God Wasn’t Being Subtle

If you had told the girl at her very first small group that she’d one day be leading one, she would have laughed in your face. And then probably left early feeling pressured by expectations.

Because that girl almost didn’t walk in at all.

I was so socially anxious, so low on self-esteem, that sitting in a room full of people I barely knew felt like the hardest thing in the world. I didn’t really want to be there. But I also didn’t want to stay the same. I was lonely, and I was tired of being lonely, and some quiet part of me knew I couldn’t keep shrinking my way through life and call it safe.

I didn’t know it yet, but God knew exactly what He was doing putting me in that room. He knew I needed that community. And He knew I’d need it even more than I could imagine, not long after.

So no. Leadership was never on my radar. It was the furthest thing from it.

Here’s the thing you have to understand about me. The enemy has been working on me my entire life. Not with anything dramatic. Just a quiet, constant whisper of “You’re not capable.” “You’re too anxious.” “Who do you think you are.” The kind of lie that doesn’t announce itself as a lie. It just feels like the truth about you, so you never think to question it.

And he got specific, too. Because he’s crafty like that.

Praying out loud has always terrified me. For years. That deep, irrational fear that I’ll stumble over my words, that I’ll say the wrong thing, that everyone will hear how clumsy I sound talking to God. I’ve gotten better this year, but it’s still the thing the enemy reaches for when he wants to make me feel small. “You’re no good at this. Just stay quiet.”

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize something. Maybe the reason he fights me so hard on that exact thing is because there’s real power there. Power he does not want me to figure out I have.

That’s when it started to click. The things he works hardest to keep you from doing are usually the things God most wants to use.

So this year, something shifted.

In January, I started reading my Bible daily again. Not here and there, but daily. And somewhere in the weeks that followed, as I started taking better care of myself in body and in spirit, it got quieter inside me. Quiet enough to actually hear Him.

And He used that quiet to start stirring something I couldn’t quite name yet. A pull. A quiet what if that I kept to myself, because surely that wasn’t for someone like me.

And then, honestly, He just about knocked me over with how clearly He answered it.

It started when I found out our group was growing so much that people were being turned away. That undid something in me. And then, within just a couple of weeks, everything started stacking up in a way I could not have arranged if I tried.

First, one of the women asked me to co-lead.

Then my daily devotional plan turned to a theme I could not make up if I tried. Heeding God’s Calling. The reading walked through Isaiah, where God says I have called you, I will hold your hand, I will keep you. The reflection questions asked, right there on the page, whether I’d felt God nudging me lately, and how I might respond in faith. It even named the exact thing I was feeling, that we resist God’s call because the familiar is comfortable, and stepping out means leaving the balance we know.

Then, over coffee, a friend I was catching up with looked at me and said, “You should start your own group, girl.” I hadn’t even told her entirely what I’d been quietly wrestling with. I’d only mentioned the devotional and feeling like God was calling me to something more.

Then one of our leaders sat me down. She talked about how badly more groups were needed, and then she asked me point blank, “Have you ever thought about leading a group?” And for the first time, albeit hesitantly, I admitted it. I’ve actually been thinking about it.

And then came the moment that I constantly think about.

We gathered for one of our prayer fasts, where we’d come together and lift up specific things. And that time, one of the things we were praying for was God to raise up new leaders. I was the one who opened that prayer (this was the meeting I agreed to co-lead). I stood there asking God to send someone. And I was already the someone. I just hadn’t fully caught up to it yet.

As God would have it. Not fate. Not luck. Him. I sat with all of it and just laughed.

“Okay, Lord. I hear You. You are not being subtle.”

It still feels surreal to type. The girl who didn’t want to walk into the room is being asked to help hold the door open for other women now.

So here’s the prayer I’ve started praying over myself. And it’s not a comfortable one.

I don’t pray “God, make me impressive.” I pray “God, show me what’s in me that shouldn’t be.” Because I want to steward this the right way. And the only way I know to do that is to keep my own heart under His light, constantly.

I keep thinking about Solomon, too. When God told him to ask for anything, he didn’t ask for riches or a long life or power over his enemies. He asked for wisdom and knowledge to lead the people God had placed in front of him. That’s the prayer on my heart lately. Not “make me a good leader” in some shiny, impressive way. Just, God, give me the wisdom and the knowledge to care well for the people You’ve given me.

I’ve been around enough churches to have seen leadership done both ways. I’ve seen the kind that draws people closer to Jesus, that understands the whole reason we need each other, that pulls people in and makes room. And I’ve seen the other kind. The kind that pushes people away. That isolates. That chooses control over love.

But let me say this clearly, because it matters. I think we judge church leaders far too harshly. They are human. They are flawed. They make mistakes, just like I do. I am certainly not exempt from that. In fact, my own self-doubt reminds me of it every single night after a group meeting, running back through all the ways I could have done better. (That’s probably the enemy in my head too, if I’m honest.)

So I don’t say any of this to point fingers. I say it because it made me tremble a little, and want to fall on my knees, and ask God to guard me from ever leading out of anything but Him.

Because here’s the weight of it. When you say yes to God’s call, the opposition gets real. And it isn’t only the leader the enemy is after. It’s everyone that leader is holding. Because if the shepherd falls, the sheep scatter. The stakes were never just mine.

That’s not fear talking. That’s reverence. That’s me taking this seriously enough to armor up for it.

And I have so much reason to take it seriously. I know what it’s like to be the one sitting in someone’s living room, terrified, barely wanting to be there, and to be met by leaders who loved me well anyway. That community held me through one of the hardest losses of my life. They were God’s hands and feet to me when I needed it most. How could I not want to be that for someone else?

And God, in His kindness, wasn’t finished showing off. Because around that same time, another woman I’m close with had been feeling her own pull to start a new group. An arts and crafts Bible study, of all things. We came to find out we’d been carrying the very same calling, without either of us saying it to the other. Turns out God had been whispering the same thing to both of us all along.

So I’ll keep praying that dangerous, honest prayer. I’ll keep putting on the full armor of God, every single day, and asking Him for protection and for discernment. For me, and for my family, and for every woman He puts in front of me.

Because the enemy is crafty. But he is not the one who has already seen how this ends.

So, sorry, Satan. I’m stubborn. And I’m not going to fail, because my God, my Lord, my Savior has already won the victory.

I’ll put the armor on daily. I’ll keep praying for protection and discernment.

My work here is not done yet. 💪

He wasn’t being subtle. 🤍