Bailey Shepard is a Ministry Assistant in Student Ministry at Liberty Live Church in Hampton Roads, VA. She is passionate about discipleship and leading up the next generation of girls, especially girls in middle and high school. She also specifically loves helping young girls and women navigate through depression, anxiety, and other mental health needs through scripture and prayer.
Recently I have been blessed to enter into the season of engagement with my amazing fiancé. This has been such a sweet and surreal time, experiencing brand new things with him and along each step of the way. This is completely unchartered territory for us, and the Lord is using it to teach us both so many new things and reveal himself in new and exciting ways. Engagement, and from what I can assume, marriage as well, is such a process of sanctification. I remember a dear friend telling me this a couple of years ago as she entered into this season as well. But living it out has been such an awesome experience.
As women of God we can have many important roles and titles: mother, leader, teacher, mentor, role model, just to name a few. With each of these roles comes a high responsibility. Sometimes, these responsibilities can lead us to forget that we too are also children of God, learners, students, mentees. The Lord loves us enough to work on us and mold us through every step of life, no matter what step we are on!
I know that this upcoming role of “wife” that the Lord is calling me into is not a small deal. I know and sense the weight and importance of this role, not only in my marriage, but in the kingdom. God, am I ready to serve in this role in Your kingdom? Will I live up to the standards of The Proverbs 31 Wife in which we have been called? If we are being completely honest here, absolutely not. But rest assured, He is not done with me yet! He will teach me along the way! We do not have to enter into seasons of life or step up in roles of Christian women as experts, but as wet, shapeable clay, ready to be molded into the beautiful creation that the Creator intends us to be.
“I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6, CSB).
How incredibly comforting is it that the Lord pursues us and refines us every day for the rest of our lives? We do not have to have “made it” before the Lord can use us. I am reminded of Ruth and her devotion to not only Naomi, but ultimately the Lord. She left her family to become one with her husband, having no idea of the steps that lied ahead of her. A widowed girl in a country that was not her home, but she remained steadfast to the Lord! She found a true blessing and gift, her husband, Boaz.
Ruth walked through so many roles and seasons since leaving her father and mother: wife, daughter, widow, servant, then wife again. But take heart my friends, God used her. God was not done with her. Her story is still being shared, all these years later.
The Lord has his hand on your life. Prepare yourself to be the clay in His hands!
