My Heart for Women

A question posed by an anonymous poster got me thinking...

Although all those ministry things are great and bring glory to the Lord, do you still feel the Lord leading you to serve there, or are you just doing because you've simply always done it? I hope that's not offensive to you... cause I know I can do that at times... I just keep serving somewhere even though I feel the Lord moving me somewhere else but I don't want to hurt feelings by moving on. Ya know what I mean?

Yes, my secret friend, I do know what you mean! There have been many times where I've realized that I am doing this.

For years, I helped in the nursery at our Church. I felt I should - after all, I've put a lot of strain on the system! LOL! Every time I helped in the nursery I would head home after Church feeling exhausted and cranky, and every little sound my own children made grated like nails on a chalkboard. Someone very wise told me two key things... First, if the experience of serving leaves you drained rather than pumped up, you're probably serving in the wrong area (God designed us each with our unique gifts for a purpose - He wants us to serve using those gifts, and that experience should leave us feeling fulfilled, purposeful, and satisfied). And second, if you serve in a particular ministry area simply because "someone needs to do it," or "if I don't do it, who will?" you may actually be interfering with God's plan. Often, people do not hear or believe God's call on them to ministry, and if they feel a call but don't see a need, they may ignore that calling. Sometimes the best thing we can do is leave a gap wide open, for the right person to walk in and fill it.

Even within women's ministry, I've experienced this. We have a number of ministry areas for women, and my job is to oversee each of them, and encourage/equip the leaders. The difficult part of my job comes down to what to do when there isn't a leader for a particular area. Do we leave that position vacant and let that ministry area fall away? Or am I to step in and fill the vacancy until someone comes forward or is found? I am so thankful that I work with a team of women who can help me discern such things.

So, in answer to your real question, do I still feel the Lord leading me to serve there there [women's ministry] or am I just doing it because I've simply always done it? (Oh, and don't you worry about offending me - I'm not, it's a GREAT question!)

Women are the heart of the home. They set the tone for the entire family. But so many women today are hurting, broken, insecure, isolated. My heart burns with passion to reach these women, and to share life with them, to speak love to them, to help them see how amazing they are - so that ultimately they can embrace Jesus Christ and pour His love out in their homes!

Though I had accepted Christ as my Lord and Saviour, I spent years believing that my worth as a woman was tied up in the love of a man. If I wasn't loved, I was nothing. When I found the love of a good man, though, I wasn't satisfied. Perhaps I really wouldn't be a valuable contributor to society until I was a mother? Unfortunately, the main feeling that motherhood brought me was - loneliness...isolation. I was aching and empty, and my marriage and children were suffering because of my emotional void.

One day, way out of my comfort zone, I decided to attend a women's group. (I think, hoping the void could be filled by developing friendships with other women.) Little connections were made, and I felt myself emerging from the "new mommy fog." I went to a women's retreat... Things were changing in my heart. At first I thought it was the friendships - they were what I needed all along! But it didn't take long for me to realize that the filling of my soul was coming from the Only Source with the ability to fill. The other women were simply the tool He used to reach me!

I knew, in one simple moment, without a doubt, that I needed to bring other women out of their dark loneliness. That somehow, way beyond my personal abilities, God could use the work of my hands to touch the lives of other women - if I simply did what He said to do. So I did it. Because how could I not?!

For now, and for as many days as I feel the certainty of this call on my heart, I will pour myself into women's ministry.

Of course, marriage-family-home must be priority number one. It would be impossible for me to show one other woman how Christ can change her life - making her strong and beautiful and satisfied, in spite of all the crap the world tells her about how to "find herself" - if I am not living the satisfied (and balanced) life in my own home. If I have learned one thing, though, it's that you can't teach such things. In order to truly experience them, we must live them together as women.

So until the day God tells me "STOP" or "GO HERE NOW" and the team of wise and discerning women I am blessed to call friends back up what He's saying, I stay. I stay, not because I'm simply doing what I've always done. I stay because He is doing the great thing that He does, and I get to be a part of it!

Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the Word of God. ~Titus 2:3-5