Fear, Purpose & Public Speaking

This cartoon is one of my husband's all-time favorites. I think it's interesting because instead of fearing public speaking, I feel compelled to do it. Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to teach at a friend's church for a women's conference. 130 women of all ages came to enjoy some time together, several high quality seminars, worship, and me. It was especially strange to realize that my picture was plastered all over her church and was sent to hundreds of women, inviting them to come and listen to me share what was on my heart.

I always fear that it seems like pride to put myself out there, to think that I have anything to offer these women, to get up on a stage and ask for their undivided attention. It is a strange thing. And yet, since I was 18 years old I have believed that this is what God has had for me, this is what he has asked of me. He has asked me to lay down my fears, lay my reputation on his altar, and leap in faith. An absurd sort of faith that God is speaking things to me that he wants shared with others.

While trying to pursue what God has told me, I have feared everything from humiliating failure to delusional thoughts. How can we really know when God is speaking to us? We just have to jump. Jump out off the cliff that we fear most and hope that God will catch us and keep the word we think he has given us.

And he did. Two weeks ago I stood up in front of women of all ages and told them that I knew the purpose for their lives. I looked them in their aging eyes and told them that they are beautiful, and wonderfully made, and that they were designed for love. They were created to be objects of affection. Their purpose is, and always has been, to love and be loved.

We laughed and cried together as I walked them through the seasons of life that we face as women. I knew I was connecting with them and I loved it.

And as I shared these things, even as I think of them now, my heart swells with the love that I know God has for them, with the love God longs for them to know and feel and share and delight in. When I stand on that stage my one purpose is to get at their hearts and then to let God fill them up. When I do this time flies.

When I practiced my two teachings they both came out to 30 minutes. This was strange and troubling. I tend to be a person who can barely be kept to a 45 minute time frame, and I was supposed to fill 50, for each teaching. This made me nervous, but I thought, well, now I can slow down and share a few more stories, be ready to share something God spontaneously puts on my heart.

And I filled the time. I was nervous and insecure about what these women would think of me, and yet absolutely sure that this is what God had for me. I don't know why he chose me for this. I just know that he did. And I delight to speak of the love of God to anyone who will listen.

In one of the seminars I went to, the teacher asked what things we enjoy so much that time flies. What kind of things do we start in on and look up to find that an hour has passed in a blink? When I teach that certainly happens, probably why it's so hard for me to keep to a set time frame. When I read or write, time passes without me even knowing it. I used to draw a lot, and I remember getting lost in my charcoal and pencils and sketchbook, completely unaware of an outside world. I love those things. The things that we were made to do, that our whole being gets wrapped up in, that get our hearts and minds and bodies and souls all engaged at once.

I wonder if you've found something like that. If you feel that you know what you were created to do. I'd love to hear if you do.



Me and my chica's hanging out at the conference: Andrea (a.k.a. my rockin' guest artist who sang two powerful songs for the conf.) and Crystal the Beautiful (my dearly missed friend and MC for the conf.).