Tag: fearless fridays (Page 2 of 2)

Draining the Daunt on Fearless Friday

For those of you new to this blog, you may want to read about One Word and our Fearless Fridays.

I’m flying to Chicago today to speak at a retreat for the church where I grew up, and yes, I’m a tad nervous.

Some (many?) of the women who will be there know me.  You know… in a way that can be embarrassing.  They watched me grow up and they introduced me to my husband and they were at my wedding.  They have seen a lot of awkward.  And perhaps remember some ill-advised words or jump-before-you’re-ready-moments.  This is a bit…daunting.

What’s ahead of you today that requires “undauntedness”?

What is it that helps us to walk secure into situations like these?

There’s a message that Bill Hybels preached a few years ago that I have thought about more than most and it’s been helpful in this daunting stuff.  In the message Bill talked about Hezekiah’s prayer in 2 Kings 19.

The Assyrians are coming against the Israelites.  The king of Assyria sends a letter trash-talking Hezekiah and the God he holds fast to.  Hezekiah could easily have been daunted by this super power of the ancient world, but he spreads out the threatening letter before the Lord and prays.

“Now, Lord our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, Lord, are God.”

The key question that has rolled around in my brain as I’ve prayed ever since is, “What’s  your ‘so that’?”

Whether it’s anticipating a really hard conversation or confrontation, or a big project or a new business venture, or a physical goal, or an application… if there’s fear associated with it, it must be important to you.  Why?  What would you say?

“This is important to me so that…?”

Really?  There’s a lot of muck in our many motives.  But if our “so that” is to bring glory to God it drains the daunt out of the situation.

Because if we’ve worked as hard as we can to prepare, and laid out our situation before God, and can honestly say “I think…as best as I can tell (and I know no motives are completely pure) I want to do this well so that You will be glorified.”

Then it’s not about us.

We have nothing to lose and nothing to prove. The ball’s in God’s court. We can relax and move ahead undaunted.

It’s up to Him to add His “extra” to our “ordinary”, His “super” to His “natural”.

Because “we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” (2 Cor. 4:7)

How’s it going with your One Word?  I’d love to hear what you’re learning!

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Fearless Friday and My Brother

It’s Fearless Friday in our One Word year!  Catch up and join us!

You may think you have the best family in the history of the universe, but you don’t.

I do.

I know I don’t deserve it.  I don’t recycle enough and I can be petty and selfish and I sometimes pray for things like losing weight when many are starving, and there’s a lot of other bad stuff I’m not going to tell you about.

The only thing I can attribute my family to is grace.  Period.  But there you have it.  Yes, we have our own set of crazy, but I’m still convinced my family is the best.

Anyway, now that we’ve got that straight, I want to introduce you to one of my two wonderful brothers.  I like to call him “Baby David” and he calls me “Sweet Sis” and he is one of the kindest, most godly men I know.  He’s on the right below, washing dishes at Thanksgiving with John.

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Last Friday he wrote me such an encouraging note in response to the One Word post.  He, like so many of you, will text or email, or FB message me with these incredibly rich insights that others don’t get to see unless they’re in the comment section here on the blog.  So I asked David if I could post some of the words from his email and he graciously said “yes.”  Here’s what he wrote:

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Fearless Fridays

Last week, with fear and trembling, I shared my One Word for 2013 – Fearless.

Ironic, I know.  But there are so many important, relevant, good words!  What if I got it wrong?  I really prayed about strong, brave, secure, equipped, enough… What if it feels to God like I’ve thrown down the gauntlet (where did that phrase come from?) and says “It’s on!” leading me into situations to stretch me uncomfortably?  What if this year just shows how fearless I’m not?

And then I remembered the two words fear always asks: “What if…” And I said “So what.”

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I hope you’ll enter into this year-long adventure too.

I’ve loved hearing from you through email, text, and FB and I hope more of you will share your words here.  Some of your OneWords I’ve heard so far are Margin, Relinquish, Trust, Live, Content, Enjoy

So here’s what I’m thinking…We’re going to rename “Spirit Stretch Fridays” (You may not have even known that was a thing.  I’ve kind of dropped the ball).

From now on it’s gonna be Fearless Fridays.  I’ll be posting on different aspects of Fear because I think it’s a pretty universal challenge and is related to so many other challenges.  AND, I’m going to be asking some of you to send me guest posts about your experiences with your One Word.

Here’s my thought for the day around “Fearless”.

“Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s just deciding that fear isn’t calling the shots anymore” Bob Goff

Soooo…here we go!

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Have a great Friday and consider sharing your word here if you haven’t!
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