Make It or Break It
Written by Melissa Sharpe
Recently, the Women Together leadership team gathered for the 8th annual Called Canada Conference. This is a spiritually enriching event rooted in the truth, that we are all called to go out into the world making disciples among the nations.
And for Women Together, around the world we truly are. Women from many different countries, continents and backgrounds bonded over God's Word, copious cups of coffee and their personal testimonies. With incredible teaching, preaching, workshops and worship, it was three days of soaking in His Spirit for renewed strength and purpose.
This year the theme was Called: To Abide. The world defines the act of abiding as to accept or be able to tolerate something that may go against our instinct or nature to do so, but the biblical definition of abiding is to remain or dwell in an intimate and persistent process of trust and obedience with Christ.
Two radically different definitions of something that has the power to break or... make you.
Having to tolerate and accept something difficult can literally break us. Break our heart and break our spirit. But persistently trusting in obedience to Christ has the ability to make us. To make us see the world and God's children through His eyes. To make us hear the Word in order to calm our anxious thoughts. To make us seek God each and every day we awake with breath in our lungs and struggle in our hearts. And we need the spiritual discipline of abiding more than ever in this rapidly shifting world.
We were challenged with the truths that pruning is for holy refinement, shifting brings change; change brings fear. We are positioned with a priority and a purpose. And if we don't allow God to prune us, actively removing that which binds us, the only things that others will be able to bear witness to is the clutter, overgrowth and messiness within us.
When tensions are high, morale is low, and nothing around us feels safe or predictable, we need to lean heavily into the Spirit, be persistent in our prayers, and trust with an obedient soul that God knows everything that we simply don't.
Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
John 15:4
