What has God taught you while following His lead?
Hey God’s Gals!!
I just finished up my Christian Women’s Wellness Retreat and God taught me so much during this new journey. I will be using my retreat as an example, but you can apply this to any area of your life; It could be your business, your marriage, your relationships, your friends, your work… Anything at all. I want you to be thinking about what God may be teaching you if you’re following His lead. That’s the tricky part, right?
I’m going to share with you 4 Things God Taught Me during this revelation of running a women’s retreat.
God Taught Me: TRUST
TRUST in Him; so hard to do, right??? We think that our way is the best. Or because we can’t see God, we can’t always hear from Him; It’s hard to trust Him. We may not understand what God is telling us OR we may take it the wrong way or misinterpret it.
How did God give me the vision for this retreat??? He gave it to me back in January of 2018. I was really praying. “God, what do you want me to do with my life? Where do you want me to go? Do I just continue with my fitness coaching? What exactly am I supposed to be doing?” Because at the same time, I started having a lot of body aches, pains, injuries, etc. Everything was piling up on me all at once.
Talk about a new revelation!! Maybe God had a new plan for me. But I didn’t know it at the time, I was just praying. It was January, New Year’s Resolutions time; that’s when we start to really question our lives, dig deep and ask, “What am I supposed to be doing differently with my life right now?”
I was just praying and praying like crazy; I was journaling every day, really focusing on God’s Word and writing out my prayers; all the “right” things. It was during this time that I got the vision for this travel business. I’ve never done travel in my life. I mean I have traveled, but I’ve never done the travel business or run a retreat.
As we all do, we make excuses. If we have some kind of dream, a passion, something we really want to do, we make a million excuses as to why we can’t do it. Because we are just mere mortals here on earth. And we tend to think of every excuse in the book as to why we can’t do something. I had so many excuses: *I have never done travel *I have never been a travel agent *I’ve never run a retreat *I don’t have the time or money, etc…. You name it, I was saying it! I even said to God,”You know, God, I must have heard that wrong, because I don’t know how to do that.” So what do I do? I pushed it out of the way. And I said, “Okay, that must not have been right.”
Well here I am journaling again and it came to me AGAIN! The same vision about wellness travel and a retreat. I said to myself, “Okay, here it is again.” I even received the vision of places that I had taken my mom in the last few years, like spa retreats. Over and over again these ideas would come to me, and then a mother daughter retreat was coming to me. I pushed and pushed but God pushed right back! Luckily, He is persistent. Check out my recent blog post on knowing when God is speaking to you: CLICK HERE
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Check out my Ebook: “But First, Pray”
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As soon as you take that first step, God will take hold of the reigns. I began to organize this retreat and yeppers, you guessed it, God opened up the doors. And as always, if you just TRUST GOD and just take that one step, He will guide you every step of the way. He’s not going to let you just flounder out there.
I knew this vision for a retreat was His vision because it was for a Christian Women’s Retreat. Who else would that be from???? And yes, as soon as I started researching it, everything was falling into place, everything was working out perfectly.
Of course, we’re not perfect and we are going to misinterpret things that God tells us all the time. My advice is always – trust Him, and just take one step towards what you think God is guiding you to. He will take you the rest of the way. He will hold your hand and He will guide you. He will not leave you alone out there if this is a vision that He has given you.
God Taught Me: WITH HIM ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE
We cannot carry out all of these plans that God has, but He can. So when we start to doubt – like I was, and making excuse after excuse after excuse – we have to remember who’s in charge. We’re not!!
Let’s ponder this for a moment….. God created the universe. He parted the Red Sea. He raised His son from the dead. He created us in his image. So… don’t you think that He can accomplish ALL THINGS!?!?!?! Of course He can! There literally is NOTHING too big for God.
Our little plans/dreams/passions are really small compared to all that God has done on this universe. Maybe it’s a job that you want? A new career? A new business? A husband? (a topic I know tons about, even wrote a book about it: But First Pray) When you start following God and His lead, amazing things are going to happen in your life!!
When you start getting that discernment for where He’s leading you, you will see your life completely change. And I saw that completely change with this retreat. Also back in my days of being single, He completely changed all parts of my life, as soon as I learned to put Him first and follow His lead. He has a lot to teach us, if we follow Him.
God Taught Me: ONLY GOD CAN SEE THE BIG PICTURE
We can’t see the big picture, only God can. We are constantly doubting why God puts us in certain situations; we may be thinking, “Oh I just don’t, I don’t see how this retreat is going to help anything” or….the struggles you’re dealing with in your life – your job, your marriage, your relationship with your kids. You may not think of it as that big of a deal, OR maybe you’re even wondering why in the world God is putting you through such #@!!$#, BUT….keep this in mind… God is reigning over us. He sees the entire picture. When things start falling into place, it’s almost like there’s light bulbs that go off and you realize, “Oh my gosh, God had His hand on all of this.”
That’s exactly what happened with my retreat. When we were getting closer and closer to my retreat, I was a little upset. I did not see God’s big picture. I was upset, and I blamed God. There were a few times I got a little upset; I said, “God, you gave me the vision for this retreat, why isn’t it sold out? Why isn’t it packed with people? Why would you give me this vision if you’re not going to see it through?”
What a huge mistake to be arguing with God! I couldn’t see the big picture. I’m over here in my little world thinking, “My retreat’s not sold out, so I guess it’s not very successful.” There were definitely people signed up, but I wanted it to be sold out. And it was for earthly reasons, money being one, but also wanted the discount I get as a leader and the other perks! And plus, I just wanted to look like I knew what I was doing, ha ha! I wanted the people at the retreat center to think, “Wow, she really knows what she’s doing. She sells out her retreats!”
Guess what? God saw the big picture. God did not sell it out on purpose. Now that the retreat is over, I can see – if the retreat had sold out, it would’ve been a much larger group of women. The women would not have gotten out it what they did. I wouldn’t have gotten out of it what I did. I believe the group would have been too large and the women would not have truly felt God’s presence and the intimacy of such a small group of women. The women were able to share on a very personal level, because it wasn’t a huge group of women. They were able to really share their faith. And also, for me, because it was the first retreat that I was running, God kept it smaller to not overwhelm me and to show me, I CAN DO THIS!
I am now able to look back on this retreat and think, “Wow! God touched us in such an amazing way.” Beforehand, all I was praying for, was some huge group; a sold out group. The moral of this story, we DON’T know best, but God does! He sees what we cannot!
God Taught Me: GOD CAN DO IMMEASURABLY MORE THAN WE CAN IMAGINE
Ephesians 3:20 “Now to Him who is able through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we can imagine.”
That has actually become my verse for this retreat. Because I had no idea what God was going to teach me through this. Just following His lead, that one lead that started almost a year ago with the vision of this retreat – has completely changed my life, it’s completely changed my business, and I hope it’s changed the lives of the women that attended the retreat. But not just their lives, but everybody else they come in contact with. I want them to take everything they learned at the retreat – take it home to their families, and have that spread out among their families. I’m pretty sure that was God’s plan all along.
Yes, I would love for this retreat to grow, so I can share this with more women. But I want it to grow for the right reasons. I want it to grow for Him, and to bring God glory. Because He has taught me a lot through this. And just watching how He has grown me with my faith, spiritually – but also all the ladies at the retreat, and how it’s completely changed the course of my business.
If you’ve followed me, you know that my business has been fitness focused for 20+ years. Like fitness, fitness, fitness. Now I feel because of this retreat and just what has happened in my health in the last year, God has completely changed my course. He has veered me off the fitness world and more Faith-focused. One of my favorite parts of this retreat was leading the Christian Yoga classes. Our bodies are God’s temples, so it’s important to teach others that fitness goes right along with faith. God desires us to be healthy! I feel that it is my job to share with others that you can combine yoga/fitness with worship and prayer time. God is everywhere. God can be in every part of our lives, every part of our day. Even sitting in traffic in the car, you can use that as your prayer time. Because God wants to hear from you all day long.
It’s Humbling to Be Used by God
It is so humbling the way God can use us. Sometimes we feel so insignificant in this world, but God does not see us that way. He wants to use us and our talents. He has such incredible plans for ALL of us! Using lil ol’ me to accomplish His purpose for the women at my retreat, it was so very humbling. If you follow God’s lead and you follow where He wants you to go, you will feel so blessed to see how He can use you. Things in our lives may look horrible right now, but God sees the entire picture, and He knows how every little piece and every person is going to fit together. We just can’t see that. And that’s where the TRUST comes in. And just knowing that with God, ALL things are possible.
Check out my video about how God lead me in such an amazing way. Don’t forget to Like, Subscribe and Share this video! Click on the notifications button so you don’t miss a thing!
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBI2SimOOtk[/embedyt]
What is God teaching you?
Are you following His lead? Are you listening to what He’s telling you? I pray for you to have that discernment to know where God is leading you. And I would love to hear from you if you happen to have any ways that God has led you to wonderful, amazing things and what you’ve learned from that – share below.
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