know that that’s become a political lightning rod. Just saying those words is something of a lightning rod in certain circles of our culture.
There’s always been that aspect of ministry, and part of the reason we put people into congregations, part of the reason we put them into small groups is so that they can realize they’re not the only one who is struggling with one kind of an issue or another. And you know, I used to tell people when I was pastoring churches all the time, you need to go to church so you’ll know that you’re not the only one and that you’re not losing your mind.
We all struggle in similar ways with each other and to each other and that we can encourage and learn from each other how to go through difficult experiences and how God can minister to us. And, and that sense of go first and me too is just really at the heart of so much ministry that gets done in all kinds of environments, churches and otherwise.
Mary, I know a number of your resources and things deal with church hurt. And even aspects of church trauma. You related a little bit of that at the beginning of our, our conversation. Unfortunately it just, it just seems like we are encountering one story after another in our culture these days about church hurt, church abuse.
Church trauma that runs in a number of different categories. How does this issue of being overlooked connect to these stories of, of bad leadership and ministry abuse within the context of a local church or local ministry?
[00:22:08] Mary DeMuth: Yeah. I think. You know, I think it’s always existed because we’re a bunch of humans thrown together in a group.
But because we’re becoming more transparent, we’re seeing more and we’re talking more about it. And we’re, I think there’s also a realization that it’s okay to talk about it, which has not been the case in the past where there’s. This kind of if you ever talk about it, you’re gossiping. We’re at a place now where we’re realizing that perhaps part of the deconstruction movement is a response to people trying to quell church hurt and don’t talk about, don’t talk about it.
And so people are like, I’m over it. I, in an age of the internet where we can hear each other’s stories and see each other’s stories, it’s time to just bring it out into the light. And I think Jesus wants us to do that. It doesn’t mean that we hate the church. It actually means that we love and adore the church because you want her to be better.
Now, in terms of church hurt and church trauma, I, I just want to say to anyone who’s walking through that right now, you’re not alone. There are a lot of people that have walked through it. And it’s okay to grieve it and it’s normal. I think for me, having been at a church for 23 years and left last year, I would say to the person struggling that way is not to minimize the injury.
I’ll be speaking at a conference soon. And in that conference, I’m going to be talking about how I feel. thought my church wound was a scratch. It was actually a chasm that needed some, it needed some work by a physician and a surgeon because it was a giant wound. When you are wounded by Christ followers, particularly Christ following leaders, it is a gaping wound that needs to be dignified, listened to, talked through, grieved, and slowly healed.
[00:24:03] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, and that’s a great, you know, not, sometimes we overuse medical metaphors, right, but sometimes they’re very, very helpful and and to realize, you know, the severity of it is so important. All of us, I think, go to church not expecting to get hurt. We go to church to find hope and to find healing, not to find additional pain but we often encounter it there because like you said, we’re we, we hope that the church is a redeemed community, but it’s always in the process of being redeemed.
It’s never fully redeemed until Jesus comes again. And so the opportunity and, and reality of getting hurt at church. is there. But it can be very disorienting and obviously very disillusioning when it happens in that context. And we’re unfortunately when we see the stories, we just have to be thankful that God is exposing what needs to be exposed.
So that it can get better and it can heal. And I, you know, I, I finally learned to try to talk to people in my church about, okay, let’s talk about this hurt and where are you with it? Is it still an open wound and you need triage and immediate attention? Is it, what stage of healing might it be at? You know, that it takes a while before.
Something very deep can, can start to close over and become a scar, but then it or become a unfortunately use the term scab, you know, every, every time you cut yourself, it becomes a scab before it becomes a scar and certain things can happen in all of those stages. Right. And that’s true emotionally as well as physically.
[00:25:35] Mary DeMuth: It is. And I think. For some people, it’s just hard to quantify or to even identify that they have been hurt that way. I do have a free resource on marydemeuth. com slash church hurt. And it’s a church hurt checklist. So people can go through and go, Oh yeah, I had that, that, that, that. And sometimes that’s really helpful in the healing process because you just need to identify what it is that you experienced.
And so folks can just go there and get that for free.
[00:26:03] Dr. Mark Turman: Oh, that’s so great to hear. You know, cause like I said, just giving people. a language and terminology in order to kind of frame and get to the place of understanding, right? Can be so helpful and so important to kind of moving the process of healing forward.
Because oftentimes we just don’t have those kinds of resources. readily at hand, especially in a spiritual environment. Mary, you talk some in your work about how Jesus was overlooked and how that can be helpful and encouraging and healing to us. Explain what you mean by that. And what, what sense do you feel like Jesus was overlooked and how can that be helpful to us?
[00:26:44] Mary DeMuth: Yeah, he was not truly embraced for all he was, and that in its way is its own overlooking because a lot of people came to him. Wanting something from him, you see the crowds chasing after him, not because they thought he was cool or the son of God, but because he restored sight to the blind and he fed 5000 to 10, 000 people and they came to him out of a point of need, not understanding the judgment.
You know, the hypostatic union, the deity of Jesus Christ and who he was. And of course in history now he’s, he’s not overlooked because our all of our timeframes are based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So we do have those pivotal points in history of pointing back to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
But I think he also, because he was tempted in all ways as we were. He understands loneliness. He understands not being understood. He understands what it feels like to be alone on the side of a hill and I’m so grateful that he did go away to a probably a pretty scary little place on the side of a mountain to pray and to have fellowship with the father.
It, it encourages me that he had times of loan and we, We do as well, and he found solace in his father and we can as well.
[00:28:16] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Unpack that a little bit more for us. I just imagine that there might be somebody listening to us through this podcast and they’re, they’re feeling like they’ve been overlooked recently, or they know somebody that they really care about and they’re like, Oh, this is exactly where my friend or my family member is suffering or struggling right now with this feeling of being overlooked.
Talk about that a little bit more. What would you say to that person that Is like really in the midst of this experience right now how even the practice that we see in Jesus’s life of, of going off for periods of solitude, how that might be helpful. other things that you would want to speak into their situation at this point that seem to be pretty consistent in these stories.
[00:29:01] Mary DeMuth: I think it’s why the Lord was so kind to allow so many lament Psalms in the Old Testament. And a lament Psalm is just simply giving our grief to God and being honest with him and asking him questions. How long, oh Lord, how long is this going to keep happening? So for the person that’s feeling overlooked right now, there is that practice of lamenting and writing it out, saying it out, just say the honest truth.
He already knows that it’s going on in your head anyway. And to find safe community is super important as well, because you can, once you isolate particularly if you’ve been hurt by other Christians, the last thing you want to do is like trust another Christian, but watch. some folks. Find out, notice if they’re safe, and entrust your story to them.
And then there’s a funny little side of this that has really encouraged me, and that is when I am suffering, when I am hurting, when I feel alone, when I am overlooked, there is this kinship that can happen between me and Jesus. And Paul states it like, you know, like he’s completing the sufferings or, you know, he uses some verbiology similar to that verbiage.
similar to that. And there’s this camaraderie that happens when I am suffering and Jesus is suffering alongside me in it. Or I am feeling like he felt on this earth and that weirdly cements my relationship with him. It gives me empathy for what he went through. And it also makes me feel like this is something that is lived experience by him and he can help me.
[00:30:36] Dr. Mark Turman: So good. Yeah, so good. Let me, let me bring this around, Mary, to the idea of just the pursuit of contentment is what I would call it. That we, we live in a culture and maybe all cultures have been this way where certain people get exalted, they get highly noticed, right? For various reasons, not always necessarily bad, but they You know, I, I feel this way sometimes when I’m watching a sporting event I’m like, look at that.
There’s a hundred thousand people, you know, cheering for this person or for this team. And I’m like you know, and part of the reason we like sports is we live vicariously through those kinds of situations, but it’s kind of always been the situation, I guess, in, in societies where. Certain people just get a lot more attention and a whole lot of people get overlooked.
And that puts us into a situation of being tempted toward jealousy and towards all kinds of experiences of bitterness and discontent. Talk about how the importance of just personally pursuing what the Bible teaches about contentment as a way of navigating that feeling of being overlooked.
[00:31:47] Mary DeMuth: I’ll respond to that with a story. So I shared that I grew up being pretty overlooked, and so you can just imagine all of the gymnastics that I did to try to be noticed in my teens and my early 20s. I just wanted to be seen. I wanted to be noticed. I started publishing in my thirties and I, my first book you know, I, I, I wanted to have a first book and I eventually did, but As I was on the way to a writer’s conference, before I was ever published, I was on the plane and the Lord gave me a vision, which hardly ever happens.
And it was just this like snapshot of all the things that I had endured in my life. So many traumas. And I said, Oh, Lord, I, you have helped me withstand many trials and traumas. And he said, yes, but will you survive the trial of notoriety? And I was like, what? That doesn’t seem like a trial. It seems awesome.
But I’m so grateful now looking back over a career of over 50 books, that first book that I wrote, did not do it. It did fine, but it didn’t, you know, break me out. I still haven’t really broken out. I really haven’t had bestsellers or anything like that. I am a solidly unknown mid list author. I’m so glad because my soul couldn’t bear the weight of that.
And when we look at a football stadium or we look at famous people or singers or performers, A lot of them, we see them not being able to live up to the weight that is upon them. It is not a blessing to have fame. It is a curse, and it emaciates the Christian soul. And so we do need to practice contentment because the grass may be greener on the other side of the But it could corrupt your soul and cause you to walk away from the Lord.
And, and really, I don’t want to do that. So I’m so grateful that I was never famous and all of that.
[00:33:45] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And such a good word, right? Because it just the, the phenomenon of celebrity in our culture. Is something that too many of us think, Oh, I would love to be that I would love to be that person when in fact, as you said, it’s so can be so soul crushing.
I remember years ago listening to my pastor in a sermon and he said, you know, for for every 100 people that can handle adversity. There’s only one that can handle celebrity
[00:34:12] Mary DeMuth: and handle
[00:34:13] Dr. Mark Turman: it well and handle it biblically. Let’s let’s walk that out just a little bit further. Because. Kind of what’s underneath all of this as I’m thinking about it is there is a natural God given desire to be noticed and to belong, to be connected in community.
And so we want, I want to call that out. If you’re feeling overlooked, that doesn’t necessarily mean that God is punishing you or that you’re having a a sinful direction in your life. I, I was reading some things in a devotional this morning that just that God given desire to be in community, to be seen, to be noticed.
I’m thinking about that great story in John nine where Jesus and the disciples go into town and they. There’s a man there that’s been born blind, and the first thing it says is that Jesus saw him. He noticed him. Okay so that’s kind of the background of what I’m talking about now, but Mary, where, where might we be able to see some warning signals that our desire to be noticed and to belong has become too important to us.
[00:35:19] Mary DeMuth: I think, yeah, I think you’ve said it well. Those are two different things. The desire to be noticed is one thing. The desire to belong is a different thing. To be noticed is to be elevated above others and to be applauded, whereas belonging means you have a group of people who have your back and love you and pray for you.
And absolutely, when I think there’s a line between those two, when you just. I remember in seventh grade, I had no friends, and all I wanted was one friend, and I didn’t know Jesus then, so I just hoped, I didn’t pray. And I found one friend, and I was so excited and so happy to have one friend. And it’s just, that was a desire for belonging.
And that is a, that is a prayer that the Lord wants to answer for you to elevate yourself above all others. And you know, to, to be noticed in that way, then you’re getting closer to that falling off the cliff of pride. And we all do it. I’m not saying that, Oh, I’ve never done that. Cause I totally have, but belonging and noticing are two different things.
[00:36:24] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, and that desire again for attention can just really take us down some rough roads if we’re not careful. Mary, one of the things in your work that I saw called out was just the practice of hospitality. Which has been a, an idea and a word and a practice that’s intrigued me the last number of years.
I think it’s a lost gift, a lost art. But let’s turn this conversation around a little bit from the standpoint of how would you encourage us, inspire us, instruct us even to be people who notice others better. We all at times feel like we’re overlooked, but we’re also overlooking people. So how do things like hospitality and other things that you might recommend to us help us to be people who notice others the way Jesus does?
[00:37:18] Mary DeMuth: First, I think it’s that you use your broken story as a catalyst for change. And so when you are overlooked, it becomes a cautionary tale to you like, Oh my gosh, I hate that feeling. And therefore, as a Christ follower, I don’t want someone else to feel that way because that’s terrible. So it can be a cautionary tale instead of just.
plowing you under, just learn from it and say, okay, I don’t want to do that. The second I would say is to be in that kind of Brother Lawrence stature of having a continual conversation with the Holy Spirit within and, and being interruptible. There are times where the Lord will stop me and just say, pray for this person and I used to just do that, but now I’m getting on my phone and I’m recording a prayer for that person and sending it to them because there’s something about that where we are noticing someone else because the Lord brings them to mind.
And so be sensitive to when the Lord puts somebody on your mind. Maybe you even had a dream about him last night. That could be a prompt to pray for them, reach out to them, tell them you’re noticing them and ask them, how are they doing? And then, of course, The art of listening and not just trying to get your point across.
[00:38:33] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, so good. And just, just having heard several people comment or write on this recently. Just one of the ways we love people well is just to have curiosity about people. Mm hmm. Just to see them not as as threats. Or as problems or as you said in some of your work, to see them as projects.
But rather to see them for who they are as people made in the image of God and worthy of our love and our attention in healthy ways. And that we just be curious about them just to know what their stories are and to know how we might share in that story in some way that kind of fundamental curiosity that seems to have been replaced by suspicion.
In a big way in our culture. Mary, anything before we kind of wrap up our conversation today, what, what, what would you like to share about this idea of being overlooked and not overlooking others that maybe I haven’t brought up yet?
[00:39:29] Mary DeMuth: It was a good conversation. You asked great questions, but I would just reiterate that if you’re feeling overlooked, you are not alone.
And I’m so sorry. And it is a hard place and I won’t, you know, sugarcoat it. But there is healing available. There are people who are good folks who want to bear that burden with you, even though that’s terrifying to think about sometimes. And that the Lord is for you. He is El Roy, the God who sees, he takes notice of everything.
He knows all the contours and elevations of your story, the highs, the lows, every single part of it. And he loves to come alongside us when we are weak. He is the one who holds us up.
[00:40:14] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. So good to bring us back to that. Well, folks, that’s Mary Demuth. And if you’re feeling overlooked or know somebody that possibly is, we would point you to her resources.
Her recent book is called The Most Overlooked Women in the Bible. And whether you’re a woman or a man young or old, this resource could be really helpful to you to just deepen your relationship with Christ and to help you to not only love and live with Him, but also to love and live with others well.
You’ll find the book at all the major book distributors, right, Mary? Yes. Also available at marydemuth.com and you can check it out there. Mary, thank you for spending time with us today and we hope that God will continue to bless your work and help you to reach others with the message of God’s love.
And we just thank you for being a part of this conversation. I want to thank our audience for joining us today. We would ask you to rate, review us on your platform and share this with others. And as a donor supported ministry, we’re grateful for you and for your support for our ministry. If you’d like to know more about us, you can find us at denisonforum.org. We’ll see you next time on the Denison Forum podcast. God bless you.
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