I’m honored to share an excerpt from “Mentor for Life” today that is featured on Christianity Today’s Gifted for Leadership blog. It references the mentoring commitment to relationships, and features Chapter 14: Embrace All Women.
God Calls All Women: But We Don’t All Have the Same Calling
Understanding our identity in Christ gives us purpose. God has a specific purpose for each of us, a unique calling for each individual. Our shared and primary purpose is to become disciples (followers) of Jesus Christ. Our secondary callings are unique and are birthed out of our submission to the primary calling.
The body of Christ misses out when we attempt to force all women into one constrained understanding of the role and responsibilities of women. Christ’s transformation does not mean we blindly do as other good and godly people say we should. If we are simply content to go along just to get along, we will never come to realize our true purpose in life. A great mentor and a safe community of believers will consistently point us to Christ and challenge us to follow him as we seek clarity on our faith journeys. A godly mentor models Christ’s character, while calling us to completely surrender our will and desires to God’s will for our lives.
God is the creator of all things, and his creative vision is big enough to include women from all walks and stages of life, from different backgrounds and cultures. His kingdom purposes transcend generations. His will is big enough to include young girls like Rhoda, who commit themselves to prayer, and virgins like Mary, the young mother of Jesus. His plans are big enough for women like Elizabeth, Rachel, and Hannah—all of whom experienced prolonged seasons of infertility. His purposes include women with pagan pasts like Ruth, prostitutes like Rahab, and rejected, widowed, adulterous women like the Samaritan woman at the well. He sees marginalized and enslaved women like Hagar, and old women like the prophetess Anna. We compassionately embrace women like these because God’s purpose and plans include all of them. God’s purpose includes you as well!
Sadly, we live in a world where women constantly receive messages that communicate, You are not valuable: You’re not smart enough for this job or capable enough to earn that amount of income. You are not skinny enough to fit into those jeans. You are not attractive enough to date that guy or to have a man fully commit to only you. You’re not competent enough to be a leader. You are not a great parent. You are not an excellent wife. And when we feel insecure or feel inadequate, it is easy to degrade or reject women who are either more confident than we are or who have made different choices from our own. This rejection somehow makes us feel better about ourselves and more comfortable with our choices, if only for a moment.
Continue reading at Christianity Today.
A SISTA'S JOURNEY 