womens ministry

Do You Know the Shepherd’s Voice

Good deeds proper worship

Good Deeds

During my study today in Revelation, it was talking about how all our prayers are incense.

Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people

It cross referenced Psalms which was talking about how we worship

I call to you, Lord, come quickly to me; hear me when I call to you. May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.

This then took me to 1 Timothy chapter 2 where Paul is talking about how men and women are to worship.

Therefore, I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing. I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.

The last part…but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God really spoke to me especially as I have been scrolling Facebook lately.

There have been many posts over the last few months that were related to “since Covid we haven’t gotten our hair or nails done.”  There have even posts that said something to the effect “couldn’t wait to get back in “so and so’s chair” so they could fix our mess.

Please hear me, there is nothing wrong with getting hair and nails done.

But the more I have scrolled it has saddened me how far many have derailed from the truth of scripture. How we have allowed the past 5 months’ tear friends and families apart? The anger. The loss of hope. And just that quickly we now don’t trust each other.

What convicted me was, “appropriate for women who profess to worship God.”

Here we are in the middle of August. We don’t even love our friends who sat next to us in church anymore.  They are the enemy.  The news has become our only source of hope and truth.

Decades ago when I was just beginning my walk in the church, and I say walk in the church because I know now that it was just a lifestyle because where I lived it was a way of life and what was expected, I remember stumbling over the scripture in Matthew 7,

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a FEW find it. (emphasis mine)

Everyone I knew went to church. Everyone I knew was a “Christian”. How could only a FEW find it? But after watching 2020, with church buildings being shut down, John 10 scares me for many who like me years ago, went to church, followed a dynamic speaker, and found my fellowship with other church goers who adorned themselves with elaborate hairstyles, gold, pearls and or expensive clothes, but when push came to shove, there weren’t any good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.

But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”

I am afraid many are running to the stranger’s voice because they truly don’t know the Shepherd’s.

Jesus wants to know the stripper

This is a re-post from a blog I did in 2012

Today I woke up with a heart ache.

I could not get out of my mind the women and moms who are working in our adult entertainment district. God has laid them on my heart to pray for their safety.  I cannot say that he has had me pray that they will get out of the industry but to pray they stay safe.  I know you are right about now saying “get me this women’s phone number. She has gone off the deep end”, but before you stone me hear me out.

As an organization we have worked with many women who have worked in the Adult entertainment industry. To sit down and listen to their stories would make you cry… Why, why did you only see this as your only option?

About 2 years ago I was running a Job Readiness Program and the State sent clients that were on Families First to my class.  I had a young women that was not only about to lose all her benefits for her and her children (food stamps and healthcare) but someone was threatening to call DCS because she was not providing the basics for her children.

She tried and tried to get a job but at that time jobs were a little harder to come by.  One day after class she approached me and said, “I hear what you are saying, but right now I need to make some money.”

For the next 20 minutes I sat down and just listened to the heart of a mom who wanted more than anything to stand on her own two feet.  She loved her kids and would do anything not to have them taken away.  She had walked away from an abusive boyfriend and was trying NOT to rely on a “guy” for anything.  She wanted to make it on her own.

I started asking questions about what she used to do before she moved here.  She told me she was a stripper.  I think she was waiting for me to say “Oh No, you can NEVER do that again”; but instead I just listened. I did not want to make her feel any lower than she already did.

I heard from her the next day when she did not show up for class, she had a job and she was providing for her and her children.  Was the job the most ideal?  NO, but she was not relying on an abusive boyfriend to make sure she was taken care of.

Why do I tell you this story?  Well as I was driving up 65 North into Franklin today my mind started wandering to 15 years ago this month when my not so perfect marriage started going awry.  My husband was unhappy and had started having an emotional affair with my best friend.  I was just beside myself when that day came and he said to me “I just don’t love you anymore”.  We started separating things and he started paying child support.  I got the house but with me not working what was I to do?

I had been a stay at home mom and had no marketable job skills.  My self-esteem took a plunge which in turn started a very quick downward spiral.  How could this be happening, we went to church every time the doors were open, we participated in every event, even organized them.; kids choir and Bible bowl were my Sunday afternoons.  Now I am sitting in the bathroom asking “how am I going to make ends meet”.

I needed money fast and knew that going through the paper, to interviews and trying to put on a show that everything was ok was NOT going to work.  So what is a girl to do?  Oh I know, I had just lost a lot of weight and looked pretty good, so let me find out where the local Strip Clubs are and I will learn to swing around a pole.

You see, emergency mode is what I was in.  I needed to provide for my 3 children and fast easy money was how I was going to make it.

Now back to why my “heart aches” for the women that are in this industry? Because that could have very easily been me; Someone’s daughter, someone’s mother, someone’s Aunt, someone’s sister.  Every one of those ladies has a different story as to why…. But in our busyness of the day do we really want to sit down and get to know “the local stripper”?

Jesus does…

 

My heart still aches for the women who see this as their only option.  If you know of young woman in this profession, please get them my information.  I would love to talk with them and equip them and empower them. star fish

Worthy

 

worthy

If you were guaranteed success and money was taken care of, what would you do with your life?
Many of us had dreams when we were younger and for whatever reason they were dashed by the time we became adults.me and phone
We were either told, you can’t become a princess because they only exist in fairy tales or you were told to be realistic because you aren’t tall enough, skilled enough or thin enough to become “that”.

 
Do you remember being a kid and saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me?” Now that I teach life recovery classes on a daily basis to people who are overcoming addictions, abuse or negative cycles of life, I realize that whoever wrote that was trying real hard to do the “Positive Self-talk” or they were trying to strengthen their child because of the horrible parenting they had done. Whatever the reason, if we are really honest with yourselves the words of, “you can’t do that”, “that will never work”, or “you’re not good enough”, still haunt us today and we may find ourselves stuck on this cycle of letting life happen.

 

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I teach every week in the darkest corners of the United States, in our jails and prisons. I know what hopeless looks like. I know what oppression feels like. I also know what it is to be locked up inside my own prison filled with doubt and self-sabotage.

 

 

To know me, you would never guess I deal with the feeling of being worthless. I am full of self-confidence becspeakingause I am a survivor. I have survived being abused as a teen by my stepfather. I overcame the feelings of abandonment by my father. I survived being neglected by the church, because I didn’t know all the hidden rules and I didn’t fit in, which just added to my feeling of worthlessness. I even overcame feelings of neglect as my husband worked 3 jobs and the emotional trauma of marital infidelity from both my husband and I. And just when I thought God was finished, I became the survivor of a gang attack in 2011 which has produced PTSD.

To be a survivor, you can have all the confidence in the world. But self-esteem is an estimate of yourself, and if you have been beat down by words and events, you start to believe this as truth about yourself.

This year my husband and I read a book called “One Word that will change your life” by Jon Gordon, Dan Britton and Jimmy Page. My word this year is “Worthy”. I started 2016 by repeating that “I am worthy of: (and then I would journal what I was worthy of), after a couple of weeks I realized that in order to overcome the “less than feelings of unworthiness” I needed to start taking a serious look at who I was internally and ask myself “Do I even love myself?”

Old habits are hard to break and one of my biggest habits is self-sabotage. The definition of sabotage is deliberate destruction. So if you put the word “self” in front of that you get “deliberate self-destruction”. When you couple self-sabotage and low self-esteem with a high self-confidence you find in a survivor, the results can actually be disastrous.

I have around me a support system that I can call on when my days don’t go so great. The challenge for many is that they look so put together on the outside, that they can’t be honest with what’s going on inside and all the while they are dying for someone to say “it’s okay, you do not have to be all put together for me”.image

Please don’t go another day without reaching out to someone if you are that person dying inside.  For more information about The 180 Program that we use everyday please click here.

If you want more information about having me speak for your women’s group or retreat please fill out the following form.