part one
I talk to women all the time about their blogs and their online businesses. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Help them determine who they’re writing to and what those people want to hear. When it comes to my own little space on the internet, it’s always harder. Who am I writing to? What does she want/need/have to hear? The last thing I want to be is a clanging cymbal or a woman making noise that doesn’t bring Glory to Him alone.
I finally asked a precious friend the other night for some vision for my online voice. She said what I’ve known all along, but somehow lost along the way. She said:
“I think you need to be writing to you five years ago. Young moms or wives of husbands in ministry or women struggling with depression or women figuring out what biblical womanhood looks like, women trying to find their place in the online world — one or all of the above. Write to them and give them some grace-filled hope. Not a ‘how-to’ guide, but stories of what happened along the way for you“.
That felt right. It felt good to remember that those are the women who make my heart beat faster and my blog is a letter to them.
part two
I have heard about people who make hard choices and give up good things for the sake of better things. I have heard of those people and not quite identified with them because the last few years have been so much about adding for me. Adding a baby, adding a business here and there, adding a church planting endeavor into our lives. Others would look at our lives or schedule or workload and say, “I just don’t see how it all fits. I don’t see how this will work.” And in over-optimism I would blink back tears and say, “It will. It just will. Because it has to!”
This past week the Lord caught up with me and said, “No more.” No more pretending that I can add and add and never take away. And He helped me take some much beloved things off my plate and out of my life. Good things. Amazing things. Things I loved. But He loved me enough to help me see that there has to be space.
Psalm 18:19 has been my battle-cry this week. “He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me, because He delighted in me.” It is for my good that the Lord brought space. It was His rescue for me, and it was absolutely because He delights in me and loves me.
part three
The other day I heard a pastor preaching on Joshua 14 where Caleb goes to Joshua and asks for the land that the Lord promised to him through Moses. The idea of us claiming things that the Lord has promised to us instead of wimping around like people who can’t trust our Father is one I can’t get out of my head. If He promises something to us, we can depend on it, right?
I am trying to be obedient and listen very hard to what He wants me to do and say and not do or not say. And I am also asking that He would give me my land. In the spaces where I know He wants me to be, like my blog, I’m asking that He’d set me free in those broad spaces to make much of Him. I’m asking that He’d save me from wasting my time and that He’d rescue me from the easy-to-fall-into trap of creating a kingdom or even a website that is about me or glorifying to myself.
In all the areas where He wants me to be — my home, my blog, our church, my kid’s school, the Influence network — I’m praying He’d give me my land and enable me to work for the harvest well.
And I’m wondering, what about you?
What land has He promised you?
Jess Connolly is a gal who wants to leave the world more in awe of God than she found it. She’s a passionate entrepreneur, author and speaker and loves talking to women about Jesus on the internet or over coffee. She and her husband Nick have recently planted Gospel Community Church in Charleston, SC. Jess is the cofounder of The Influence Network and the lead designer + owner of Naptime Diaries Shop. Her first book, Wild and Free, co-written with Hayley Morgan, will be out in spring 2016 with Zondervan. She blogs at jessconnolly.com.
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