Home Christian News ‘This Is Not a Dress Rehearsal’—Fox’s Ainsley Earhardt Discusses New Book and...

‘This Is Not a Dress Rehearsal’—Fox’s Ainsley Earhardt Discusses New Book and How Pastors Have Influenced Her

So that’s that’s the message, and the message to children of all walks of life. I think about the kids that are raised in a house like mine where they know that they’re loved. We kiss on them. We love them. We read them books. We say prayers every night. We say our blessing at the dinner table, and we take them to church. But there’s some children that the parents don’t have that time with their kids, whether it’s because they don’t want to spend that time with their children or they’re working all the time to put food on the table—or they might have three or four kids and they just don’t have the energy to do that. My prayer is that this book gets into the hands of all children. Whether it’s their birthday, or a baby shower, or grandparent giving them this book, or just a stranger, or a donation to a shelter, I want all children to read this and just know that God has huge plans for your life, that you matter, and you are important and no matter what you do. You can lean on Him and you can be anything you want to be.

CL: One of the lines in I’m So Glad You Were Born says, “The sky is the limit and soon you will see. That you can be anything you want to be.” Then you list preacher as one of the occupations. What inspired you to list a pastor as something a child could grow up to be?

Ainsley: Well, pastors, I just I look up to them. I’ve had so many in my life that have made such an indelible difference and I think of how they serve others. They’re at hospitals, they’re on the phone, talking people through marriage dilemmas or illnesses or children that have gone wayward and they’re trying to talk to their parents or even just saving children from drugs or from abuse or whatever it might be. Those are the men and women that we really lean on when we are in a crisis and so they are so important.

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I think of them as like doctors. I mean, they’re saving lives even in a bigger way than than doctors. Doctors are saving their physical lives, but pastors are are reaching into the lives and souls of individuals and telling them about Jesus, which will save them for eternity. So it’s just such an important role. They know the Bible, they know Scripture they have spent their adult life studying scripture and studying the ways of the Lord and they teach us. People go to church on Sunday, because people want to hear the message and that sets you off for the rest of the week. It sets the tone of your week when you listen to the message.

I have pastors on my TV all the time. I listen to different pastors on YouTube or I scroll through and find pastors, and they really just motivate me. And so that was why why we added it. It says, “The sky is the limit and soon you will see that you can be anything you want to be,” and we go through a builder, a baker, an electric carmaker, a mover, a shaker, a loving caretaker, a painter, a preacher, a history teacher, someone who studies fantastical creatures, and they’re beautiful illustrations for these.

I want them to know how important pastors are and how loved they are. And even if I will never meet all of them face to face, please hear my message: you are crucial in this world right now, and we need the church to thrive and to stay alive. And we need these messages taught, because my life completely changed when I met Jesus and when pastors and other strong Christians really dove into my life and taught me about the Lord and having a relationship with God. I was 21 years old. I was raised in the church but never had I heard to have a relationship with Christ, and that changed generations to come. Now I have that relationship with Christ. My daughter just asked Jesus to come into our heart when she was five, and she’ll do that with her children. So generations have changed because of these ministers and what they’re doing is just important and really crucial for for our society.

CL: Can you share a time that a pastor has inspired you?

Ainsley: I got saved on October 19, 1997, when I was 21-years-old. I was at Henry Blackaby’s experiencing a bible study with a group of friends and sorority sisters when God started working on me in a major way. Half of my sorority sisters were really strong Christians, and I wanted to be more like them. They didn’t gossip. They were really good girls. They weren’t out partying all the time. They were doing what I thought mattered. They were studying and reading the Bible, hanging out together, laughing, having fun, and playing music on the beach. We would take the guitar outside or sit around a bonfire and sing praise and worship music.

I started hanging out with them more and more and just wanted to live a life like they were living, because the life that I had lived in high school and the first two years of college was a life were I had one foot in church and one foot at the party. And I got so sick of that. That type of lifestyle doesn’t fill that void—that hole in your heart. And so I became very close with our pastors are our college minister at this Baptist Church in my hometown, where the University of South Carolina is. The pastor of the church grew up in the Episcopal Church, which I could relate to, because so did I. And then here he was a pastor at a Baptist church, and his preaching was dynamic. His associate pastor was the big teddy bear—he was the one who married me. They were a great combination and I started just learning so much about the Bible through them. The Baptist Church taught me scripture. And I had to go get a Bible and put those tabs in it, because outside of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, I didn’t know where to find the other books of the Bible.