Day 2 There is Power in your Difference

I was sitting here watching 30 mins with the Perry’s and they started talking about prayer and I had to pause it because it made me think about the fact that no one ever taught me how to pray. It is wild to me that I grew up in church and NEVER learned how to pray until recently. My current church is a Church of intercession and so many people in my church can pray a thing down. But when I think about the way that I pray, it used to make me feel like I wasn’t equipped.  However, what I know now is that my prayer didn’t lack power, it’s just that I pray differently. I remember receiving a word from someone and they talked about how I would pray differently and that my prayer was still powerful even though it didn’t come across as loud and boisterous as someone else’s prayer. They told me it would be necessary because it would give people permission to pray as themselves as well.

So, I began to reflect on this and think about the uniqueness of who I am.  There is POWER in my DIFFERENCE.  My entire life I continued to receive words about how I’ll never fit in, I will always stand out, and how I have to get over the fact that people will not always like me and be OK with that. That’s challenging for someone who grew up as a people pleaser. I spent my entire life learning how to please other people in order to be liked, to be safe, to be in a room, and to be a part but my entire life God has built me and created me to stand out. That is not who he’s called me to be. Somehow, we’ve gotten to this place to where we have idolized sameness and so when someone presents themselves as different from us or some in a way that we don’t necessarily understand sometimes we reject the idea of that. But there is beauty in difference.  If God wanted us to be the same, He would have made us all look alike. There would be one race. We would be ONE BAND, ONE SOUND and that is not who he’s called us to be. God said you are chosen! You are a peculiar person! You are set apart! Which means different and so today I am embracing the POWER in my DIFFERENCE! I am standing up in the fact that God made me different and that there is beauty in that!  When God called you His masterpiece, he meant you are one-of-a-kind! That’s what makes them a masterpiece! There’s nothing else like it! People may try to duplicate it or replicated but the value is in the original!  I truly believe that once we grasp and really believe that God made us different and that there’s power in that, that we will thrive in a way that we’ve never seen ourselves thrive before! So be OK with being you! Stop valuing people’s opinions over God’s be OK with being set apart because that’s where your power lies 

I love y’all!

 Until tomorrow

Ashley Lacheá