A Woman of Strength and Purpose: Directing Your Strong Will to Improve Relationships, Expand Influence, and Honor God - Softcover

Tobias, Cynthia

 
9781601428981: A Woman of Strength and Purpose: Directing Your Strong Will to Improve Relationships, Expand Influence, and Honor God
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1601428987 ISBN 13: 9781601428981
Verlag: PRH Christian Publishing, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Your Strong Will Is God’s Will!
 
As a strong-willed woman, you meet the world head-on, undeterred by those who say something can’t be done. When applied in the right ways, your God-given passion produces clear-eyed purpose, deep compassion, and a bold spirit that can change the world. But sometimes your determination leads to misunderstandings and fractured relationships.
 
Cynthia Tobias knows firsthand the positive potential of a strong will channeled appropriately. In A Woman of Strength and Purpose, she offers practical strategies for applying your confidence and drive to enrich your friendships, career, ministry, marriage, and parenting. You’ll also hear from hundreds of other women who share your strong will and the desire to use it for God. 
 
You don’t need to silence your strengths. Instead, let God use them to impact your world for good.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Cynthia Ulrich Tobias, M.Ed., has a successful background that includes more than thirty years as an author and popular speaker for businesses, churches, and schools around the world; eight years of teaching public high school; and six years in law enforcement.  She has written numerous books and is often a featured guest on radio and television.  She and her husband, Jack, live in the Seattle area.

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WHO SAYS I’M A Strong-Willed WOMAN?

Strong-Willed Woman. It’s a galvanizing phrase. It evokes an immediate reaction—either positive or negative. There’s no middle ground, no indifference. It’s a term that is not neutral.

There are those who believe the term strong willed is auto­matically negative, describing a person who is stubborn, defiant, and difficult to deal with. But that’s not the definition of strong will—that’s what happens when strong will goes sideways. Strong will, in and of itself, is a positive trait; it describes a per­son who is energized, resourceful, and determined to succeed.

I am a strong-willed woman (SWW). I grew up the daugh­ter of an evangelical pastor, and I never rebelled against my dad. I didn’t talk back to a teacher or get loud, obnoxious, or rude. I tell people that you couldn’t have traced even half the trouble I caused back to me! Outwardly I was compliant and coopera­tive. But if someone pointed a finger in my face, if someone told me something simply couldn’t be done—that’s when I dug in my heels and pushed back.

As I grew up, I had other strong-willed friends who were more independent, extroverted, and outspoken. Although some were unlike me in many ways, we all shared the same basic traits that make strong will such a positive force for good. We weren’t afraid to tackle tough situations; we didn’t back down just because circumstances were difficult. If we didn’t know what to do, we figured out that someone in our network of friends and contacts would help us accomplish the goal. We excelled in finding creative alternatives.

During my first year of teaching high school, for instance, I was the girls’ drill team faculty advisor. That meant getting forty high school girls to every football game. Unfortunately, I quickly found out that school bus drivers were scarce. Other people might just shrug, wring their hands, and say, “Well, that’s just the way it is.” But I thought, How hard can it be to drive a bus?

The next Sunday at church I pulled aside the Sunday school director and pointed to the seventy-two-passenger school bus parked outside. “Pastor Bob, can someone teach me to drive that bus?”

He smiled. “I can make that happen.”

In short order, I passed the driving test and got my special license—and my drill team girls had a reliably available school bus driver.

Because we quickly get a reputation as someone who can get the job done, SWWs tend to be called upon to figure out tough issues for other people too. All my life my family and friends have turned to me when they run into particularly hard situations: There are no hotel rooms available. I can’t find a rental car under sixty-five dollars a day. No one can figure out how to get there. It’s not that I have special skills; I just don’t like taking no for an answer. I’m against giving up or admitting defeat when it’s really important that something gets done.

Years ago, when I started traveling a lot for speaking en­gagements, the airlines had a rule that in order to get the best fares, you had to stay over a Saturday night. One weekend I was finished speaking at my event. Knowing that my young twins were both sick with colds, I decided I needed to head home even though it was still Saturday. I called the airline to see if I could get a flight out that night. The customer-service person informed me that the Saturday night stay could not be waived without great expense, and that I would have to wait until Sunday morning. But I knew this airline had more than forty thousand employees, and every time I called the reservations number a different person answered the phone. I also knew there were several empty seats on that Saturday night flight, so I kept calling back until I found a reservation agent who would make the exception for me without penalty—and I got home to my sick kids on Saturday night.

SWWs are experts at finding loopholes, figuring out a way around a rule that doesn’t make sense, or maneuvering around even the biggest obstacles. They are undaunted, undeterred, and sometimes succeed just through sheer perseverance.

But this book isn’t talking about just any kind of strong-willed woman. Strong will has a dark side, and when it takes the wrong turn, things can get ugly. Resourcefulness can turn into manipulation; creative solutions can become dishonest tactics; determination can present itself as purely stubborn pride. Every strong-willed woman has experienced both the light and dark sides of her nature. We know we are capable of great good—or great destruction. The difference in how we use the power we have lies in whether or not we have dedicated it to the Creator and Designer of it.

When honoring God is our top priority, our greatest tri­umph is succeeding without cheating, being dishonest, or using any other tactic that would dishonor Him. As we’re called upon to find unique solutions to problems or creative angles for at­ tempting the impossible, we are fully committed to staying within the boundaries of God’s law and direction and using our strong will to change the world for good. One woman put it this way: “A strong will doesn’t have to have negative conse­quences, especially if it keeps us following in the footsteps God wants us to follow. It might be a lifesaver.”

So what do we mean by strong-willed women? If we were talking about an army, these women would qualify to be part of a special operations unit. Special ops members stand apart from the others, not necessarily because they are smarter or more gifted than those in the infantry, but because they are, quite simply, bolder. In God’s army, we find strong-willed spe­cial ops women from all walks of life—teachers, stay-at-home moms, CEOs, cashiers, homeschooling moms, entrepreneurs, missionaries, neurosurgeons, mail carriers. Whatever they do, wherever they are, they meet the world head-on—unafraid, un­daunted, undeterred by those who tell them something can’t be done. Each one is a woman with convictions of steel, willing to take the lead when called upon to use her passion, courage, and drive to withstand extraordinary conditions—even when her commitment requires a seemingly impossible mission.

Today more than ever, we’re in a battle between good and evil. There is an enemy who is determined to steal the hearts and minds of children, destroy marriages, crush ambitions, and redefine ethics and spiritual morality. This is no ordinary warfare, and the stakes are higher than temporary victory. The outcome of this warfare determines the destiny of every soul for eternity.

God doesn’t force us to serve, but when we voluntarily en­list in His service, we become part of something greater than any of us, and He uses our strong will to accomplish more than we could have ever dreamed. As Paul reminded us in 1 Thes­salonians 1:4–5: “It is clear to us, friends, that God not only loves you very much but also has put his hand on you for some­thing special. When the Message we preached came to you, it wasn’t just words. Something happened in you. The Holy Spirit put steel in your convictions.” God gave us a strong will for a reason—and He calls us to use it for Him.

The Enemy would have us think that it’s wrong to possess strong will. He tries to make us feel guilty for using it or to discourage us from speaking up, especially in the church. That’s because he knows that when strong will is voluntarily given to God and used for His purposes, it becomes a mighty...

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Verlag
PRH Christian Publishing
Erscheinungsdatum
2016
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1601428987
ISBN 13 
9781601428981
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
208
Kontakt zum Hersteller
preigu GmbH & Co. KG
mail@preigu.de

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