Standing Strong: Overcoming Adversity & Living ConfidentlySample

You Were Born for This 

We live in a culture that constantly tells us who we should be as women. We’re told to eat according to the latest diet trend, work out like it’s our job, and hustle our way to happiness. And we’re supposed to do these all while looking perfectly made up and put together and with a closet so organized that we personally keep the label-maker business profitable. 

It’s exhausting.

Here’s the thing: we want our lives to matter, we want to take care of ourselves, we want to move past the pain and the pandemics, we want to win the fight against adversity, and we want to find some happiness this side of heaven.

But there are so many mixed messages, combined with our own self-doubt, that we get stuck and wonder exactly where our place is. 

Have you heard someone say, even jokingly, that “a woman’s place is in the kitchen” or board room or fill-in-the-blank? For Christians, however, a woman belongs in only one place: squarely in the center of wherever God has sent her.

A woman’s place is changing the world around her.

A woman’s place is with her Savior, led by the Holy Spirit wherever God calls her—taking action, rejecting lies, stepping up, dreaming big, being brave, learning how to fight, and then to fly.

We have many great women of God to whom we can look.

• Deborah used her greatness to step up when no one else would (Judges 4).
• Abigail learned what it meant to be great when she rolled up her sleeves and saved her household (1 Samuel 25).
• Rahab taught us that greatness can look like protecting those who can’t protect themselves (Joshua 2).
• Esther showed us that greatness means being willing to take the ultimate risk, even if you’re not sure of the outcome (Esther 5–7).
• The Proverbs 31 woman demonstrated greatness in how she managed her home and her business (Proverbs 31).

God has a habit of raising up great women in every era, and he wants you to join this lineage. 

If any of these great women of God in the Bible were sitting in front of us, I bet they would say they didn’t feel they were great at the time. They would tell us stories of their ordinary lives and how they trusted and obeyed God in seemingly mundane ways. In other words, they were just like us.

You were born for this—to shake off the limitations that others have imposed on your life. You were born to overcome the adversity that you fear will overtake you. You were born to tear down the false beliefs you have about yourself and to embrace the calling God is wooing you toward.

Are you ready to let go of the self-doubt that’s holding you back?

Are you ready to let God strengthen you in the face of adversity?

Are you ready to stand strong as a woman of God?

Action Step: A woman’s place is wherever God sends her. Take a moment to consider where you feel “sent to” in your current season. Are you stepping confidently into the place God has sent you? Why or why not? 

Prayer: Lord, I’ve felt less than and left out. At times, I’ve given in to fears and doubts. But I know that you have called me to be a great woman of God. Would you strengthen me and lead me into the place you’ve called me to? I’m ready to stand strong with you by my side. Amen.