It's Time
My 11th book “baby” was released this week and the joy has been enormous!
I believe that it is the book that I was born to write. Let me tell you why …
When I was a young woman, I was highly influenced by the teaching and the writing of a woman by the name of Elisabeth Elliot.
Elisabeth’s husband, Jim, had been murdered by the Auca Indians just a few years after their marriage and she had continued to minister to this people group and eventually helped win them to Jesus.
Elisabeth became the voice of wisdom for women in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. She encouraged women to love the years of serving their families and to rest in God’s calling for their lives.
She also spoke to the sticky topic of suffering and how even suffering can become a place of deep joy.
Elisabeth called the women of my generation to live a life of significance and influence for the glory of God.
I pray deeply that my book, “Significant” will do the same for the women under my watch.
It is my delight to share with you, my family of readers, an excerpt from this book today:
In the Scriptures, we see that God used women for specific purposes and assignments.
His methods have not changed, because He is a God who is consistent in His plans: “For I, the Lord, do not change” (Malachi 3:6).
God entrusted Eve to be the mother of all the living, despite the troubling fact that Eve had doubted Him and then given in to sin.
God chose Sarah to give birth to a baby boy whose descendants would become a great nation, even though, at age ninety, her cheeks were wrinkled and her body was about as ripe as a dried-up prune!
God elected Esther, a victim of sexual trafficking, to save a people.
God picked the obscure Deborah to serve as a judge over a nation.
God used a homemaker named Hannah and her desperate prayers to change the course of a nation’s history.
God appointed Rahab, a prostitute, to help the people of God win a great victory.
God chose a young, grieving widow named Ruth to be part of the line of the Messiah as she quietly believed in His intervention when all natural hope was gone.
God selected Elizabeth, a righteous, older woman, to raise a strong- willed boy who would prepare the way of the Lord.
God appointed Mary, a teenage virgin, to give birth to the Savior of the world.
God chose Mary Magdalene to demonstrate that a woman who had formerly been trapped in the demonic darkness of sin could have the propensity to lavishly love her Savior and minister to Him when others chose to judge and ridicule Him.
Have you seen yourself in this cast list yet?
Do you feel that God just might be calling you out of your insecurities so you can move past your place of pain or stagnation and into a new season of purpose?
Would you accept a change in assignment or in possibility?
Consider this additional question: Would you take some time today to dream with the Father and to hear His voice concerning the years that you have remaining on earth—whether it is one year or fifty years?
“Holy Spirit – think through me until Your ideas are my ideas.” – Amy Carmichael
As I was dreaming with God recently, He spoke a word to my heart that has emphatically changed my focus and my job description: “Carol, you are in the army now!”
If you knew me, you would understand how absurd that is in the natural course of who I am and how I have been wired as a woman.
I am a woman who loves peace, who quietly encourages others, and who desper- ately needs creature comforts.
And yet, I heard the voice of my Father say, “It is time for women to go to war!”
There is a battle raging for the lives of men, women, and children, and it is time for the women of this generation to exert their influence and their power to strategically battle on behalf of those who are caught in the crossfire.
It is time for us to believe that we are significant and to respond as such.
We must discern what our specific role and calling in life is.
Perhaps you have been called to care for the wounded, which is a powerful and significant assignment! Serve well as you meet the needs of the broken with compassion and kindness.
But perhaps, like me, you are now called to join the army of God at this exciting moment in history. We are the ones who must rise up and fight so that there will no longer be so many who need critical care.
We must lend our voices, our hearts, our gifts, and our time to the Great Commission and to the battle to prevent others from experiencing pain.
It’s time for today’s women of God to rise up against the powers of darkness, against the slavery of sexual predators, against the thief of depression, and against the lie of eating disorders.
It’s time for the women of God of this generation to say, “No more!” to abuse, to pornography, to addictions, and to self-harm.
It’s time for the women of God to raise a standard of moral purity, to demonstrate the strength that is extracted only from the joy of His presence, and to live the abundant life that Jesus alone can give.
It’s time.
I believe that God is raising up a generation of “Esthers.”
He is not raising up just one Esther, but He is raising up an entire generation of women who have been born “ for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14).
God is raising up a generation of women who know the power of fasting, who are not intimidated by the compromise of the culture, and who are willing to stand against demonic spirits.
God is raising up a generation of women who are not afraid of dying, but who are determined to live boldly and courageously on the battlefield of life.
What will your role be?
Because you will, indeed, play a role in the plan of God during your lifespan.
Will you cower or will you care?
Will you be afraid or will you be a force to be reckoned with? Will you truly live or will you merely die?
It’s time for the women of God to go to “war.” It’s time.
Thanks for listening to my heart this week. As you know by now, my heart is truly not a perfect heart but it is a heart that is filled to overflowing with gratitude for the life I have been given and for the people who walk with me. And, it continues to be a heart that is relentlessly chasing after God and all that He is!