Grieving Levi Part 3: Talk The Talk, Walk The Walk – Kathryn Ball
When I think back to being invited to our church’s leadership meeting in 2022, I can feel the excitement all over again. I can remember Micah and I half joking about how we weren’t sure if our pastors meant to invite us. I was nervous and excited to be a part of whatever these meetings consisted of but I also felt that being included in leadership would require a heart posture that was open to serve the body, and for loving correction/discipleship if needed.
If you couldn’t tell by now, we never expected to be involved in leadership at our church and help carry the weight of the responsibility of stewarding the call on our church. But now when I reflect on it, I see that we had already accepted the call when we submitted to God’s placement of our family there; we were already wholeheartedly giving, serving, worshipping, and praying. We were stewarding the promises of God on the church, fully participating in the meetings, and developing relationships within our church. We were simply living what we proclaimed so to speak, so why was being involved in leadership meetings so intimidating to me?
I realized the intimidation (fear) was rooted in my desire to please our pastors and God, and avoid mistakes in walking this out. I think this comes from realizing that no matter what anyone says, when people find out you’re involved in church leadership in some way, they can begin to criticize you or place you on a pedestal that any one of us will inevitably fall off of because we’re human. Once I identified this lie that fear was attempting to get me to agree with, I was able to confront it head on.
I’m so thankful for the Holy Spirit’s gentle and loving correction. He makes it so clear when my thoughts are not in alignment with Him. God wasn’t demanding perfection from us, this was directly from the enemy.
The truth is, it’s not my job to manage other people’s expectations of me or my husband. While I love and respect our pastors, my aim is to please God. So often we misplace our needs for acceptance, focused attention, guidance, or protection on church leadership, namely the pastors. However, all four of these emotional needs are met by the Father, not people.
When You said, “Seek My face [in prayer, require My presence as your greatest need],” my heart said to You,
“Your face, O Lord, I will seek [on the authority of Your word].”
Do not hide Your face from me,
Do not turn Your servant away in anger;
You have been my help;
Do not abandon me nor leave me,
O God of my salvation!
Although my father and my mother have abandoned me,
Yet the Lord will take me up [adopt me as His child].
Teach me Your way, O Lord,
And lead me on a level path
Because of my enemies [who lie in wait].Psalm 27:8-11 AMP
We’re all prone to misplacing our expectations and needs onto people rather than God. It seems that is especially true of church in general. Church is not a place to come and pretend to be perfect, and there is no room in leadership to attempt to walk it out that way. I refuse to hold my pastors to that impossible standard in fact, I love their authenticity and transparency; so why was I okay with holding myself to an unattainable standard?
Regarding church and life in general, I always want to avoid mistakes because I don’t want to hurt people or steer them in the wrong direction, but the truth is Jesus didn’t come so we have to walk this life out on a tight rope. I’m human, I will make mistakes. It’s not about being perfect, the real test from God is how we walk out our mistakes with Him anyway.
It turned out that the church leadership meetings were exactly what you could expect from attending our prayer meetings. Our pastors and leaders are transparent in their walk with Jesus. The expectation is don’t just talk the talk, you need to walk the walk. How refreshing and healing it was to see that they are exactly who they say they are, not just because they proclaim it, but because they live this daily.
I’m always pleasantly surprised at the areas that God has healed me in regarding church. In general, I’m big on people’s behavior matching their words. You can say one thing but show me what you really believe by your actions. In time, behavioral patterns will always show you what someone really believes, even if they themselves are self-deceived. I use to think everyone saw this but I’ve realized this seems to be how God uses my natural ability to see behavioral patterns with ADHD, and the gift of discernment and discerning of spirits.
There’s a difference if someone is just analyzing a person and calling it discernment versus true discernment from the Holy Spirit. I don’t analyze, I just see it at some point and typically, discernment doesn’t come with proof- this gift from the Holy Spirit gets misunderstood a lot so I just wanted to make that clarification. It’s relevant to mention this gifting because I can’t un-see what’s really going on and I’m thankful to be a part of a church where leaders are not put on pedestals and instead are expected to serve underneath to uplift the body and the call on the house of God.
In simple terms, we’re involved in leadership meetings, but we’re not designated leaders. We were being asked to continue to be ourselves, to continue to intentionally press into the call of God on our church; to give, serve, worship, and pray, all without an actual title. We felt like it was a gift to not have a particular title while being included in church leadership meetings, and reminded us that a title does not make anyone more important than another. Authority, submission, and roles in the kingdom never mean that someone is more important than another and I think our cultural understanding of these words gets mixed up with scriptural truth.
It’s always better to read God’s word and have our misunderstanding of these terms corrected in love. For whatever reason we mix up God ordained authority, submission, and roles with equality in God’s eyes. The fact is, there are no second class citizens in the kingdom of God. Jesus came to serve not be served, and that is the heart posture that is expected at our church.
When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.
John 13:12-17 ESV
Years ago in 2019, I heard the Holy Spirit say,” You have chronic hope.” I could not have imagined the battle that was ahead of me but I knew I was supposed to write a book and share online about the faithfulness and goodness of God and the promises of God in our life.
When the Holy Spirit was leading me into healing in 2017 for endometriosis, the Lord showed me a vision of pulling women out of pits. It was a sea of pits in desolate land and each woman I helped was then able to help pull other women out and so on and so forth. I thought that meant I was helping woman get access to endometriosis care but God had much bigger plans than the small picture I created in my mind. Micah has always said that I’m doing woman’s ministry but the word ministry always intimidated me.
There were things that had been prophesied over Micah and me over the years, after returning to our church, that seemed impossible. Indeed, whatever the call of God is on our lives, rest assured it will always be impossible without God leading the way. I remember asking God for help with preparing to help others. God made it clear up to that point that I am called to help women. I felt that I needed someone to teach me some foundational truths that I might be missing in order to move forward with God’s plan.
Certainly God isn’t going to have me help others without first helping me prepare for however this ministry to was going to unfold. Knowing that the Holy Spirit is our helper, counselor, teacher, and encourager, I asked for his direction.
But the Helper (Comforter, Advocate, Intercessor—Counselor, Strengthener, Standby), the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name [in My place, to represent Me and act on My behalf], He will teach you all things. And He will help you remember everything that I have told you.
John 14:26 AMP
After I prayed for help, all I had to do was wait on God. Oof not my favorite. The concept of waiting on God sounds so easy, but sometimes it is the hardest thing for us to do. I followed little nudges from the Holy Spirit to share online about being healed from endometriosis and how to navigate pregnancy loss with Jesus. I had no idea how God was going to meet this need and I certainly never expected Him to do it through a church leaders meeting.
Just goes to show, be careful of the picture you develop in your mind, God rarely stays inside the lines of the box we try to put Him in.
It was in March of 2022 that I met my mentor and her husband, Gloria and Michael Cotten. The Cottens had become part of the spiritual oversight of our church, and had become friends with our pastors. God is relational and has graced our pastors to build relationally. What that means is, meeting Gloria and Michael through God’s placement of us at our church was no accident.
I remember seeing Gloria look at me a couple of times in the meeting. I thought I was just being sensitive but Micah mentioned that she looked at me several times. Our Pastors always have a plan for the subject of the meeting but the Holy Spirit is welcome to interrupt the meeting at any point and change the course direction.
That night was no exception to this rule and my Pastor felt led to have us stand in a circle and release hospitality over us by the power of the Holy Spirit. I was last in the circle, and wouldn’t you know my pastor heard to release a double portion over me. Just as he finished, Gloria came over to me and started prophesying a women’s ministry and hospitality over me. I wish I could have recorded everything she said because it happened so fast.
As she finished prophesying, the meeting came to an end. As we disbursed to clean everything up, Michael came up to us to encourage me to reach out to Gloria. He sensed that this women’s ministry was going to happen sooner not later and to call Gloria the following week. He gave me her number and then went on his marry way.
I remember saying to Micah, “Did that really just happen?” on the way home. We laughed at our impatience with God directing our steps in the face of His perfect timing. Of course the next morning it hit me that I was going to have to call Gloria, a perfect stranger, a spiritual giant in the face of the enemy, like her husband encouraged me to do the night before.
I started sweating at the thought of it and made the decision to wait over the weekend and call the following Tuesday. After all, the meeting was on a Friday night and I didn’t want to overstep any personal boundaries by calling on the weekend.
Plus, I was petrified so there was that.
Tuesday morning rolled around and I started sweating again at the thought of making the call to Gloria. It’s funny, the moment she answered the phone I was able to relax. Gloria shared that she teaches women about God and while they have retired from running their church, they are still very much involved in ministry.
Michael was a pastor and although he has retired, he travels world-wide offering spiritual oversight to various churches as a prophet. Gloria has the spiritual gift of teaching (among many other giftings) where she mentors women, leads bible studies, speaks at churches worldwide, and has written a book called, In the Beginning, Restoring God’s Vision for Women.
She shared that what initially brought her back to God was experiencing 5 miscarriages and 1 stillbirth. Today she has great grandchildren.
It was encouraging to hear a little bit of her story and it gave me a lot of hope for our future. We never know how God is using our circumstances to eventually bring healing to others and this is a prime example of it. Gloria clarified that she saw in the spirit a teaching anointing and women’s ministry on me that night and that is why she kept looking at me. She explained that God made me a teacher but it has not been drawn out of me yet because there are foundations that need to be laid.
Gloria shared that much like Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 9), the seal of his calling is their draw of the anointing that was on Him. We typically look at Paul’s road to Damascus moment as the proof that He was called by God, but the proof of the anointing was the draw of people to Him. It is the same for us today, it’s the anointing that draws people in, not a title or outward claim of God’s call on our life.
Gloria said that women would be drawn to me, which would be proof of the teaching anointing God has placed on me. It was a relief to hear that God will draw them in, I don’t have to do anything to orchestrate it. She said it might start as one on one bible study, then I might be asked to lead a bible study, then I might be asked to speak at churches or conferences etc. She encouraged me to let the Holy Spirit Shepard me into this.
Gloria reminded me that it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to equip me, but it’s my job to be obedient to Him. This is such a good reminder because it is easy to come up with my own picture of what a women’s ministry might look like but if I’m just focused on Jesus and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, God will do it.
We ended the call with her offering any help that I needed moving forward. She told me to call her at any point if I had questions. Of course I thought to myself, umm can you just teach me everything you know? Did I actually say this? Nope. I chickened out and honestly, I felt like it would be too much of an imposition to ask for her help. I reasoned that she was probably really busy and didn’t want to impose anything on her. I felt hopeful and encouraged that God was confirming his call of a women’s ministry over my life.
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
Ephesians 4:11-14 ESV
Good gracious, a teacher? That explains so much of my life and how I navigate the world. When I learn anything, I end up teaching it in some way to someone else. It also explains why I can’t really get away with anything and tend to have to follow the rules or I’m made to be the example. I have always sought out the truth and will go to the ends of the earth to find it.
Not many [of you] should become teachers [serving in an official teaching capacity], my brothers and sisters, for you know that we [who are teachers] will be judged by a higher standard [because we have assumed greater accountability and more condemnation if we teach incorrectly].
James 3:1 AMP
This checks out, she’s right. What do you know, Micah was right calling this a women’s ministry. Imagine that, ha!
Pastor Whit is so good to remind us that God meets us in our stepping and I’m thankful that I’m no exception to this spiritual truth. I think after hearing all of this, the challenge was knowing what to do next and waiting for the Lord to reveal my next steps. As I was waiting on God, He began to confirm the word Gloria prophesied over me by having several women approach me to mentor them.
Jesus take the wheel, it’s happening.
Nine months later, I was able to take the next steps that lead to the breakthrough I needed…
