Brave Women Overcome

Today we had our last session for the spring season of Women's Connect. Six different women shared their testimonies in front of the group of around 50 women. These women are brave! They chose to face their fears and stand up in front of a room full of women and share their very personal stories with tears rolling down their faces. One of my friends shared her testimony of healing. She was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm months ago and our whole group has been praying for God to heal her body. A couple of weeks ago she went to see her specialist as a last step before surgery. The specialist had some surprising news for her, the latest test results showed that the brain aneurysm was gone. Jesus still heals people today, both emotionally and physically.


The other five women shared stories about facing their biggest fears and about a hunger to be the best at something that eventually led to sick leave from work. One of the women shared about her struggle with anxiety and depression that started after she received some devastating news this year. She talked about how God has been showing her that in the midst of the darkness He is good and He will never leave her. I could relate to every single woman's story and every story encouraged me. I was reminded of how even if every individual is unique our struggles are similar. We all struggle with feeling insecure and inadequate. We struggle with letting go of control and trusting that God knows exactly what he is doing in our lives. We are afraid of getting vulnerable with each other because we fear rejection, failure and being judged by others.


Last week Jen Pollock Michael was speaking at our Women's Connect gathering and she said that she doesn't like speaking in front of a crowd because she doesn't like being judged. I thought to myself: "You are an amazing, wise and famous speaker, I don't judge you I think you are great!" Most of the time other people don't think nearly as negatively about us as we think about ourselves. Why? Our spiritual enemy, the devil, has many different strategies to try to ruin our lives but the most efficient one is when he gets to us from the inside. He speaks lies into our souls and gets us to believe that they are true. Here are some of the lies he tells us:
"You are never going to be good enough, you just don't have it in you." 
"Nobody likes you."
"God doesn't love you, not after what you have done. God will never love you."


It's hard to not listen to these lies and believe them. The enemy knows our weak spots and that's where he will strike us. The amazing thing that happens when we get into community with others is that we become very hard for the enemy to break. When we choose to get vulnerable with a group of other Christians we give God an opportunity to use people to speak truth and encouragement into our lives. There has been a couple of times when another Christian woman has spoken something to me that she felt God wanted her to tell me and I had to fight back tears because it spoke right into my current situation. These were private things that I hadn't told anyone about and the woman just shared what was on her heart, having no idea that God was using her to bless me in that moment. This is what doing God's work will look like a lot of times.


God will put people in front of you and if you choose to love them you have no idea what he can do through you. We shouldn't let people use us but the goal is to let God use us. God uses women to carry babies and then to raise up the next generation that will take over the Earth after we are gone. God uses women to love and encourage their friends and family members, even strangers, whenever there's an opportunity. God uses women to go on mission trips and save other women and children from sex trafficking. God uses women to serve meals to the poor in homeless shelters. God wants to use us. Will we let him?


Pastor Holly Wagner's airplane story is a good example. A very mean lady entered the airplane and started yelling at the flight attendant who got tears in her eyes. When the mean lady went to sit down she sat down right beside Holly. Holly felt angry at the lady on the inside and planned to ignore her for the rest of the flight. God had other plans. God started nudging on Holly's heart and asking her to talk to the lady. Holly talked to the lady but only got an irritated answer back. The answer made Holly even more angry at the lady but God kept pulling on Holly's heart, asking her to try again. Holly decided to give it another try and at that point the lady broke down and started crying. After Holly had talked to the lady for awhile she found out that the mean lady had just found out she had terminal cancer. Holly ended up praying for the lady on the airplane and exchanging numbers so that she could continue to help her. The lady got connected to Holly's church and received help to walk through this very difficult last season of her life.


If we choose to stop looking at other people as competitors/annoyances and are open to letting God use us it's mind-blowing what God will do through us. God works in many different mysterious ways but one of his favorite ways to reach people and love on them is through other believers. We are the body of Christ. We are all here on Earth to love God and other people. He never said it was going to be easy.

Community

Today we had our Women Connect meeting at church and it was a very encouraging and empowering experience. We currently have women from three different generations in my group and I love the insight and wisdom that I'm able to receive from these women. Sadly our modern society doesn't seem to value wisdom from older generations that much anymore. I find that outside of my own family the church is the only place where I've found it easy to connect with people from many different generations. I've met many wise older women in my church whose advice has been very encouraging to me. I've also met people ten years younger than me in church who are much more mature than me.


The cool thing is that when we get together in a church community God is able to use all our different backgrounds and past struggles to help and encourage everyone. When I share how God helped me overcome one of my biggest struggles in the past my story can encourage somebody else who might be going through a similar struggle. It's amazing to witness how God can use your story for good if you just let him. My story can't help anyone if I keep it a secret. When I choose to get vulnerable with others my story can be used for something greater. It's powerful what God can do through a community of believers.


Women Connect is wonderful but I don't think every church has gatherings like these, what most churches do have is Life Groups. There are many different types of Life Groups; Couples groups, Women's groups, Men's groups, Young adults groups etc. One of my New Year's resolutions was to focus more on community in 2017 so at the beginning of the year I joined a fairly new Life Group for women in their twenties and thirties. We have so much fun at my Life Group and I love the wisdom, encouragement and help that these women offer me every week. Life Groups are also a great way for each Christian to "love their neighbor". We can't help our community if we never make time to hang out with other Christians. When we gather together weekly we get to share in each other's struggles and lift each other up.


Another thing I love about my Life Group is that we just randomly happen to be from very different cultural backgrounds which adds perspective and new insights about life. We are currently five women in my Life Group and our cultural backgrounds are: Finland, Korea, The Philippines, Barbados and Guiana. Our church is very multicultural so our groups tend to have a really fun mix of people. I love it!

Stronger in Community

Everyone were crying tears of joy this morning as we had our last session of Women’s Connect for the winter season. Becky and Shauna shared their powerful stories of how God has been moving in their lives during the past two years and everyone listening were tearing up. I’m so grateful that I get to take part in this empowering and encouraging Women’s ministry at my church.

It’s powerful to get together with women from all different age groups and life stages, to gather together weekly to share in each other’s struggles and victories. We are always stronger together. No matter how alone we may feel when we are facing something difficult in our lives we are never the only person in the world facing this struggle. When we let other people come alongside us to encourage us and help us it makes life’s storms less difficult to battle.

During the winter season of Women’s Connect we did a study based on Lisa Bevere’s book Without Rival. The Spring season will be based on a video-study from Right Now Media called Teach Us to Want by Jen Pollock Michel, an author and speaker from Toronto. I’m already looking forward to the next season of Women’s Connect! I’m very grateful for the group of women that God has brought into my life through this ministry.

God & Community

Why do we need community? What role do others play in our spiritual growth? The Curiosity Collective brings together thought leaders, subject matter experts, pastors, and theologians to explore these questions.

Coming Home

Pastor Charlotte Gambill from Life Church in the United Kingdom teaches a sermon about God's house, the church. Many of us can sometimes find ourselves spiritually homeless, we are lost and drifting around in life. Sometimes we are lost because we don't know that God even exists but other times we are drifting because we have a consumer attitude towards the church. We come to church with a check list and if the church doesn't live up to all our expectations on it we will move on to another church. We might stay in one church for awhile but when we start to disagree on something with other people within the church we quit and move on. We are looking for a perfect church and we will never find it, just like we will never find a perfect person to marry. God's house, the church, is filled with imperfect broken people seeking God so it's always going to be an imperfect place.


I sometimes hear people say "I'm a Christian but I don't need a church, other Christians annoy me so I don't want to go to church." The problem with us deciding to love God but to avoid his people is that one of God's main commands for us is to love each other. God isn't calling us to love only those who agree with us on everything, who have the same hobbies as us and have the same priorities in life.


It is difficult to love people who are different than us. We are drawn to people who are exactly like us because loving them takes less effort. Loving people who are different than us takes effort, maturity and commitment. We are always tempted to quit a romantic relationship when it gets difficult rather than to stay and figure things out, the same way we can be tempted to quit church every time we disagree with others on something or feel like the church isn't living up to all our personal preferences.


Sometimes God calls us to move, to leave a relationship or a church and go somewhere else, but often he calls us to stay. It is very tempting to quit when life gets uncomfortable. Staying planted in one place can be one of the most difficult things in life but it's also one of the things that will grow us the most. There are some lessons that can not be learned any other way. There are also gifts that God wants to bless us with that he can't send us before we have set our roots down in a church. God knows that without the support, encouragement and wisdom from the church we won't be able to use the gifts well. We were built for community and on our own we can only grow so much. God chose people to be his hands and feet on Earth, we will not flourish in isolation.


God's house is the church and it can become the place where we belong, a place where we learn, get help, advise and wisdom, but if we keep looking for the perfect church we will never find it. God's aim is to transform our hard hearts and to make us more and more like Jesus, this will definitely be an uncomfortable ride at times. Life outside of our comfort zones can be difficult, scary and very inconvenient at times, but those who decide to stay planted will experience a growth that they would not have been able to attain any other way.