I was terrified to go on DWTS, but facing my fear and overcoming it has been an incredible experience. Have you faced fears and overcome them. ~ Ricki Lake {Guest Prompt}
By nature, I’m a relatively shy person. I don’t mind speaking in front of a crowd, I teach American History and I work as a librarian, so speaking before crowds doesn’t bother me; but speaking to people one~on~one scares the living daylights out of me. And going to social gatherings? That totally freaks me out. I actually spend days preparing myself for the event and will often cancel out at the last minute if I feel too overwhelmed.
But more than that, my biggest fear has always been confessing the Lord as my savior and declaring it boldly because I was afraid of what my friends would say. I thought they’d disown me or, worse, talk about me. I feel silly even typing this now because it just sounds so juvenile but that’s how I genuinely felt. But then I started to really pay attention to the tweets of some of my friends and the status updates of others and it occurred to me that they weren’t concerned about offending me, they weren’t worried about hurting my feelings, they didn’t think about me unfriending them, so why was I worrying about hurting them?
Jesus says that we are to expect to be rejected for His namesake, “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first.” (John 15:18), but more than that He says in Matthew 10:33, “But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven.” I don’t want Him to deny before His father in heaven. I want Him to embrace me and say “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
God knows our talents and I believe that He uses those talents to draw people in, it’s just up to us to allow Him to use us. My talent is writing and taking pictures ~ these are things that I enjoy doing. I also like interacting with people online, so I believe that God gave me this blog to share His word and I don’t want to waste the opportunity. I want people to leave my blog wanting to know more about my Lord and Savior. I want them to ask the question, “What must I do to be saved?”
So I’ve started being bolder about sharing my faith on Facebook, Twitter and my blog through Word Filled Wednesday and the sharing of music with a message. I know this may cause some folks to unfollow me or to talk about me but I’m OK with that because I know that His word does not return void, someone out there is being touched…
Today’s post was written in response to the writing prompt for National Blog Posting Month. For more information, go here.