From Mom Guilt to Gospel Identity

Dannah Gresh: Emily Jensen says a gospel mom’s highest allegiance is to Jesus. 

Emily Jensen: He is preeminent in her life. It’s not her mom friend, it’s not her mother-in-law, it’s not her mom, it’s not the Instagram influencer. Thegospel momsays, “Hey, at the core of my identity is God and His story.”

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe for May 8, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Today Dannah is continuing her conversation with Emily Jensen and Laura Wiffler, who are co-authors of a book called Gospel Mom. If you missed yesterday’s program, don’t forget you can listen to it on the Revive Our Hearts app or at ReviveOurHearts.com. 

Emily, Laura, and Dannah are tackling some pretty big questions about motherhood, things like: “What is a mom supposed to do with mom guilt?” Maybe you’ve faced that one. This is such a practical, gospel-centered conversation. 

Whether you’re a mom or not, I can’t wait for you to soak in these truths. They really do apply to so many areas of the Christian life. Now, here’s Dannah.

Dannah: You know, this conversation takes me from the introduction to one of your wonderful . . . is it “appendix”? What’s the plural: “appendice, appendici?” I don’t know.

Ladies laugh: “Appendices.”

Dannah: But you talk in there about personal conscience. That is one of the factors in making a decision as a mom. It’s not all written down for us in black and white in the Scripture. I think there are a lot of really hard . . . I’m going to say some inflammatory, hard things that we grapple with. I’m not going to ask you to answer them directly. [Ladies laugh and exclaim, “Whew!”]. But I am going to ask you to answer them categorically. How do we approach it?

I’m thinking of: 

• To homeschool or not to homeschool? 
• To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? 
• How old is a child when they’re ready to be baptized or experience a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? 
• Sugar or no sugar? 
• I mean, you could go on and on!

These are issues where we can lean on the wisdom of Scripture, but it’s not written in black and white for us. How do we go about both entering into and being aware of our own personal conscience, and how do we respect the personal decisions of other mothers?

Emily: So this is a pretty big, complex topic. I think once Laura and I sort of unlocked this—or understood this—it helped us both walk forward with so much more freedom in motherhood!

I think this is a topic that, if someone is like, “I’ve never heard of this before” is worth studying. This is worth learning about and understanding because your personal conscience is your individual sense of right and wrong, but it’s not the Holy Spirit. 

And so, we have to realize that as we grow up our moral compass is formed, our worldview is formed, our sense of what’s good and what’s bad, what’s normal and what’s not normal is formed by so many factors. Like: 

• What our family did, whether or not we liked what our family did. 
• Did we grow up in a rural area? Did we grow up in an urban area? 
• Were we in a conservative political area? Were we in a liberal political area? 
• What was our experience of childhood and our perception of the world? 
• Were we rebellious? Were we someone who followed the rules all the time?

All of these different things, and more, contribute—little nugget by little nugget by little nugget—to our sort of innate sense of whether or not something is good or bad.

Now, when we become a believer and we are filled with the Holy Spirit and we are reading the Word of God, that is ultimately our “big T” Truth moral compass. But we often don’t realize that we are bringing all of this other stuff: all of our experiences, all of our biases, all of our “this is the way I’ve been shaped, nurtured, formed” to the Word of God. And so it can just make it difficult!

That is where wisdom comes into play. Over time the goal is to align your personal conscience with the Word of God more and more and more. But it gets really tricky. Every Christian–I think, I would like to think—would agree it is a sin to lie. But if you talk to Person A, Person B, Person C, especially even depending on what culture they’re from, they may have a little bit of a different definition as to what “lying” means in a specific situation or even what telling the truth means in a certain situation.

I think that’s part of why we see in the Word of God that we need to obey our consciences, and that if we’re ever doing something that we knowingly think is wrong, for us that is sin. So it’s kind of like saying, “Hey! Insofar as you believe you are obeying God, do that!”

Keep praying, keep reading the Word of God, and over time, hopefully, you will come more and more in line with His Word. Okay, so that’s kind of the undergirding.

Dannah: Well, I have two questions about that. I want to keep on this trail, this is very important. My first question is, “Where in the Bible does it say that we should be following our conscience?” I want to land on that.

I want to make sure, for anybody who is like, “Wait! Aren’t we supposed to follow the Word of God? Aren’t we supposed to follow the Spirit of God? This sounds a little woo-hoo to me.” Give me a Scripture verse.

Laura: Well, I know it’s Romans 14. (I’ll find the exact verse.) But Romans 14 really talks about weak and strong consciences. This is where Paul is writing and talking about someone who is only able to eat vegetables, and not eat the full gamut of food.

Paul is talking specifically about food, which we don’t necessarily always relate to, but he’s essentially talking about, “Hey, if you feel like you are called to still only eat certain foods . . .” Like the Jews had very strict food requirements. He’s like, “. . . then follow that conscience.” Even though we know from Peter that God had actually allowed them to eat all different types of food. That’s what that chapter is talking about, and it’s talking about conscience. Emily, did you find a specific verse yet?

Emily: Yeah, there’s a whole bunch of these. This is a really good topic to go explore!

Laura: Like the whole podcast could be on this.

Emily: I know, I know! Okay, this is one kind of off-handed comment that we read in Acts. I believe that this is Paul speaking, “So I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man” (Acts 24:16)

This is an example of a time where he is saying, “Hey, I want to act towards others and before God in a way that I don’t have that yucky feeling that I have done something wrong.” I think he’s not just saying, “Yes, I want to follow the Holy Spirit, but I also want to live in such a way that I can say I am doing good! I want to have that clarity of conscience before the Lord and before others.”

Dannah: Yeah, that’s good! I think about James 4:17, “Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” That falls under this category; it doesn’t even say the word “conscience.” 

But listen, let me play the devil’s advocate. Let’s say I just want to go about gossiping about somebody because I don’t have a conscience, or I’m not aware that the Bible says something about it. Are you saying we have a license to do whatever we feel like doing?

Emily: No! So, I think what we’re diving into might be a little bit like maturity and immaturity. Someone who is like, “I don’t know that the Bible doesn’t say I can’t gossip.” Like if they literally don’t know, they are still sinning. But the Holy Spirit may not have convicted them of that yet or grown them in that yet, because they’re very new and immature in their faith. 

They need brothers and sisters to come alongside them and say, “Let me help you think about this topic!” I think that where personal conscience comes into play, if we can try to bring it more concretely, and then I’ll let Laura talk about those big topics.

Dannah: It’s getting a little deep in here, Laura, so we’re calling you in!

Emily: It’s like a holiday. Some moms and dads may feel like, “We cannot participate in anything related to Halloween.” We have this example in our book. Some Christian parents may say, “Hey, we see a way in which there is a redemptive way to participate in Halloween.” 

That’s not clearly spelled out in Scripture with the word “Halloween.”

There are principles that apply, there is biblical wisdom that applies, but in that there is room for both people to be saying in their hearts, “I’m doing this to honor God; I have scriptural support for what I’m doing. Insofar as I can understand, I am trying to live in a way that is faithful.” But in their context, that might look different. I feel like that is such a key. 

We talk about school a lot. Our kids are going to a school in central Iowa where the town is like 500 people. Laura does that sound right?

Laura: It’s small!

Emily: But that decision is very different from someone who might be in an urban school district on the West Coast. Those are not apples to apples situations.

Dannah: Absolutely, 100% different! I can tell you, I’ve been in California all year long. It's a very different experience to have your child in the public school system in California than almost anywhere else in the United States right now! 

Laura: What gets so hard is that so often, particularly with the rise of the internet, we are receiving advice from people that are living a life that is anything like ours! In fact, we are receiving schooling advice from the West Coast mom who is saying, “Do not do this! That is unbiblical, that would be wrong, the exposure is too much . . .” whatever it is. And then we’re coming back to let’s say our rural, small town life, and we’re saying, “Well, this is what this person said who is a good Christian, so I now must do this.” 

Instead, one of our heartbeats at Risen Motherhoodis to show a mom actually the enormous freedoms she has in following Christ, and that is being in line with her conscience, but also seeing where the Holy Spirit is convicting her. Because our goal as Christians is to make our conscience more and more aligned to the Holy Spirit’s truth.

So, as Emily said at the beginning, they’re not perfectly aligned, our conscience and the Holy Spirit. But as we grow in maturity, those two things should become closer and closer and closer. They’ll never match up. They’ll never be exactly the same until heaven. But that’s the opportunity of growth and sanctification that we have as a Christian.

As our conscience grows stronger—Paul talks about it being stronger in Romans 14—that means that you actually understand the depths of freedoms that you have in Christ. You do have freedom to make some school choices. You do have freedom in medical treatments. You do have freedom in whether or not you celebrate Halloween, or how you do birthday parties, or Christmas or whatever. As you see those freedoms that you have as a mom, well then actually what starts to happen is your tolerance level for most things . . .

You start to be able to say, “Okay, I see that these other people feel very, very strongly that you do not celebrate Halloween ever, ever, ever, ever! There’s no wiggle room.” But when you have a stronger conscience, you start to see, “Oh, I actually can see where people come to this at different places.”

And so while you still hold your convictions and your beliefs, and you are called to continue to walk in them, oftentimes you’ll notice that that person is actually not quite as loud about what decisions to make. They’re usually a little more at peace. Things don’t rattle them quite as much when you start to kind of see the full gamut of God’s good design for His people.

I think the example of birthday parties is a really good one. I grew up, and my mom did not give a lot of birthday parties to us kids. Birthdays were really simple. You picked your own dinner, and that was about it that we did to celebrate birthdays.

As I had children of my own, I kind of followed in her footsteps. I did the same thing. Birthdays are really low-key; it’s not a big deal around here. But I saw a lot of my friends were throwing these really big, awesome birthday parties, and there was a lot of time and energy put into them.

Their child seemed to be so loved, right? They just felt all the affirmation! So I started feeling guilty as a mom and thinking, Oh, I must not be a very good mom because I don’t even desire to do this.”

“Should I, God? Should that be a desire of my heart? Should that be something I do? Is that a way that I need to show love to my children and be a good mom?” That was like the equation for me. It wasn’t, “Should I do this?” But, “Does that make me a good mom in Your standing, Lord?”

I went through a season where I felt like I needed to throw these big birthday parties, and it was almost like anti who I naturally am.

Emily: You threw a couple of really epic birthday parties, Laura! I can remember them.

Laura: But my children were like ages two, three, and four, right? It hasn’t happened since! I realized I was doing that out of a striving and out of a desire to sort of “keep up” with other moms and to “earn” my “good mom” status. Understanding the conscience and understanding what really God is commanding from a “good mom” actually frees you then to walk fully into the mom that God created you to be! I don’t have to throw big birthday parties. I can if I want, there’s freedom to do that. 

But if that’s not in my natural push and pull, and DNA, and desires, then having simple birthdays is totally fine! That’s a small example, but it's a big area where we can really get this under our skin, where, “Oh, that’s actually my conscience firing and my conscience needs to change to be more aligned with the Holy Spirit’s command.” Then we actually begin to experience freedom.

Dannah: You’re talking to every woman, not just the moms, but this is such an important conversation for motherhood because it does produce peace and freedom to live the way God wants us to live.

As a mom with a gift of teaching, with a gift of praying for people (I love interceding with people one-on-one), I always felt deflated by baking cookies and all of those hospitality things, but I felt guilty if I didn’t do it.

But when I figured out that the gifts Christ gave me for the body were not baking cookies (even though I really do love baking cookies, and I especially love eating them!), I had the freedom to say, “You know what? I am going to participate in this potluck after church, because we all need to participate, but I don’t have to show up with a Joanna Gaines’ quality platter! I’m going to stop by the bakery on the way. I’m going to show up. I’m going to bring cupcakes from the best bakery in town!” 

What freedom that provided for me as a mother to where I did have time to do the extra things outside of the home that the Lord was giving me a heart to do. The other thing that I think this concept exploring does for moms is, it stops the “mommy wars,” which can address the “mommy guilt.”

Tell us what you have discovered, through your research at Risen Motherhood, about mommy guilt, and how it ties into this.

Laura: Yes, mom guilt is so universal. We have conducted a few Risen Motherhood surveys, and we’ve had nearly 10,000 moms complete them, so that’s a pretty good survey of Christian moms—97 percent have said that they’ve struggled with mom guilt.

So, my first question is, “Can I please meet the 3 percent and understand what they’re doing so that we don’t all have mom guilt?!” But for 97 percent, it truly is this universal feeling for so many of us. Just as you were sharing, “I’m not baking and cooking enough and therefore, am I a bad mom?” . . . And I’m thinking, I have birthday parties, and I’m not throwing them to whatever status I believe I should. . . Those are feelings of guilt. What we’re feeling is guilt and shame of believing that we’re not enough. At the end of the day, who God made us was not quite right, like He didn’t get it right.

So as we look at guilt, I think the exciting thing about being a Christian is that you don’t have to live with it. You can take your guilt, you can pick it up, and you can look at it and say, “Okay, what am I really feeling here? I am feeling bad because I don’t throw very good birthday parties,” or “That is not a desire in my life, to throw big birthday parties and do all these crafts.”

Then you can say, “Okay, is that something God commands for His people?” We can then search Scripture; we can have conversations with women wiser than us; we can talk with our husbands; we can talk with other friends and we can see that, “Nope! There’s no command here.”

There’s a command to love your children. There’s a command to care for your neighbors, to serve them, to show them the gospel, to give your children truth and Scripture and to raise them up in the ways of the Lord. But there’s nothing that says, “Big parties are a big part of being a good mom.” And so from there you can say, “Okay, I don’t need to feel guilt for that!”

But also, you can say, “Is there anywhere in this that I’m sinning?” I think when it comes to guilt, sometimes that guilt comes because we have actually violated God’s laws and commands. That may be something where we’re feeling like, “I watched something on TV that I shouldn’t have watched,” or “I engaged in a book that I shouldn’t have read.”

Could there be freedom to watch that show or read that book? Potentially. But for you, you know that, “This is not what God has called me to do.” So that’s the great part. We can confess our sin and we know that God is faithful and just to forgive us from all unrighteousness (see 1 John 1:9).

Then we can walk forward in freedom, because we’ve repented, and we turn away from that. We don’t engage in it again, and we don’t have guilt anymore. We can walk as daughters of the King.

And so, I think that that is so great, because moms live with this low hum of mom guilt. That’s what the survey shows: everybody’s living with a little hum. But the hope of the gospel is that that actually doesn’t have to be a reality for us. We can take our guilt, we can look at it, we can analyze it, we can pray and ask the Lord to show us what to do with it, and then we can eradicate it.

Dannah: Laura, that’s such good stuff! I think we need to remember when we feel that guilt, it’s an invitation to check in with the Holy Spirit and say, “Is there something here You’re trying to address in my heart, in my life?” Which brings us back to the topic of the gospel. Emily, what is a gospel mom?

Emily: So a gospel mom is someone who has her life oriented around God and His Word. I think that in motherhood there are so many things that we’re tempted to link ourselves to. There are so many words we want to use to define ourselves and our identity.

A little bit throughout this show, we’ve been talking about: “What kind of formula? What’s the right answer?” I think in motherhood we are hopeful that like, “Okay, I can find a strategy or a method or a lifestyle or just this picture of motherhood that I’m going to cobble together, if I can do that, I will be good!”

And what we want moms to do is to say, “Look, strategies, methods, sometimes lifestyle choices, all these things can be good, but we don’t grip onto them with an iron grip. We don’t orbit our lives around them. We don’t stand on those things as a foundation.

We stand on Jesus Christ as The Foundation, and we build everything around Him! And then we come to God with open hands about what He might bring into our lives and what tools, strategies, methods He might have us use at different times for different reasons, as He leads us to love our families.

One of the phrases we use in the book is, “A gospel mom has allegiance to Jesus. He is preeminent in her life!” He has the most important, the highest role, the highest seat on the throne of her heart. And so, He is calling the shots ultimately of what she is doing, where she’s turning.

It’s not her mom friend, it’s not her mother-in-law, it’s not her mom, it’s not the older woman at church that has all these questions about what she is doing and it’s kind of making her feel uncomfortable. It’s not the Instagram influencer. That’s not ultimately who she’s taking instruction from.

She’s taking instruction from the Lord, and she’s filtering every other thing through that. And so, it’s just exciting, because the gospel mom says, “Hey, at the core of my identity is God and His story.”

And we can talk a little bit if you want about what we mean by the word “gospel,” because it is a little bit broader than the way I think some Christians use it.

Dannah: We can do that, and that’s a great tease for tomorrow’s program because, unfortunately, we’re out of time right now. Thank you, friends, for some thought-provoking insights! We’ll pick up the conversation again on Revive Our Hearts.

Nancy: Thank you Dannah Gresh, along with Emily Jensen and Laura Wifler, co-authors of the book, Gospel Mom. The subtitle is: How to Make Biblical Decisions and Discover the Mom God Created You to Be. You’ll find more information about how to order it at a link in the transcript of this program at ReviveOurHearts.com.

You know, Dannah, this whole conversation is so relevant to the day-in, day-out choices moms face—and not just moms. We all wrestle with how to handle our personal consciences, and we wrestle with comparison and guilt. We all need to remember that our identity is in God and His story, just as Emily said.

Dannah: That’s right! I hope our conversation today encourages you to embrace the freedom of your identity in Christ. When He is on the throne of your life, you don’t have to be tossed to and fro by the winds of mom guilt anymore.

Maybe you’re a mom and you’re feeling you’re stuck. Maybe that low hum of mom guilt that Laura described just won’t leave you alone, and you’re asking the Lord to give you freedom. Or maybe you’re a woman who longs to become a mom, but the Lord hasn’t said “yes” to that desire of your heart . . . not right now.

Friend, the Lord sees you! Our team here at Revive Our Hearts would love to pray for you. You can submit a prayer request at ReviveOurHearts.com/prayer. When you do, one of our team members will pray for you by name.

Well, it’s the month of May, and we’re wrapping up another ministry cycle at Revive Our Hearts this month. That means we’re seeking the Lord to provide for another year of ministry. We are so excited, because we’re launching a six-year initiative called Wonder of the Word.

That initiative includes Nancy teaching an overview of the entire Bible! Now, let me tell you, Nancy is passionate about this initiative, and she can’t wait to walk with you through God’s Word in a couple of years! 

Our prayer is that women all over the world will be inspired to love the Word, that they will be transformed by it and that they will share its wonder with others! I can tell you this: God is at work! Will you join us?

Our regular fiscal year-end goal is to raise $810,000 here in May, but all giving above and beyond that amount will go toward our Wonder of the Word initiative. To jump in and say, “Yes! I want to join you in supporting Revive Our Hearts this month,” you can make a donation at ReviveOurHearts.com or by calling us at 1-800-569-5959.

And this month when you make a donation of any amount, we’d love to send you our 50 Promises Scripture Card set as our way of saying thank you. As always, our desire is for you to find freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ! Thank you for your prayerful consideration about how you might support us in that mission.

Tomorrow I’m back with my friends, Emily and Laura, to talk more about what it looks like to be a gospel mom. I hope you’ll join us. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts!

This program is a listener supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ! 

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.