by Donya Dunlap | Jun 17, 2013 | The Spiritual Life
My dad once told a friend that if he ever took me to a football game, I would be worried that the guys in the huddle were talking about me. He was right.
Go Blue!
Well, not literally of course, but figuratively he was spot on. I struggled quite seriously about what people think about me for years. It was a problem that would often steal my joy, fill my mind with worry and cause great anxiety. The Holy Spirit really worked in my life in this area, mainly through the message of a book called Loving God with All Your Mind by Elizabeth George and through meditating on Philippians 4:8.
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. – Philippians 4:8
I actually felt like this was part of my past, until recently I have found myself struggling again with regards to my writing.
I have had several people ask why I wrote Forgetting the Fairy Tale and my answer is always the same. I couldn’t NOT write it. I have a deep passion to help young women realize that they can only find satisfaction in Christ, and not in all the ways the world is teaching them to look for it. That passion drove me through the writing, editing and publishing process and continues to burn in my heart.
Lately however,
I’ve put a lot of effort into building what is referred to as a “platform” in order to sell my book and help the message spread. While that isn’t a bad thing in itself, it has lead to a change in my internal focus from helping others into a desire to see my blog numbers increase. I started worrying about what the guys in the huddle were saying again.
Why does one post spread and others aren’t hardly opened? Maybe people really don’t think I’m a good writer. Maybe I need to be funnier. Maybe I’m just wasting my time. I hardly get any comments—I wonder what my readers are thinking?
In all of the striving I lost sight of the goal. I lost sight of my passion. I lost my love for the “game” and became annoyed with the work of running the plays.
(And I have now reached my limit of football knowledge and applicable metaphors. Not a sports chic. Sorry.)
Instead of applying Philippians 4:8 to my writing I have been letting my mind dwell on the necessary, but secondary elements of promotion.
So today I confess to you my sin and begin again.
I will still read the writing books and learn what I can about creating a better blog, but my focus will no longer be on the stats and how I’m scoring in the blogosphere. This means tightening up my posts and not trying to please people with my writing. No more filtering. I’m going back to the basics of putting my passion on paper and loving people, not worrying about what they can do for me.
Photo credit: marylea / Foter.com / CC BY-SA
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by Donya Dunlap | Sep 28, 2012 | Guest Posts, Making a Difference
I have the privilege of sharing with you today a brief, but invaluable five question interview with author, blogger and speaker Jeff Goins. If you have been following my posts recently, you know that Jeff has written a book called Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into Your Comfortable Life. The book was an Amazon bestseller for two weeks and went into a second printing the day after it was released in August. If you have yet to get a copy, I hope that this glimpse into Jeff’s heart and the core of Wrecked will encourage you to get it soon.
Jeff, thank you for taking the time to share with us today!
Jeff Goins, Writer
Wrecked talks a lot about finding your passion. What is your passion in a nutshell?
My passion is words. To communicate messages worth spreading. I’ve done that my whole life — with music, theater, art, and now writing — and I love helping others do the same.
For the longest time, I minimized this passion, because it felt too small. I had friends who were traveling the world, and here I was, writing about it. But recently, I’ve had a change of mind: I’ve come to grips with the power of words.
Words can bring life or death, and my hope is to live a life in which my words bring hope and wholeness to people. Some say talk is cheap; I no longer believe it.
When did God first start stirring your heart in this area?
About two years ago, a friend asked me what my dream was. When I hesitantly told him it was to be a writer, he looked at me funny. Then he said, “Jeff, you don’t have to WANT to be a writer… You ARE a writer; you just need to write.” So I did. And that changed everything.
Was there a catalyst to this stirring? (ie: personal prayer, fasting, sermon, song, event, trip, etc.)
I had been working with a ministry, helping other people find their passions and pursue their dreams, and I was wondering, “Do I have a dream?” It had been so long since I’d asked that question, I was afraid of the answer.
After attending several conferences, I had to come to grips with the scary realization that I did, in fact, have a dream.
Was this always a dream for you or did you have a different desire at one point that God redirected?
I think it always was, but I didn’t know it. My experience with dreams is we get them often before we need them. So we have to go through a season in which the dream dies, which is exactly what happened for me. For five years, I served somebody else’s dream. So when the dream came back, it felt selfish and like betrayal. But at that point, my motives were more pure and I was ready.
The dream was now bigger than me.
Did you respond immediately to God’s tug on your heart? If so, how? If not, why?
You know, it took me a long time to see the spiritual implications of dreams and passions. It all just felt kind of selfish to me. When I was in college, I had some pretty dramatic experiences that led me to believe my life was going to be about more than me. I was called to serve others.
And so when I had the chance to write a book and pursue a platform that attracted an audience, it felt a little weird. I was scared of that much influence. So I avoided it for awhile, but eventually I came to see it as an opportunity to serve others (as I had been called) with the gifts God had given me. I’m continually surprised by how much impact a few simple words can have on people. So I guess I’m still getting used to it.
As I share in the book, our callings often come to us as surprises, and that’s exactly what happened for me. Discomfort is what causes us to grow; this is a lesson I keep learning throughout life.
When I was 23, the most uncomfortable thing I could do was go downtown and hang out with homeless people, so I did. When I was 28, the most uncomfortable thing for me to do was sit down and write. So I did — albeit, begrudgingly.
The abundant life, it seems, is about making choices we’d rather not make, but understanding that there’s more at stake than our own comforts.
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by donyadunlap | Mar 1, 2012 | Modern Day Slavery, The Spiritual Life
I feel so overwhelmed.
I am overwhelmed by the fullness of my heart in seeing how God is at work in me and in the world around me. Some of you know that the Lord has been doing some really amazing things in my life recently. Some days He just takes my breath away and brings tears to my eyes. God has always been at work in my life, but in the last nine months, He has taken things to a whole new level.
A Brief Recap
In June of 2011, I felt the Lord stirring my heart and giving me a deeper burden for single women. Since college I have had a growing passion to be a voice to and for single women, but I thought that passion would be fulfilled with the writing of my book. In June, the Lord showed me that the book was just the beginning. I started praying, dreaming and planning, guided by this new direction and a vague picture began to form in my head. Then it seemed as if God checked out for a while. I don’t mean that irreverently, and I know that in truth He never leaves me, but I went through a period where I felt that He wasn’t speaking to me. I began to get discouraged and frustrated. I wondered if maybe the Voice that I heard in June was really just voices…and that they were telling me that I should be on the lookout for the men in the white coats. But again the floodgates of Heaven have opened and I am swimming in the depths of God’s grace and goodness.
An Added Burden
In January of this year, I was introduced to the truths of modern day slavery. I was shocked to learn that there are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world today, more than at any other time in history. It is believed that human trafficking alone generates over $32 billion in revenue every year. The majority of trafficking victims are between the ages of 18-24, but it gets worse. “The victims most vulnerable are women and children. Children in particular are sold, bonded, trafficked, subjected to commercial sexual exploitation, recruited into armed conflicts and forced to work as domestic workers.” (72daysforfreedom.com, antislavery.org)
This information is troubling, but the statistic that completely broke my heart is that the average age of a person forced into prostitution is 12. TWELVE YEARS OLD. These children, girls and boys, should still be playing with dolls and video games. Instead they are being raped and beaten and threatened in untold ways EVERY SINGLE DAY. And this isn’t just a problem for other countries. This is happening here, in the United States of America, in our neighborhoods, at our sporting events, at truck stops, hotels, massage parlors, restaurants…all around us.
When I started learning about this I was shocked, as I mentioned, but then I got angry. How is it that I didn’t know about this? I lived in Atlanta for 5 years. It’s an awesome city that I love and I miss, but learning that Atlanta is a major hub of human trafficking and that it is ranked in the top 14 cities in the US for child prostitution it made me sick. (Governor’s Office for Children and Families) For five years I lived in peace, safety and happiness while all around me unspeakable things were being done to helpless children who are meant to be protected and loved. When I think of someone hurting my nieces who are the same ages as many of these children, I want to come unglued.
27 million is just a number until you make it personal…and this is personal to me.
I began to pray that God would allow me to be a voice for the children. I had already started plans for a novel to raise awareness of the effects of rape, but I felt the Lord directing me to change my focus. So I began to research and write about sex trafficking…and the more I learned the more God worked. Tonight as I write these thoughts to you, I literally feel as if at any moment the very molecules of my body could let loose. My muscles physically ache with emotion. I long to do something now to make a difference. I post awareness messages on Facebook and Twitter, I research, I beg God to use me to be a champion for freedom, and yet I still have homework, I still have a job, I still have deadlines for my first book, I still have dishes and laundry to do…
The rush of all this emotion and all of these thoughts coursed through my mind and body today as I stuffed suckers and papers into little plastic bags for work, I received a notice that a friend had posted a message in response to a tweet of mine that was copied to Facebook. The message read,
We’ve been studying the book of Nehemiah in church and I love the order of events on his timeline. After he heard of the state of things in Jerusalem he was burdened to the point of sobbing for days. It was this initial grief that made him realize that this burden was from the Lord and a signal to get involved. It reminded me that while others may not get as upset about situations to the same level that I do, that’s okay, because the heaviness of my heart is God’s message to ME to get involved. Thank you for sharing this journey that the Lord’s put you on. It IS encouraging to see that He still uses Christians to right the wrongs of this world.
Her note was an encouragement to me, but the depth of her words didn’t really hit home with me until later this evening. I was reading the first chapters of Nehemiah and noticed that the months Chisleu and Nisan were mentioned. Chisleu is the third month for the Hebrew and the month during which Nehemiah was told of the state of Jerusalem by his friend. Nisan is the seventh month, the month that Artaxerxes noticed that Nehemiah was sad. For four months Nehemiah wept and fasted and prayed for God to do something, and for four months Nehemiah got up, slapped a smile on his face and went to work. I wonder if during those four months he wondered why God tarried His response? Nehemiah was just a regular guy, no different from you or me (except by gender of course). He was a person with responsibilities and deadlines that could not be ignored despite his broken heart. But Nehemiah was not alone in his grief, just as I am not alone in mine. God was at work during those four months of silence. God was preparing the heart of the king to be open to Nehemiah’s request to leave his position and go to Jerusalem. God was preparing supplies and people and working on a timeline that only He could see. And when the time was right, He let Nehemiah in on the secret.
Since January, I have laid my head on my pillow each night and my mind and heart goes out to all the women and children that are just beginning their daily walk through hell on earth. I know I’m not supposed to think such unChristian thoughts such as, “God, why don’t you do something?” but I have…and He gently responds to me, “My child, I am.”
God is always fighting for the helpless, whether or not I see it.
These last two weeks He has given me glimpses of how He is at work. In a total random “chance” event (or by divine appointment as I choose to believe) God prompted a woman named Catherine Smith to comment on a comment that I had left on a blog by Jon Acuff. (Did you follow all of that?) Catherine is the co-founder of the You Are Project, an effort to help women realize their value and significance in the eyes of Christ. Coincidence? I think not. He also arranged it that I would be visiting a friend’s church when they announced a special 72 day effort to raise awareness of human slavery, called 72 Days For Freedom and the corresponding website that is full of information, including prayer points for each day and ways that each of us can get involved to stem the tide of this growing evil in our world. Coincidence? Again, I think not. Every day God whispers encouragement to me through His Word, through messages from friends, through songs on the radio…
“I AM at work. I AM mighty to save. I AM the Father to the Fatherless. I WILL BRING FREEDOM TO THOSE IN BONDAGE!”
God is at work behind the scenes, and if it be His will, one day He will bring me in on the secret and allow me to be a part of His work. But until then, it is my job to be faithful in the daily tasks that He as set before me. It’s okay if I cry my eyes out and fast and plead with God. In fact, I think that’s part of the process. God has to do a work in me too. But His silence doesn’t mean that He doesn’t hear, or that He isn’t busy accomplishing His will for His glory.
One of my absolute favorite passages of Scripture is when Jesus reveals Himself to Mary on the morning of His resurrection. She is grieving, she is heart broken, and she is in a panic because she came to dress the body of her Lord following the Sabbath and He wasn’t in the tomb where He was laid. She is completely beside herself, overcome with weeping to the point that she assumes the blurred form she sees through her tears is the gardener…until He says her name. “Mary.” There was only One that said her name like that. Only one that looked beyond her faults and failures and treated her with unmeasurable love and kindness. It was Jesus.
There was nothing but silence for three days. When all of your dreams and hopes and the One that you love with all your heart are wrapped up together in grave clothes and left to rot in a cave…you can’t get more broken than that. But God was not dead. He was at work behind the scenes. He was fulfilling the prophecies going back centuries before. Only the sobs from Mary’s chest broke the quiet of the morning that day, but the silence was about to bring forth the most glorious shout of joy that I believe the earth has ever heard. “Rabboni!!!” He had conquered death and hell and there He stood before her very eyes. Her Savior. Her Redeemer. Her Jesus. He had freed her from the grasp of seven demons and set her on a path of worship and purpose unlike anything she could have ever imagined. She was granted the privilege of being the first person He revealed Himself to after His resurrection. She is written into history as one that brought much glory to God—a woman that I highly respect and look forward to meeting some day. She was one of the first to testify of His resurrection and took part in the very first meetings of the physical church on this earth.
God used her darkest days to shine forth His most glorious light.
So tonight, as I lay my head on my pillow and think of the hundreds of thousands bound in slavery, I will also think of my wonderful, all-powerful Savior—the One who holds each of His children in the palm of His hand—and I will sleep in peace, trusting Him to make everything beautiful in His time.
Please take a moment to follow the links above for the You Are Project and 72 Days for Freedom. Together we can shine the light of God’s love and pierce the darkness!
