Take the Lead Devotion

A few years back, I attended a women's event held by my pastor's wife.  The event was called Take The Lead.  It was all about letting God take the lead of your life, as well as being a leader in spiritual maturity and stability.  I truthfully credit a large portion of my spiritual growth to the things I learned that night.  The event was themed with arrows; and we were each given an arrow bracelet to take home.  The church kindly gave me the extra bracelets from the event to take to women in Honduras on my trip that year.  I translated my notes from the event into Spanish and gave it to the mothers and Sunday school teachers of the children I worked with, along with the bracelets and some chocolate.  I loved getting to encourage the women who take care of my sponsored children every day, that they have the ability to be strong leaders in their families and be transformed beyond their surroundings- because they have the same God who I have.  One day when we took the children swimming, a group of women called to me from the pool and pointed to their wrists.  They were excitedly wearing their arrow bracelets.  Below is the Take the Lead notes I often send to my sponsored children's mothers, and to my sponsored girls who are 15 and older.  If you would like a Spanish copy, please contact me for the word document.

From the event in 2015

Praying with women in  Honduras as they received their bracelets

Take The Lead

When you receive Jesus and become a woman of God, He is the stability that will lead you to everything else you will ever need- your physical needs, emotional needs, spiritual needs, and your ministry to others.  Now that you are a child of God, He will take care of everything else and take the lead in your life.  Philippians 4:19 says, “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”  Once you are a child of God, many attacks from the enemy may come to cloud your vision.  This devotion includes steps to recognize when the enemy is coming to cloud your vision, and how to let God take the lead in your life and lead you to spiritual maturity in these areas.  With the devotion, you are receiving a bracelet with an arrow on it.  This arrow is to remind you to rise up and let God take the lead in all areas of your life.

Things that may cloud your vision:

-Being too busy comparing.  When you compare yourself, your looks, your beliefs, your personality, or your boundaries to what you see around you, even within the church, you can forget to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”, as it says in Romans 12:2.  It is very daunting to live with chains attached to what you see around you, rather than breaking free and letting the Holy Spirit inside of you transform you in all ways.

-Having negative or ungodly voices in your life, telling you things that are not the truth.  There also may be an overload of too many voices, whether good or bad, or an imbalance in the voices you listen to (listening to and putting too much stock into only one main person’s opinions, maybe a boyfriend or other very influential person in your life).  This can cloud your heart from putting the voice of Jesus above all else and believing Him no matter what.

-Having an unhealthy attachment to entertainment, media, or distracting things.  Things like phones, computers, and fun outgoings are all good things, but can be distracting or just exhausting if they are the main part of your life.  This can lead to ungodly thinking, or even just distraction.

-Losing hope.  Feeling disappointment, depression, or fear.  These things can put a fog in front of you to the point where you don’t feel like you can see the truth any more.  Disappointment can also cause you to question what you know to be true. 

-Forgetting Who you truly belong to.  When all of the above things are clouding your vision, you may get so caught up in them that you lose sight of the fact that you are a child of the King, an overcomer, who has already been given victory over the things listed above.

How to Let Jesus Truly Take the Lead in Your Life:

-Understand His true nature.  If you read His Word and learn Who He is and is not, what He does and does not do, and what He does and does not say, and then dwell on those things daily, it will be easier to recognize when something is coming to cloud your vision.

-Acknowledge Him.  If you automatically turn to Him and recognize His goodness in every situation, you will remember that there is an answer and resolution, even if you don’t know what it is.

-Trust His leading.  Automatically choosing to say YES to what He asks of you without hesitating or trying to find a way out with always lead to the quickest and best outcome.  You may be tempted to think, “What if this happens?  What if that happens?”…but, what if you trust Him?  What He has for you is, as the bible says in Ephesians 3:20, “immeasurably more than all that we can ask or think.” 

-Don’t give in to defeat.  It is perfectly okay to grieve, but do not get stuck living in feelings of failure.  You are an overcomer!  God has redeemed you and given you the capability to be mature and press on!  You can be transformed and be a leader!  For greater is He in you than He who is in the world and in your defeat.  You don’t have to understand the thing that hurt you to understand the greater One inside of you.

Your heart was made to belong to Him.