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What Does a Leader Look Like?

by Alison Ward

Women often tell me they are not leaders. Yet, they influence their children every day, They help them to make decisions, they assist children to change their minds when they say, “I can’t do this”, and in a hundred small ways they are persuading and guiding their children every day.

Yet, these same women believe they are not leaders.

What is leadership? It is influence, it’s the power of persuasion; it’s the art of inspiring a group to function towards achieving a common goal.

Knowing how children want to go their own way, this is a delicate art indeed.

No home, no organisation, no church can run leaderless for very long.

Someone said to me a little while ago that we don’t need a leader if everyone knows their job in the organisation. I disagreed. My answer was that every ship needs a captain.

Hubby took me on a Mediterranean cruise a few years ago, it was a life long dream to see parts of Europe. I must declare, I was happy there was a captain of the large, 15 story passenger liner.

The captain had to make sure that ship entered and left each port safely. He was responsible for every one of the 2500 people on board. He had to set the course and dynamically be aware of obstacles to avoid collisions.

In fact, not long after our cruise, another passenger liner scared every person on board by ripping the side of the ship along the dock of one of those old European sea ports. The captain had failed to steer the ship safely into port, causing danger to everyone on board and harm to the port of call and those on the quay side.

We need leaders, those who will lead their families, businesses, churches, communities and society in general.

So, what does a leader look like?

A leader is self aware. The success story for a leader is a person who has nurtured emotional intelligence traits in their own life. The number one trait of emotional intelligence is self awareness, according to many who have written on the subject. This sets you apart by the fact that you know yourself better than others know you. You know your strengths, you know your potential, you know your weaknesses (what sets you off), you know when you are in your zone (the space where you work the best and are the most clear headed). I see many professionals who do not value or embody this trait and it breeds a sense of entitlement in these men and women. You may be very clever, highly prized for your expertise, but just hopeless at knowing yourself and therefore stunted as a leader.

A leader is brave. Courage is a requirement for any leader. This is the quality of being prepared to act when others don’t or won’t. You act even though you are scared. You are scared, but you still act. Do you hear that sound? It’s my heart beating so loudly in my chest because even though I am slaying giants, I am still scared. Think of people who have pioneered lands, missions, new ventures. Think of people who have righted wrongs in society. What made them do it, when it could have been a thousand other people? They were prepared to act when others didn’t. There’s a price to pay for being brave. You may be criticised for acting a different way to everyone else, but let’s face it, no one ever changed our world by maintaining the status quo.

A leader is human. You give yourself permission to fail, to be human or to be weak at times. It’s what you do with that weakness that counts. Let it be lesson to others. Go back to those you failed and apologise. Repent, say you are sorry and make it a lesson for all involved. The reason I say this is such an important trait in a leader, is that I have seen so many leaders over 40 odd years of church leadership who practice hubris; a pompous attitude when they fail. If you are truly a leader you are a servant, as Jesus said he was. You have no rights to pride or arrogance. You only have the right to turn your failures and weaknesses into lessons for others. And what wonderful lessons they can be.

You are a leader if you have influence. Use your influence wisely. You are not perfect, but someone needs you to lead them.

7 Ways to deal with a martyr syndrome

How you can show compassion for the hurting — www.alisonward.me

Martyr syndrome is a common issue amongst women.

I have seen it among church people for many years.

Martyr syndrome or victim complex can be classified as a person who uses self- sacrifice and suffering to control their environment.

They are unwilling to deal with themselves and grow in spiritual formation, and instead hide behind a mask of serving.

Martyr syndrome is self destructive, and directly opposed to biblical maturity as a Christian.

We all want to serve our families and our fellow man. We may be concerned that if we say no, we will not be helping others.

God made us as helpers.

It is part of our calling as women.

Remember that the word ‘helper’ (the Hebrew word is ezer) used in terms of Eve’s relationship with her husband in Gen 2:18, is the same word used of God as Israel’s helper in Ex 18:4, and of God as our helper in Ps 20:2 and many other scriptures.

Psalm 121: 2 declares, “My help (ezer) comes from the Lord”.

Helping others is not a lowly occupation, but one God values highly!

Yet, we must know what help to give and where to give it, in order to function effectively as Christians.

Some women are good at saying no, and stating their boundaries with family and others, but I venture to say that many women do not know how to do this.

This is particularly difficult for a person who is a server by gifting and personality.

The problem is they keep saying yes in order to please others and end up with resentment in their hearts and ‘feeling used’.

Are you frequently berating yourself and feeling sorry for yourself when you help others or when they reject your help?

Do you find yourself thinking ‘poor me, don’t they know how hard I am working’?

You may have martyr syndrome!

It is misguided to think you are the only one who can meet everyone’s needs and always be there for others. In fact, you are acting like God.

7 Ways you can change martyr misery into masterful maturity:

Decide what is important for you to take care of. What are your chief life responsibilities in God’s eyes? If you are wife and mother, those vocations are important for YOU to take care of. Is your work taking over the rest of life?
Take care of your responsibilities first with joy before you agree to take on other duties.
See yourself as a really valuable human being in God’s sight whether you give of yourself to a situation or not.
If you say yes, do so willingly, of your own accord and resolve to have a positive attitude towards the task and the people involved.
Give prayer to the issue and ask God to reveal your heart to you and enable you by grace to walk free of being a victim.
Learn how to say ‘no’ graciously when you need to. Work out a strategy with a friend who knows your problem and keep to that strategy when you encounter the need to say no.
Be accountable to someone who knows your difficulty and share with them your triumphs and failures, so you may grow.

Be a blessing, but do it God’s style.

In what ways have you found yourself acting like a martyr?

15 ways to curb your spending this Christmas

For us as Christians, Christmas remains about Christ.

It is a time to reflect and rejoice that Jesus Christ took on flesh and forever lives in Heaven having overcome hell, death and the grave for us.

He is the main character of the Christmas story. The gift of Christmas is Christ himself.

In our consumerist society, Christmas has become about many other things; peripheral stuff that matters very little in the greater scheme of things.

Christmas is now about parties, expensive gifts and outdoing friends and family with decorations and holidays.

Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with family, decorating the house for Christmas, giving gifts and going on holiday.

But, there is a shift in focus that needs to take place for us to truly see the meaning of Christmas.

One shift we can make is to curb Christmas spending, so we keep the focus on Christ and glorify him the right way.

Is it worth starting the New Year broke and in deep debt that takes us the first quarter of the next year to crawl our way out?

15 Ways to Curb Your Christmas Spending

If you are a spend thrift, get a family member or friend to be your partner in helping you to control your spending. It’s all about creating a new perspective.
Do not spend endless days at the shopping centre searching for the perfect gift. You spend more that way and get taken in by all that is on offer.
Make a list of people you have to buy gifts for with a budget amount and stick to the budget. Dave Ramsey has a great resource for a Christmas budget: http://www.daveramsey.com
Tell your family and friends that time spent together, including Christmas day is about them and the relationships, and ask everyone to bring and share. I guarantee no one will be offended, and all will be happy to participate.
Look for deals, and online shopping discount days. You will save and still buy great gifts.
Holidays don’t have to cost you your whole bonus. Eating in is cheaper than eating out, and a whole lot healthier. If you are sharing a holiday with another family, have a roster for meals and clean up. Make it fun by doing simple meals where kids can help cook. You will be teaching them while having fun and building quality time together.
Remember, a bargain is not a bargain unless you really needed and wanted it before you saw it on the shelf. Walk away, think twice and then decide. Impulse buying will blow the budget more than you think.
Come home from shopping and list all you spent on food, entertainment or gifts. If it was too much and above budget, decide to cut back on tomorrow’s expenses by having a stay home day or a picnic in the park.
Stop feeling guilty about not spending money! Your family wants you, your time, your input, and your love, not your money. It’s a change of focus. You cannot buy their love with expensive gifts and goodies. They need you.
Recognize when you are impulse shopping to fill a void or a need inside. Just like compulsive eating is trying to fill a need the wrong way, compulsive spending is doing the same thing. Stop doing it!
A good way to curb spending is to ask yourself whether this spend is worth the investment of your money or whether you are prepared to make this trade– your hard earned money for this expenditure. This works well for restaurants and gifts!
Be generous! Sow into someone’s life that could not repay you. You will be surprised at how blessed you feel. Give something away when you buy something new. This keeps the cycle going and prevents hoarding.
Be grateful for all you have. Stop, look around you, look at your life, count your blessings and do this with your family too. This stops the furious desire to obtain more at this time of year.
Ask yourself, “Do I really need this?” “Does my child really need this?” “Will it enrich my life?”
Ask yourself, “Is it still all about the Father and his gift of Christ to us?” or has it become about all the other things to the exclusion of glorifying Christ.

How do you need to simplify to change your focus this Christmas?

Preach the gospel to yourself

It was Jerry Bridges, who passed away recently, whose book taught me: preach the Gospel to yourself every day. [The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges].

You may be like I was as a young Christian; continually questioning whether I measured up to God’s standards for holiness, and whether I would make it into Heaven.

I did not realise that my Christian walk relied on Christ and his sacrifice, not on my performance as a Christian!

Yes, we must acknowledge our sin, but we relate to God through the blood and righteousness of Christ, not through our own merits.

Wow, what a change and relief when I found that out!

Bobbie Carlyle sculpted a statue of a man called ‘Self Made Man’. The vision of ‘Self Made Man’ is a man carving himself out of stone, carving his own character, carving his own future.

Bobbie Carlyle: Self Made Man

[http://www.bobbiecarlylesculpture.com/SelfMadeMan.php]

This is often reminiscent of us as Christians.

We want to carve out our own lives. We take what we think are the tools of spiritual transformation into our own hands and try to sculpt ourselves into Christian specimens.

However, spiritual transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit.

He is the Master Sculptor.

It means you believe He forgave you all your sins (Col 2:13) and now “[presents] you holy and blameless and above reproach before him”, (Col 1:22 ESV).

But, note: the discipline of being a disciple of Christ requires continuous, robust effort on our part. We must not be lazy, apathetic or halfheartedly committed. We must have no indifferent attitude towards sin!

Consider two different days in your life:

Day One- Good one spiritually: You have an opportunity to share the gospel with someone

Day Two- Bad one spiritually: You have the opportunity to share the gospel with someone

Would you feel more confident on day one than on day two?

If you choose day one, this reveals your reliance on works for your salvation rather than on God’s grace in Christ.

God’s blessing does not depend on our performance, but on His grace in our lives.

“Any time we bask in God’s mercy and grace is our highest moment, higher than when we feel good about our great performance and cannot think of anything we need to confess” (Jerry Bridges).

Remember Gal 6:14: But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

Are we willing to rely on God’s grace alone, instead of our performance, to boast in nothing except the Cross? If so, we can stop living in our good day/bad day scenarios and bask every day in the grace of God!

You see, preaching the gospel to myself, as a believer, means I remind myself daily to rely on Christ’s sacrifice, not on anything I can do.

Remember this as you preach the gospel to yourself every day:

My salvation is through Christ’s sacrifice for my sin
I live in the grace of God
My performance does not change the grace of God
God has forgiven my sin
I am able to look forward to my walk with God every day because of Christ.

Let’s remember the sculpture of Self Made Man, and make sure we not engaging in a self-help, self making of our Christian lives!

What else engages us in preaching the gospel to ourselves? Please comment below.

Quote:

Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace (1994), Navpress.

How do we forgive when we don’t want to?

Do you find it difficult to forgive? You are not alone, most of us do.

woman, rock, water-1082056_1920 — Alisonward.me

It’s easy to forgive the person who steps on your toe in the elevator. What about the person who shaped your life by their abuse when you were a child. What of the husband who cheated on you, thus ruining your dreams of a happy marriage?

One balmy summer evening recently hubby and I were walking in our neighborhood with the dogs. Rather the dogs were walking us, I caught the heady scent of pine from the huge trees down our street.

The fragrance released by the warm temperature hung thickly in the air. As we passed underneath the trees I breathed in deeply, my senses alive with enjoyment from this delightful aroma.

I thought of how the heat in our lives brings out the fragrance that is within. Is it a wonderful scent or the stench of years of bitterness resulting from unforgiveness?

The pleasant fragrance from our lives is that of good works, like forgiveness.

Forgiveness seems to be so hard for us, and yet it is the requirement for God forgiving us.

Forgiveness is a grace that sets us free.

In a research survey, 80% of people interviewed said they had learned from their parents how and when it is appropriate to forgive. Natalie responded in one of these interviews that her mom never apologised or asked for forgiveness and she was the same way.

Muner, Maisy; My Research Paper- Forgiveness. (http://forgivenn.weebly.com/my-research-paper.html)

We are obligated to learn the grace of forgiveness for the sake of our children and grandchildren, as well as for our own salvation.

How Can we Forgive?

C.S. Lewis said: “Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night ‘forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.”

S. Lewis,The Weight of Glory(New York: Harper Collins, 2001; Originally published 1949), 181-183.

God wants to save us from ourselves, from the weight that unforgiveness adds to our souls.

Here are 8 signs that show we need to forgive:

When we can’t think about the person without strong negative emotion
When we lie awake at night thinking of revenge or self-defense
When we rehearse the incidents relating to this person over in our head
When we know the feelings are so deep down we stop ourselves from going there
When we treat others badly
When we won’t get close to anyone and we won’t let them close to us
When we have more negative emotions in a day than positive
When we are depressed about the past

The secret to freedom is to forgive.

It is the grace of God, working in our life that empowers us to truly forgive.

We may also need a friend, a counselor, or a pastor to help us see perspective and to pray with us as we let go.

How Do We Forgive?

Recall the goodness of God and how He has forgiven us
Pray a prayer: “Forgive me my trespasses as I forgive (and insert the person/s name here) ___________ who has trespassed against me (Matt 6:12).
Write a letter to the person who has offended you pouring out all your emotions and keep writing till the emotion is spent. Then write across the letter, “DEBT PAID IN FULL”, and tear it up
In your thoughts, refuse to dwell on the person’s deed towards you, and keep bringing your thoughts back to these 3 previous actions you have taken
Finally, refuse to speak badly of the person, to gossip or to say caustic remarks about them.

All these points will aid in pressing the reset button in your heart towards God and towards your hurt.

You may have heard of the story of the little girl examining at her grandmother’s quilt she is stitching. She asks why the threads are all hanging loose, making the quilt look ugly and unfinished.

Granny turns the quilt over, to show her the finished side and tenderly replies that the little girl is looking at the quilt from the wrong side, as the other side is quite beautiful!

God is looking at the finished side of the quilt of our lives, already seeing the beauty of a life lived fully by the finished work of the cross applied to our lives as Christians, and forgiving others as we are forgiven is a massive part of that!

Question: What else has helped you to forgive?

How you can show compassion for the hurting

The gift of compassion is a wondrous thing.

God wants us to be compassionate towards people. He wants us to help those who are hurting.

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Eph 4:32).

Have you ever tried to share a hurt with someone only to have it minimized by their dispassionate, flippant, thoughtless reply?

It doesn’t feel good, does it? So, don’t do it to others.

However, we do not have to be strong in a mercy gift to show compassion for someone. Just think how you would want to be treated if the situation were reversed, and act accordingly.

This is the golden rule:

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you (Matt 7:12a, NIV).

We can all learn compassion.

Having been a pastor for many years, I have noticed that church people struggle with showing compassion. It does not come naturally to all.

In times of difficulty, we all need compassion, even when we are to blame for our situation or have made a mistake costing us dearly.

How difficult it seems to be for people to show compassion to others without including their own suffering. Someone shares a hurt with you and you are already off telling them how you suffered before their sentence is even finished.

No, that is not compassion!

To listen patiently is compassion.

To feel deeply for another person is compassion.

To express this deep feeling as empathy means you would say something like:

“I don’t know what to say, but I am here for you”.

“I can’t imagine how this feels, and I am hearing you”.

My definition of compassion would be: to truly see someone in their suffering.

How do we comfort others?

How do we show compassion or mercy to those who are hurting?

Here are 10 ways to express comfort:

Be present
Do not think you have to know what to say
Do not use trite phrases
Put yourself in their place
Show your heart
Say caring words
Sometimes say nothing at all
Keep showing up
Think of practical, kind things to do
Do not ignore the person or the situation

When my daughter was experiencing infertility and mourning over lost pregnancies, she often commented on the crazy things people said to her.

Be aware of unthinking, uncaring and judgmental statements.

Weigh your words well.

You can even practice on a friend or a spouse before you go to make that compassionate visit to a cancer sufferer. Rehearse what you can say that will be profitable and caring.

People who are in need of comfort do not want to hear your ‘good advice’

or empty words of platitudes such as ‘God only takes the good ones’

or ‘you must be very special for God to allow you to suffer’, etc.

Face it; you really don’t know what the hurting person is experiencing inside.

You may even have been through the same kind of suffering, such as losing a loved one, but you don’t know how that person is feeling inside.

You only know how you felt inside at the time.

For you to show compassion and for it to be felt and experienced by the other party, you have to be fully present in the conversation.

Be really there, focused in body and mind on what they are saying.

This is the greatest gift you can give another human being. Your attention, your time, your focus on that person and their suffering brings relief to their aloneness.

It expands my world to know someone has heard me. I am not alone. You may not be able to relieve my suffering, but I am not alone.

How have you felt compassion shown or not shown to you when you have been in need and how has it made you feel?

Leave a comment and join the conversation.

MUSINGS ABOUT MOTHERS

Mothers are Not Perfect

but they are ‘mom-azing, mom-derful, and mom-some’.

I thought I would write a few thoughts about mothers since we have just celebrated mother’s day.

Mothers are not Born they are Made.

They are made in the furnace of adversity, and in the melting first look at your baby. They are made in the faithfulness of the night watch over a sick child and in the joy of a child’s response, no matter how small.

Proverbs outlines the character of this wise mother:

Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; (Prov 31:25-28a ESV).

The real life of mothering a child molds a woman into another kind of human being altogether, still fragile, still weak, still human, but wonderfully tough and resilient and willing to fight for her child.

Sure, there are some young or wounded women who are so damaged and hurt they cannot look beyond themselves to see the life of this precious little soul they have brought into the world.

But, most mothers become moms the moment they encounter the fragile life of a child.

Some women are so nurturing they take on others’ rejected children to love and care for; thank God for them!

Mothers are special kinds of human beings.

They see more deeply, feel more deeply through the child they bare.

Jesus’ mother, Mary was at the cross when all the disciples had fled, her fear overcome by her mother’s heart of love and grief for her son.

Ravi Zacharias, the apologist, speaks highly of his mother’s tenacity in sitting by the bedside of his dying brother when everyone else had given up on him, even the rest of the family, and her love seeing him restored to health.

My own family has a rich history of many generations of caring mothers, caring for the souls of their children, and fighting the fight in prayer for their children.

My great-grandmother was one of them.

I have in my possession a letter written to her children (she had 8) a few years before she died. She gives her testimony, and adds at the end, “I have prayed that I will see all my children in heaven”.

My maternal grandmother was her oldest child.

When her mom died she had not yet seen the fulfillment of that prayer. My grandmother lived her own kind of life for many years, only coming to repentance and faith in Christ in her 60’s after an accident that left her debilitated. I know this because she too wrote a letter, to me, from the old age village where she lived, speaking of her love for Christ.

My own mother was another woman who fought for her children. Born with a heart defect, her life expectancy was 18 years. When she was still alive at age 21 and engaged to be married to my father, doctors performed the first ever open-heart surgery in South Africa on an adult to correct this particular defect. (My mom is 83, and strong and healthy today). She wanted children and courageously, 2 years after her major surgery, I was born, pretty uneventfully.

Little did she know that a defining event a year later would rock her world as a mother and define mine for the rest of my life. At 1 year of age, I was burned rather badly and hospitalized in a small missionary hospital in Swaziland, where we lived.

The doctors gave my parents bad news that I was not responding to treatment for infection, and they went home to pray, calling all their friends to a prayer meeting that night. My mom fought for me, in prayer, and I was soon on the way to recovery.

A generation later, and I well remember the fight for my own daughters as if it were yesterday. I have experienced earth-shattering news on a few occasions, but the worst was with regards to separate incidents that happened to each my two daughters while they were growing up.

The fight for their survival was harsh, and at times soul destroying, but it turned out to God’s glory. I remember my heart and mind kicking into a new gear. A shout rose up from deep inside, a shout that said we would win! It was the shout of faith in God.

As a mother, I have stood before God and cried, mourned, prayed, shouted the victory in faith, given sacrifices of praise. I have held on sometimes by seeing a little spark of light in the distant darkness, but I have held on. And you do that as a mother, that’s what you do.

You don’t give up; you fight the good fight of faith. You intercede, you pray for your children. You refuse any other voice rising in your mind.

I watch my daughters in their own fight for their children. They laugh, they cry, and all the deep, dark emotions are mixed up with the happy, light ones in the pursuit of motherhood.

One of my daughters had a five-year struggle with infertility. I watched her struggle and stood by helplessly, and finally two beautiful babies. I have watched my other daughter weather the news of unexpected difficulties and make the adjustments because she is a mother.

You believe God and his word for you as a family.

After all, you are a mother.

The Secret of Dealing with Grief and Loneliness

Grief comes to all of us.

Grief is an intense sorrow or something that causes keen distress or suffering.

This is the stuff of life. We will all have grief over loss that we suffer.

There is the feeling of losing something dear when change happens, when a loved one dies, when we move, when a season of life comes to an end, or when a relationship dies.

Grief carries with it the pain of loss. Loss of life, loss of the familiar, loss of dreams.

We want to know life as it was before the loss happened. We want to continue as normal. We don’t know if we will ever be happy again. And then, in the middle of it all, there is the loneliness.

Loneliness is a painful feature of grief

In her book, The Path of Loneliness, Elizabeth Elliot says:

The pain of loneliness is one way in which He (that is, God) wants to get our attention (for) our hearts are lonely till they rest in Him who made us for Himself.

Loneliness is a hurdle of grief, especially when you are grieving the loss of close family.

Elizabeth Elliot who lost her first husband to martyrdom on the mission field, and her second to cancer, says:

Our loneliness cannot always be fixed, but it can always be accepted as the very will of God for now and that it turns into something beautiful.

Consider the musings of Job in his grief, “My spirit is broken, my days are cut short, the grave awaits me” (Job 17:1, ESV).

At the end of the book of Job, he eventually comes to know that whatever had happened to him would work out for his benefit, for our benefit. As Romans 8:28 assures us, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, ^]for those who are called according to his purpose”(ESV).

Job is able to say to God, “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2).

Consider also the words of the man of sorrows who was well acquainted with grief: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ and know that because he was forsaken, because he took on our sin on himself, and the Father turned his back on Jesus for a moment of time, we are NOT forsaken. No, never!

Not forsaken in our grief, not forsaken in our loneliness, for we know that God is for us, God is with us, God is in us.

God is with you in your grief, in your loneliness. He is the one who wants you to rest in Him who made you for himself.

May I add, let’s remember those among us who grieve, and keep reaching out to them. They need you to remember, to identify with their pain, not to ignore their grief, or make light of it with ‘feel better’ statements.

How are you able to see Christ in your grief and loneliness?

Let the Called Women Preach!

I believe women should preach.

I believe women should preach and teach provided they teach truth, just as a man should teach biblical truth.

I believe that if you do not expose your people to women in the pulpit they will not be rounded in their exposure to biblical truth as women have a different perspective or way of putting across truth.

I am neither a complementarian nor a feminist.

I believe in biblical, New Testament ministry.

I believe that it can be dangerous for a congregation to only be exposed to a man preaching and teaching if that man has a deep rooted problem with half of his congregation, that is, the women.

If he is a chauvinist or a mysogynist his congregation is catching measles while he is preaching mumps, if he has the measles. He will communicate his heart in the pulpit whether he wants to or not.

His jokes, his teasing in the pulpit will be subtly aimed at putting down women and this will anger the strong women, even cause them to leave the church. There must be a healthy balance that checks the pastors’ motives too.

Women are excelling in the workplace and the marketplace today. If they enter a church that puts women down, and I am not talking about unhealthy ambition, but calling, they will not stay.

There are women with gifts and callings to serve the church in upfront ministry.

The unfortunate thing is that these women are not encouraged to develop as men are and thus kept suppressed and immature in their gift, thus when they do get to preach or are exposed to public scrutiny they have not been mentored and developed as the men are, and they easily fail or fall prey to emotionalism or prophetic indulgences.

Yes, women are the equals of men in the church according to Galatians 3:28. They can and should operate in their gifts and callings, just as the men should.

Yes, they can be pushy, but then, men can be too.

Yes, they can operate in the flesh and draw people to themselves, but so can men.

Yes, they can rebel or be prideful, but so do men, all the time.

I say, take the strong, gifted, called women and train them, mentor and coach them, take them under your wing, Pastor and guide them.

They will be forever grateful, for being tutored, for being seen as worthy, for being honored as worthy of your time and effort.

They are a mighty workforce in the church. They are loyal and committed. You will have an army of loyal soldiers, willing to go to battle with you and willing to give their lives.

But don’t put them down with sly jokes against women and subtle innuendos about their weakness, nagging or emotions. You have just lost half your congregation, man of God!

If a woman is called to preach, she is called to ministry to the body of Christ. Women’s ministry is only one part of the body. The whole body is all the members, functioning together. Let them hear the word of God expounded by well trained, well equipped, women with sound bible knowledge and understanding.

That is your job, Pastor to recognise, acknowledge, and equip such women. Believe me, they will take it seriously!

Comment on this blog post and join the conversation!

10 Life Lessons I Want my Daughters to Remember

Now they are all grown up and are wives and mothers themselves, I want my daughters to remember some life lessons I have learned:

1. You will make mistakes– I made mistakes as a mother and so will you. Learn to live with a life that is not perfect, but do the very best you can, repeatedly, every day.

2. Remember whose you are– Never let any one of your roles as wife, mother or woman-at-work define you. You are greater than any of those roles you play, you are a woman of God firstly and will always be, long after your children are grown and even after your spouse dies, and your work changes.

3. Always build for the long term– Don’t throw away all you have built into your character for a current, flash-in-the-pan, instant gratification episode, no matter what it is or how tempting it may seem. Keep eternity in mind in your daily actions.

4. Develop resilience– Life will throw you curve balls- learn to be resilient enough to play them. Resilience is the stuff of the strong women of the Bible. Bounce back from hurt, bounce back from defeat, bounce back from pain; you are worth it.

5. Keep reinventing yourself– you can do lots of things – you are creative, multitalented and ever able to keep growing in skills. Never put self-limiting thoughts between yourself and the future. You are up to the challenge. See your life as an unfinished painting, a masterpiece in the making.

6. Regrets may be unavoidable– but hold them with an open hand and allow them to blow away like leaves in the wind. Regrets may be the greatest teaching tools in our lives, and the best guides to staying on the narrow path, having to trust in God’s grace rather than our own achievements.

7. Never say ‘if only’– God holds your life in his hand and he determines your times and seasons. There are no other roads you may have taken that may have been better than this one. You are on God’s journey and he holds your hand, he lights up your way and makes straight your path.

8. Hold on to LIFE with a capital L– it’s God’s gift to you. It may be messy at times, chaotic and crazy, but life is what you have and it’s the most beautiful present you will ever receive. So, plunge in and appreciate what you have and what you do, and the people around you, because they are all part of this gift. God has put each one in your life on purpose.

9. Fight like a girl warrior– fight for your family, fight for your mission, fight for what’s right! God has put fight in you, you are strong willed for His purposes, not for control, not for stubbornness, but so you may fight the good fight of faith! You will have to act in the presence of fear, not wait for it to go away.

Keep dreaming– but with your feet firmly on the ground. Does that sound like a contradiction? Possibly, but dreams are meant to come to fruition, so put shape and plans to your dreams and never give up on them.

I pray that God’s love will overtake you, joy will flow from you, mercy will be your watchword and his grace will make you a truly gracious, remarkable woman.

What life lessons do you want your daughter or other women to remember?

Please leave a comment on this blog post, and let’s start the conversation!