Share the Arrows, Allie Beth Stuckey’s annual women’s conference, returned for a third year on Saturday in Dallas, Texas. The “Relatable” host built the event to encourage and strengthen Christian women seeking sound doctrine and sisterhood when the progressive culture takes aim.
As always, the lineup fit the purpose. Rosaria Butterfield, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Alisa Childers, and Costi Hinn, among other prominent names in the evangelical world, each took the stage, with Christian music duo Shane & Shane leading worship.
At 37 weeks pregnant with her fourth child, Stuckey closed the event with a powerful speech on the importance of clarity and courage — two words that undergird the entire Share the Arrows conference and her broader platform.
“Clarity comes from knowing God and His Word, and courage comes from trusting God and His Word,” she said.
While these concepts seem to go hand in hand, they’re not always working together as they should. And when they don’t, man gets himself in trouble, Stuckey warned.
The first example, she said, of how knowing God’s Word doesn’t always translate to trusting it goes all the way back to Genesis, when the serpent approached Eve in the garden.
Stuckey pointed out how Satan asked Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” Eve’s response was the correct answer: “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.”’
Satan responded with what Stuckey called a “half-truth”: “You will not certainly die. For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
This was enough to convince Eve to disobey God’s command and convince her husband to do the same.
“Eve knew God’s words. Eve had the biblical knowledge. … She could repeat God’s words back to Satan even in a high-pressure moment,” said Stuckey.
What she lacked was “trust.”
“Because of that choice, because of the buying in to the confusion, there’s a distance from God,” she explained. “There’s difficulty with creation, and there’s dissonance between each other.”
The pattern of Eve’s sin — knowing the Word of God but not trusting it — is still playing out today, Stuckey warned. Christians are still confronted with that same question: “Did God really say …?” and Satan is still at the ready to answer with confusion — a “half-truth” that almost sounds biblical.
“The people in shady corners of Manhattan don’t sell knockoff Louis Vuittons by convincing you a Kroger bag is the real thing,” she analogized. “They give you something that looks really close to the real thing because that’s the only way you’ll buy it.”
Satan, too, she warned, is also a master of “counterfeits,” and if we don’t know and trust God, we’ll fall victim to his schemes.
“Ultimately, all believing of lies, all sin comes down to this: Who do you trust?” Stuckey said. “Satan is satisfied with having us puffed up with knowledge. He is OK with us having clarity. None of that matters if we do not trust God.”
She pointed out the epidemic in modern culture, especially when it comes to “progressive Christianity,” of people knowing what God’s Word says about gender, sex, marriage, and the sanctity of life but choosing to believe lies anyway.
“Bible knowledge is not enough if we do not trust God,” she reiterated.
Stuckey then pointed to the example of Jesus, who, like Eve, was tempted by Satan and responded by repeating God’s Word. However, He triumphed because He did what she failed to do: trust God.
“Jesus is the perfect embodiment of not just clarity but clarity and courage,” she said.
God, she urged the audience, is worthy of our courage to trust him. “This God who is love, who is kindness, who is righteousness, who is compassion, who has not spared his own son … if this God is for me … who in the world can be against me?” she asked.
“If this God is for me, then what He tells me to do, what He tells me to say, what He tells me is right, and what He tells me is wrong is for my good and is done in love. It’s not just enough to know that. … You have to trust it.”
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Allie beth stuckey, Share the arrows
