What is God speaking to you?

Today I want to pause and let’s share one aha moment or one takeaway from Chapters One, Two, or Three in this study.

Can I share mine?

My desire has always been to impact people with my faith, but in the past year I’ve felt a burden for women across the world. In the powerful book, Half the Sky, the authors detail oppression of women across the world.

It’s hard to read.

It’s hard to imagine.

Yet I just returned from a trip where I saw it close and upfront.

When forced to acknowledge that half the women across the world live in oppression — from sexual slavery to a lack of education and opportunities, or a safe place to live — it can feel overwhelming, as if there’s nothing we can do.

Half the Sky author Sheryl WuDunn, reminds us that, “Our focus has to be on changing reality. . . ”

That’s why I was so excited to partner with my friend, Lysa TerKeurst and others on a recent trip to India. Lysa desires to change the world — so much so that she’s giving away all of the proceeds from her newest book. (In fact, she’s given away all of the proceeds from her last few New York Times bestsellers.)

She understands that she isn’t big enough to change laws or culture, but she can touch the reality of one woman at a time.

We partnered with Mission India, a ministry that offers a woman the chance of education through literacy programs. Most of the literacy centers we visited were vibrant. Women who had not been able to write their name were reading at the fifth level after a  year. They shyly showed us their progress.

Church plants are birthed out of those literacy centers.

Women are teaching their children to read. They are learning how to run a small business (making toothpaste or sewing or making laundry detergent are a few ways they are making money).

When you buy Lysa’s book, Uninvited, you make a difference in ministries like Mission India.

Maybe we can’t change a nation. Maybe we can’t change laws.

But when we can change a woman’s reality, that act multiplies.

This beautiful new friend learned to read through the literacy program in a slum area in Central India. She and her son have become believers.

She and three other women in the literacy program banded together and began to save money. Five rupees here. Ten there. They bought a sewing machine and started a business.

Now that they can read, they can measure fabric. They can count money. They can keep a tally of their profits.

Life changing!

My aha moment is that I may not be the next Lysa TerKeurst, and that’s okay because she fills those shoes quite nicely.

But I can do what God asks me to do. Whether that is in my home, my community, my church, or across the world.

I can go, if that is what He asks.

I can give, because it goes a long way when we all give together.

I can pray, and I do.  Will you pray for my friend pictured here? Pray that her husband will come to know Jesus. Pray for the health of her two boys. Rejoice with me over the uniform her little guy is wearing. He has to cross a rickety metal bridge over a sewage canal to walk to school, but his beautiful mama is making sure he has that opportunity.

Today let’s pause and pray for each other.

Share what God is speaking to you through this study.

If you’ve hit a brick wall, let’s pray and help you climb over it. If you are excited at what you are discovering, share it with us and let’s celebrate.

Suzie

To learn more about Lysa’s book, Uninvited, which releases August 9th.

To learn more about Mission India.