I couldn't fall asleep last night until I got up and wrote this post, because I felt guilty about leaving something important out of my last post on the She Speaks Conference.
Alright. In the interest of honesty I have something to confess about my last post. I said something to the effect of "I don't need to shine except when God shines through me because I've spent so much time with him, blah, blah, blah."
And that's mostly true. I believed it and desired it before, during, and especially since the conference.
But there was something about that post which gave Satan a small & seemingly insignificant victory over me and my desire to serve God: it wasn't the whole truth. The part I left out was that I wanted to shine because, well, hello! I'm Jen and I shine and I'm wonderful and everyone wants me. Not necessarily because of God - there was a small part of me that went into the conference feeling like I could take him or leave him. It breaks my heart to write that.
But it's true. And a major part of what I would like to do for all women in the church is to remove the secrecy from our real-life struggles & pains and get to our hearts. I would love to see frank, open, honest discussions and teaching. And Satan would love to undermine that by having me start off my service and ministry with a lie.
So I'm telling the embarrassing, humbling, scary, ugly truth. Because I don't want to give Satan a leg-up in my life or anyone else's. Now you know. I wanted to be "discovered" by more than just God at that speakers' conference. And by his grace, I wasn't "discovered" and offered any contracts or speaking engagements. And so I continue right where I started, but with all the benefits mentioned in my last post. And I like it here.
2 comments:
Thank goodness you're human, I was about to worry that you wouldn't want to be my friend anymore- 'cause I am most definitely human- and I want to shine on my own all the time. Funny how the world usually works opposite of how God works. If we want to shine the brightest we need to stop shining and just seek- easy to say, hard to do...
Sweet Jen ... I was so anxious the first day of the conference because the majority of women I met (many there for the first time, like me) were ready with book proposals for publisher appointments and knew the direction they were traveling. I had conversed with myself before the trip - "I'm there to hear what God's saying to me about this writing thing and there's no pressure to perform, etc." Ha! Like you, it's what I DESIRED to be true, but it wasn't the whole truth. I immediately started comparing myself to others and was so thankful to have time that night alone in my room with God. I told him how I felt and asked him to remind me that I am exactly where He needs me to be - unknown and unpublished at the moment. Thanks for your honesty - it's refreshing and encouraging.
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