Hey You!! The Cost of Courage
Hey You!! The Cost of Courage
You may have some big obstacles—you don’t see how you can overcome that sickness, how you can break the addiction, how you can accomplish your dream—but if you only knew Who our God is. He’s not a weak, lifeless, limited God. Our God is alive. He still parts Red Seas, He still makes rivers in the desert, He still brings walls down, He still defeats giants, He still breaks chains in the midnight hour. He’s still a way maker, a promise keeper, a miracle worker.
Hey, you, I know that this is probably not what you were expecting if you’ve ever joined us for, hey, you then you know we have worship.
We put together a nice video for you all.
And then I usually come up and share what God has been saying with, with me and to me for our word of the month and yet here we are in an unexpected moment of connection.
Unexpected. That’s the word that I felt you would think of when you saw this coming to you in this way.
Part of the reason why I think that’s so important is because when we talk about courage, which is our word for March.
Courage has a lot to do with the unexpected.
As a matter of fact, what keeps us from being courageous is we don’t know what to expect.
And it is that idea that we don’t know what to expect that keeps us stagnant.
I wanna talk to you today about the cost of courage, but first I wanna invite you to sit with me in this unexpected moment.
There’s this tension in the unexpected, the tension of I don’t know what’s coming next and I don’t know if I can get with this.
I don’t know if I’m gonna like it.
I’m gonna dare you to allow this moment this hey, you to be an opportunity for you to exercise who you would be when facing whatever your uncertainty is, whatever your unexpected is, can you dare your heart to be open to receive that?
There is a lesson even in the unexpected because if we can practice this, even in a video, how much more could we allow it to show up in our life?
The unexpected, the uncertain is scary and yet God is calling us to be brave to be courageous and to show up as a different version of who we are.
So here I am leading by example and removing from my own comfort, the way that I like to present the word, the way that I like to put on hate you and instead surrendering to the truth and belief that the anointing cannot be relegated to one platform or one stage that change or transformation doesn’t have, doesn’t have to happen in the way that we are used to, but instead can be facilitated when we come into a place of openness and willingness.
So I wanna pray for you.
You at the Florence mcclure Women’s correctional facility you watching in Denver, U in the DMV, U in Nigeria, U in London, U in Australia, U in L A A U.
What area of your life could you stand to use more courage.
Can you just for a moment?
Invite this word, this moment into that space, allow it to challenge you.
Allow yourself to be seen, heard, loved. I’ve got a story I wanna share with you.
But first I wanna pray God, we thank you.
Mm Because we recognize that in order for us to be made in your image, that you have to deal with the fact that we don’t always feel that way and yet you are so gracious and so kind towards us.
Father. I thank you for every woman watching.
I thank you that you have plans to prosper her and not to harm her plans to breathe courage in the places and spaces where she needs it the most.
And so God, I pray that you would allow her to be vulnerable with you in your presence.
This time, soul care. God, we invite you into our soul, take a deep look, bring them healing, bring them, bring them restoration, bring them joy, bring them happiness.
Father, have your way in Jesus name. Amen.
So I was studying and praying and thinking about courage and what it means to me, what it means to you, but most importantly, demonstrations of it in the Bible.
Can you just for a minute?
Like if there is an area of your life where you know, you need to show more courage.
Can you just like type it in the comments?
Like can we create just a safe space of transparency and honesty and vulnerability.
Like where is an area of your life where you need to show more courage? Is it in speaking up?
Is it in communicating how you feel? Is it in releasing that business idea?
Maybe it’s like you’re like me and one of the areas where you need to show more courage is like getting behind what God is doing in your life and not shrinking because it’s gonna create friction or could create friction, allow yourself to just type it in the comment because whether we want to admit it or not, if we are still on earth, there is still a place in a space where we could benefit from being more courageous.
Now, you know how I am, I gotta give you the definition of courage, courageous means, not deterred by danger or pain, not deterred by danger or pain.
You know, I was looking in the Bible for a story that I felt would resonate with what it means to not be deterred by danger or pain.
And I found the scripture in Luke seven that I wanna share with you.
It’s Luke seven verse 36 is where I’m gonna start.
You’ve got notes, you know, I want you to get your notepad out because if I had to give this message a title at all, it would be called the cost of courage.
Now, so many of you have not been raised in church like I have.
But for those of you who’ve had, you already know that this text is about the woman who has the Alabaster jar with oil in it.
OK? So I’m gonna just read it says, then one of the Pharisees asked him the him in this text is Jesus.
Let me give you a little background. Jesus is at the home of the Pharisees who are the Pharisees.
You may be wondering the Pharisees were big time haters.
And Jesus say, ok, they were not here for him calling himself the Messiah and they kept setting up these traps where they wanted to trap him into somehow proving that he wasn’t who he said he was OK.
And Jesus with his big bad bowl of self gets invited to have dinner at the home of one of the Pharisees and says, yes, what I’m not going to do is be sitting with my haters and that’s why Jesus is Jesus and I am SJR because I cannot imagine going into the home of someone who I knew wasn’t for me and sitting down with them anyway.
But as I was reading this text, I realized that it had so much less to do with the Pharisees and everything to do with the woman who we’re gonna meet.
So Luke seven verse 36 says, then one of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him and he went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down to eat and behold a woman in the city who was a sinner.
When she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an Alabaster flask of fragrant oil and stood at his feet behind him, weeping and she began to wash his feet with her tears and wipe them with the hair of her head.
And she kissed his feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil.
What I love about this text is when they introduce the woman, they make sure to call this woman a sinner.
Like first of all felt like a read, you know, like don’t just call me a sinner, call me something else.
But I felt like this was so important because that word sin in the Greek literally means to miss the mark.
So we have a woman who’s about to have an encounter with Jesus.
But at this point in her life, she is a woman who misses the mark that has become her identity.
She feels like she’s constantly missing the mark. She is a sinner.
It has gone from something that just happened one time to something that is happening persistently.
Now you may not be willing to call yourself a sinner.
But some of us have come to a place where we live with enough humility where we know I am constantly missing the mark in some area.
But we don’t allow the fact that we missed the mark to become our identity.
And yet some of our sisters.
Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s someone, you know, you’ve come to a place where your identity is wrapped up in the fact that you’ve missed the mark so much.
So that courage for you is impossible because you don’t wanna risk missing the mark again.
I want you to know that as I was reading this text, I thought about you and I want you to know that your identity is not just the fact that you missed here or missed there.
Maybe you missed in the areas of relationship so much so that you don’t wanna show courage in that area again.
Maybe you missed in business so much so that you don’t want to speak up.
You don’t wanna execute that idea. I want you to know that you missing.
The mark is not indicative of who you are in God.
Maybe you’ve missed the mark in the past, but that doesn’t mean that that is the only way that you will continue to show up in the world from here.
So courage, I want you to write this down if this is for you.
Courage is not defined by how I messed up in the past.
It is not defined by how I missed the mark in the past.
Courage is about how I am willing to show up right now, not five minutes ago, not an hour ago, not last week, how I am willing to show up now.
I cannot change the fact that I didn’t have enough courage to do it back then.
I can’t change the fact that I didn’t have enough courage to say the things that I should have said.
But I still have time. I still have air in my lungs.
And so the real question is, how am I going to allow courage to show up where I am right now?
This woman is a sinner, a woman who is constantly missing the mark. What is that mark?
That mark is where God said. This is the spot where I want you to land.
This is the spot where I want you to show up in the world.
And every time she reaches for that, she keeps on missing the mark.
And yet she has another opportunity to show up.
I don’t know who you are, but I want you to know that God has given you another opportunity to reach for that mark again, I don’t know who you are, but I feel it so strongly.
Somewhere along the way, you stopped reaching, you stopped showing up because you got so tired of missing the mark.
And it is easier for you to stay in doubt than to reach and stretch into the realm of faith where you believe that you can hit the mark.
But I hear God saying, if you’re willing to stretch, if you’re willing to keep showing up, that he still has work for you to do, he still has a plan that only incorporates you and this woman who was known for only missing the mark is about to hit the bull’s eye in the grandest way possible.
The text doesn’t tell us where she missed the mark in the past.
But what it does make increasingly clear is that this is the moment that matters the most.
I want you to know. I feel this.
I wish I was like on stage with my organ going behind me because I want you to know that this is the opportunity that matters the most.
This is the moment that matters the most.
I hear God saying that you need to forgive yourself for the areas where you didn’t show up in the past so that you do not miss the mark of this present moment.
I hear God saying that it is time for regret to let you go.
I hear God saying that it is time for shame to let you go.
It is time for you to reach again, to stretch again.
And I don’t care how you have been defining the past, just like this woman.
God is gonna give you courage to hit the bull’s eye where it matters the most.
And that is exactly what happens to this woman.
Our text tells us that this woman approaches this moment with Jesus with a plan.
It tells us in the text that she brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil.
She’s got an intention when she comes to Jesus with this oil.
The goal we know back in those days is to pour out the oil as a sign of anointing.
And she wants to anoint Jesus as a sign of, I know who you are.
I know that you are the king of kings and understand what this moment represents.
And yet before she can do what she thinks she is supposed to do in that moment, she comes undone in verse 38 it says she stood at his feet behind him, weeping.
When we talk about the cost of courage, I have to let you in on a little secret and I have to tell you, you may not want to hear it.
The cost of courage is being willing to come undone.
And the pursuit of her taking this Alabaster flask of oil, she was going there with an intention to anoint Jesus.
And yet the closer she got to pursuing exactly what was in her heart to do, the more she had to come undone.
I don’t know who this is for, but I feel so heavily in my heart that you’ve been trying to hold it together and execute at the same time.
And I hear God saying that if you would give up on holding it all together, I will show you how to execute even when you’re falling apart.
We think that we have to present this pretty little picture of what it looks like to show up.
For God and I hear God saying the prettiest pictures are those who have cried, the ugliest tears.
The prettiest pictures are the ones who have the ugliest thoughts, but show up anyway.
And this woman begins to come undone. There is an undoing, coming to you.
I know that in church and in scripture, we like to hear about how God is gonna bring it all together.
We like to hear about what God is gonna do in our life and how it’s all gonna make sense in the end.
But I wanna challenge you today to recognize that in order for you to lay hold of who God has called you to be for this season of your life that you are gonna have to surrender to the undoing.
What is the undoing, the undoing of your fear, undoing of your pride, the undoing of your ego.
I hear God saying that you can’t hold it together and build what I’m calling you to build at the same time.
But can you do it if tears are streaming down your face, can you do it?
If it means that you have to sit back and cry?
This woman, she stands behind Jesus and she cries, she is so close, yet so far away.
And sometimes we get so close to Jesus.
But the closer we get, the more tender and vulnerable we get, the closer we get to hitting that mark to becoming, we are supposed to be in God to vocalizing our thoughts, to vocalizing our ideas, the closer we get to manifestation, the more we come undone.
Oh I feel this for you.
The enemy has been speaking and by the enemy, I mean, the enemy of your destiny, your doubt, your fear, it speaks louder and louder.
The closer you get to Jesus, the closer you get to manifestation and you like this woman are so close yet so far away and she stands behind Jesus and she weeps.
She allows herself to become undone.
She allows herself to become messy because she’s in the pursuit of acceptance and it’s gonna require courage that she didn’t even know that she had.
So here she is standing behind Jesus.
Some of you, you’re listening to this message and for you, this message is you standing behind Jesus.
It’s saying, I don’t know if I can face this, but I’m gonna stand behind Jesus anyway.
I don’t know if I can actually do what I’m supposed to do, but I’m gonna stand behind anyway.
I don’t know who you are, but I hear God saying that you can show your face to Him even if it means that you are coming undone.
There are moments where we are meant to follow Jesus and in those instances, we do stand behind him.
But before the disciples became followers, they had to face Jesus.
That means that you can be in proximity.
But until you are willing to face off with who God has called you to be, to face off with the path that leads to the best aversion of who you are.
You can be close to anointing but not saturated or walking in it and functioning in, in it or changed or transformed by it because you haven’t faced off with it.
And so this woman becomes undone and yet she still faces off with Jesus.
This woman becomes undone, but yet she still faces off with destiny.
Sis you are that woman and you have been standing behind long enough, I hear God saying that your next dimension of courage, you will not get from standing behind in the shadows pretending like you don’t want it pretending like you don’t care, pretending that you no longer have a desire to show up in a courageous way.
I hear God saying that version of you is never gonna get it done.
You’re gonna continue to be a woman who misses the mark.
The woman that God wants to talk to right now in this moment is the woman who doesn’t mind facing off with Jesus, who doesn’t mind looking him in the face and saying God, what is it that you see God?
What is it that you carry God? I didn’t get this close to you.
I didn’t undo all of my mistakes and undo all of my shame and undo all of my regret to get here and not have destiny.
When I think about my books.
I, I saw Lost and Bound and I posted this on Instagram earlier, earlier this week, I had lost and found sitting right beside a woman evolve.
And I thought to myself when I finished writing my book lost and found that that was it for me.
If you read the book, you know, the book ends.
And I’m like, I don’t know where we go from here, but I am just so glad that I found God’s grace.
I did not realize that there is a step past being found and that step is to step into the perpetual upward cycle of constantly becoming who God has called me to be.
I had to become someone who didn’t mind facing off and saying God change me, mold me, transform me.
And that’s what this woman does.
She takes her broken raggedy undone self and she takes that oil that she carried with her.
And my text tells me that she began to wash his feet with her tears as she was becoming undone.
She brought that undone into the presence of God. I’m undone.
But I know you can use this. I’m undone, but I’m gonna pour it out in front of you.
Anyway, I hear God saying that you have to let the wall down and allow yourself to be undone and still on a mission.
I’m undone, but I’m still gonna do what you’ve called me to do. I’m undone.
I’m gonna cry my tears, but I’m gonna use these tears for your glory and she does exactly what each of us are gonna have to do.
She begins to wash his feet with her tears as I was studying and thinking about this moment, I thought about how her undone.
This even had a purpose. Do you remember? She has the Alabaster flask of oil.
She came to anoint the head of Jesus and yet these tears create an opportunity for her to do more than she even expected to do because God is gonna use every area where you come undone in his presence and show you how to use it for his glory.
This woman becomes undone in his presence.
And so she, before she can do what she wants to do, she has to deal with what has come undone.
Courage is taking the time to say, ok, before I can get to what I have in mind before I can get to the goal that is in my heart and in my life and in my destiny as a part of the vision that I have from my life, I have to do something with this area that I have come undone.
She offers it to Jesus and now it’s time for her to finally stand in the reason why God saved her to finally stand in the reason why God brought her into this moment and brought her into this room.
And what does she do? She cracks open this Alabaster flask and she begins to pour this oil on Jesus Man.
When I was taking notes about this, I thought about how expensive life is because this is not just any ordinary oil, you know, oil comes so easily to us.
Now, you know, you could be uh seduced into thinking that this went on down to Alberson and got her some olive oil from the store and it was just so easy to pour it out.
But this oil, this perfume was so expensive and so treasured and so valuable that you weren’t supposed to just pour it out.
And yet this woman pours it out because there is nothing more important to her in this moment than to give God what cost her?
Oh God, I feel this for you. Life has been so expensive.
It has been costing you and you have been paying the price over and over and over again.
But I hear God saying that when you pay the price to show up that it isn’t an appreciating asset.
It is an appreciating asset. There are moments when we invest into things that are depreciating like cars.
But then there are other moments where we pay the price like in real estate and instead of losing its value, it continues to increase in value.
And I hear God saying that you have been paying the price to show up in life and you feel like you were at a loss and you feel like you are at a deficit.
And every time life asks you for something, you find a way to cough up whatever strength is necessary, you cough up whatever responsibility is necessary for you to stand in that moment.
And I hear God saying that this is an appreciating asset because anything you pour out.
God says I can give it back to you 100 fold.
And this woman wants Jesus to know that I am willing to pour out what costs me.
That knowledge cost you something. Those divorces cost you something that abortion. It cost you something.
Can I talk to some real women today?
Life has been expensive for you and you have continued to pay the price and you have continued to cry the tears.
And yet I hear God saying that you are not crying them in vain that you did not just go through so that you could be empty, living your life in overdraft.
But courage is gonna require in order for you to finally ca cash out on the investment of life that you have continued to pay.
You were gonna have to activate your courage.
And by activating that courage, it is having a one on one encounter with God and finally saying God, this is what it costs to be me.
This is what I went through in order to show up for you.
And God, I just want you to know if there’s any way that you can use it.
If there’s any way that you can find value in it, then I’m not asking for courage, for myself, asking for courage for what you have called me to do.
The difference between us and people who may be asking for courage is that we are asking for courage so that we can tap into what God already knew about us.
I don’t want courage to go out here and be crazy since I already had enough liquid liquid courage.
I don’t want courage to go out here and to make my name great.
I need courage to do what you have called me to do.
I need courage for me to step into the identity that you have connected to my name.
It’s gonna take courage to raise that child. It’s gonna take courage to stay in that marriage.
It’s gonna take courage to walk away from that relationship. But you’re not asking God for more of your courage.
You’re asking God for more of His courage.
What is an area of your life where you can say God, I need more of your courage and God can bless you with that courage.
Because what you’re pursuing and what he is pursuing is the same thing because when you are in connection with God, what you are pursuing and what he is pursuing is the same thing.
And so yes, we need more courage for this and this woman, she pours out what caused her and child, the saints are having a fit because they are thinking to themselves.
There are so many other things that we could have done with this and yet she continues to pour it out in Jesus.
Jesus acknowledges this poor and Luke seven, verse 47 you have to really read this whole thing to get the full picture.
But in verse 47 it says after they’ve told her over and over again, they’ve told Jesus and they’ve gone back and forth with Jesus about how she shouldn’t have done this.
And how if he were really the Son of God, he would not have allowed this.
But verse 47 really summarizes his thoughts towards this moment.
It says, therefore, I say to you her sins which are many are forgiven for she loved much, but to whom little is forgiven.
The same loves little. Then he said to her, your sins are forgiven.
So in the middle of them debating whether or not she should have done what she didn’t do, which isn’t this exactly why we don’t operate in courage.
Another reason at least is the debate that we feel like other people are gonna have about our actions.
And yet the only thing that matters in this moment is not what everyone else was saying.
It’s what Jesus said to her.
That’s why for me, this moment, even in my own life is about me being able to say, God, I’m pouring out what you gave me, I’m pouring out every idea.
I’m pouring out every concept and I don’t know what people are gonna say and I don’t know how people are gonna feel, but I’m gonna pour it out anyway.
Because what I wanna hear more than anything is Sarah, your season of missing the mark is away.
That word forgiven. It means away because I have poured out much because I have loved to my capacity, my prayers that I will hear God say.
You know what I know what it cost you.
I know who you had to become in order to step into this moment.
And because you paid the price, those moments of you missing the mark, they’re away from you sis.
I couldn’t talk about courage this month without challenging you to come to a place where you are willing to show up and to believe and trust and have faith that God is gonna be with you, that he’s gonna do the rest.
I’m challenging myself and I hope I’m challenging you too, but I am challenging myself to show up in the space of courage in a way I’ve never done before because I wanna pour it all out when you get desperate to pour out what cost you when you get desperate to pour it out.
Um And what do I mean by pour it out? It means that I want to use it all.
I want to figure out how to recover from this.
I wanna figure out why you put me in this situation. I want to use it all.
I want that wisdom to show up. I want that strength to show up.
I don’t wanna just keep paying and storing it up for myself. I want to use it all.
I wanna be when it’s all said and done. And so here I am use me.
There’s just a few things I want to share with you before we go.
I want you to consider and this is kind of like where, hey, you really gets personal because I’m gonna share with you a few things.
And then I wanna challenge you to take some time, maybe time that you would have used taking this whole hour of soul care.
I want you to take the remaining time that you have set apart and I wanna challenge you to worship.
And I know some of you are already thinking about maybe the song you wanna play, but I wanna challenge you to go even deeper and to not think of worship in the context of playing a song.
But to have courageous worship without any music.
Worship is our ability to open up our heart.
And I wanna dare you to be alone with God for a moment, this woman, she was on a mission and the only person that mattered in that moment was her and Jesus.
I wanna invite you into an opportunity to have courageous worship.
And to bring into your prayer closet, to bring into your life, an area where you feel like, you know what I do need more courage right there, there’s a few things that I want you to consider as you have this time with yourself, this time with God.
What would it being courageous look like for you?
Now, this month, we’re talking about being courageously free.
We’re talking about courageous worship and we’re talking about even being courageous in the way that we communicate.
What would it look like for you to be courageous in this moment? Let’s dream.
Let’s write the vision and make it plain. What does that courageous version of you look like?
Who is she in meetings? Who is she with her friends? Who is she in ministry?
Who is she when she writes, who is she when she sings?
Who is she when she sets up things and organizes? Who is this courageous woman? What does she do?
What does she dare to not do?
I want you to write that vision of yourself down, write it down and I want you to put it somewhere where you constantly have to see it.
That is your mark. And it’s so important that we do this in the presence of God because God determines where we really need to be courageous.
Because some of us, you know, maybe not you, maybe someone you know would be like, I need to be a little bit more courageous than wearing these clothes.
I need to have something known as a little bit more spicy.
I don’t know if God is calling you to be more courageous in that area.
But in the presence of God, he qualifies the area where we need to be more courageous.
I might say I need to be more courageous than telling these folks off.
I don’t know if that’s where God is calling us to be courageous.
Maybe it is, this is your opportunity to have relationship with God.
But in God’s presence with God in mind, I want you to consider what being courageous would look like for you.
And then you know what I want you to do.
I want you to go a step a step higher.
And I want you to ask what’s keeping me from tapping into that? OK.
So this is what courageous version of me looks like, but what’s keeping me from tapping into that?
What am I afraid of? Is it rejection? Is it inadequacy? What am I afraid of?
And when we pinpoint what we’re afraid of, when we pinpoint that actual feel, I want that actual fear.
I want you to ask yourself, is this worth it? Can I recover from this?
Is this even true? My value is not connected to my outcome.
My value is connected to my identity.
So the outcome doesn’t have anything to do with my per my, my value.
That is my perceived value, but that’s not my actual value. OK.
So once we determine that I want you to come to a place where you are like this woman, one of the things that I love the most about the woman in this text, the woman with the Alabaster flask of oil is that while the Pharisees were judging by religious standards, this woman took a chance on relationship, she took a chance that she would do something that would be meaningful to God because it was from her heart.
And because it was personal and she received a response, a response that was so remarkable that Jesus says to her, your days of missing the mark are over, they’re forgiven, they are away from you.
And she was able to go from not just being courageous to being confident with a blank slate.
I’m looking forward to this moment for me, this moment of courage for me because, you know, my book is coming out April 6th.
And um you know, I feel such such peace about what God has done in my life and this is me actually sharing it.
And it’s weird to be sharing it without being in a room because when you’re in a room, you can tell when people are receiving it.
But this is just like on paper and I’m having to just share my heart and share what God has shown me on paper.
And this is courage for me because it’s causing me to walk in this form of leadership that confronts my inadequacy.
If you remember, maybe you don’t know, maybe you do because I had my chat at such an early age and because I broke all of these church rules, I never felt qualified to be in leadership.
And yet God gave me this vision of woman evolve and what it could mean for women.
And so much of this is built on me being just like you.
And yet in order for me to really champion this book, I have to put on the hat of a leader and being a leader is scary for me because it brushes up this idea of you are not qualified to be a leader.
You’ve made too many mistakes, you’ve messed up too many times.
And yet I’m stepping into it anyway, because I believe in what God has done in my life and I believe that it’s gonna bless every woman who dares to open her heart and receive it.
And so this is my courage on display.
You’re walking this thing out with me, you’re watching me go through it, but I don’t want to do it on my own.
Yours may not be writing a book, but wherever your area of growth connected to courage is sis, please don’t make me do this by myself.
Step into the awkward, uncertain, unexpected way of living.
It makes you log into, hey, you expecting one thing and discovering another.
It makes you walk into boardrooms thinking that you’re one way and walking out with the confidence that you can actually do this.
I believe that there is so much that God wants to reveal to us about us, but we have to get out of the way.
I wanna pray with you.
I wanna pray that that fear version of you, that, that insecure version of you, that that inadequate version of you would begin to shrivel up and die.
Yeah, that version of you has gotta go.
That version of you has way too much courage and it’s keeping you from tapping into who God created.
Who God formed. I’m gonna be praying for fresh wind for you and for me, for fresh strength, for you and for me, for vision that we wouldn’t grow weary, that we would be confident that God began to work in us and He’s not gonna leave us undone that he’s gonna finish it if we would dare to start it.
Thank you for the women connected to this word.
Those women who are ready to step into courage.
God, I thank you that we don’t have to do it alone, that your courage is waiting to be released.
If we’re willing to open up, I hear you saying God that you can’t release courage to closed jars.
And so we open our hearts, we open our minds, we open our spirits and we say poor if you’re at home and you can’t, I just want you to open your hands like you’re receiving something.
This is a sign of surrender. God.
We open our hearts, we open our mind, we open our spirit.
And we say, if the heavens are open and you’re pouring, pour us out the reflection of who you had in mind, pour us out the image of who you’ve called us to be.
Pour us out courage, father. And as you pour out courage, we pour out our fears, we pour out our worries, we pour out our stress, we pour out our concerns and we say less of it and more of you, less of it and more of you father for my sister, less of it and more of you for my mother, less of it and more of you for my friend’s father, less of it and more of you because we recognize that when we have more of you that we lack nothing.
I rebuke father the spirit of inadequacy. I rebuke it in the name of Jesus.
I break the stronghold off of our relationship with fear. I break the stronghold off of our relationship with anxiety.
I break this stronghold off of our relationship with confusion, confusion, I speak clarity over their minds.
God, I speak clarity over their vision. I speak clarity over their creativity.
Oh God, that as they begin to take seriously their ability to walk and encourage that you would make clear the steps that they must do next.
Like the woman in this text, father that they will know when to wash your feet with their tears and when to dry it with their hair and when to pour out the oil.
I hear timing, I hear process. I hear procedure.
Father and I thank you that that is those are all of the things that you wanna give us a father.
We receive your timing, your process, your strategy, your procedure.
God, I’m praying that we would allow this word to sink into the most vulnerable tender parts of our heart.
And from that place that you would plant seeds, seeds of courage, seedss of strength, seeds of power.
And then this word would be sealed and that we would continue an environment of peace, presence and power so that those seeds can take root and change the fruit that we’ve been eating.
God, thank you for giving us this time together. Blessed father, forgive us of our sins.
We repent for our flawed way of thinking, transform our minds and make us new and Jesus’s name.
And then, hey, you, thank you for trusting me.
Thank you for taking a chance on what God is doing through my life in my life and believing in the overflow that touches your life.
You always know that we’re here. We’re ready to serve you.
I’m gonna ask them to put our texting number on the screen here, text us.
How can we pray with you? How can we connect with you? Write us.
Can, can you put that on the screen too? Write us, send us letters.
We wanna know how we can serve you.
And as always, if you wanna give to what God is doing through woman evolve, whether it’s just sowing the seed of agreement into this word, or you wanna continue to help us reach our sisters who are currently in correctional facilities or who are being rehabilitated.
You guys can. So that information is on the screen.
My prayer is that as we grow and evolve, that we would leave no woman behind.
It’s not enough for me to win.
If I don’t grab your arm and drag you across the finish line too.
If you’re watching at the Florence mcclure Correctional Facility or the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility, I just want you to know that God loves you and so do we and not just me, there’s a whole army of woman evolved cheerleaders that believe in what God is doing in your life.
We love you so much. We’re honored to serve you.
We can’t wait to continue to get to know you better and just know that whenever you’re released or for however long you’re in there that you can stay connected to us by writing.
We have so many gifts and goodies that we’re gonna be sending you.
But the most important thing that we can share with you is our love and our belief that this thing is not over.
It’s just getting started. We’re in your corner. We’ll see you next month for hey you, it’s gonna be special.
I’m gonna be back on the platform somewhere because you know courage has its limits, ok?
I’ll see you next time.
We put together a nice video for you all.
And then I usually come up and share what God has been saying with, with me and to me for our word of the month and yet here we are in an unexpected moment of connection.
Unexpected. That’s the word that I felt you would think of when you saw this coming to you in this way.
Part of the reason why I think that’s so important is because when we talk about courage, which is our word for March.
Courage has a lot to do with the unexpected.
As a matter of fact, what keeps us from being courageous is we don’t know what to expect.
And it is that idea that we don’t know what to expect that keeps us stagnant.
I wanna talk to you today about the cost of courage, but first I wanna invite you to sit with me in this unexpected moment.
There’s this tension in the unexpected, the tension of I don’t know what’s coming next and I don’t know if I can get with this.
I don’t know if I’m gonna like it.
I’m gonna dare you to allow this moment this hey, you to be an opportunity for you to exercise who you would be when facing whatever your uncertainty is, whatever your unexpected is, can you dare your heart to be open to receive that?
There is a lesson even in the unexpected because if we can practice this, even in a video, how much more could we allow it to show up in our life?
The unexpected, the uncertain is scary and yet God is calling us to be brave to be courageous and to show up as a different version of who we are.
So here I am leading by example and removing from my own comfort, the way that I like to present the word, the way that I like to put on hate you and instead surrendering to the truth and belief that the anointing cannot be relegated to one platform or one stage that change or transformation doesn’t have, doesn’t have to happen in the way that we are used to, but instead can be facilitated when we come into a place of openness and willingness.
So I wanna pray for you.
You at the Florence mcclure Women’s correctional facility you watching in Denver, U in the DMV, U in Nigeria, U in London, U in Australia, U in L A A U.
What area of your life could you stand to use more courage.
Can you just for a moment?
Invite this word, this moment into that space, allow it to challenge you.
Allow yourself to be seen, heard, loved. I’ve got a story I wanna share with you.
But first I wanna pray God, we thank you.
Mm Because we recognize that in order for us to be made in your image, that you have to deal with the fact that we don’t always feel that way and yet you are so gracious and so kind towards us.
Father. I thank you for every woman watching.
I thank you that you have plans to prosper her and not to harm her plans to breathe courage in the places and spaces where she needs it the most.
And so God, I pray that you would allow her to be vulnerable with you in your presence.
This time, soul care. God, we invite you into our soul, take a deep look, bring them healing, bring them, bring them restoration, bring them joy, bring them happiness.
Father, have your way in Jesus name. Amen.
So I was studying and praying and thinking about courage and what it means to me, what it means to you, but most importantly, demonstrations of it in the Bible.
Can you just for a minute?
Like if there is an area of your life where you know, you need to show more courage.
Can you just like type it in the comments?
Like can we create just a safe space of transparency and honesty and vulnerability.
Like where is an area of your life where you need to show more courage? Is it in speaking up?
Is it in communicating how you feel? Is it in releasing that business idea?
Maybe it’s like you’re like me and one of the areas where you need to show more courage is like getting behind what God is doing in your life and not shrinking because it’s gonna create friction or could create friction, allow yourself to just type it in the comment because whether we want to admit it or not, if we are still on earth, there is still a place in a space where we could benefit from being more courageous.
Now, you know how I am, I gotta give you the definition of courage, courageous means, not deterred by danger or pain, not deterred by danger or pain.
You know, I was looking in the Bible for a story that I felt would resonate with what it means to not be deterred by danger or pain.
And I found the scripture in Luke seven that I wanna share with you.
It’s Luke seven verse 36 is where I’m gonna start.
You’ve got notes, you know, I want you to get your notepad out because if I had to give this message a title at all, it would be called the cost of courage.
Now, so many of you have not been raised in church like I have.
But for those of you who’ve had, you already know that this text is about the woman who has the Alabaster jar with oil in it.
OK? So I’m gonna just read it says, then one of the Pharisees asked him the him in this text is Jesus.
Let me give you a little background. Jesus is at the home of the Pharisees who are the Pharisees.
You may be wondering the Pharisees were big time haters.
And Jesus say, ok, they were not here for him calling himself the Messiah and they kept setting up these traps where they wanted to trap him into somehow proving that he wasn’t who he said he was OK.
And Jesus with his big bad bowl of self gets invited to have dinner at the home of one of the Pharisees and says, yes, what I’m not going to do is be sitting with my haters and that’s why Jesus is Jesus and I am SJR because I cannot imagine going into the home of someone who I knew wasn’t for me and sitting down with them anyway.
But as I was reading this text, I realized that it had so much less to do with the Pharisees and everything to do with the woman who we’re gonna meet.
So Luke seven verse 36 says, then one of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him and he went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down to eat and behold a woman in the city who was a sinner.
When she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an Alabaster flask of fragrant oil and stood at his feet behind him, weeping and she began to wash his feet with her tears and wipe them with the hair of her head.
And she kissed his feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil.
What I love about this text is when they introduce the woman, they make sure to call this woman a sinner.
Like first of all felt like a read, you know, like don’t just call me a sinner, call me something else.
But I felt like this was so important because that word sin in the Greek literally means to miss the mark.
So we have a woman who’s about to have an encounter with Jesus.
But at this point in her life, she is a woman who misses the mark that has become her identity.
She feels like she’s constantly missing the mark. She is a sinner.
It has gone from something that just happened one time to something that is happening persistently.
Now you may not be willing to call yourself a sinner.
But some of us have come to a place where we live with enough humility where we know I am constantly missing the mark in some area.
But we don’t allow the fact that we missed the mark to become our identity.
And yet some of our sisters.
Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s someone, you know, you’ve come to a place where your identity is wrapped up in the fact that you’ve missed the mark so much.
So that courage for you is impossible because you don’t wanna risk missing the mark again.
I want you to know that as I was reading this text, I thought about you and I want you to know that your identity is not just the fact that you missed here or missed there.
Maybe you missed in the areas of relationship so much so that you don’t wanna show courage in that area again.
Maybe you missed in business so much so that you don’t want to speak up.
You don’t wanna execute that idea. I want you to know that you missing.
The mark is not indicative of who you are in God.
Maybe you’ve missed the mark in the past, but that doesn’t mean that that is the only way that you will continue to show up in the world from here.
So courage, I want you to write this down if this is for you.
Courage is not defined by how I messed up in the past.
It is not defined by how I missed the mark in the past.
Courage is about how I am willing to show up right now, not five minutes ago, not an hour ago, not last week, how I am willing to show up now.
I cannot change the fact that I didn’t have enough courage to do it back then.
I can’t change the fact that I didn’t have enough courage to say the things that I should have said.
But I still have time. I still have air in my lungs.
And so the real question is, how am I going to allow courage to show up where I am right now?
This woman is a sinner, a woman who is constantly missing the mark. What is that mark?
That mark is where God said. This is the spot where I want you to land.
This is the spot where I want you to show up in the world.
And every time she reaches for that, she keeps on missing the mark.
And yet she has another opportunity to show up.
I don’t know who you are, but I want you to know that God has given you another opportunity to reach for that mark again, I don’t know who you are, but I feel it so strongly.
Somewhere along the way, you stopped reaching, you stopped showing up because you got so tired of missing the mark.
And it is easier for you to stay in doubt than to reach and stretch into the realm of faith where you believe that you can hit the mark.
But I hear God saying, if you’re willing to stretch, if you’re willing to keep showing up, that he still has work for you to do, he still has a plan that only incorporates you and this woman who was known for only missing the mark is about to hit the bull’s eye in the grandest way possible.
The text doesn’t tell us where she missed the mark in the past.
But what it does make increasingly clear is that this is the moment that matters the most.
I want you to know. I feel this.
I wish I was like on stage with my organ going behind me because I want you to know that this is the opportunity that matters the most.
This is the moment that matters the most.
I hear God saying that you need to forgive yourself for the areas where you didn’t show up in the past so that you do not miss the mark of this present moment.
I hear God saying that it is time for regret to let you go.
I hear God saying that it is time for shame to let you go.
It is time for you to reach again, to stretch again.
And I don’t care how you have been defining the past, just like this woman.
God is gonna give you courage to hit the bull’s eye where it matters the most.
And that is exactly what happens to this woman.
Our text tells us that this woman approaches this moment with Jesus with a plan.
It tells us in the text that she brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil.
She’s got an intention when she comes to Jesus with this oil.
The goal we know back in those days is to pour out the oil as a sign of anointing.
And she wants to anoint Jesus as a sign of, I know who you are.
I know that you are the king of kings and understand what this moment represents.
And yet before she can do what she thinks she is supposed to do in that moment, she comes undone in verse 38 it says she stood at his feet behind him, weeping.
When we talk about the cost of courage, I have to let you in on a little secret and I have to tell you, you may not want to hear it.
The cost of courage is being willing to come undone.
And the pursuit of her taking this Alabaster flask of oil, she was going there with an intention to anoint Jesus.
And yet the closer she got to pursuing exactly what was in her heart to do, the more she had to come undone.
I don’t know who this is for, but I feel so heavily in my heart that you’ve been trying to hold it together and execute at the same time.
And I hear God saying that if you would give up on holding it all together, I will show you how to execute even when you’re falling apart.
We think that we have to present this pretty little picture of what it looks like to show up.
For God and I hear God saying the prettiest pictures are those who have cried, the ugliest tears.
The prettiest pictures are the ones who have the ugliest thoughts, but show up anyway.
And this woman begins to come undone. There is an undoing, coming to you.
I know that in church and in scripture, we like to hear about how God is gonna bring it all together.
We like to hear about what God is gonna do in our life and how it’s all gonna make sense in the end.
But I wanna challenge you today to recognize that in order for you to lay hold of who God has called you to be for this season of your life that you are gonna have to surrender to the undoing.
What is the undoing, the undoing of your fear, undoing of your pride, the undoing of your ego.
I hear God saying that you can’t hold it together and build what I’m calling you to build at the same time.
But can you do it if tears are streaming down your face, can you do it?
If it means that you have to sit back and cry?
This woman, she stands behind Jesus and she cries, she is so close, yet so far away.
And sometimes we get so close to Jesus.
But the closer we get, the more tender and vulnerable we get, the closer we get to hitting that mark to becoming, we are supposed to be in God to vocalizing our thoughts, to vocalizing our ideas, the closer we get to manifestation, the more we come undone.
Oh I feel this for you.
The enemy has been speaking and by the enemy, I mean, the enemy of your destiny, your doubt, your fear, it speaks louder and louder.
The closer you get to Jesus, the closer you get to manifestation and you like this woman are so close yet so far away and she stands behind Jesus and she weeps.
She allows herself to become undone.
She allows herself to become messy because she’s in the pursuit of acceptance and it’s gonna require courage that she didn’t even know that she had.
So here she is standing behind Jesus.
Some of you, you’re listening to this message and for you, this message is you standing behind Jesus.
It’s saying, I don’t know if I can face this, but I’m gonna stand behind Jesus anyway.
I don’t know if I can actually do what I’m supposed to do, but I’m gonna stand behind anyway.
I don’t know who you are, but I hear God saying that you can show your face to Him even if it means that you are coming undone.
There are moments where we are meant to follow Jesus and in those instances, we do stand behind him.
But before the disciples became followers, they had to face Jesus.
That means that you can be in proximity.
But until you are willing to face off with who God has called you to be, to face off with the path that leads to the best aversion of who you are.
You can be close to anointing but not saturated or walking in it and functioning in, in it or changed or transformed by it because you haven’t faced off with it.
And so this woman becomes undone and yet she still faces off with Jesus.
This woman becomes undone, but yet she still faces off with destiny.
Sis you are that woman and you have been standing behind long enough, I hear God saying that your next dimension of courage, you will not get from standing behind in the shadows pretending like you don’t want it pretending like you don’t care, pretending that you no longer have a desire to show up in a courageous way.
I hear God saying that version of you is never gonna get it done.
You’re gonna continue to be a woman who misses the mark.
The woman that God wants to talk to right now in this moment is the woman who doesn’t mind facing off with Jesus, who doesn’t mind looking him in the face and saying God, what is it that you see God?
What is it that you carry God? I didn’t get this close to you.
I didn’t undo all of my mistakes and undo all of my shame and undo all of my regret to get here and not have destiny.
When I think about my books.
I, I saw Lost and Bound and I posted this on Instagram earlier, earlier this week, I had lost and found sitting right beside a woman evolve.
And I thought to myself when I finished writing my book lost and found that that was it for me.
If you read the book, you know, the book ends.
And I’m like, I don’t know where we go from here, but I am just so glad that I found God’s grace.
I did not realize that there is a step past being found and that step is to step into the perpetual upward cycle of constantly becoming who God has called me to be.
I had to become someone who didn’t mind facing off and saying God change me, mold me, transform me.
And that’s what this woman does.
She takes her broken raggedy undone self and she takes that oil that she carried with her.
And my text tells me that she began to wash his feet with her tears as she was becoming undone.
She brought that undone into the presence of God. I’m undone.
But I know you can use this. I’m undone, but I’m gonna pour it out in front of you.
Anyway, I hear God saying that you have to let the wall down and allow yourself to be undone and still on a mission.
I’m undone, but I’m still gonna do what you’ve called me to do. I’m undone.
I’m gonna cry my tears, but I’m gonna use these tears for your glory and she does exactly what each of us are gonna have to do.
She begins to wash his feet with her tears as I was studying and thinking about this moment, I thought about how her undone.
This even had a purpose. Do you remember? She has the Alabaster flask of oil.
She came to anoint the head of Jesus and yet these tears create an opportunity for her to do more than she even expected to do because God is gonna use every area where you come undone in his presence and show you how to use it for his glory.
This woman becomes undone in his presence.
And so she, before she can do what she wants to do, she has to deal with what has come undone.
Courage is taking the time to say, ok, before I can get to what I have in mind before I can get to the goal that is in my heart and in my life and in my destiny as a part of the vision that I have from my life, I have to do something with this area that I have come undone.
She offers it to Jesus and now it’s time for her to finally stand in the reason why God saved her to finally stand in the reason why God brought her into this moment and brought her into this room.
And what does she do? She cracks open this Alabaster flask and she begins to pour this oil on Jesus Man.
When I was taking notes about this, I thought about how expensive life is because this is not just any ordinary oil, you know, oil comes so easily to us.
Now, you know, you could be uh seduced into thinking that this went on down to Alberson and got her some olive oil from the store and it was just so easy to pour it out.
But this oil, this perfume was so expensive and so treasured and so valuable that you weren’t supposed to just pour it out.
And yet this woman pours it out because there is nothing more important to her in this moment than to give God what cost her?
Oh God, I feel this for you. Life has been so expensive.
It has been costing you and you have been paying the price over and over and over again.
But I hear God saying that when you pay the price to show up that it isn’t an appreciating asset.
It is an appreciating asset. There are moments when we invest into things that are depreciating like cars.
But then there are other moments where we pay the price like in real estate and instead of losing its value, it continues to increase in value.
And I hear God saying that you have been paying the price to show up in life and you feel like you were at a loss and you feel like you are at a deficit.
And every time life asks you for something, you find a way to cough up whatever strength is necessary, you cough up whatever responsibility is necessary for you to stand in that moment.
And I hear God saying that this is an appreciating asset because anything you pour out.
God says I can give it back to you 100 fold.
And this woman wants Jesus to know that I am willing to pour out what costs me.
That knowledge cost you something. Those divorces cost you something that abortion. It cost you something.
Can I talk to some real women today?
Life has been expensive for you and you have continued to pay the price and you have continued to cry the tears.
And yet I hear God saying that you are not crying them in vain that you did not just go through so that you could be empty, living your life in overdraft.
But courage is gonna require in order for you to finally ca cash out on the investment of life that you have continued to pay.
You were gonna have to activate your courage.
And by activating that courage, it is having a one on one encounter with God and finally saying God, this is what it costs to be me.
This is what I went through in order to show up for you.
And God, I just want you to know if there’s any way that you can use it.
If there’s any way that you can find value in it, then I’m not asking for courage, for myself, asking for courage for what you have called me to do.
The difference between us and people who may be asking for courage is that we are asking for courage so that we can tap into what God already knew about us.
I don’t want courage to go out here and be crazy since I already had enough liquid liquid courage.
I don’t want courage to go out here and to make my name great.
I need courage to do what you have called me to do.
I need courage for me to step into the identity that you have connected to my name.
It’s gonna take courage to raise that child. It’s gonna take courage to stay in that marriage.
It’s gonna take courage to walk away from that relationship. But you’re not asking God for more of your courage.
You’re asking God for more of His courage.
What is an area of your life where you can say God, I need more of your courage and God can bless you with that courage.
Because what you’re pursuing and what he is pursuing is the same thing because when you are in connection with God, what you are pursuing and what he is pursuing is the same thing.
And so yes, we need more courage for this and this woman, she pours out what caused her and child, the saints are having a fit because they are thinking to themselves.
There are so many other things that we could have done with this and yet she continues to pour it out in Jesus.
Jesus acknowledges this poor and Luke seven, verse 47 you have to really read this whole thing to get the full picture.
But in verse 47 it says after they’ve told her over and over again, they’ve told Jesus and they’ve gone back and forth with Jesus about how she shouldn’t have done this.
And how if he were really the Son of God, he would not have allowed this.
But verse 47 really summarizes his thoughts towards this moment.
It says, therefore, I say to you her sins which are many are forgiven for she loved much, but to whom little is forgiven.
The same loves little. Then he said to her, your sins are forgiven.
So in the middle of them debating whether or not she should have done what she didn’t do, which isn’t this exactly why we don’t operate in courage.
Another reason at least is the debate that we feel like other people are gonna have about our actions.
And yet the only thing that matters in this moment is not what everyone else was saying.
It’s what Jesus said to her.
That’s why for me, this moment, even in my own life is about me being able to say, God, I’m pouring out what you gave me, I’m pouring out every idea.
I’m pouring out every concept and I don’t know what people are gonna say and I don’t know how people are gonna feel, but I’m gonna pour it out anyway.
Because what I wanna hear more than anything is Sarah, your season of missing the mark is away.
That word forgiven. It means away because I have poured out much because I have loved to my capacity, my prayers that I will hear God say.
You know what I know what it cost you.
I know who you had to become in order to step into this moment.
And because you paid the price, those moments of you missing the mark, they’re away from you sis.
I couldn’t talk about courage this month without challenging you to come to a place where you are willing to show up and to believe and trust and have faith that God is gonna be with you, that he’s gonna do the rest.
I’m challenging myself and I hope I’m challenging you too, but I am challenging myself to show up in the space of courage in a way I’ve never done before because I wanna pour it all out when you get desperate to pour out what cost you when you get desperate to pour it out.
Um And what do I mean by pour it out? It means that I want to use it all.
I want to figure out how to recover from this.
I wanna figure out why you put me in this situation. I want to use it all.
I want that wisdom to show up. I want that strength to show up.
I don’t wanna just keep paying and storing it up for myself. I want to use it all.
I wanna be when it’s all said and done. And so here I am use me.
There’s just a few things I want to share with you before we go.
I want you to consider and this is kind of like where, hey, you really gets personal because I’m gonna share with you a few things.
And then I wanna challenge you to take some time, maybe time that you would have used taking this whole hour of soul care.
I want you to take the remaining time that you have set apart and I wanna challenge you to worship.
And I know some of you are already thinking about maybe the song you wanna play, but I wanna challenge you to go even deeper and to not think of worship in the context of playing a song.
But to have courageous worship without any music.
Worship is our ability to open up our heart.
And I wanna dare you to be alone with God for a moment, this woman, she was on a mission and the only person that mattered in that moment was her and Jesus.
I wanna invite you into an opportunity to have courageous worship.
And to bring into your prayer closet, to bring into your life, an area where you feel like, you know what I do need more courage right there, there’s a few things that I want you to consider as you have this time with yourself, this time with God.
What would it being courageous look like for you?
Now, this month, we’re talking about being courageously free.
We’re talking about courageous worship and we’re talking about even being courageous in the way that we communicate.
What would it look like for you to be courageous in this moment? Let’s dream.
Let’s write the vision and make it plain. What does that courageous version of you look like?
Who is she in meetings? Who is she with her friends? Who is she in ministry?
Who is she when she writes, who is she when she sings?
Who is she when she sets up things and organizes? Who is this courageous woman? What does she do?
What does she dare to not do?
I want you to write that vision of yourself down, write it down and I want you to put it somewhere where you constantly have to see it.
That is your mark. And it’s so important that we do this in the presence of God because God determines where we really need to be courageous.
Because some of us, you know, maybe not you, maybe someone you know would be like, I need to be a little bit more courageous than wearing these clothes.
I need to have something known as a little bit more spicy.
I don’t know if God is calling you to be more courageous in that area.
But in the presence of God, he qualifies the area where we need to be more courageous.
I might say I need to be more courageous than telling these folks off.
I don’t know if that’s where God is calling us to be courageous.
Maybe it is, this is your opportunity to have relationship with God.
But in God’s presence with God in mind, I want you to consider what being courageous would look like for you.
And then you know what I want you to do.
I want you to go a step a step higher.
And I want you to ask what’s keeping me from tapping into that? OK.
So this is what courageous version of me looks like, but what’s keeping me from tapping into that?
What am I afraid of? Is it rejection? Is it inadequacy? What am I afraid of?
And when we pinpoint what we’re afraid of, when we pinpoint that actual feel, I want that actual fear.
I want you to ask yourself, is this worth it? Can I recover from this?
Is this even true? My value is not connected to my outcome.
My value is connected to my identity.
So the outcome doesn’t have anything to do with my per my, my value.
That is my perceived value, but that’s not my actual value. OK.
So once we determine that I want you to come to a place where you are like this woman, one of the things that I love the most about the woman in this text, the woman with the Alabaster flask of oil is that while the Pharisees were judging by religious standards, this woman took a chance on relationship, she took a chance that she would do something that would be meaningful to God because it was from her heart.
And because it was personal and she received a response, a response that was so remarkable that Jesus says to her, your days of missing the mark are over, they’re forgiven, they are away from you.
And she was able to go from not just being courageous to being confident with a blank slate.
I’m looking forward to this moment for me, this moment of courage for me because, you know, my book is coming out April 6th.
And um you know, I feel such such peace about what God has done in my life and this is me actually sharing it.
And it’s weird to be sharing it without being in a room because when you’re in a room, you can tell when people are receiving it.
But this is just like on paper and I’m having to just share my heart and share what God has shown me on paper.
And this is courage for me because it’s causing me to walk in this form of leadership that confronts my inadequacy.
If you remember, maybe you don’t know, maybe you do because I had my chat at such an early age and because I broke all of these church rules, I never felt qualified to be in leadership.
And yet God gave me this vision of woman evolve and what it could mean for women.
And so much of this is built on me being just like you.
And yet in order for me to really champion this book, I have to put on the hat of a leader and being a leader is scary for me because it brushes up this idea of you are not qualified to be a leader.
You’ve made too many mistakes, you’ve messed up too many times.
And yet I’m stepping into it anyway, because I believe in what God has done in my life and I believe that it’s gonna bless every woman who dares to open her heart and receive it.
And so this is my courage on display.
You’re walking this thing out with me, you’re watching me go through it, but I don’t want to do it on my own.
Yours may not be writing a book, but wherever your area of growth connected to courage is sis, please don’t make me do this by myself.
Step into the awkward, uncertain, unexpected way of living.
It makes you log into, hey, you expecting one thing and discovering another.
It makes you walk into boardrooms thinking that you’re one way and walking out with the confidence that you can actually do this.
I believe that there is so much that God wants to reveal to us about us, but we have to get out of the way.
I wanna pray with you.
I wanna pray that that fear version of you, that, that insecure version of you, that that inadequate version of you would begin to shrivel up and die.
Yeah, that version of you has gotta go.
That version of you has way too much courage and it’s keeping you from tapping into who God created.
Who God formed. I’m gonna be praying for fresh wind for you and for me, for fresh strength, for you and for me, for vision that we wouldn’t grow weary, that we would be confident that God began to work in us and He’s not gonna leave us undone that he’s gonna finish it if we would dare to start it.
Thank you for the women connected to this word.
Those women who are ready to step into courage.
God, I thank you that we don’t have to do it alone, that your courage is waiting to be released.
If we’re willing to open up, I hear you saying God that you can’t release courage to closed jars.
And so we open our hearts, we open our minds, we open our spirits and we say poor if you’re at home and you can’t, I just want you to open your hands like you’re receiving something.
This is a sign of surrender. God.
We open our hearts, we open our mind, we open our spirit.
And we say, if the heavens are open and you’re pouring, pour us out the reflection of who you had in mind, pour us out the image of who you’ve called us to be.
Pour us out courage, father. And as you pour out courage, we pour out our fears, we pour out our worries, we pour out our stress, we pour out our concerns and we say less of it and more of you, less of it and more of you father for my sister, less of it and more of you for my mother, less of it and more of you for my friend’s father, less of it and more of you because we recognize that when we have more of you that we lack nothing.
I rebuke father the spirit of inadequacy. I rebuke it in the name of Jesus.
I break the stronghold off of our relationship with fear. I break the stronghold off of our relationship with anxiety.
I break this stronghold off of our relationship with confusion, confusion, I speak clarity over their minds.
God, I speak clarity over their vision. I speak clarity over their creativity.
Oh God, that as they begin to take seriously their ability to walk and encourage that you would make clear the steps that they must do next.
Like the woman in this text, father that they will know when to wash your feet with their tears and when to dry it with their hair and when to pour out the oil.
I hear timing, I hear process. I hear procedure.
Father and I thank you that that is those are all of the things that you wanna give us a father.
We receive your timing, your process, your strategy, your procedure.
God, I’m praying that we would allow this word to sink into the most vulnerable tender parts of our heart.
And from that place that you would plant seeds, seeds of courage, seedss of strength, seeds of power.
And then this word would be sealed and that we would continue an environment of peace, presence and power so that those seeds can take root and change the fruit that we’ve been eating.
God, thank you for giving us this time together. Blessed father, forgive us of our sins.
We repent for our flawed way of thinking, transform our minds and make us new and Jesus’s name.
And then, hey, you, thank you for trusting me.
Thank you for taking a chance on what God is doing through my life in my life and believing in the overflow that touches your life.
You always know that we’re here. We’re ready to serve you.
I’m gonna ask them to put our texting number on the screen here, text us.
How can we pray with you? How can we connect with you? Write us.
Can, can you put that on the screen too? Write us, send us letters.
We wanna know how we can serve you.
And as always, if you wanna give to what God is doing through woman evolve, whether it’s just sowing the seed of agreement into this word, or you wanna continue to help us reach our sisters who are currently in correctional facilities or who are being rehabilitated.
You guys can. So that information is on the screen.
My prayer is that as we grow and evolve, that we would leave no woman behind.
It’s not enough for me to win.
If I don’t grab your arm and drag you across the finish line too.
If you’re watching at the Florence mcclure Correctional Facility or the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility, I just want you to know that God loves you and so do we and not just me, there’s a whole army of woman evolved cheerleaders that believe in what God is doing in your life.
We love you so much. We’re honored to serve you.
We can’t wait to continue to get to know you better and just know that whenever you’re released or for however long you’re in there that you can stay connected to us by writing.
We have so many gifts and goodies that we’re gonna be sending you.
But the most important thing that we can share with you is our love and our belief that this thing is not over.
It’s just getting started. We’re in your corner. We’ll see you next month for hey you, it’s gonna be special.
I’m gonna be back on the platform somewhere because you know courage has its limits, ok?
I’ll see you next time.
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- Friday Morning Prayers! 💌🙏❤️Tháng tám 11, 2023
