Do You Believe You are His Glory?

Do you believe you are His Glory?

What if you did?

What if you really believed He has snatched you out of sin to present you as a gift to the Father?

What if you believed your life could truly please God?

You wouldn’t be afraid. You would know you are a leader and that leadership would propel you forward — always forward.

In this moment, I invite you to encounter Christ’s deep love for you. Fill up the pool of your heart with His radical love for you. He is the proof you seek. He is here. He has ransomed you and He wants you to be the ransom for many others through your leadership.

Why do we run away from the deep call to mother-leadership?

If we refuse to be the leaders — the conduit of grace to those around us — it is often because we refuse to believe that we are. We forget to remember that the first principle of our leadership is Christ. His grace- – His scares come before us. His pouring out of Himself is the genesis of our leadership — not us — not our worth — not our skill — not our goodness — not our ability or lack thereof. We are leaders because He makes us so, and this leadership looks like you.

It looks like you being a pool that He fills up to overflowing — cascading outward into the the hearts of others. It looks just like you holding your baby in the middle of the night as that sweet little thing vomits all over you. It looks like you as you listen patiently to a friend, absorbing their aches and trials into your heart. It looks like you when you wrestle with anxiety in growing your business. It looks like you as you bear the weight of your teenagers and it looks like you as you strive to heal your homes, your husbands, and your hearts by failing forward a million times in a week.

Accepting that you are a leader is no small thing. It means that you are made for great things.

As we dive deeply into this beautiful Advent season, our gaze turns toward Mary — the Theotokos — the God Bearer. Isn’t this the truest desire of your heart? To lead by bearing God to others?

While her heroic “Yes” to mother-leadership was exceptional, we often forget that she stood before impossibility when the angel asked her to be the mother of the Savior. She did not run away. She did not heed the lies that the enemy in Revelation 12 spewed out of his mouth as water to engulf her. She had every reason to run away from her “fiat” moment; to embrace the lies, the chaos, the intelligibility of it it all; to allow the turbulence of anxiety and fear to take over. And yet she stood and held fast to the call to lead and she stepped into her “Yes.”

You, too, must say “Yes!” You must silence the lies that the enemy suggests to you. “I’m just a mom. I don’t know what to do or say. I am really lazy or I don’t pray enough. I am not qualified enough. I am just not ready. I am too wounded. I am too broken. Why would anyone listen to me?”

Christ has crushed all the lies. He says to you and me, in contrast to the water of lies the enemy offers, “I have washed you. You belong to me. I am the proof of your justification. I am the proof that you are a leader. I am pouring myself into you. Overflow into others.”

You see we lead because of the treasure we bear within in us. Not because of the brokenness of our vessels.

So I ask you, “Are you are living in someone else’s chaos? Are you shaken by the turbulence of anxiety?”

Hear the Lord speak to you in Advent love, “I came for you, to die for you, to bring about your radiant smile. No darkness can silence that beauty. I’ve come to work in you.”

The deeper you accept His desire for you, His thirst for you and His desire to quench your thirst, the more you will see, there is nothing you cannot do and the more radiant your life will become.

“But” you interject, “I am nothing.”

I say to you and to all my fellow mother-leaders, stop saying, “You are nothing!”

That’s not the point.

He is everything!

We ladies tend to make the reality of our nothingness the end of it all, when in truth, it is just the beginning.

Mary dared to follow. She said, “I want you to be everything in my life.” And when she said this, He crushed the darkness. Through pain, chaos, darkness, He led her.

You’re here, reading this, for a reason bigger than what you can imagine.

All the boxes you find yourself in right now … He knows what they are. He will work through them. He is not done with you yet! He is jealous for you and He wants you to lead.

Copyright 2019 Chantal Howard.

This article was originally published at CatholicMom.com and is shared here with permission.