Hello!
I’m so glad you are joining me for today’s Sharing Life post. Sharing Life is all about women speaking into the lives of other women. My friends and I are seeking to do that in three specific areas of life:
If you click on the above areas of Sharing Life, you will be taken to a previous post that falls into that category so you can experience a bit of the flavor of this series.
As Jesus-followers, we have a biblical ‘YES’ to mentor others who are coming along behind us. While you may not be ‘older’ in age, you might be just a few steps further along a journey than another woman. Well, sister, that makes you the ‘older woman’! So, be faithful to look for those mentoring opportunities in your life and take advantage of them. Mentoring is not all formal and check-list driven. It is simply being a friend to another woman and speaking into her life when the opportunity arises.
Today at Sharing Life, I am so pleased to introduce you to one of my online friends who lives a world away from me. Lidia’s writing drew me in years ago, and her gentle manner is a thing of beauty. Please welcome Lidia Arbolario to Sharing Life.
Lidia Arbolario is from the Philippines, an archipelago of 7,100 islands in Asia. She wants her life to be a tribute to God, her King, her Creator, her Redeemer, and faithful Father, in the many opportunities she has been given to make Him known and give Him glory. She believes her kingdom destiny is to be a channel of healing and God’s redemptive purposes in the lives of others. She desires to be a mentor to this generation and the next, the arising Bridal Generation, helping prepare them to be the end-time army of Christ for His Second Coming.
Lidia served as the ministry head and principal of their church school, the Christian Academy of Bacolod for eighteen years. At present, she is part of the ministry team of Family Foundations International (Phil-Asia) working to establish a culture of blessing in the families they minister to, and helping people receive a deeper understanding of their God-given identity and how to walk in their true destiny.
She and her husband Ernie were married for 30 years before he went home to heaven in 2008. They have two sons, two daughters in law, one daughter, and four grandchildren. She writes about the changing seasons of her life, the struggles, and the victories, in her blog, entitled Crown of Beauty, an ongoing story of God’s faithfulness to her.
Lidia blogs at http://mla-crownofglory.blogspot.com/
What amazes me is that we are not meant to merely be passive readers of what God writes. He gives us a proactive role, including us as main characters as well.
He created you and me in the context of a story: our birth begins as a story, our timeline is a series of stories, and our life ends in a story.
Doesn’t this just take your breath away?
Many years ago when I had just gotten to know Jesus as my Lord, Savior, and King, as a university freshman, I understood my main role in life was to be an important character in His creation story, and therefore, to remain true to the script that He had prepared for me.
There was a plot, a sub-plot, twists and turns… but they were not always revealed to me beforehand.
Yes, my life story is a all about trusting and obeying… faith in the making.
Faith was not just an abstract concept to be understood in one’s mind. It was a truth that could only be learned and understood in the context of my life.
Each one of us is in a faith journey; we all have many faith chapters in God’s book.
Let me share one chapter with you.
One of the best things that God ever did for me was to give me a new name. It was 1992, and I was in the middle of one of the most painful seasons of my life. I had stopped looking at myself in the mirror because each time I did, I saw an ugly face staring back at me. The road ahead was bleak, and hopeless.
One night God spoke to me. “Get up,” the Voice said.
“Stop being despondent.” The One speaking had authority.
“Pick up your Bible.” I opened my Bible and started reading from where I had stopped the day before. The next passage was Isaiah 62.
