by Rebecca George | Apr 27, 2023 | Life Advice, Perspective, Sisterhood
“She’s who I want to be when I grow up,” I quietly whispered to myself as I hit End Call on a podcast interview with a new friend. We had a great conversation that would soon air for public consumption; however, the conversation that followed was what captivated me. She shared insightful wisdom and spent more time than I deserve pouring encouragement into me after we finished recording. She was incredibly kind and we had a conversation I wouldn’t soon forget. She made me feel like my contribution to God’s kingdom mattered, and she wanted to know how she could help and encourage me in the journey.
“Why does this feel so rare?” I pondered, as I twisted a pen between my fingers and stared at the ceiling. I want to be like her. I want to celebrate like her. I want to walk alongside other women in my industry and value their gifts as she valued mine. Sadly, I recently had some experiences on the contrary. Maybe that’s why this encounter with her surprised me so much. It felt like this was the way God intended for His daughters to collaborate. I wonder if you can relate?
He prompted me with the reminder that part of my calling, as a follower of Jesus, is to help others use their gifts and talents to build the Kingdom. To celebrate what is deemed worth celebrating in the women around me. You know, rejoice with those who rejoice (see Romans 12:15). As I reflect on Women’s History Month, I’m reminded that winning alone isn’t enticing to me any longer, but winning with my fellow go-getter girls brings much joy.
It’s easier to call out the gifts in others and celebrate them with gumption when we are clear on how God has gifted us. When we’re clear on our call, we can cheer with excitement. I wonder how you would answer the question, “What were you made to do?” Where do you feel you’re naturally gifted? How has God wired you to radiate Him to the world around you? Is there a skill where, when you exercise it, you lose track of time?
God has uniquely wired you in a way best suited for the community and people He has placed you within. Understanding your purpose will allow you to maintain an eternal perspective as you take next steps (and encourage others along the way). In the Old Testament, the Lord gave Moses instructions on how to care for the oil lamps in the tabernacle (see Leviticus 24:2-4). The oil had to be replenished and the wicks had to be trimmed in order to keep the light source shining brightly within the space that held the presence of God. Why does this matter for us? On the other side of the life, death, bodily resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, we carry the very presence of God within us. The Holy Spirit, the same power that raised Jesus from the grave, is alive in us (see Romans 6:10-11). It is freeing to remember that, not only do we have the encouragement of go-getter girls around us, but in Christ, we are never alone in our struggles and discouragement. Jesus, in the sermon on the mount, calls his disciples the light of the world. He tells them to let their lights shine so that others may see their good works and so God will be glorified (see Matthew 5: 13-16).
When we seek to gain more clarity on how to shine our light, God will give us wisdom and discernment in how he desires to use us in this season (see James 1:5-6). With that clarity and confidence, it’s easier to run in your lane, eyes fixed on Jesus as you encounter other “runners” on their own course (see Hebrews 12:1-2 for encouragement). Why does this matter? I don’t want anything to hold me, or those around me, back from our God-given assignments. I don’t think you do either.
When we recognize God at work in our sister in Christ, we should be at-the-ready to recognize her and call out those gifts in her. Hebrews 10:24 reminds us to “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.” When we celebrate the gifts and talents we see at play in our fellow go-getter girls, God will use this encouragement to spur them on in their own calling. We can create a culture of celebration, as my friend Deann Carpenter says, by walking around with confetti in our pockets. When we have clarity in our own work and a heart ready to run alongside others, God will use that desire to encourage us, too.
We have all experienced the exhaustion of a challenging season in our calling. No matter how much joy we have in our work or how confident we feel that God has us right where He wants us, we will all have moments where we want to quit. We might face obstacles that will cause us to lose steam. That’s exactly why we need one another! This month, my challenge to you is to be on the lookout for opportunities to cheer for and call out the gifts in the women around you. Make it your mission! God will use these moments to encourage and bless you too, I promise.
As we celebrate the go-getter girls around us, let’s also fall in love a little deeper with the lane in which God has called only us to run. Let’s shine our light so bright that it encourages the women around us to do the same. Collectively, we are a city on a hill that cannot be hidden (see Matthew 5:14). As we observe Women’s History Month, it’s the perfect opportunity to gain clarity on our call, encourage others who might be facing a tough season in their calling, and celebrate the amazing women God has placed in our lives. As my favorite 90s country icon Shania Twain would declare, “Let’s go girls!”
Rebecca George is the founder of Radical Radiance® —a podcast community where listeners are encouraged and equipped to radiate the heart of Jesus in their life, work, and relationships. She is an author, speaker and podcaster whose greatest joy in life is discipling others to pursue their passions in a way that builds the Kingdom. She is married to Dustin, the senior pastor of Vonore Baptist Church in East Tennessee. A proud University of Tennessee graduate, Rebecca spends her free time running outdoors, writing, or trying a new recipe with Garth Brooks playing in the background. Connect with Rebecca on Instagram (rebeccageorgeauthor) or at www.radicalradiance.live.
by Hannah Anderson | Dec 13, 2022 | Perspective, Wisdom
Here, where I live in the mountains of southwest Virginia, December marks the beginning of winter. Night gathers quickly, with a deep darkness settling in by the time we settle around the table. The ground, that only a few months earlier burst with life, lies dormant under a chill that never seems to lift. From the warmth of my kitchen, I look out the window to see my once-lush garden encrusted with ice, full of thick, heavy clods of earth, and littered with the remnants of cornstalk and pumpkin vine that twist up among the table scraps.
The red raspberry canes stand bare, imitating dead sticks quite believably. The strawberry plot has been rifled for the last bits of fruit, and all that remains are dark, decaying leaves. The herbs have been cut back to their slumbering roots. And on particularly cold mornings, the asparagus I left to bolt is encased in frost, its fern-like leaves crystallized so that each segment is clearly visible.
Closer to the house, ornamental beds of lily, hosta, and peony hide their delicate parts deep within the earth. The grape vine that climbed the arbor in summer and whose clusters hung over us while we ate and drank in the sun is bare, stripped and cut back in expectation of next season. The peach trees raise bony limbs against a perpetual gray sky. And across the way, the fields lay in patchwork browns, punctuated occasionally by tussocks of rusty broom sedge. I can see straight through the thicket of trees now, their naked trunks and leafless branches as thin as wisps of hair on an aging head.
In December, it’s hard to believe that the earth ever brought forth life or that it ever will again.
But winter also brings the holidays, and so we do our best to be merry despite the landscape around us. We wrap bare limbs and sleeping bushes in brightly colored lights, the miracle of electricity compensating for their previous buds and blooms. We stoke fires to make up for the sun’s absence and fuel them with seasoned wood, disproportionately pleased by our ability to salvage light and heat from death. The wintering birds will get an extra helping of seed, and eventually, we’ll cut a tree and drag it into the front room. We’ll scour the woods for bits of green—Virginia pine, holly, eastern hemlock, and if we’re lucky, mistletoe—and drape them along the mantle, windowsills, doorways, and banisters.
I wonder, though, if we’re really scouring for hope, searching for those small, steady promises that reassure us that the gathering night and the present interlude is only temporary. I wonder if, like the earth itself, we’re waiting, holding our breath in anticipation, longing to believe that something more is happening, that something more is coming. I wonder if we’re all just waiting for God to show up.
In Romans 8, the apostle Paul writes that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us”—that no matter what we’re currently going through, no matter the heartbreak, no matter the confusion, no matter the grief or loss, God’s goodness and glory await us. That deep, under the surface, out of sight, he is at work. That he always has been, and he always will be. To prove this, Paul turns our attention to the natural world: For the creation eagerly waits with anticipation for God’s sons to be revealed.
For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly, but because of him who subjected it—in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children.1
It’s a strange thing to think of the earth this way—as having a will or having to wait or even having the ability to hope for redemption. Even stranger that the earth would be our partner in hope, longing for freedom and life and glory as much as we do.
But when I look out my window in December, when I see how much the world around me has changed in only a few weeks, when I see its lifeless stillness, I believe it. And when I remember what Genesis tells me—that I was made from that same ice-encrusted earth, that a curse of futility hangs over us both, that “from dust you were taken and to dust you will return”2 —I know it in my bones.
Yes, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth shows forth his handiwork just as Psalm 19 says they do. And yes, when I gaze into the inky blackness of a December night and see a thousand points of light, I can almost hear a chorus of praise. But when I see a mountaintop cut bare for the minerals beneath or I remember the whirlwinds that level neighborhoods or I watch on the news as fires consume home and forest alike, I hear something else. I hear a groaning that mirrors my own. I hear a longing and a pain that cries out for redemption.
And I find in nature an unexpected ally in the work of hope.
So in this season, as we celebrate the Creator who took on flesh and came to his creation, we do so in solidarity with an entire cosmos. Here in these moments of Advent and Nativity, heaven and nature sing, teaching a truth we cannot know without the witness of both. It is a story of bodies and skies and beasts and trees—all waiting for the glory that will be revealed when the Son of God comes to his own. It is a story of longing and incarnation, of the earth receiving a flesh-and-blood Redeemer, first as a Baby and one day forever as its King.
I want to invite you into this story afresh. To consider the Christmas narrative from a slightly different perspective—to think of all the ways Jesus’s coming changed and will change the world. To truly believe that in response to the Savior’s reign, “fields and floods/Rocks, hills and plains/Repeat the sounding joy.”3
For as much as we are part of this same creation, made from the very ground that lies beneath our feet, it is our story as well. So that even as our mortal bodies waste away and the ground continues to groan, we take hope. The One who loved the world came to it. And from this love, he will redeem it until both the earth and those made from it slip from the bondage of decay to eternal glory. Until the children of God are revealed.
Because just as Jesus came to this world through birth, the Scripture promises that we enter the heavenly kingdom through rebirth and that one day the earth itself will give birth—not just to another season, but to our resurrected bodies.
And now you know why heaven and nature sing. Now you know why those of us who dwell in the dust must awake and sing along with them, why a chorus of “ joy to the world” is on our lips. Here in this season, with its quiet, pervasive witness to both life and death, when we’re most fully aware of the darkness can we become most fully aware of the light. Here our cries for deliverance become songs of praise. And here, between what is and what will be, I am most convinced of the glory that must come.
Because here, where Advent turns to Nativity, creation itself teaches us to hope in our Creator, infant King.
by Live Original | Dec 6, 2022 | Perspective, Wisdom
Have you ever stood at the top of a mountain, or the ocean’s edge, or deep in a redwood forest, or in the stillness of a winter blanket of snowfall, and wondered at God, “What is man that you are mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4). Who am I, God, that You hear me, know me, or meet me in my need?
God’s creation can draw out that wonder and humility in us that so often gets tangled up in our self-made confidence and sense of control. It can be hard to break away from our bustling lives to recognize clearly that God is the creator of the universe. And I’m not. “All things were created through Him, and apart from Him not one thing was created that has been created” (John 1:3 HCSB). How humbling to remember that nothing happens outside of God’s care. How often do you remember, in the course of a day, that God is in full control of all that He’s created? Likely, not enough.
God made everything, and He called it good. He made our hearts to respond to music and He made tastebuds to experience all the flavors He has conceived. He made us to be different from the rest of creation; He made us for fellowship with Him. All of creation was formed, shaped, and designed to show us His character and to declare His glory. God didn’t create the universe out of boredom, but out of a desire to be Love to His created and have a relationship with us.
Creation was God’s labor of love. It was His plan from the beginning to show His delight through creation and His faithfulness through fellowship with us, His image-bearers. God with us, through the birth of Christ, was His heart from the beginning—that we would be with Him. The Jesus we find in the manger is indeed Immanuel, God with us, but God demonstrated His presence and desire to be with us from the very start of creation.
Creation is forever connected to the Christmas story because it is there that God reveals His heart for us, His children. It is there we find the unhindered fellowship He intended for men and women to have with Him—a tender and intimate relationship given to no other part of creation. And so, as we prepare Him room this Advent season, don’t forget where it all began: God and His creation, good and made to walk with Him.
When we start here, we begin to discover that Christmas—the story of God with us—is not about us, but about the heart of God. And if we know nothing else, this is enough: that our Creator God loves us and created us for Himself.
Chances are this Christmas finds you feeling more alone in your personal struggles and thoughts than the busyness and festivities of this season might suggest. Maybe it’s physical distance from those you love, or maybe it’s emotional. And maybe the challenges of this year have you wondering if you’re the only one who struggles like you do. Our enemy, Satan, just as he did in the Garden, would love for us to think God has abandoned us—that He has left us to fend for ourselves.
Most of us experienced the effects of isolation and distancing that a global pandemic brought. And those effects were compounded for an already-lonely generation. The separation we felt during that global crisis was not unlike the separation that sin causes in our lives. It isolates, it hides, it removes us from the comfort of others. Sin robs us of the very nearness we were created to have with our Creator, God. The weary world that looked for their Messiah couldn’t fix the problem of pain and brokenness that sin set loose. They needed God to do the impossible, and He did.
The name Immanuel emphasizes God’s nearness to us when we were unable to be near to Him. For us as believers, God is with us; He is not without us or against us. This truth reveals the heart of God. It makes His promise in Matthew 28:20, “I am with you always,” all the more special. We are never alone.
God with us is the true gift of Christmas. For all the human effort and our insufficient means of paving a way back to fellowship with Him, God closes the gap and makes the only way through His Son. He came to us! The weary world rejoices, indeed. And in our rejoicing, we relax our shoulders, sigh in great relief, and sing, “O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Immanuel!”
Taken from: Emmanuel by Ruth Chou Simons Copyright © 2022 Ruth Chou Simons. Published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon 97408.www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Ruth Chou Simons is a Wall Street Journal bestselling and award-winning author of several books, including her most recent Emmanuel: An Invitation to Prepare Him Room at Christmas and Always. She is an artist, founder of GraceLaced and speaker, using each of these platforms to spiritually sow the word of God into people’s hearts. Through her online shoppe at GraceLaced.com and her social media community, Simons shares her journey of God’s grace intersecting daily life with word and art. Ruth and her husband, Troy, are grateful parents to six boys—their greatest adventure.
by Heather Savonne | Apr 21, 2022 | Life Advice, Perspective, Wisdom
Have you ever felt like your time was wasted? Whether it’s your own doing or the line at your favorite coffee shop is super long and you think to yourself, “what is taking so long?” But you keep your cool and wait anyway because you know once you get your order, you’ll be sipping on a nice frothy latte. Well, you’re already in your car, late for work, and the first sip you take of your drink, you figure out it’s the completely wrong order. Yuck! You feel like your time was wasted. For what? A drink that wasn’t even yours? In situations like these, my mind always ponders, “God, what possibly was the lesson here?” Is there a lesson at all? Maybe this scenario was totally out of your control like many scenarios we face in life. What about working relentlessly for something you really wanted, insert whatever you wanted really badly, and all that hard work seemed to not pay off, a health condition got in the way, or you made excuses and long story short, it didn’t happen. You can’t help but feel the very human feeling of “my time was wasted”. What else happens when we think our time is wasted? We think the time was lost! Technically, the time has passed but it is anything but lost.
Thankfully, we serve a God that is really good at finding things. After all, He did make the universe. I’m sure an all knowing God knows where everything is. We were never misplaced. We are often the one’s trailing off into the woods. Throughout scripture God is referred to as a Redeemer. Father Abraham, the prophet Isaiah, and Job all foretell God to be this way. But, there’s been many times in my life where I’ve looked at past mistakes, or things that happened to me and thought, “how could this ever be redeemed?” With that mindset, I was certainly not living in the good news of my redemptive Father, even though I had been redeemed through Christ. Our salvation is secured but the renewal process, I believe, is ongoing. Like the famous hymn quotes, we were once lost and now we are found, the same can be applied to anything in your life that you feel is “lost”. A dream, a person, relationship, or even time! What was considered lost can be found in Him.
As a worship leader and singer/songwriter, I always write what I feel and write from experience. I wrote a song called “Found In You” about everything I am being found in God. The chorus says,
“All my hope is found in You
All my worth is found by knowing Your truth
All my treasure found in You
You know my every step
I’m woven in the web of salvation”
Pre-Christ, my hope was lost and felt like a lot of time and dreams were gone with the wind. I didn’t have hope for my life the way God did but He had hope for me and my future. ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ (Jeremiah 29:11) My worth was completely dependent on what others thought of me or said about me which drifted with the ever changing ways of the world. Now my never-changing worth and value is found in Christ and always has been, but I wasn’t aware of that truth. “For you created my innermost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” (Psalm 139:13–14) My treasure had been abandoned like an old pirate movie and I was constantly searching and searching in all the wrong places. Luke 12:34 tells us, “where your treasure is your heart is also”. My heart was stone, my heart was in the world, my heart was previously dead and needed reviving.
The good surgeon, the One who made me, gifted me the greatest treasure; salvation. Now, woven in that unbreakable web, any security I thought I needed and sought after riches are in Him. He redeemed you and I, which means He also redeemed our baggage. To redeem means to get something back by paying a price. So God redeemed us by purchasing us with the cost of His perfect son Jesus who paid for our sins on the cross. This is good news! Redeeming news! Many of us keep holding on to our baggage that was never meant to be carried for so long. I’m truly surprised my biceps don’t show more because of all the heavy junk I trudged along for years, but it does explain an achy back and what was once an achy soul. We desperately attempt holding the heavy weights when it was all meant to be laid as His feet. The bible tells us His yoke is easy and His burden is light. If you’re like me, you try to carry in every grocery bag into the house at the same time no matter how heavy they are even if your pinky is getting its blood supply cut off. This is a rare case where the good cannot outweigh the bad. You cannot firmly hold on to both Jesus and the world; it must be one or the other. You cannot fully follow freedom if you’re still following fear. You cannot carry peace if you’re latched on to worry. Hold both hands open and surrender it to God. Be ready to catch an abundance of redemption that has been waiting for your “yes”.
One of my favorite scriptures is Genesis 50:20, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” God intends to use your past for good. How could that possibly happen? What good could come from bad? God’s sovereign power is the only good that can right a wrong. It’s for His glory – not our own. It is so that lives can be saved. How beautiful the redemptive nature of God is. That He would take our rags and make them riches. “All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28. We don’t always know that purpose but when our heart starts to align with His, we can almost be certain it is for the advancement of the Kingdom. The Father’s heart is always for His children.
So, just when you begin to think your time is being wasted, there’s always a bigger purpose and a bigger picture. A picture that is sometimes too big, too divine, too mysterious for us to see right away or see at all. Even the tried and tested Old Testament servant Job cries, “Can you discover the depths of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty?” Even in the midst of suffering, grief, and questioning the circumstances happening around him, Job still declares, “Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him.” (Job 13:15) And later proclaims,“Yet my Redeemer lives, and he shall stand at last on the earth.” (Job 19:25)
Is there anything in your life today that you desire to be reclaimed and redeemed in Christ? Your mind, your children, your finances? Whatever it is, it can be submitted under the feet of Christ and be found new in Him. Pray the prayer of psalmist David, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.” (Psalm 51:12)
Allow the words of the final verse of “Found in You” to wash over you today,
“All my strength is found in You
All my peace is found by living in You
All my joy is found in You
You know my every breath
You never leave a heart that is broken.”
Nothing is wasted for surely our redeemer lives!
Heather Savonne is a worship leader and singer/songwriter living in Houston, TX. She attended Wayland Baptist University in Plainview, TX where she got a B.S. in psychology and English minor. Heather is working on her first solo worship album and loves to encourage women in their daily walk with God on all of her social media platforms. Heather is married to her husband of 2 years, Lea, who has a ministry called Childish Faith Ministries where they both serve as worship leaders, kingdom creators, and partner with local ministries to highlight Christian creatives.
by Katherine Wolf | Jul 13, 2021 | Life Advice, Perspective, Testimonies
After being raised in the South by women who dared not leave the house without lipstick, then subsequently working as an actress and model in my early twenties, my relationship to beauty and satisfaction with my body feel complex at best. That complexity exponentially multiplied after I suffered a massive brain stem stroke at age 26, just a few months after giving birth to my first child.
In the blink of an eye, I could no longer walk, talk, swallow, drive, or care for my son. The soft postpartum tummy and bags under my sleep-deprived eyes suddenly paled in comparison to the reality of drooping facial muscles and limbs that no longer responded to neurological commands. My body had become distinctly different after pregnancy. Now, after a catastrophic stroke, it was altogether foreign.
Over years spent in physical rehabilitation, I learned new ways of navigating the world in my modified state. But, even in the healing and adapting, my body remained alien to me. To this day, my face is partially paralyzed, I require a wheelchair to get around, I have severe double-vision, and my fine motor control is mostly gone. I struggled to love my body when it was “normal.” How was I expected to love it now?
So many of us have internalized messages that we must meet certain metrics to be accepted. You’ve gotta look good while you do good. You’ve gotta pull it all together and not let anything unappealing hang out. You’ve gotta be enough but also not too much. In other words, to be loved by others requires that we put in a lot of effort and put on a lot of makeup.
Beneath our pursuit of external beauty and eternal youth is both a deep fear—to escape death—and a deep longing—to be loved without having to earn it. Our pain-avoidant and death-phobic culture tries to calm our fears of aging with every manner of creams, injections, and workout classes. Buy this. Eat that. Be young and beautiful forever.
While my stroke stole much of my independence and traditional “beauty,” it also disabused me of the illusion that death can be outrun. I met death when I was 26. The sweeping magnitude of that experience means I no longer participate in the fruitless charade of covering up my flaws or concealing my brokenness—both physical and emotional— because I now know that life is simply too tenuous to carry the burden of shame.
Being satisfied in our skin isn’t so much about looking the right way. It’s about surrendering the shame surrounding our deficits. When our eyes move past our own navels and onto the panoramic view of the goodness of existence, shame no longer has a place in us. Spending our time picking apart imperfections and shelling out resources to fix flaws will prove to be a tragic waste in the end. Shame is a costly habit with a paltry return on investment.
The body positivity movement, which rejects a narrow beauty standard and celebrates a wide spectrum of bodies, has brought healing to so many people by challenging the baseless status quo of how a body is supposed to look, and I applaud that. Lately, however, I’ve been intrigued by the concept of body neutrality, which focuses on what our bodies can do rather than how our bodies look. As a woman with physical disabilities, even body neutrality is a complex practice to engage because my body no longer does so many of the things it used to. So how can I befriend my body when it doesn’t always measure up to standards of beauty or utility?
While my hands don’t always cooperate and my gait is wobbly, this body of mine tirelessly serves as my only available interface with existence itself. My broken brain, eyes with double vision, and paralyzed vocal cords continue to ping signals of beauty from the outside world, from inside my mind, and from the heart of God. I’ve come to appreciate that the interplay of my inner being and outer form are the very embodiment of the cruciform life: Christ’s perfect power playing out through imperfect flesh-and-blood means.
We can be grateful for each facet of our inner and outer selves because God blends the beautiful stuff and the broken stuff to create the lives, families, passions and purposes we have today. We can train ourselves to celebrate the cellulite because it’s sprinkled on the body that allows us to engage that existence. And by walking away from the shame of what I should look like and how I should function, I’m robbing the fear of death of its power. I’m choosing to use my one precious body to fully engage my one precious life, while believing the best comes after the death of this body. The wrinkling and softening of age feel less scary when I reframe them as mile markers along the rich journey to eternity with God.
I’m training myself to not merely tolerate but celebrate my broken brain and body because they didn’t ruin my perfect life. Rather, they gave me the gift of a good/hard life. Because my outer body has suffered, my inner life has flourished. I have reframed my deficits as grounding truths that remind me my worth was never tied to my facial symmetry or fitness level. I am freed from the crippling burden of chasing youth or the perfect figure because my gaze is fixed on the grace gift of existing rather than the shame of imperfection.
When I look at my paralyzed face, I see a woman in the process of transformation. When I see stretch marks from pregnancy, I see the beautiful children who came from my body. When I see stretch marks that aren’t from pregnancy, I see bountiful feasts I’ve enjoyed. When I see bags under my tired eyes, I see a hard-won second chance at life. When my standard of beauty is redemption, not weight; when it’s sacrifice, not self-absorption; when it’s new life, not chasing youth gone by, I can see how my body embodies the grace gift of a second chance at simply existing.
This excerpt is taken from The Powerful Workshop inside the LO sister app and written by the amazing Katherine Wolf! LO sister is all about championing women to live out their purpose. We believe that happens with prayer, support and encouragement. If you’re searching for a safe place to be heard, share, and encourage others in their lives, too, this is the community for you, friend! Join here!
Katherine is a communicator and advocate. She leverages her redemptive story to encourage those with broken bodies, broken brains, and broken hearts. Engaging both faith-based and secular communities, she seeks to bridge the gap between those disabled on the outside and those disabled on the inside with the hope that Jesus brings healing to the deepest pains we all carry. She currently reside in Atlanta Ga with her husband Jay and two sons, James and John. To connect, visit hopeheals.com or @hopeheals
by Jenessa Wait | Mar 4, 2021 | Life Advice, Perspective, Wisdom |
Have you ever been in a season where you were contending for something in an area of you life and then all of the sudden it seems as though everyone around you seemed to be getting breakthrough in that very area? I know I have!
I have GOOD news for your sister. When you feel the weight of comparison begin to overshadow you, you don’t have to stay there. In fact, because of God’s God’s mercy and kindness, He always gives us a way out. In that moment you will face two options. Either you can choose defeat and believe that your chance for a blessing has passed you by, or you can stand beside your sister in Christ and celebrate their victory and then choose to believe that their testimony is prophesying that God can do it again in your life!
This is what I know about God. He is no respecter of people. He doesn’t choose to bless someone more because that person loves Him more, reads their bible more, does good things for others more. It’s never been about how good we are- it’s always just been about how good HE is. God is good. Period. And that HAS to be the foundation on which we stand. External circumstances should never be the meter on which you determine how loved and seen by God you are. The truth is, you are God’s favorite! His chosen one, His beloved! So when you see Him bless someone else, it’s not because of anything you’ve done wrong, it’s actually because of how Good He is and what a beautiful invitation we get in that moment to step into someone’s testimony and celebrate WITH them!
God has a specific plan and process for your life. He has a route only you can go on and thrive in. YOU have a God lane that has been prepared for only you!
Jeremiah 29:11 says “I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”
What a promise! That even when it “feels” like everyone around us is prospering, we also have the same promise, it will just look different!
So how do we overcome comparison? Here are some practical tools below that have helped me in my walk in this area!
1) Choose to celebrate! Comparison will always lead to introspection and make it about us, but when we celebrate someone else it makes it about how GOOD God is! It always points us back to God and realigns our perspective. The more you choose to celebrate someone, the easier it will become.
“Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).
2) Choose humility. The truth is, none of us really deserve anything. BUT because of Jesus and what He paid for, we are beneficiaries of His inheritance! Humility keeps our heart in check.
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” (Philippians 2:3-4).
3) Remain thankful for what you do have. Comparison is the byproduct of a lack mentality. It believes that there isn’t enough for everyone to go around. But our God is the God of more than enough and the God of abundance. There is no lack in heaven! When comparison tries to have you focus on what you don’t have, use thankfulness as a tool to remind yourself what you do have! Some practical ways to do this are writing things down on a piece of paper or verbally saying what you’re thankful for out loud!
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).
4) Renew your mind with your truth! Romans 12:12 says “…that we transformed by the renewing of our mind.” Dive into scriptures and start reading and meditating on these types of verses that will help you remember that God has a plan for your life and desires for you to flourish!
5) Take a social media break! Maybe you need to detox from the gram and Facebook. Ask the Lord if this is something He’s calling you to do for some time!
6) Pray. Pray and ask the Lord to help you in this area. Pray that He would refine and prune your heart so that you can look more and more like Jesus (and bear more fruit!). “Ask you shall receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.” (John 15, Matthew 7:7).
God has you on the path you are on for a purpose. Your process is beautiful! Be content with where you are while celebrating where others are going. Your security is in Christ! I pray that God would fill your heart with strength to overcome comparison and faith to believe that you are where you need to be and you have everything you need to thrive in the season God has placed you in!
Jenessa is a wife, mother, hand-letterer and speaker who believes that encouragement and truth of God has the power to change the way we live! She started her hand lettering journey in 2015 as a hobby and it quickly turned into a business as well a way to bring encouragement into people’s lives and homes. She has a strong passion to impact the way people think about who they are and what they’re destined for. When she’s not creating, her and her husband pastor a young adults group at a local church in Austin, TX where they reside.
Follow Jenessa on instagram @jenessawait
