I am a member of Lynn Haven United Methodist Church. Our church host's an annual women's conference called "Hope for the Heart." This has a become a much anticipated event for all the women in our church as well as the surrounding areas. We have women attending from all over. I think this year we had women represented here from over 100 churches. Each year we host a guest speaker and/or a worship leader. This year we were blessed to have Babbi Mason and Donna Douglas. They were awesome and had us either crying our eyes out or laughing till we almost wet ourselves. (Yes God's word was/is that good.) :=) I am not sure who was the funniest among this duo. These ladies were good friends and it showed in their worship and praise of God. We all learned how to "boogie down" with soul searching gospel music. Truly it was an awesome sight to see over 500 women with hands raised high praising God with whatever rhythm God gave them. ;-0 Ha! It is a wonderful experience to worship God together with a bunch of women....or "girlies" as Babbi and Donna were fond of calling us. I love that term....girlies! Everyone should have their girlfriends or girlies to talk, laugh, cry, share with.This conference is on a Friday night and Saturday morning. As part of the conference weekend the ladies of our church are asked to host a table of eight for lunch on Saturday. I have been blessed to be able to do this for many years. I love it when I get a group of ladies at my table that I never met. This gives me an opportunity to share the love of Christ with those who may or may not know the Lord. I have been amazed at how God has blessed me with so many wondeful new friends. Anyway each hostess has her own set of dishes and she decorates her table with a theme. It can be any theme, elaborte, simple, silly, fancy...you name it...I have seen it all from china sets to plastic to paper dishes. If I can figure out how to post a few pictures of the tables I will in the next blog so you can see how awesome they are.
With all that said I wanted to share with you a constant struggle I have every year when this conference comes along. My struggle is with girl cliques. Do you know what a clique is? In Webster's dictionary one of the definitons of clique is.......small, exclusive group of people; coterie; set. Now I don't just struggle with this area of life at this conference but have struggled with this all my life. I have never liked when cliques form because they leave people out. As a child the teachers thought there was something wrong with me.........about 4th grade.....my parents were called because they said I never hung out with a group of girls. I didn't have a best friend and I was very content with my own company whether it was reading a book or just hanging out. I did on occasion get involved with whatever activity was going on at the playground like volleyball, softball etc. But I rarely followed the crowd. My parents asked me why I didn't have any friends that I hung out with. I remember telling them that I didn't like that people were left out of the groups....so I intentionally left myself out so that I could be friends with everybody. Such a simple concept but one that I find hits me in the face every day. You see at this conference I want to hang out with my girlies or my chicas as I call them. I just want to be one of the girls. What's wrong with this anyway? This year I had this thought........this year I am just going to be one of the girls. I am going to hang out with someone and just enjoy myself. After all this conference is for me. Do you see how many "me, myself and I" are in that statement? So I struggled all day Friday afternoon as I set up my table for the luncheon. I prayed and prayed for God to reveal to me what I should do about this. But until I got my answer I decided I would just continue to do what I have done in the past and that is to just befriend everyone. This was Friday night. Saturday morning I ran into a friend from a Sunday school class and the first thing she said to me was.....I hate clique's. HELLO! Was that from God or what? She said she struggled in this area for the very reasons I do. Now I am not saying that there is anything wrong with hanging out with your girlies. Some people are more comfortable in a group then they are alone. I totally get that but I have been one of those girls on the outside looking in. I have been made to feel like I don't belong if I don't say the right thing, live in the right house, have the right clothes etc. It is not a good feeling to feel excluded regardless of the reason. We are all different and yet we are all children of God. He loves all of us and he calls all of us to love one another. In the bible in the book of Mark chapter 12 verses 28-33....The Greatest Commandment.................. One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these."
"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." WOW! Is God awesome or what!! Anyway.......later on I talked to my mentor (if you don't have one of those.......get one) about what I had struggled with and how I felt God leading me. She affirmed that it was right to reach out to those who are not from our church and make them feel welcome. We had over 260 women from other areas there. WOW! Some of those ladies came alone, didn't know a soul and needed a helping hand, a smile or personal touch. As a woman from that church I felt............. no I knew I needed to reach out to as many as I could. I met some interesting sweet people. I say all this to open up your eyes to step out of your comfort zone and reach out to those in your areas of work, play, church...whatever it may be. As women it's okay to have our girlies....it's even good for us to have those to whom we confide in and share with. But there are also times when it's good to reach out. Make sure whatever group(s) you are involved with aren't closed groups....we have to be open to the lost. Don't just be one of the girls...........be a woman of faith for Christ and let Him use you. Until next time be blessed.
No comments:
Post a Comment