Ep. 172: I Am Rahab (with Autumn Miles)

Kourtney Cromwell:
Welcome to the indoubt podcast, where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s word. For more info on indoubt visit indoubt.ca, or indoubt.com.

Ryan McCurdy:
Hey everyone, so good to be with you. My name is Ryan, welcome to this episode of indoubt with Autumn Miles, who we’ve had on in the past before and she was speaking predominately on her experience with domestic abuse and how Christ has been in that and walked her through that. But now we have a conversation with Autumn Miles about some of the personal ministry that she’s a part of. And we also talk about church culture. And although we’re both in North America, Autumn being from Texas and myself being from Vancouver, our cities have completely different perspectives on church culture. So this is a great conversation to have about the difference in culture within church culture, and how it affects all of us. So tune into this episode with Autumn Miles and we hope that you enjoy.

Ryan McCurdy:
Alright, today on this episode we actually have a returning guest with us, Autumn Miles, all the way from Texas. Great to have you back with us.

Autumn Miles:
Thank you so much for having me. I feel so honoured, thank you, guys. Back for show two, which is amazing.

Ryan McCurdy:
Absolutely. You know Autumn you’re a bold person. You probably hear that every once in a while, you got some pizazz.

Autumn Miles:
Every day.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, you get that every day?

Autumn Miles:
Yes.

Ryan McCurdy:
You know you have a platform now where you share, you speak all over the place, you have your own podcast as well, and there’s lots of resources that you give out. So what is the main thrust of your message? And what are you finding?

Autumn Miles:
I love that. I realized that God never wanted me to be some sanitized version of who I was. He never wanted me to be this plastic, religious, lie. He always wanted me to be authentic, and I even hate that word authentic because I feel like we talk about it, “I’m so authentic. I’m so authentic.” And I’m like, “I see your Instagram account, and you just called me about your marriage being in peril, so something ain’t authentic here.” So even the word authentic I don’t really even like to use that anymore, it’s so overused.
But I realized that I was playing the Christian, playing the believer, and not being the believer. So when you talk about the ministry, it was that night I felt like God called me into ministry. That night on that floor, in the midst of the height of my rebellion and my sin, it was that night. And I knew that whenever God gave me the honour, the privilege, to minister to his people on behalf of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I wanted it to be about the truth of God’s word. I wanted people … I did not need that night, being abused for seven years in this relationship, my nails done. I did not need that. I did not need my weave to be tightened right. I did not need someone to come in with a hot cup of coffee and sit down and say, “Tell me how you feel.” I needed the truth of God’s word.
And because that Truth, from the verse in Psalm 91 was literally what changed my life, and made me realize that God is real. I started living, and really sort of recycling this phrase in my mind, “If God is real, and I know he’s real, I’m not going to be the idiot that doesn’t live according to what his word tells us.” If I have tangible evidence that he is real, you cannot stop me from getting in the word to finding out as much as I can about this God. So the whole premise of our ministry is bold truth. Bold truth. I’m not scared of it. I know there’s everyone questioning did the virgin birth ever happen, questioning all that stuff. You know what, if the Bible says it I’m going to believe it okay.
Bold truth. And I also believe we lack raw faith. So that is what our whole ministry is built on, bold truth, raw faith. Not packaged faith, not religious faith, not predictable faith. I’m talking about looking at the Red Sea with a staff only, with hundreds of thousands of people behind you saying, “God I am absolutely terrified. If you do not come through I don’t know what I’m going to do,” and standing and expecting him to come through. So, that’s really the premise of our daily radio show in North Texas. We’ve got the podcast, we speak everywhere. We’ve got the book.
But I don’t self-identify with any of that. I self-identify with someone that has sold out for the Lord, and I will take any avenue possible to talk about it.

Ryan McCurdy:
That’s so cool. When you say the word bold truth, at times I would say there’s a lack of boldness when it comes to speaking the truth because of how it might make other people feel. And so that’s again where we get into, well I’ve got to be authentic. But feelings are almost like the trump card in our culture. If I don’t feel it I’m not going to do it. You know, if I don’t feel like it’s the right thing then, “Ah, I don’t know,” even though I know it’s the right thing, I know what the truth is. And I’m curious like that’s the background that I’m coming from, that’s the culture I’m in. And I’ve never been to Texas-

Autumn Miles:
You should come.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, I’d love to. I would love to. But I’ve heard Texas is like … You know it’s part of the Bible Belt, right. And so do you have any of that sense? Like, do you have any push back in your culture when you speak openly about the gospel, and you speak openly about who Jesus is, and what God has done? Do you get the shifty eyes of people saying, “Okay? Hey, that’s nice for you, that’s your truth. But that’s not my truth.” And I think that’s a farce, and I think if we explore that intellectually as honest people we’ll find that that falls through. And so what do you find down there?

Autumn Miles:
Well here’s the thing. One of the things that I’ve actually prayed for a long time and God has really opened up the door with my new book, Rahab, which just came out. And I’m actually releasing another one in July called Gangster Prayer, which is going to be fun. I can’t wait, it’s going to be awesome. But I have been given a lot of opportunities to do, we would call it secular media, where it’s not faith-friendly. Like this, I mean we’re going to have a good time, we’re probably going to agree on most things. But I’ve had this opportunity to really go outside and into the world.
One of the things, that really Jesus taught me, from the Gospel is when he was in a very divisive situation he told a story. And I think there is a difference between me taking my Bible in and beating someone across the head in a secular interview, that will never win them, ever. Never. It is not the way to do it. Now I can speak to the church differently than we talk to people that don’t believe the same way that we do. But Jesus always told a story, and his stories always captivated people. And I learned based on his example, that if I just want to minister and share the hope that I have with people that don’t agree the same way that I do, I tell my story.
One of the things I told a huge secular outlet that did a piece on me last year, is I just said, “Listen, this is my story. You don’t have to agree with it, but you can’t argue with it. Because this is my story. This is my experience.” And it went over so well, they were so like in a secular environment, so gracious with it. And I think that story-telling that Jesus did in the scripture, is the way we ought to engage with people that don’t agree the same way we do. I can tell the story, you know one time we needed to raise a million dollars in one day, and we did. And it is a miracle.
Now when I tell that story, everyone, it doesn’t matter what your religious background is, is like, “How did you do that?” And I’m able to say, because that’s the inevitable questions, “How did you raise a million dollars in one day?” Let me tell you about what God did in my life. So when you tell stories about the evidence that he is present, people are a lot more interested and, “Wow, I want some of that. I need a miracle. I need healing. I need whatever.” So, that’s what my advice would be to sort of combating some of this.
I’m very grateful, we’re based in Dallas, but I travel all over the country. We talk to what we call, Progressive Christians. We talk to secular people. We’re called to reach the world, and so that’s where we’re going. We certainly don’t pigeon hole ourselves to just the Christian community.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, that’s cool. I think that’s an important dialogue to have because there are different cultural contexts, even within North America. You could drive a couple hours from different major cities and you would notice a big cultural difference. We are living in the globalized world where information is passed on through phones, and media, and technology so easy. So ideas are more easily transferable than ever before. One of the things that I’m curious about is your book, I Am Rahab, tell me about that because that has a message. And so what is this book, what is this message about, I Am Rahab?

Autumn Miles:
Well, Rahab was a biblical prostitute, and I love that. I feel like as soon as I heard about Rahab and looking at my past, I’m like, “Okay she was a prostitute and God used her. Okay, there’s hope for me.” I just feel like her actual weaknesses, and her occupation really drew me to her. Several years ago I was sitting and just really praying and, “Okay God what’s next? What’s next?” And I was in Joshua 2 when Joshua … You know Moses had died, Joshua’s taking over the lead of Israel, leading the nation. I was in Joshua 2 and I started reading her story, and I realized that I saw myself in Rahab, when I did not see myself in Mary. I can’t identify with someone that the scripture says nothing bad about. I can’t identify with Esther who basically was a girl boss who went in and kind of like saved the Jewish nation.
I identify with Jezebel, that’s who I identify with. And I knew I wasn’t Jezebel because God had changed my life, but I needed a happy medium and that’s when I found my girl, the biblical prostitute, Rahab. And in Joshua 2 it talks all about how Joshua sent the two spies in to search out Jericho because they had crossed the Jordan, they were about to inhabit the promise land. And they send them into the city of Jericho, and Rahab welcomes them in. And she saves their lives, and in turn the lives of Israel. And as I looked through her story, I saw that there were so many different practical things that she did that really told the story of the gospel. It was absolutely incredible. So I wanted to dig into that and that’s why I wrote the book. You’re not too far gone, I know we say that a lot, but you’re not too far gone for God to choose you, to choose you for his work when you make yourself available to it.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah. And I think that’s cool because I think so often, even you go to the passage in Hebrews 11, which is the hall of fame for faith. And you read about guys like Abraham, Moses, like all these big timers, you’re like, “Wow these guys really, they really set the stage of what it means to be a follower of Yahweh.” They really did it well. And they’re in this list, understandably, you know they did a lot of good things. But then what else do we find? We also find Rahab here, and this is from Hebrews 11:31, “By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.”
And I think even in that, just recognizing the first two words, by faith. By faith, Rahab did this. And so there might be people who are listening even to this, and they’re like, “Yeah with my story I could never be used by God. My story’s just kind of like, I’m going to just drift away. I have no purpose. I have no goal.” But what’s interesting is that all these people in that chapter, in Hebrews 11, are acting out of faith. It’s not acting out of their strength, or their wisdom, or all those other things, it’s acting out of faith and saying, “Okay God this is where I’m at, what would you like to do?” And so I think that’s a cool message that you’re sharing.

Autumn Miles:
Thank you. I think Hebrews 11 is fascinating to me that she is in the hall of faith. But one of the things that I found as I was studying this scripture is we hear about Boaz all the time, Boaz and Ruth. And Boaz was Ruth’s kinsman redeemer, and he gave her a second chance and all this stuff. And a lot of people don’t know that Rahab was Boaz’s mother. And what is so incredible is as I read the text, and then you read the book of Ruth, is that we give Boaz a lot of credit, and no doubt he was a kinsman redeemer of Ruth. But where do you think he learned the grace that he should share? He learned it from his mom, who was a prostitute, who God redeemed and chose to save Israel. So there is so much wealth of wisdom in her story that … I mean I loved writing the book, it was fascinating.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah. Cool. I want to ask this Autumn. What would you say, from your perspective, in the work and the ministry that you’re doing, and all your travelling all over the place? Obviously, you have books that you’ve written, and there’s messages that you’ve shared. And spoken at, whether it’s conferences or events. What do you experience, what do you see as the need right now in North America, in the church? What do the people that are following Jesus, what is kind of the message that you feel would be something that we need to hold onto?

Autumn Miles:
Oh my goodness, how long is your show? I have a ton of thoughts on that. I’ll give you two so we don’t take up three hours. One is that it’s really, I think people think that Christianity is coming to church on Sunday, sitting, listening, easy. You know we hear what our pastor says and we leave. And it is just, that’s where Satan has us in the North American church. I mean in America I feel like there is such a need for … I don’t want to say persecution, but there’s a need for us to understand and realize that the Bible says without faith it is impossible to please God. So if you’re coming to church on Sunday and you’re sitting there, and you’re hearing, and you’re listening, and you’re not going out and actually acting out in faith, there’s an issue. You’re not pleasing God, that’s just straight from the scripture.
So I think there’s a lot of ease, it’s not taken seriously because it is readily available here in the States. Like you said, I’m from Dallas, there’s churches everywhere, you can’t go a half a mile without seeing a church. It is everywhere, and we need to take it more seriously, which is why I feel called to do what I’m doing. I also think that there is a huge lack of prayer. People don’t pray anymore, I mean they just don’t. In my new book coming out, now I’m not here to talk about this book, but I talk about it being a dying language. And we see that in the rise of the … Just the disunity in America right now is at like, I mean I don’t want to say all time high because I’ve only lived 38 years, but it is at a high in my lifetime for sure.
When you see just the social injustices, people not standing up for people that Jesus clearly would’ve gone to. When you see us more concerned about the temperature in the auditorium than, Is the gospel being shared in service? When we’re more concerned about what the pastor is wearing, and making sure we Instagram that, than going and telling our neighbour that the Gospel will save them from hell, we’ve got a problem. I think prayer is what God is calling … That’s sort of the global word, God is calling us, in America, back to the foundation of a prayer life. And we have to unlearn a bunch of the junk that we’ve learned for generations to get back to that raw prayer life.

Ryan McCurdy:
I mean it sounds like consumerism is a huge … Like that’s kind of the theme of which some of what you’re talking about. Because the elements of consumerism are, I’m going to attend but I’m not going to participate. I’m going to be there to be amused, but then the week that I leave-

Autumn Miles:
Entertain me. Entertain me. And if it’s not what I want I’ll just go somewhere else.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, there’s another church half a mile down.

Autumn Miles:
It’s not about the Gospel. Yeah, I’ll just go to the one across the street. It’s not about the Gospel, it’s about entertain me, and then I’ll determine whether I like this or not. And that’s not the church, we are the church. The church is not a building, we are the church. And we’re praying … People want revival and all this stuff, and what they don’t realize is revival starts in you, not in them, in you. So, yeah.

Ryan McCurdy:
That’s good. I think there’s a lot of things there, like even in the holiness movement, and certain parts of the holiness movement. But there’s this one guy who had this big theme in his life, and it was called the deeper life. He said, “If you are not inviting the Holy Spirit to do the work of sanctification in your life, in the deeper life, then what’s going on?” And he really pushed, and he really spearheaded in that direction. And from that, missions began to rise. Looking out after the poor, and the widow and the orphan began to be something that was really important in North America. And so there’s these movements, there’s these tastes of it. And I agree with what you’re saying, and I recognize the word persecution isn’t probably the most ideal. So I agree with you there, but-

Autumn Miles:
You know what I’m saying though right?

Ryan McCurdy:
I know what you mean, and I’m agreeing with you. I’m saying the idea of, hey my life is not just the most comfortable thing around, and so my faith is just an add-on. And so often I think that can be a challenge, is the apathy of affluence. I have everything I need, therefore I don’t need God. And I think you totally hit it there when you said that in that way.

Autumn Miles:
It’s very self-centred. It’s about me, and what you can do for me, not what am I doing for the Lord. I mean, you know the verses aren’t even shared very often when the Bible says, “Crucify yourself. Pick up your cross daily and follow me.” No one wants to crucify themselves. And of course that’s a harsh word, but you know what, it’s in the scripture. We’re not dying to ourselves. There’s some of us that are doing it, but the majority of people have just adopted and adapted to this comfortable lifestyle that we have here.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah. Even from where I’m from, and the church culture that I’m part of, there’s times where in my perspective on North American churches, hey the culture of the world is going away from God, therefore let’s get really creative and let’s kind of communicate the gospel in a way that’s more inviting than anything else. I was thinking about this last night actually, the gospel is first bad news, then its good news. Right. Jesus talks to people and says, “Hey, your sins, that’s bad news. You have sin.” That is a bad news, that is a sobering reality. Your sins, bad news, are forgiven – good news.
And that is what makes sense, is that the good news makes sense that it’s good in light of the bad news. But I think oftentimes churches are saying, “Well let’s not preach the bad news, let’s just preach forgiveness.” And then Christians are like, “Forgiveness, yeah I’m forgiven.” But they don’t know what they’re forgiven from. Because it’s not communicated in a way as like, hey we are all falling short of the glory of God, and we all need to be saved. And so this whole invitation to remember, and again like you said earlier, like remember when God would say to the people of Israel, “Remember when I brought you out of the Red Sea. Remember that you were a slave to sin. You were slaves in Egypt, and you were a slave to sin. And remember what I did for you.” And that remember, I think we’ve forgot. I think we’re a forgetful couple generations here together.

Autumn Miles:
He also said, “Do not forget.” And that’s one of those things that I think when I … You know I’m 20 years past my conversion to Christ, however, there are … Every time I share my testimony, and I’ve done it probably a thousand times, every time I get teary eyed because I’ve put myself right exactly where I was, on the verge of suicide, remembering what actually happened in that room was that I accepted for the first time the hope of the gospel. And I needed to be confronted that, hey guess what, you’re not perfect, you have sinned, you have done wrong. However, I’m not going to leave you there. I’m going to do something with your sin. I’m going to make it work together for good because you love me and are called according to my purpose.
But you’re dead on Ryan, I totally agree with you.

Ryan McCurdy:
And so I think there’s something there. And so even as you’re saying, like there’s two things that are kind of really on my mind what I’m seeing in the church today. And I think those elements of how do we die to ourselves? How do we walk in Christ? I think dying to ourselves needs to be paired with recognizing that there are things that need to die.

Autumn Miles:
Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ryan McCurdy:
Maybe it’s a behavior. Maybe it’s an attitude, maybe it’s a posture, maybe it’s a yearning, maybe it’s a hope, maybe it’s a desire, maybe it’s a relationship, maybe it’s a friendship, maybe it’s a path that you’re on. But there are certain things that do need to die so that other things may live. And that is something that Jesus teaches in his heart, it’s a hard thing and so-

Autumn Miles:
He taught it in the Gethsemane. Jesus did not, he asked of God, he said, “If it be possible let this pass for me.” He understood, and was literally emotionally and mentally in the Garden of Gethsemane dying to himself. Physically he died hours later, but mentally he was dying to himself. Why? For the greater good that me and you Ryan can do this podcast today. So he didn’t just say this just for his benefit, he said this for our benefit. And Jesus himself had to die to himself.
And I don’t think people see the benefit that after dying to yourself, there is a resurrection of some sort that happens in your life. They only see that, like you said, it’s two-sided. They only see the die, they only see the sin, they only see the bad. But what we don’t understand is that if Satan can get us pigeon holed into this mentality that it’s bad, it’s bad, God’s trying to keep you, focused on the death, we will never experience the resurrection power like Jesus did just three days later.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yep. Totally. Totally. I completely agree.

Autumn Miles:
One of the greatest … I can look back today and say I am most grateful in my life, of course for my relationship with Christ, but also for the abusive marriage. God has, that death, if you will, has produced so much life in others that I couldn’t have predicted, but I’ll tell you this, I would do it all over again if I had to. Because there was so much life that came from that. And when you follow Jesus you will follow him to some sort of a cross, but there is a resurrection on the other side of it.

Ryan McCurdy:
Totally. Well, I just want to say this as we wrap up our time together, if you’re listening to this conversation and you’re like, “You know, this is an interesting conversation.” I would just say learn from Autumn’s life, learn from her testimony, her story, and recognize that God is on the move, he’s working in our lives and in the lives of people around us. But also this element of, hey God is calling you to die. And you might look around in your context, whatever city you’re from, whatever place you belong to and you call home, you might say, “Yeah I want to be part of something where people are taking their faith seriously, where they’re actually willing to grow and say, God, do this surgery on me and help me die to certain things so that I may live to other things.” And whatever context you’re in, you might be looking for somebody else that God could use, but maybe God is actually inviting you and saying, “Hey why don’t you die first, and then invite people to follow you as you follow me.”

Autumn Miles:
Yeah.

Ryan McCurdy:
And I just think that if there is 100, 1000, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people who would say that, and say, “This is the direction I’m willing to go,” I think we truly would see a change in culture. We would see these elements of revival. And so that’s what I want to add. What about you Autumn, you want to add anything?

Autumn Miles:
We covered a lot today. I think I’ll just kind of echo what you just said. It’s not maybe to me that God wants to use you, God does want to use you. And he doesn’t want to use you in 10 years, he wants to use you right this second. You have a very … Just like Rahab had a specific purpose to save Israel. And I have many purposes, but one of them was domestic violence in the church, there is a purpose, or many of them with your name on them. So if you’re wondering, “I don’t know if this podcast is for me or not,” it is. It is for you. I can say very confidently that if Jesus dies for you he has got a plan for you.

So take this as your sign, and find out what that is and get in the scripture and let the Spirit of God speak to you.

Ryan McCurdy:
That’s awesome. Anyways, I loved your excitement, your enthusiasm, pray that you are blessed and encouraged by this, but that also that your ministry will keep growing.

Autumn Miles:
Thank you so much Ryan. Have an awesome day.

Ryan McCurdy:
Thanks for joining us on this episode of indoubt with Autumn Miles. You can follow her @autumnmiles, or go to her website, autumnmiles.com. And you can find out a little bit more about the ministry that she’s part of and the work that she’s doing there. If indoubt has encouraged you and you are passionate to help others grow in the truth we want to welcome you to partner with us. As we continue to provide resources we depend on the generosity and partnership of people just like you to help communicate the good news of Jesus to a world that needs him.

Download our app and follow us for updates on Instagram @indoubtca. We would love to hear from you on topics you’d like for us to discuss, and how indoubt has impacted you. E-mail us at info@indoubt.ca. And stay connected with us for next week’s episode as we talk with guest Emeka Nnaka, who is somebody who has an amazing story of how God has worked in and through their lives despite tragedy, and hurt, and suffering. And so I hope that you listen in next week for this episode.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes and Spotify, or visit us online at indoubt.ca, or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.