Embrace your Gifts and Stop Doubting Yourself!

You know when you know that God gave you a gift, or the Holy Spirit has led you to do something, but then you doubt yourself? I remember the day the Holy Spirit plainly told me to write my book and start my ministry because there are women out there who needed to hear this and needed to be uplifted. Women need to know that they are ok. Yes, you have fallen from grace, but God has forgiven you. Also, to help those who just don’t know how they could help a single parent.
 
This was and still is my message to those women and their children as well.
 
I am writing this blog today for anyone like me who has a gift, who was given the task of starting a ministry. You started out motivated, but somewhere along the line, you started to doubt yourself. People put doubt in your mind. And sometimes, it's not even what they said but their actions.  
I had people act very excited about my ministry, make plans to host an event or take my book, claiming they would read it and never did. Some never responded when I ask for their feedback. Or how about the numerous emails sent out. The disheartening responses make you feel like you're not good enough to be heard! Or wait, how about the people you have known for years that act like your ministry isn't worth it!
 
Yes, all these happened to me! And for a while, I felt like, well, maybe I was wrong, perhaps it is not the ministry I was called to. I started doubting myself and well decided to take a step back. Every time I would try to write a blog, doubt would fill my mind.
 
Sometimes it would be all the things that were going on around me that would put me in a mood where I had no zeal to work on building what God had helped me start. I would refrain from telling single mothers that I was led to write a book just for them.
I felt as if I wasn't good enough to carry forward this ministry that had been put in my heart.
 
But thankfully God was working on me, on my confidence, in the work that he had given. During this time a friend shared this bible verse with me.
 
Luke 1:45 
And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.
 
I realized that the devil was bringing up old thoughts he had put in my head when I was a single mother. Beliefs that people made me believe that as a single mother, the Lord could not use me. My story was just one of many. When I did write my story, many put my testimony in the same category of single mothers that wrote books bashing men! They made these assumptions without even reading my testimony. I wrote a testimony to uplift and encourage. To remind other single mothers that they were not alone. That there is someone they can depend on and put all their burdens on. God!
And for others to be able to understand and be able to help single mothers. Yes, they deserve the best! You deserve people in your life that want to see you rise to the potential that God has put in you. 
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You deserve a Priestly husband; your children deserve the best! To go the best schools, for God to send a Priestly father to help raise and love them as his own! 
Abba, our Father, wants us to have good gifts. 
 
To my surprise, this book resonated with all Mothers, not just single mothers but men as well. A young man told me that he grew up with a single mother and can understand exactly where I am coming from. Some of the same problems we have as single mothers are also the same problems they were having in two-parent households. I had a friend planning on having a baby who stated that she was going to implement some of that advice she read in the book as soon as she decided to have children.
 
The Lord brought back to my memory all the people whose life I had touched by my testimony and reminded me that he was not done with me. All I have to do is believe!
I have to allow him to finish what he started with me. I need to put away all doubt. Trust God's judgment because he could have picked someone else, but he chose me.
What an honor and privilege. I am humbled! And when I doubt God, I am saying that he was wrong when choosing me for this work. I am reminded that his ways aren't mine and all I have to do is believe!
 
"If you love God with all your heart, there will be no room in your heart for doubt, we keep displeasing God by our lack of faith…then we expect blessing."  

Written by Sochel Thomas Dandy