Category: Obedience

Where is MY Abundance, Lord

I preach it, I teach it, and I believe it. Abundance is your birthright, not because some New Age guru said so, but because Christ told us, “I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly.” – John 10:10

Yet lately, it’s looked to me as if my life is anything but abundant. Last night, I asked Him, “Where is MY abundance, Lord?”

Today, after attending Mass, I wrote a blog post expressing this frustration, the answers I found at Mass, and a conversation had with a non-Catholic friend because of that experience entitled, “Tired of Working Hard and Going Nowhere?“

Surrendering Everything to Him

I entered into prayer and I invited Christ to not just get into the boat of my life, but to direct me in where to cast my nets so that I might find MY abundant harvest as He once helped Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John find theirs.

I told Him, “Lord, it’s your boat. It’s your ocean. They’re your fish. I surrender them all to you. Tell me where and when to cast your nets. I want only to do your will your way.”

I heard Him ask me, “Will you let me use your life as bait?”

I responded, “I offer my life to you. I will open it up and allow you to use it in whatever manner you need for me to let you use it. It isn’t my life, but yours. Do unto me according to your word.”

This is who I am. This is who I want to be. Entirely His, living for His sake. All of me. Not just the best parts of me.

Letting My Failures Lead the Way to Christ

I reflected on my conversation I’d had with my non-Catholic friend, Earth. It wasn’t my successes that opened the door to that conversation. It was my willingness to be open and honest with her about my own struggles and challenges and my failures to listen to Christ that opened that door.

It’s my willingness to admit that I fail the Lord all the time that makes people who aren’t Catholic willing to listen when I tell them the answers I find in the Mass, in confession, and in the Church’s teachings. They know it’s not coming from a place where I think I’m better than they are because of my walk with Christ. They know that I’m sharing it because it’s what worked and got me through each step of the way.

The truth is that in little ways and big ways, I’ve got little to show for my life’s efforts except my failures. That’s my abundance: an abundance of my failures. I’ve got a treasure trove of those to offer to any soul in need, along with the lessons I learned the hard way because of those failures.

Giving God Permission to Use My Failures

More than a dozen years ago, a priest at St. Joseph’s Parish in Elko, Nevada gave a homily about allowing Christ into the messiness of our lives. He talked about the fact that many times parishioners would call on him to bless their homes.

Yet they would have this one room or one area of their home where they did not want him to go, telling him, “Father, you can’t bless that area. It’s too messy.” They were literally refusing to allow the priest to bring Jesus into the middle of that mess.

Most of us tend to do that with the places and spaces in our lives where we’ve been hurt or done things we aren’t proud of doing. We shove those things into a kind of mental junk closet, lock the door, and hope that nobody ever finds the key. In fact, we bury the key because even we don’t want to go back and look at that incident anymore.

It’s too painful. Too filled with guilt and shame. If it’s a failure, it might remind us too much of the parts of ourselves that we don’t like. The parts of ourselves we find so hard to love.

If it’s a past incident of pain caused by the actions of another, we bury it because the pain of it is so great and we’ve got no idea where to begin stitching that part of ourselves back together again. Maybe we don’t even think it’s possible. We just want that part of our lives to stop existing, to stop hurting us.

We think if we shove it in that closet, we won’t have to look at it again. We won’t have to think about it. We won’t have to be reminded of the pain it causes us and we can go on with our lives.

But that’s not how the brain works. The subconscious mind does not know anything about time. Time does not exist for that part of us. Those past moments are as present to us as today’s. And those past memories do not stop trying to break loose from the closet where we’ve shoved them.

They come out at the worst possible moments, when our logic and reason are suspended and our emotions are activated. They spill out into our dreams, turning them into nightmares from which we can’t escape. They drive our decisions, destroy our relationships, and cause us to destroy ourselves in big ways and small.

Those hidden past pains become the weapons and instruments of the demons that latch onto our woundedness. They point to those things as proof that God doesn’t love us and God doesn’t care what happens to us and God can’t possibly want us because who could want someone who did that??

And those demons fuel our drinking habits, our drug addictions, our sexual immoralities, our depression, our anxiety, and all those things that keep us from being able to give and receive the love that God wants for us.

Only when we invite Christ into that closet and give Him permission to open it up and sort through the ugliness of it all can we find in those painful past moments the incredible gems of wisdom God wants to offer humanity through our story.

So this is me. Inviting God into the middle of that junk closet of my life. I’m calling on Him to help me sort through the mess of it all and help me put together the message that He wants the world to receive through my life’s story. I give God permission to use the abundant failures I’ve accumulated to bring abundance into the life of those who connect with me and Him an abundant harvest of souls on fire for Christ.

Your Invitation to Join Me

If you’re a faithful Catholic who wants others to come to know the love of Christ that you’ve found, I invite you to join me. My free course, Turning Problems into Prophets, will teach you where to get started.

If you’re either not Catholic or not on fire for Christ, I invite you to take my free course, Turning Problems into Profits, so I can show you how to leverage those past pains and failures to your financial advantage so you can taste the abundant life He has in mind for you.

Embracing the Messiness of My Life

This morning on the way to confession, God and I engaged in a little tête-à-tête regarding my present circumstances and the mission he assigned my husband and I eight years ago.

I spent eight years fighting him on this mission, overlooking the obvious solutions to the challenges I faced, because – as God pointed out to me – I wanted to wait until I measured up to the world’s vision of success: millions of dollars in the bank and millions of admiring fans. Instead, God commissioned me to do this work and then allowed me to become homeless with little to no money to show for all my efforts.

A Question That Haunted Me

At one point, when I told my mother about the ministry God called me to do, to teach people how to take the same business skills required to build a successful business and use them to engage in evangelization – she asked me a question that cut me to the core. “How is anyone to take your business training seriously when you don’t have money to show them?”

When I look back at the last eight years, I think that’s the real question I kept asking myself. What makes me qualified to do this work? Like our stuttering friend, Moses, I essentially told God, “You’ve got the wrong girl! Don’t you know I’m a walking financial disaster? Nobody’s going to take me seriously.”

And every failure I met in trying to get the ministry up and running only further entrenched me in that fear that I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t credible enough. I hadn’t done enough. I hadn’t proven myself worthy.

Struggling to Value Myself Beyond the Money

I struggled to write this blog post. I struggled to admit to myself how much it hurts and how much of a failure I feel because I’ve ended up where I am.

Her question cuts me to the core because it reduces my accomplishments to rubble, and my worth along with it. In a society that values people by the money they make, few people see the person beyond their bottom line.

But then God shared with me why He allowed me to become homeless in the first place: He wants to use me to break people free of that mindset. To show them that they are worth far more than the money they make.

To take away their excuses and prove to them that no matter how bad the situation in which they find themselves, if they follow His instructions, He will equip them with everything needed to do what He’s assigned them to do.

Their worth is not measured in dollars and cents but in the blood of Christ which He shed for them to ransom them from captivity. Their value is not set by the monetary system but by Christ. And the same thing is true about me.

It’s Not About Me and How Good I Am

As I spoke with God, He pointed out to me my real problem: making myself and my circumstances the focal point of the ministry. He reminded me that the work He’s asked me to do isn’t about me and how good I am.

It’s about how great He is and how He can raise up the meek and the lowly regardless of their circumstances if they but place their trust in Him. It’s about reminding people that His power is not limited by our finances. He can turn our empty stone jugs into the best wine if we but do whatever He tells us to do.

That’s why He wants me to start it right where I am and not to be ashamed but to step out in faith and allow His perfection to cover my imperfections. He reminded me that those who turn to me for help will emulate my example. If I let money be the reason I didn’t do what He asked me to do, they’ll let the money be the reason they didn’t respond to Him either.

The Model of the Manger

Christ didn’t choose to enter the world in a fancy hotel or a palace, but in a manger. A messy, dingy, dusty, dirty impoverished manger where animals fed.

Nobody expected the King of Kings to be born there. Had His birth taken place in a palace or a fancy hotel instead, the messy, dingy, dusty, dirty and poverty-ridden shepherds would never have dared to approach Him. They would have been too intimidated by the polished appearance of perfection so far beyond their grasp.

My call is to minister to those Catholic families whom society has forgotten, neglected, and dismissed as worthless because of their empty bank accounts. To show them how to find the incredible wealth that God placed inside their heads and their hearts.

I’m to help them understand the irreplaceable value that they bring to the world whenever they open up their lives and allow the goodness of God’s work in their lives to be shared. Then, He can use them as a vessel of His love and His grace in the world.

Obedience, Not Perfection, Is Required

I don’t need to be perfect to do the work God asked me to do. I don’t need to have everything in order or to know everything. God will supply all of my needs. All I need to do in order to find success is to trust Him and obey. The rest is in His hands.

Eight years ago, in early May of 2016, I heard Christ telling me to come follow Him and He would make me a fisher of men. I felt, along with St. Peter, the frustration after all my hard work spent trying to catch my living failed.

However, unlike St. Peter, I refused to listen when Christ told me to cast my nets out into the deep. I simply kept grumbling and complaining that I’d worked hard and caught nothing. Today, I’m choosing to listen. I’m choosing to cast my net out into the other side of the boat and to trust that if I do as He tells me to do, the catch will be abundant.

Sound Familiar?

If this article sounds familiar, if you think you’re being called to do something by Christ but you’ve been allowing your bank account to be the thing that’s holding you back, I encourage you to place your trust in Him.

Sign up for our free course, Turning Problems into Prophets, and I’ll guide you through the skills you need to learn in order to engage in effective evangelization while learning the skills needed to build a successful business.

If, after you take the course, you feel you need more support or want to join a community of other individuals on the same journey, join our free Prophet Makers private online membership. We’ll work together to get you up and running, ready to play your part in bringing the love of Christ to humanity as you share the Good News.