When I wrote the book, DADDY’s Girl Forever: Come Home to the Truth About God’s Heart Towards You, I included the stories of women I know who, in their own voice, shared the negative effect their daddy issues had on their relationships with God the Father and how God pursued them with His love.
After my dad read his copy, he asked if those stories were real or did I make them up. I chuckled to myself, assuring him they were true stories in their own words.
DAILY YOU’RE ASKED TO VALIDATE YOUR VOICE
My dad’s question had nothing to do with the plausibility of their stories—rather, his discomfort in reading them. Everyone has their own “comfort level” so it’s no wonder that daily you’re asked to validate your voice.
To explain why anyone should give ear to what you say and to confirm what you say is true.
It gives the sense that if they don’t hear you, if they don’t give your words weight—you didn’t really make a sound.
Don’t give that nonsense any wiggle room.
The same God who created you, spoke the planet you’re standing on into existence. Those same words keep it rotating on its axis till now—though none of us heard them.
And since He made you in His image, don’t you dare think your voice doesn’t matter! The power of life and death is in your tongue.*
Your voice doesn’t need any qualification other than the truth—because God is not the author of lies or confusion.
When you give breath to your experiences, emotions, and viewpoint, you validate your own life while honoring the God who first breathed into you.
“I saw everything that happened to you…but I knew I would restore you.”
As a little girl, you craved the security of a dad who’s close. Who sees all your hurts and swoops in to fix them. If that wasn’t your story, know that your story’s not over. There is a father who saw it all. And if you give him the chance, he’ll fix it too.
YOUR VICTORY IS IN YOUR VOICE
It’s with your voice you receive salvation and deliverance. It’s how you agree with every promise available to you through a relationship with Christ, and how you overcome the horrors of your past.
You overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of your testimony.**
It’s that way any time Gigi Gilliard, corporate trainer, speaker, friend and fellow Bronx girl, shares with her audiences her personal experience with housing discrimination in 80s New Jersey, yes—the 1980s.
After one event, described in her book, The Loud Brown Round Girl: Rejecting Assumptions That Do Not Define Me, the CEO thanked her and asked if the story really happened.
When she replied, “Yes it did,” she not only exposed a dark experience to light, she testified that what could have demoralized her, actually launched her into her destiny.
The same is true of your dark experiences. So, you use your words to bring life out of what could have destroyed you.
Your future is voice activated.
So don’t let people, your personal ‘demons’ or the devil himself, fool you into silence with the threat of dismissal or disbelief.
FAITH COMES BY HEARING
It’s not a surprising statement when the Creator of ‘voice activation’ states—to get the full effect of his Word, you need to hear it.
What is it about the voice that makes words come to life?
I don’t know, but when I took a break from podcasting, the Lord redirected me toward the book he’s had on my mind these days. He said it’s time for an audiobook version of DGF. It’s time to read the book out loud for women who won’t ‘get it’ any other way.
So, that’s what I’ve been up to. And there’s power in breathing life into words on a page. It’s etched the truths of DADDY’s Girl Forever into my soul in a way silent reading never did.
If you journal—and I recommend you do—go back and read some of your old entries out loud. And the next time you read your Bible, read it out loud too.
It’ll surprise you how your faith takes wings as you remember all you’ve lived through and rehearse what’s still to come.
If you ever write a book—read it out loud, my friend. And if you never write your story, then tell it in any space you can.
Will anyone hear you? Some will, some won’t. But those with ears to hear will hear you.
And the Lord is one of them.
I’m rooting for you!
[*Proverbs 18:21, **Revelation 12:11]
WEAR YOUR FAITH
Tees That Testify
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16, NIV
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Vanessa A. Harris 