EP 132: The Truth You’re Missing—and Why It Matters: An Overview of My New Book!

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In this episode, Audrey Rindlisbacher introduces her new book How Truth Makes You Free, the culmination of 25 years of studying the meaning of Jesus’s teaching that “the truth shall make you free.” She explains how objective truth—known historically as the natural law—governs every aspect of human life and cannot be broken, only broken against.

Audrey outlines how understanding first principles, governing principles, and their applications creates a reliable formula for solving even the most difficult personal, relational, financial, and health challenges.

She shares examples from her own marriage, family, health, and business, illustrating how aligning with truth leads to permanent freedom, personal transformation, and lasting success. Part One of her book defines truth and freedom; Part Two provides actionable steps for applying principles to any area of life.

Ultimately, the episode teaches that anyone can live a principle-centered life, discern truth, and experience real liberation.

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Transcript (AI Generated)

Welcome back to the podcast. I am Audrey Rindlisbacher. I'm the author of The Mission Driven Life and Founder of the Mission Driven Mom, and I have been thinking for probably 25 years about what Jesus meant when He said, “The truth shall make you free.” Now, I don’t know if you’ve put very much thought into that, but I’ve asked myself thousands of questions around that concept.

What is truth? How does truth work? How would we be made free? What does it mean to be free? And this has sent me on an incredible journey through thousands of books, trying to really get to the bottom of what this could mean for me. I think that religious people hear this phrase, and it means that Jesus can free them and liberate them in a myriad of ways, and I think that’s probably true.

That’s probably a lot of what it means. But I have just spent the last year putting everything that I’ve learned about this principle—which I believe is a true principle, a first principle—and I’ve been putting it into my new book, How Truth Makes You Free, and I finally finished writing it on Friday.

Yay. So excited. And I thought it might be a fun idea today on this podcast, this Thanksgiving week when we all have some downtime, if I spent a couple of minutes walking you through how the book is outlined and some of the things that you can expect to find in this book when it’s released in the spring—some of the epiphanies that I’ve come to about what truth is, what it means to be made free, and why it matters so much.

Because this is not just the culmination of everything I’ve learned, although that's definitely one of the major things it is. It’s a guide. It walks you through. It’s a proven formula. I have now been teaching this for a decade or more. I have worked with thousands of students, even just in my Academy.

We've had over 600 women come through there to this point. And so these are concepts that have proven to be freeing in my own personal life as I came to understand truth and true principles and why they matter so much. And then we became free in very concrete and meaningful ways. And then, of course, I found so many answers in so many of the great readings that I spent time in, and with great mentors that I spent time with, and then, of course, being able to share it out with all of our students.

So let me just walk you through a little bit of what you’re going to find in this book when it comes out—some of the things that you can look forward to. I hope that I can shorten the learning curve for you.

I hope that I can present—or have presented now; we’ll edit, we’ll figure it out, we’ll get a cover, all of those things will be coming—and I can talk to you over the next few months as we put those things in place. But what is this whole thing that is basically my life’s work, that I’ve spent the last 25 years working on?

Why does it matter so much to me? Why does it matter so much to other people? And what can you expect to find in this book when it comes out? Because I hope that in the same way it has revolutionized my life and completely transformed me, and so many of the individuals I've worked with, I hope it can do the same for you.

And that’s why I’ve condensed so much of what I’ve learned into this book. And let’s just get into it. I’m going to spend the next few minutes walking you through what you can expect to find—the concepts that I’ve covered and how this book can be of use to you.

So the book is divided into two parts, and Part One is all about what truth is and how it makes us free. It walks you through the meanings of those things and how you can understand them properly. And then Part Two is a practical guide. It takes everything that you’ve learned in Part One and gives you very actionable steps that you can take to actually practice the things that I’ve taught you.

Now, the first chapter gets into how we all have problems, and sometimes we have problems that we just legitimately do not have the first idea how to solve. And sometimes those problems have been around for a really long time, and maybe we've tried lots of things. Maybe we've been to therapy, maybe we've read books. Maybe it's even an addiction and you’ve been to rehab. You know, the book starts out talking about my and my husband’s challenge with his sexual addiction and the difficulties that that created in our lives—and how much pain and anguish, and after such a long time, having the struggle since the time he was a child and now bringing it into our marriage and all of those kinds of things.

And so we know a little bit about problems that seem unsolvable. But then I mention many other problems that I was facing—other marital issues, trying to parent my children, big problems with extended family, really big career problems, business problems, financial issues. We went through a lot of those, and even in the last few years, more health issues than we'd ever had before.

And in every case, we have been able to use this formula, to use this simple concept that there is truth and it can make us free. Jesus taught us that, and He isn't the only one to say it, but He is the one who made it the most famous—that there is truth, and it can make us free. And so the first chapter of the book is just to introduce you to this and help you understand that I get it. I’ve been there. I've worked with many people. They have been there. And the formula I'm going to lay out for you in the coming chapters does work, and there’s lots and lots of proof around the fact that it really does work.

Then the second chapter dives into this concept of truth. What in the world is truth? What do we mean by that? There are a lot of ways that you could potentially define truth. There's one particular way that I am taking you on this journey around truth, and it is objective truth—things that are always true, whether we like it or not. Things that, as Cecil B. DeMille said, are laws—immutable laws of this world, at least—that we cannot break, but that we can only break ourselves against.

And I give you some analogies to help you have some visual images, some mental images that will help navigate your thinking process around truth. And I hope these analogies will provide some anchors for you. They will help you have some comparisons that you can make, because the things that I need to share with you when I'm helping you understand what truth is—they’re abstract. You know, they're kind of high-level. And I understand that they can become overwhelming or difficult. So I want to make this as simple as possible. So I've given you these images, these analogies, so that you can walk through what I'm telling you about objective truth.

And the way that it’s been talked about all through Western history is the natural law. I take you back to the Greeks, and I take you back to where I found out about the concept of natural law and why that matters so much and how it revolutionized my life and made all the difference for me as I came to understand it. How it’s been talked about traditionally as a framework of natural law and first principles, and how the natural law is also something that is known to all humankind.

It is something that many people today will say isn’t real. They'll try to talk you out of it. They'll tell you that the natural law framework isn't legitimate, it's not objectively true. That's just not the case. I present a lot of research that I did in finding the resources that really do champion the natural law and demonstrate and prove definitively that it is a worldwide concept—that it is known all over the world, that it is honored all over the world, and has been all back through history. Our belief systems about truth as human beings have been consistently pretty similar, and like C. S. Lewis says, far more similar than they’ve been different.

So I give you all of that rich evidence and context to help you really get your mind around this thing called natural law. And I think even for women who have been in the Academy, there will be some new ideas, some nuances, some concepts around it that maybe you haven't put together or that haven’t been presented to you in quite this way. And so I’m really, really excited for it to get us all on the same page using the same language and understanding these concepts the same way.

Now, there are many books that talk about natural law that I have studied and could bring out, but many of them are pretty scholarly. And probably one of the most common ways that it has slipped into something that might be more like a modern read—something more understandable—would usually be in the government or economic space, because we’re talking about law and what law is and all those kinds of things. So I help you understand objective truth in the format of natural law, and that natural law is immutable. It has always been around. We can only break ourselves against it; we cannot break it. And so we must align ourselves with it.

In the next chapter, I walk you through that framework as it’s been delineated by the American Founders in the Declaration of Independence. I walk you through the concepts of first principles and principles and applications. I give you other examples, give you more evidence, and help you really get your mind around why it matters so much—how they build on each other, what they mean. And of course, this goes all the way back. Aristotle was talking about first principles. This is nothing new.

One of the things that I think is really—I don’t know—interesting maybe about me or about what we do with the Mission Driven Mom is just that I really don’t say much that’s actually original and authentic just to me. Mostly, I go out and grab the best resources for you. Mostly, I read what the great people have said all the way through time, and I collate them, and I put them in an order and a format that’s helpful for you. I'm mostly always trying to give you shortcuts. I'm always trying to get you to the best content that will help you right now, but also level up your way of thinking and help you have new mental maps that will expedite your path forward.

Because what happens when you really understand these three chapters that I’ve talked about so far—when you really get there, when you really arrive at an understanding that there’s objective truth, that it’s in the form of natural law, that there are first principles and applications, that they are immutable, that we can only break ourselves against them, we cannot break them, and that what we must do is align our lives with them—you have really the most beautiful formula for success.

One of my favorite—I don’t know if you want to call it definitions or quotes—is by Stephen Covey, and he said that “the internalization of correct principles is the foundation upon which all lasting success and happiness are based.” That is absolutely 100% true. I have found that to be true for myself and for all these other people that I have worked with. But I also find it over and over again in some of the oddest places, even among men and women who wouldn’t necessarily agree with each other on many other things. It’s undeniable that there are things we intuitively know, that there are principles that govern the key areas of our lives, and that when we go out and seek those out and live them, everything changes for us. And that is the foundation upon which success and happiness are based.

So then I start talking about what it means to be made free. That does not mean that problems always disappear. It means that we change in our relationship to that problem. We understand the governing principles over that area of life, and so then that is no longer an obstacle to our personal growth. Things in our lives that are blocking us, that are damning us, that are standing in our way no longer stand in our way. We are given the tools to break free of whatever is chaining us, whatever is keeping us stuck, and we know how to move forward in our lives.

In other words, if you have a handicap, to be made free doesn’t necessarily mean that the handicap goes away. It doesn’t necessarily mean that your husband is suddenly different or that your child stops rebelling. It means that you know how to break through that thing that’s got you stuck, and you know how to move forward in your life in productive and helpful and healthy ways because you are armed with truth, and that truth makes you free.

And so in this chapter, I give you some really incredible examples of the four different areas in which you can be made free—the four different types of problems that we have. I did a podcast a few months ago on those four types of problems drawn from the book. And I give you examples of those and demonstrate what it means to be made free and what you can expect now that you understand that there are these truths. When you embrace these truths, what's going to happen to you? What’s the outcome that you can always be guaranteed?

Then I talk about the mechanism of how we recognize truth. What does it mean to be able to identify truth? That is a lot about the conscience—the divine and the social consciences—how they’re different, why that matters so much, and how the mechanism of the divine conscience is the vehicle through which we can identify truth. And as we do that, and as we hone that, we become better and better and better at identifying those truths that will make us free.

And that whole framework gives you the foundation for knowing what you need to do to move forward in your life. You need to latch onto first principles, and they will tell you why you are doing what you are doing. They will give you the purpose, the meanings, the motivation, and they are intuitively known. They will intuitively reach the hearts of others. And then you need to seek out the principles that govern that area of life you want to work on. You want to work on your finances. You want to work on your health. It doesn’t matter what you want to work on—there are principles you can go out and find. And then you apply them. And there are a myriad of ways that you can do that.

And so Part Two is just that. I walk you through the steps. How can you identify first principles? How can you then take those first principles and go out and seek for principles? What are the many different ways that you can begin applying those principles to infuse your life with new tools and truths that will liberate you permanently from the problems that you face?

So I’m about to send this off. I'm going to do one last read, and I'm going to send it off to my editor, and we are going to keep sculpting it and shaping it and making it exactly what it needs to be for you and for anyone else you want to pass it along to. We plan to create a book cover, obviously, get it all edited, and do a big book launch in the spring, which I'm super duper excited about.

But I can tell you this is a proven formula. I can tell you now, on this side of things, that the truth has made us free. My husband has permanent sobriety. Our finances are stable and flourishing. My health has—I wasn’t walking last spring, and now I’m walking. And that’s a whole other story of finding the principles that would make me free in regards to my hip and my back. And I hiked three miles about a month ago. And so, whether it’s business—this is MDM 2.0, and we're excited for some new rebranding that’s coming in, better marketing and better systems—and we’ve up-leveled the Academy like we talked about last week, and learned the business principles that will make this succeed at an even higher level. Our marriage is unified and close and vulnerable and beautiful, and our relationships with our children and our friends and our extended family are doing well.

So my life is far from perfect. I just have to say that. I know you might get the wrong message. I still have really unhealthy mental patterns and lots of problems that I face and issues and worries and all of the things. But what I can tell you is that I’m only doing as well as I am doing—I only know my way forward—because I know that principles will make me free. It's only because I understand that this framework is the true framework of reality, and that I have the mental maps and the skill sets for discernment because of the education that I've given myself. I mean, those principles of education—that's what we follow in our Academy. That’s what we give to our moms: the tool sets to be able to live this way, to have a principle-centered life.

And it is just far more peaceful. You don’t feel like you have to figure everything out all the time. You don’t feel like you have to be the expert or you have to just listen to the experts blindly. You are the authority in your own life because you understand what principles are and how to find and delineate them. You can recognize truth regardless of the source, regardless of the delivery. And this book is going to be a big piece of the puzzle for helping so many of us be able to live this way.

Now, I do think you need to go on to give yourself the education that will really transform the way that you think permanently, but that’s Part Two. And you can do that in our Academy, or you can do that in a myriad of other ways. I highly recommend that you get serious about giving yourself that education that will help you discern and live in truth. But this book will be a big part of that formula, and I hope that the work that I’ve put in—the countless hours over the last 25 years of finding the resources and finding the proof and testing it on myself and helping others to walk this path and then putting it all together in this book—will be a great blessing to you and to many others who are lifted by this one beautiful truth: that the truth can make us free, as long as we identify it and infuse it into our lives.

Everything changes. We can be genuinely transformed. We can find permanent solutions for the significant problems we face, and we can have a different life than we’ve ever had.

So thank you so much for joining me today. If this podcast is blessing your life, please pass it along and give us a review. That really helps us to grow. And I hope all those listening are having a wonderful and beautiful Thanksgiving Day, and I will see you next time.