Lee Nienhuis

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Comparison Girl for Teens

Teen girls have more opportunity and pressure to compare than ever before and this generation of girls is desperate for truth about themselves and God. Behind the deep sadness and thick bondage caused by comparison is a persistent enemy peddling comparison lies. Whether a girl drives herself to exhaustion trying to prove she measures up, or she retreats to the shadows—convinced she never will, our enemy knows that comparison will hold her hostage. But Jesus’s gospel mindset sets her free. 

Join Shannon Popkin and Lee Nienhuis as they explore the new face of the comparison game for today’s teen girl, and Jesus’s healthier, happier way of living me-free. Filled with quizzes and stories to help her engage, this book helps your teen find new freedom, confidence and true influence in the middle of a world that compares.

Purchase on Amazon / Christian Book / My Shop

Take the Quizzes:

There are eight quizzes – one per chapter! We hope these will be fun for teens and moms or youth leaders and will serve as great question starters. Before you begin, you’ll be asked your age bracket (parents and youth leaders are welcome!). Then after you take the quiz, you can compare your score with others’. However, each quiz is private! You’ll only see how people responded, not who responded what way.

Take the Quizzes HERE!

Learn More HERE.

• Chapter 1—Welcome to the World of Measuring Up
• Chapter 2—Comparing Sin
• Chapter 3—Comparing Beauty
• Chapter 4—Comparing Femininity
• Chapter 5—Comparing Popularity
• Chapter 6—Comparing Possessions
• Chapter 7—Comparing Talents
• Chapter 8—Comparing Relationships

Transcript

Read the Transcript for the episode below. Please forgive any glitches by our speech recognition software.

Shannon Popkin (00:03.657)
Lee Nienhuis, welcome to Live Like It’s True.

Lee Nienhuis (00:06.93)
Well hey Shanna, it’s so fun to be with you today.

Shannon Popkin (00:10.389)
My co-author buddy, this is a super fun interview. It’s gonna be different than our typical interview. We’re kicking off a new series today. We’re talking about comparison. And so you and I have a new book coming out this month, April, called Comparison Girl for Teens. I cannot be more excited about it.

Lee Nienhuis (00:31.922)
I am really excited. It’s been a little bit like giving birth, hasn’t it? Shannon, it just like takes a while to get here. And now we’re to this point and super excited for girls everywhere to get this in their hands.

Shannon Popkin (00:36.077)
Hahaha

Shannon Popkin (00:45.349)
Yeah, we sure are. This one feels a little longer than birth though. I feel like I’m glad it doesn’t take you know two years to birth a baby. So this one’s oh I don’t yeah this is like an elephant book.

Lee Nienhuis (00:54.546)
Isn’t it elephants that just ate for two years or something? I just like, this is an elephant. Yes. And you know, all good things require extra effort and that has surely been true with Comparison Girl for Teens.

Shannon Popkin (01:09.397)
It’s just so true. Yes. So all right. I just want our friends here at Live Like It’s True to kind of get the backstory and find out a little bit about how you and I connected for this project. So can you remember how we first met, Lee?

Lee Nienhuis (01:26.13)
I saw this question Shannon and I was like, I, I think we probably met through our friends, Cindy Bultema, but the time that I remember you the most was when I was teaching at true woman and you came up and reintroduced yourself. So I remember reconnecting it at true woman and you came in and said, Hey, I just want you to know I’m praying for you. And I was like, I know I should know her, but I don’t know her yet. So that just was such a great.

Shannon Popkin (01:28.717)
Ha ha

Shannon Popkin (01:33.709)
Maybe.

Shannon Popkin (01:44.253)
Okay, I don’t remember that, okay.

Shannon Popkin (01:50.989)
Oh.

Okay.

Lee Nienhuis (01:55.574)
first impression and yeah I just loved you ever since.

Shannon Popkin (01:57.877)
Oh, that’s really cool. I don’t I mean that one is not. I remember talking with you in a bathroom. You know, we’re all good friendship start, you know, in the girls room, but at speak at the speak up conference and just remember, like thinking so highly of you right from the beginning. So tell us a little bit about your family and your ministry. Just give us a snapshot of who you are and what you do.

Lee Nienhuis (02:25.366)
Well, I live here in West Michigan with you. We’re about an hour and a half apart. I live at a Christian camp and conference center with my husband here in Grace Adventures. Yes, so we moved here four years ago, but more than that, I’m a mom to four. I am super grateful to be a mom, but also a wife and a speaker, a Bible teacher. So it’s been…

Shannon Popkin (02:36.692)
called Grace Adventures. Uh-huh.

Lee Nienhuis (02:53.814)
just a joy and delight to be in full-time ministry for the last 10 years. And most recently, I’m a missionary with an organization called Live Global, working on global women’s ministry. And that is, as you well know, one of the greatest joys of my life, is the chance to equip women all over the world with God’s word and how it changes lives.

Shannon Popkin (03:19.093)
Yeah, you know, you and my friend Christy, you’re both kind of doing similar things. And my biggest challenge with the both of you is like, okay, where in the world is Lee? Or where in the world is Christy? Like you are just globetrotting and doing all these amazing things. So, and does it give you a little more perspective when you come back home after being worldwide and seeing what God’s doing? And I don’t know.

Lee Nienhuis (03:42.058)
You know, it dawned on me, I don’t know, I probably started ministry internationally about eight years ago now, and we first started working in Haiti. And the thing that the Lord really convinced or convicted me of is that I needed to learn from the women that I would be meeting. Because to be real honest, I don’t have to need God for anything in my day.

Shannon Popkin (04:02.188)
Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (04:08.288)
Hmm.

Lee Nienhuis (04:09.598)
you know, we’re pretty self-sufficient people here in the United States. And although I know I need Jesus for my salvation, really I can hide from my kids that we need anything at all. And they live day to day relying on the heavenly father. And so it was that spirit of knowing that I had a lot to learn that God just really began to teach me that the things that were universal,

Shannon Popkin (04:23.33)
Yeah.

Lee Nienhuis (04:39.422)
which you already know, Shannon are the things that are found in the word of God. Like the only thing that I really can hand a woman who is watching her child starve to death is the word of God and the hope of heaven that we have in Jesus. And those are the things that I want to teach because cultural truths like the truths that are true in women’s ministry here in the United States don’t always apply. They don’t work, you know? And so.

Shannon Popkin (05:04.973)
Right, yeah, yeah.

Lee Nienhuis (05:07.154)
I can’t say to my friend, you need to be a stay at home mom when she won’t be able to feed her kids if she does that. On the other hand, I can talk to her about what it means to be a godly wife and a mom. And so yeah, Shan, you already know that it’s the word of God that transforms lives. It isn’t my opinion. And so yes, going overseas shapes everything. As a matter of fact, as you well know, a lot of our book was written in the Dominican Republic. So I will.

Shannon Popkin (05:24.77)
Yeah.

Lee Nienhuis (05:35.538)
Remember forever sitting on a couch in Dominican Republic and FaceTiming and thinking, Lord, you’re going to have to do this because we’re thousands of miles away from each other.

Shannon Popkin (05:36.999)
Uh.

Shannon Popkin (05:47.345)
Yeah, yeah, no, it was that was really fun to just have that perspective kind of overshadowing the writing process of this new book. So backing up to 2020, that’s when Comparison Girl, the original version came out for girls of all ages, I should say that first book and you were one of my endorsers for that book. The subtitle is Lessons from Jesus on Me, Free Living in a Measure Up World. And so I

like went and found your endorsement. Can I read it real quick? You said, I am a comparison girl.

Lee Nienhuis (06:20.628)
Oh, I love that.

Shannon Popkin (06:25.777)
I never wanted to play into the enemy’s plan for dismantling my contentment and peace, and I suspect that you don’t want to either. So it’s high time we cast aside our measuring mentality and adopt a new way. Shannon Pupkin expertly walks us through the markers and the mistakes of this measure up world and gently points us to a better way. With humor and brutal honesty, Shannon fights for her reader’s hearts with biblical wisdom, humility and truth.

favorites, you know, with endorsements, but that one I think was my favorite. It was just so helpful and so kind. And so I really, really appreciate you, you know, championing this book from the beginning. And go ahead.

Lee Nienhuis (07:11.542)
Shan, when you called and said, will you do an endorsement for Comparison Girl, I actually thought to myself, I actually am pretty secure as a human being. Like measuring, comparing, that’s not really my issue. Holy cats, I found myself in the middle of this book going, oh, I am a comparison girl. And as I’m sure we’ll talk about, it was really…

It was a real new thought process that there are a couple of different ways to measure. And I was very guilty of one way of measuring. And, you know, as we work through this process together, quite often you and I approach things from the exact opposite perspective. And that has just been so fun to work through, but I just was so grateful for what Comparison Girl taught me. And as I recall,

I wrote that endorsement, sent it to you, and then called and said, you have to make this a teen book.

Shannon Popkin (08:13.605)
You did. Yeah, I think. Yeah. I don’t remember if it’s a phone conversation or a text. But at first, I was like, oh, haha, you know, it’s sort of like when you’re giving birth, you’re in someone mentions like you should have another one, too. Right. And so it just was not something I really thought deeply about. But I remember having you as a guest when we launched, you know, the book and then just.

And that thought about a teen book was in the back of my mind. And I would be speaking at different events and inevitably when there was a Q and a at the end, um, someone would raise their hand and say, Hey, when is the teen book coming out? And I would say, Oh yeah, we need that. Don’t we? And then, you know, it just kept happening over and over. And I would talk to moms who were in tears over their teens.

Lee Nienhuis (08:53.954)
Hmm

Shannon Popkin (09:05.901)
saying like, I need this message, but she does too. Like she really needs this, how do I give it to her? And grandmas who are so concerned about their young girls, you know, their granddaughters and youth leaders. And I just kept hearing it from everywhere, every different angle. And so, I mean, I think, yeah, this is one of the good works that God had prepared in advance for you and me to do together. So I’m really glad you planted the seed.

Lee Nienhuis (09:32.938)
Yeah. Well, as I recall, you said in that moment, ha ha, I don’t write for teens. Do you want to do that? And I was like, no, I was in the middle of launching my own book and I was like, no, like you, I was like, we’re both giving birth right now. We’re not doing that. And then God just would not let go of either one of us. And I’m so grateful now.

Shannon Popkin (09:45.389)
Yep.

Shannon Popkin (09:49.825)
Yeah, yeah.

Shannon Popkin (09:57.097)
Yeah, yeah, me too. So let me just take a quick minute in case somebody hasn’t read Comparison Girl, the first book, and just tell about how, you know, just the framework for that book, and then we’ll talk about how the teen one is different, and maybe whet your appetite for both of them. You know, if you have a teen in your life, we’d love for you to get Comparison Girl, we’d love for you to get the teen book, too. But Comparison Girl, you know, I just…

I remember as a young mom feeling so, just this disparity between the world telling me that what I was doing did not matter, as I’m wiping noses and bottoms and crumbs, right? And just feeling like, ugh, I really enjoyed being a mom, but I felt that tension, that pressure, that this is not what the world says is worthwhile.

And yet noticing in scripture, like feeling the, I don’t know, just being drawn to the wisdom of Jesus saying that the greatest is the servant. Being drawn to that message and just noticing that disparity and wanting more of that. And so this comparison is not something that has only plagued me in my young motherhood days or in my teenage days or childhood. It’s kind of been in all the different ages and stages of my life.

I come back like, oh my goodness, I’m comparing again. You know, now my kids are young adults and now I wanna compare my young adult kids with other young mother, you know, other moms with young adults. Or, you know, now I’m an author and a speaker and I wanna compare myself with the other authors and speakers or, you know, just all the different areas of life. I’m tempted into looking at things the way that the world does. Like you have to measure up, you have to get ahead and you should feel ashamed when you don’t.

And yet Jesus offers this really me free way of looking at ourselves and at other people. And what I noticed is that whenever Jesus was talking with people who were comparing, and he did a lot of that, you know, he would talk with the disciples and they’re trying to elbow past each other, or he would talk with the Pharisees who felt like they were better than everybody, or he’d talk to the sinners or the, you know, the sick people who felt marginalized and consistently.

Shannon Popkin (12:18.029)
he would use these pithy upside down statements to kind of like show them, like this is how things look in the world, but here are things in the kingdom. And he would say these statements like the greatest is the servant, or whoever exalts herself will be humbled, or whoever puts herself last will be first in the kingdom. And so I thought that was really interesting. And if you look at those different upside down statements, like the vast majority of them come on the heels of

someone comparing themselves. So there’s something here that helps us with comparison. There’s something that Jesus is trying to show us. Like he’s trying to say, my kingdom is different. It’s not like here in the world. And I’ve often, we put this in the teen book too, an illustration of the game Uno. You know, if you and me were playing Uno and you noticed I’m like trying to fill my hand with cards like, you know.

Lee Nienhuis (12:49.144)
Hmm.

Shannon Popkin (13:11.897)
Oh yes, draw four more cards for me. You being the good friend that you are Lee, you would lean over and say, I’m Shannon did you know that the goal of Uno is not to have more, but to have less. I think that’s kind of what Jesus is doing here. He’s like in my kingdom, it doesn’t work like that. You know, it’s just this thing that you’re after, these goals you’re setting or this angst you’re feeling, it does not have anything to do with my kingdom. So there’s just all this, this me free.

So with the original comparison girl, it’s a study, a Bible study, and I looked at five different ways that we compare comparing sin, which I didn’t think that would necessarily be one that people wanted to hear a lot about. But turns out like man over and over. That is the one that people say they want to flip to first comparing sin, comparing wealth, comparing appearances, comparing ministries and comparing status. And so.

That’s kind of what made up that original book. What was your favorite chapter in the original book, Lee?

Lee Nienhuis (14:13.49)
This was really hard for me to just pick one, but I think the one that really sat me back on my heels was the Comparing Wealth chapter, and probably large in part due to international travel as well. Comparing Sin was a big deal to me because

I think I measure, I don’t always measure myself as far as like, well, at least I’m not a sinner like you. I don’t think that is something that I often struggle with. But what I did find was that comparing down at someone over the course of all five of those that you pointed out.

Shannon Popkin (14:45.321)
Right.

Shannon Popkin (14:59.618)
Yeah.

Lee Nienhuis (15:04.81)
that was more often what I was doing. So rather than looking at someone else and feeling inferior, sort of actually I was feeling superior and that is pride is just as offensive to the Lord, definitely more so in certain cases. And so I just really found myself quite humbled by the original book. And I wish you could all see, I mean, my book is falling.

Shannon Popkin (15:20.557)
Yep.

Shannon Popkin (15:24.214)
Yeah.

Lee Nienhuis (15:34.878)
apart at this point because we spent so much time in the original. And Shannon, what has been really great is that anymore, I can’t figure out if you said something or if I said something. So it’s so fun.

Shannon Popkin (15:35.905)
No.

Shannon Popkin (15:45.793)
Isn’t that sweet? And it’s probably cause Jesus said it first, right?

Lee Nienhuis (15:50.03)
Well, totally, but just, you know, having camped out in this, I, I really see that you focused on what God says about this. And so I want to align with that even when it’s painful.

Shannon Popkin (16:06.217)
Yeah, me too. And that back to the wealth chapter, that is the one that I mean, God just broke my heart, split it right open. Writing that one, I was like, wow, I did not realize how, how much I compare and how I am just this is, this is like it’s got its fingers in a lot of different areas of life. I wrote part of that chapter at

Cranhill Ranch, which you and I both, I think you first introduced me as a speaker there. And they have this little prayer cabin and they let people like us go use it. And I just remember crying out to God in that prayer cabin. And like, this is just undoing me.

Oh my goodness. But yeah, and me too, Lee. I tend to, you know, it used to be I would compare up and feel insecure, feel inadequate, but there’s this other way of comparing and it’s comparing down and feeling like this disgust toward other people. And if Jesus ever called people out on anything, it’s that, right? And so this comparing down, like that is actually, and especially with the area of comparing down with sin, you know, that is wrong.

Lee Nienhuis (17:07.543)
Right.

Shannon Popkin (17:15.205)
Yeah, so that is a sin to be looking down on other people who have sinned less than you or you think they have sinned less than you. So there’s there was a lot that God did in my own heart and in our hearts together, you know, as we as we talked through this topic. And you know, as over the past year or so, as we’ve been writing whenever I talk about the comparison.

there be a teen book and I say oh it’s coming in April. Like people have literally applauded like audiences just break out in applause because we know that teens struggle with comparison. We see it. We see it in their lives. We see it. It’s just so obvious like there will be a little girl who goes it’ll just be like overnight she goes from wearing sweatpants, hair pulled back in a ponytail just happy as can be happy go lucky to being like

Lee Nienhuis (17:50.285)
Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (18:12.625)
overnight she’s wearing makeup and like tight, you know, jeans and trying so hard to fit in and just feel it. You can just see it in her eyes and it’s like, oh my goodness, we’re losing her. We’re losing her. You know, she’s losing her footing and how do we, how do we get to her? Like what, what can we do? How can we help her see the truth? So like what about that stirs your heart, Lee? Like why did you want to write this teen book?

Lee Nienhuis (18:40.014)
Well, like you, I have experienced a moment where I felt devastatingly inferior and I was aware of it. And a lot of the wounding that I have actually comes from not accepting Christ until I was 17. And so I had a lot of catching up to do when I did become a believer. And the

Shannon Popkin (18:52.359)
Mm-hmm.

Lee Nienhuis (19:08.566)
church girls around me had an understanding among them that I did not have. I did not understand about modesty or interacting with boys or whatever. Those were not the same, we were not taught the same messages in our homes growing up. And so the place that became the most difficult for me to be in who I was, was at church. And I knew that

Shannon Popkin (19:26.07)
Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (19:36.441)
Thanks for watching!

Lee Nienhuis (19:37.674)
wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. And so as I was reading Comparison Girl, I kept thinking back to those moments where I was like, gee, I wish I’d heard this. Gee, I wish I’d known. Gee, I wish the girls in my youth group had heard this, because…

Shannon Popkin (19:49.014)
Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (19:53.593)
Yes, exactly. Will you tell the story of the bikini? Tell the story of the… you shared this…

Lee Nienhuis (19:59.759)
only if you promise to tell the story about the pink rollers.

Shannon Popkin (20:04.746)
Okay, we’ll see. We’ll see. But yeah, tell that story. I just think it’s such a painful story but go ahead.

Lee Nienhuis (20:10.258)
Yeah, so I went to a Young Life camp and it was so great because they were, as Young Life is, so sensitive to seeking teenagers. And I went to a pool one day, came back, you know, I had this like super cute blue and green string bikini. And you know, like more of my rump was covered.

Shannon Popkin (20:35.629)
course you did. Of course you did. Okay.

Lee Nienhuis (20:38.898)
than string bikinis today, but I looked cute. We had gone to the store, my mom told me I looked cute, and so I came out of the pool, was going back to change clothes, and left my bikini on the ground after changing and cleaning up, and my girlfriend came up to me later and was like, girls are talking about you because of what you wore.

and they say that you’re not modest. They say that you’re just trying to get boys attention. Like you really shouldn’t wear that anymore. And Shannon, I had no idea. Like, first of all, I’m not even sure I knew what immodest was, but like my mom had told me I looked good. You know, so to get there and feel so ashamed, but not know why was just humiliating. It still makes me cringe thinking about it.

Shannon Popkin (21:22.328)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (21:35.125)
Well, and this, these ideas were imposed on you. You weren’t trying to garner attention or, you know, this was just all you knew. Like you had no other swimsuit, right? Like it would never have occurred to you to wear something different.

Lee Nienhuis (21:51.238)
Yeah, it wasn’t like, should I wear my one piece today or should I wear my bikini? It just wasn’t like that, you know? Like, I just had two pieces and I didn’t think that, I mean, if somebody had said, would you put a t-shirt on over that? I’d have been like, what, why? Like, that’s so gross. Like, Velcro, you know, in the water. Like, I just had no frame of reference why that might not be okay. And so, yeah, it took me a long time, which you know.

Shannon Popkin (21:57.445)
Right.

Shannon Popkin (22:09.719)
Yeah.

Lee Nienhuis (22:19.958)
to recover from that incident. Four years till I really felt comfortable to give my life to Christ and allow my life to begin to change. So that was my comparison wake up call, really.

Shannon Popkin (22:33.769)
Yeah, that’s so hard. And I would have been the friend who would have come to you like that because I never had a two piece as far as I can remember. I was the girl who was raised in the very conservative church group. And I would have felt like, yeah, I was being a good friend to come and tell you that. And so this is, man, this is what our girls are facing on the regular.

Lee Nienhuis (22:55.416)
Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (23:03.005)
And you know, we’re not trying to impose like what’s right or wrong here. We’re just like lifting up, like this is something we’ve all, I’m sure our listeners are like.

they can identify with experiencing. I have my own camp version, which you allotted to, camp story. So I went to sixth grade camp and our teacher told us it was gonna be the best weekend of our life. It was not the best weekend of my life. It was like all of the different elementary schools were coming together for sixth grade camp. And I was in a cabin, I’m sure there were some girls from my school, I just don’t remember who they were. My best friend, Kath, was in a different cabin. And so I’m in this group with all of these girls

Lee Nienhuis (23:18.906)
Yes.

Shannon Popkin (23:44.571)
cute clothes and they had the cute hair and they were talking about the cute boys and I Was like just watching them thinking like oh my goodness. I am out of it I don’t I don’t I just you know, I would I just came to camp like I would always go to camp

just ready to have fun, go swimming and, you know, do all the fun camp things that we did. Well, I remember before bed, one of the really super cute girls, her name’s Kim, and she’s given me permission to share this story. She’s such a sweet person, but she was just adorable back then. You know, she had these dimples and like thick dark eyelashes and this thick…

blonde hair and so she’s talking to her girlfriends and she’s like it is way better to take my shower at night they all look great way better take your shower at night and I’m like well I wasn’t planning to take a shower at all this was came up you know so but I you know I’m just watching with interest so they all oops they all go off to take their showers then they come back and

Lee Nienhuis (24:35.254)
Hahaha

Shannon Popkin (24:45.777)
I watched Kim roll her hair up in these pink sponge rollers. So apparently that’s why it’s better to take your shower at night. And I had never seen these. Did you ever have pink sponge rollers?

Lee Nienhuis (24:56.85)
Um, my pink sponge rollers turned out about like yours, so go ahead, carry on.

Shannon Popkin (25:02.129)
Okay, so hers was…

like this, when she pulled those out in the morning, it was this thing of beauty. I mean, she had these big bouncy curls. I was like, oh my word. I was mesmerized, but, um, you know, I just, I just observed this whole thing unfolding and I just kind of felt myself retreating into the corner at, and in my little cabin feeling like I have clearly missed the memo. I do not know what I’m doing here. I got to go home. I’ve got to reinvent myself. And so like the first order of business was the pink sponge rollers. I thought, okay.

is the secret to enviable beauty. You have to get yourself some of those. So I asked my mom, she got them. I did it just like him, you know, took my shower at night. I rolled my hair up, I went to bed, I pulled them out, I ran to the mirror. And this time, I mean, I like gasped. Not because it was a thing of beauty. It was like, I looked like I had been electrocuted. It was, it was, it was a sight to see. Um, but I just remember this

Lee Nienhuis (25:58.359)
Hehehehe

Shannon Popkin (26:06.903)
this happy-go-lucky, carefree little girl and I came home with this sick to m-

my stomach inadequacy, like I have got to figure this out. Like, come on, Janine, we gotta get this thing, you know, get ourselves together. And it’s like I entered the world of comparison and it’s a dark place. And our enemy, I think, really preys on girls at this age when they’re just starting to notice like, oh, there are things, there are ways that people are measuring. And I…

Not only do I have to be aware of them, I’ve got to figure out how do I measure up? How do I get ahead? How do I keep up with everybody else? And how do I not be left behind or

If they can’t, or they, you know, there’s just, it’s not an option, then there’s this, oh, this shame. Like, I’m just gonna retreat to the shadows because I don’t measure up, because I can’t. I don’t know how, or I don’t have the resources. My hair won’t do what her hair is doing. I can’t go to the store and buy the clothes she’s wearing. I mean, I just, I guess I’m just stuck.

Um, and so, man, our heart just aches for girls to know the truth. So like, if you had to boil it down to why is the message of the gospel helpful? The, you know, the things that Jesus taught, why is it helpful for girls who are comparing?

Lee Nienhuis (27:28.875)
Ugh.

Well, Jesus becomes the satisfaction of all things for us. You know, like there’s no need to compare up or down because he has done everything. And as we both know, if Jesus were to have a measuring cup in his hands, his measuring cup.

Shannon Popkin (27:54.977)
Yeah.

Lee Nienhuis (27:57.302)
would be filled with everything good, everything kind. I mean, he’s so limitless. He’s so good and perfect and beautiful and wise and all those things that we want to be. And Jesus emptied Himself for us. And He gave all so that we might have a right relationship with God. And He prioritizes that relationship with the Heavenly Father and says,

This is the primary problem in your life is your separation from the heavenly father. It’s not, you know, how many likes on Instagram. It’s not if you have a boyfriend, it’s not what people say about you when you’re not in the room. It’s if you have a relationship with the heavenly father, this world is not all there is. And so if we separate the gospel from living, then we are going to live a very sad existence. And I just think Jesus knew.

He just knew and he, Shannon was judged. I mean, he was marginalized. He was mistreated. And so I think he can fellowship with a girl in the middle of all of those things too.

Shannon Popkin (29:07.554)
Yeah.

Yeah, so true. You’re kind of alluding to this imagery that we use both in the first book and the teen book of this measuring cup. You know, we say picture your life, this measuring cup filled with all the things that make you, you know, your beauty, your talents, your family, your wealth, all of your resources kind of mingled together. And what we want to do is take our cup and put it next to somebody else’s and always be measuring and always be asking, how do I,

and you know, putting our picture next to hers or our family next to hers or whatever it is. And that is the that’s the enemy’s idea for us, right? That is jealousy and selfish ambition are tied to the wisdom of this world. James, chapter four says, if you have bitter jealousy or selfish ambition in your heart.

Don’t boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes from above, but it’s earthly, unspiritual and demonic. Demonic, like that’s, it’s part of this, our enemy’s idea against us. And so like the two things that verse mentions are bitter jealousy and selfish ambition. Bitter jealousy is when I look over at your cup and you have more. Selfish ambition is when I wanna make my cup look like I have more. And like you just said, Jesus, if he had a cup,

biggest one and be most full. And what did he do with his cup? Right. He came. Philippians 2 says he came and he emptied himself.

Shannon Popkin (30:38.205)
I love those verses. They also say, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility, consider others more important, more significant than yourselves. Don’t have this mind, or have the mind that is yours in Christ Jesus. And what was his mindset? What did he think about? And it says that he did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. So equality, that’s a measuring word, right? So even though Jesus was God,

Lee Nienhuis (31:06.121)
rape.

Shannon Popkin (31:08.179)
He did not come to this earth with the mindset of, I wanna measure up to God. I want everyone to know that I’m God. I want them to worship me wherever I go. That was not his mindset. You know, the verses say he did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself and made himself nothing. He poured his life out. First of all, he became a baby. You know, he tucked all of his greatness into a little embryonic form, and he became a baby.

And he grew up as a human. God became a human. And then he took all of his resources, all his power, his wisdom, his mental aptitudes, and he gave it all up. He poured his life out. He chose the cross.

if he had not been okay with it, they could not have put him on that cross. So he chose all of that for us and that is what frees us from the whole this

entrapment of this world. That’s what sets us free in the beginning. But it’s also like you just said, the gospel is not just what saves us in the moment that we become saved. It’s like it saves us for the rest of our life because it saves us from this whole world system. We choose to be disciples, not just saved by Jesus, but followers of Jesus. And we want to live like he lives. We want, we want to let his words be influencing us.

And so you and I, we have this dream for teen girls. You know, we’re like, we have this picture of them walking into a room and having the words of Jesus in the back of their minds, like helping them to see who they are and helping them to look at each other differently. So paint that scene for us, Lee. A girl who has this me-free mindset of Jesus walks into a room and how is it different for her?

Lee Nienhuis (33:06.99)
Mm-hmm. Well, she and I, we both know that most women walk into a room and assume they aren’t welcome in the room that they walk into. And so that happens from the time they’re the littlest girls. And so they walk in, it’s like they are holding those little makeup compacts, you know, the kind that pressed powder comes in and they’re looking in their little mirror and they’re saying, am I okay? Am I okay? Like, do I look good? Am I enough? Am I too much?

Shannon Popkin (33:24.585)
Yeah, those little mirrors.

Lee Nienhuis (33:36.998)
And you and I have done this, we’ve walked into a room like that, so worried, like, am I really invited? Am I going to have someone to sit with? But what we want is for those words to be rolling in the back of her head of Jesus, this assurance that she is who she was created to be, that she belongs to him, that she’s accepted and loved. And instead of looking down at that little pocket size mirror, she’s looking up at all the other people in the room.

If most of the women and girls are looking down, then the most powerful and influential woman in the room is the one who’s looking up, able to see and meet the needs of others. And so you and I just cannot quit that vision that we would raise up a generation of girls who are looking up to encourage and equip and evangelize really.

Shannon Popkin (34:16.375)
Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (34:32.181)
Yeah.

Lee Nienhuis (34:32.582)
a new generation of Christ followers because they are not stuck in the comparison game.

Shannon Popkin (34:38.109)
It’s so true. My son was just telling me a little

like glimpse of his time in high school. And this is years ago, but I, I never heard this story. He was telling about how his lunch table would have like rows. Like this was the cool table that everybody wanted to be at. And there weren’t enough places around this, the circular table. And so people would pull their chair up and he called himself a third row kid. You know, he was never, if he tried to be in that inner circle, somebody tell him, no, you don’t belong here. And so he’d try and scoot in as the third row. I just thought, oh,

Oh my goodness, like it’s just so.

obvious the way that we’re being influenced by the world and by our enemy. You know, Satan was full of himself. He always wanted to measure up. Jesus emptied himself. He didn’t worry about that. And and you are exactly right. The girl who enters that lunchroom, enters that birthday party, enters that Sunday school classroom, knowing that she is deeply loved by the father, that she belongs, that she has been gifted and entrusted with a life, right?

people with and is able to get her, you know, close that little compact mirror and walk into that room saying not focused on herself at all, but free to focus on other people. That’s the girl with the influence and that’s what we want. We want for this book to be like rather than trying to scoot my chair up into that third row, you know, let’s be influencers. Let’s sit at any table and share the influence of the gospel.

Shannon Popkin (36:16.585)
you know, wherever we go. So OK, we I just want to close by talking a little bit about this book. It’s going to be fun. We haven’t seen it yet in print as we’re speaking today. But it’s going to be it’s really cute. The cover is really fun and cute. And you put together some really fun quizzes. Tell us just about those real quick.

Lee Nienhuis (36:40.342)
Well, everybody loves a good quiz right now. You know, the kind that tell you what kind of women you are. So what we did was at the beginning of every chapter and really at the beginning of the book is we asked the question, are you a comparison girl? In one of these for us, it’s seven areas of, seven areas, right? Seven areas of comparison.

Shannon Popkin (37:01.985)
Yes, we have eight chapters and the first one is an overview. So you’re right. Seven areas. Yep.

Lee Nienhuis (37:08.222)
Okay, perfect. We have all these quizzes that girls can get on and actually it would be really fun to have a mom take those quizzes too because you and I both found ourselves in the middle of the quizzes too and so we just are trying to get them thinking before every chapter begins. But really we wanted them to engage with a pencil in their lesson or a pen, glitter pens even.

Shannon Popkin (37:18.859)
Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (37:23.085)
We did.

Shannon Popkin (37:35.158)
Yes.

Lee Nienhuis (37:35.254)
But we just want them to keep moving. And as we both well know, this is not a one or two day kind of event. This is something that we knew, yes, we would love to have the Metta Conference, but more than that, we want them to spend 40 lessons with us in the middle of learning how Jesus thinks about them and how they can think about themselves and others.

Shannon Popkin (37:59.049)
Yeah. And these online quizzes, like it’ll be anonymous when you take the quiz. But we wanted them to be able to kind of compare their answers, which seems a little bit not intuitive, counterintuitive, because we’re inviting them to compare. But what we want is for them to realize, like, I’m not alone. You know, these comparison things, these ways that I measure, I’m not alone in this way.

but I don’t want to be stuck in these ways that I have been. So we would love for you to come and check out comparisongirl.com. And you can, as a mom, you can take the quiz. We have a little place for you to indicate that you’re not a teen. You’re a mom or a leader or somebody who loves teens. And maybe you’re taking it with your teen or on behalf of your teen. But we’d love for you to invite some teens to take those quizzes, too. The book should be out in just a few minutes.

weeks so you could have them take it and say hey you know does this sound like a book you’d like me to get for you?

Would you be interested in reading some of these chapters after you take the quizzes? You know, does it what your appetite? That’s kind of our design behind the quizzes. But before we let you go, we just want to give you if you are a mom or a grandma or somebody who loves teens, you’ve got a teen girl in your life and you see that she is stuck in comparison. Lee, let’s just we’re not going to give them a whole bunch, but I want you to pick your favorite like message.

as a mom that you can give to teens or as a grandma or a leader. What’s something that you want for every teen to know?

Lee Nienhuis (39:43.53)
Well, this is tricky because we’ve gone through a bunch of these because we are going to have the opportunity to teach, uh, coming up at the gospel coalition for women. So we’ve been working on this, but I, I think it’s that we can root for the other girl. And when we do that, it is emptying ourselves and it takes our eyes off of ourself and puts them on others. And, uh, that’s,

Shannon Popkin (39:52.951)
Yes, ma’am. Yeah.

Lee Nienhuis (40:12.806)
not to fake it, but really to encourage another girl to be all that she can be, to be solidly for her, especially when we don’t click. You know, so that means that we’re not talking bad about her. And just, I had this conversation with one of my daughters last night. It’s when we talk about other people when they’re not in the room, they don’t trust us and more often than not, then we get talked about too. And so

Shannon Popkin (40:23.554)
Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (40:39.8)
Yeah.

Lee Nienhuis (40:40.566)
What would be a better response is if we root for our rival and hope the best for her. Yes.

Shannon Popkin (40:45.181)
Root, root, root. I love it, yes. And let’s be, you know, let’s be women who do that too. Right? Anything we’re telling our teens, we gotta own it ourselves. So here’s the one I’m gonna say, I’m gonna pick is, own your different. Own your different. Like let’s teach our girls to own their different. You know, God apparently loves variety. He made us so different. He gave us different skin, different hair, different eyes. And,

Lee Nienhuis (40:52.339)
Oh, totally.

Lee Nienhuis (40:57.899)
Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (41:14.921)
We are each wonderfully made by God. We’re made different. And so I think that to own your different, you kind of have to compare, right? But you have to compare in a different way, in a me free way, in a way that’s like, I’m not comparing, putting any value statements on these. I’m just asking like, God, how did you make me different? How am I supposed to contribute in a way that’s different? I have this unique blend of resources and aptitudes

cup and it’s my job to discover how am I supposed to be pouring out, right? Cause when you tip that measuring cup, the lines become irrelevant. Right. And so we want to teach our girls own your different, figure out how are you unique, how did God make you different? And you know, that’s something that we got into a little bit in our chapter on femininity, because the world says to be feminine, you have to be a particular kind of girly kind of feminine. But what we see is that God creates.

a whole bunch of variety within the gender distinctions of male and female. And so maybe you’re kind of a tomboy. Maybe you’re more artistic. Maybe you’re an athlete. Maybe you are more shy. Maybe you are the type who has a whole bunch of friends. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you just have one friend. I don’t know. But um.

own your different, be who God created you to be and walk into every room saying like, who can I serve here? Who can I encourage with who I am with what God put in my cup, not in her cup? So that’s really just a little snippet of what we want to share in this book. Lee, thank you so much for being my partner and my co-author and my friend in this project. It’s been such a joy.

Lee Nienhuis (42:56.602)
It’s been so fun Shannon. What an honor to work together to serve King Jesus and our girls.

Shannon Popkin (43:02.985)
Absolutely. So I hope you’re going to stick around for this whole series. We will be, I’m not talking with the rest of the guests on teen kind of content the way that Lee and I have been kind of focused on teen content. I’m kind of going back to the original book talking through some of the Bible passages just like how we do on Live Like It’s True. You know we’re looking at some of these Bible stories but it’s just going to be such a rich series and I don’t want you to miss it. So

You can find it for pre-order right now, but it’s going to be out in just a few weeks. And we would love for you to put it in the hands of a teen that you love. So thank you, Lee. It’s been a pleasure.

Lee Nienhuis (43:46.146)
Thanks, Shaman.