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Being a Girl Who Leads (BEING A GIRL #3)

Bethany House Publishers

Chapter One

Leadership is not a position you can step into and out of, and it has nothing to do with your age. True leadership is a conscious choice to stand for something in a world that falls for everything. Being a girl who leads means making a conscious effort to apply the Word of God to real life-no compromises. Authentic Christians follow the lead of Jesus Christ in all they do and say. Unfortunately, the world doesn't really know too much about what that looks like because Christians are compromising left and right.

Maybe we are not making huge compromises that would incriminate us if we had to stand before a judge and a jury. But if we are honest, we will admit that we are all buying into the seemingly small and harmless compromises that masquerade as pop culture. There is no such thing as a harmless compromise when it comes to morality and the standards by which you choose to govern your life. Everything in this world either glorifies God or mocks Him. Nothing is neutral. And in everything we say and do, we either glorify God or we mock Him. All too often Christians give in to the mockery just as much as the rest of the world does.

We don't want to be different. We would much rather compromise than stand out. Like many magazines and movies suggest, we allow ourselves to become objects and not people.Instead of focusing on who we are, we become consumed with how we look. Soon we become empty shells-pretty on the outside, hollow on the inside. For the most part, people can't tell us apart from the non-Christian girls. We dress like them, talk like them, and behave in much the same manner. There is nothing wrong with being trendy, but we haven't stopped there.

We have cloned the world and Christianized it. Little by little we have let our guard down. We think that because the sins in our lives are watered-down versions of what everyone else is doing (we will tell a lie but we won't commit murder; we will watch a movie with an explicit sex scene but we won't have premarital sex ourselves; we will disrespect our parents but we won't go out and get drunk on the weekends; etc.), then we are okay.

Without even thinking twice, we breathe in compromise like it is oxygen, and when we exhale we pollute the reputation of Jesus Christ. This is no small offense. Now, granted, everyone who reads this book is at a different place. Yet if we closely (and honestly) examine ourselves, we will all find compromise in our lives somewhere.

I used to think certain things didn't happen in the Christian community. But then I had a friend who attended a Christian college tell me she walked in on two classmates having sex in the prayer chapel in the middle of the night. That blew my theory right out of the water. Perhaps you are a little bit naive, like I was. And maybe some of the topics in this book are not a problem for you. You must realize, though, that they are a problem in our generation, our culture, and maybe our church. It is vitally important that we treat them like the threats they are. We need to learn how to recognize subtle compromises and refuse to take part in them. We need to educate ourselves also, so we can go out and warn others about these lies that look so much like the truth.

Satan is destroying Christian testimonies everywhere, and his tools are quite good. Sure, I have met Christian girls who are experimenting with sex, drugs, alcohol, and self-mutilation. But this experimentation is not where the problem starts. The problem starts in the little things, and it builds momentum as more and more Christians buy into the world's lie that certain compromises are just part of having some harmless fun. The biggest problem among Christian girls today is that we do not want to lead-we don't think we have to. Life is too enjoyable to waste our time on things we can worry about later. We're having too much fun being girls to care about being girls who lead. And we are paying dearly for this kind of self-centered attitude.

It's time we stop being naive or ignorant. We need to face a few issues head on and clean up some of the dirty places in our lives.

Stop being fake! Stop pretending! Sometimes I wish I could stand on my roof and scream that as loudly as I can. Other times I want to scream it as loudly as I can at the mirror. Being a Girl Who Leads is a book I had to write because its message is one I desperately needed to learn and apply to my life every day. When it comes to "little" compromises, I have been the biggest offender of them all. Such compromises are, unfortunately, often the hallmark of those of us who were raised in Christian homes and have never had much experience with "real sin." Many girls just like you have come to me, either in person or via e-mail, and have opened their hearts and shared their stories with me. Some of the stories break my heart; others make my blood boil because of the mockery they are making of Christ and His sacrifice. A few make me laugh because I have been there before too, not that long ago. In a generation full of followers, many girls are looking for role models and leaders that often do not exist. It's no wonder that so many struggle, trying to find purpose and meaning in a world that tells us to look to Hollywood and MTV to find happiness. But they will never find satisfaction in anything except a relationship with Jesus Christ.

In all of the e-mails I receive and conversations I have with girls I meet, the struggles are always the same. So I have narrowed them down to ten topics-ten areas where we compromise more often than we don't. I have dedicated an entire chapter in this book to each one. The ten lies Christians girls buy into the most are:

1. You have to buy immodest clothing and vulgar music because it is "in" and there are no other choices.

2. It does not matter who your friends are or how they live their lives. Sin is relative, and what is wrong for you may not be wrong for them.

3. You should never let anyone know who you really are-your deepest fears and your biggest dreams-because they might turn around and hurt you someday.

4. It's okay to use profanity or Christian forms of profanity. They are just words. It is not a big deal.

5. Boundaries and guidelines are for goody-goodies. Freedom is what life is really about.

6. You can give your heart away to everyone you meet and remain completely unaffected by it, even when your heart gets broken.

7. Lying and gossip are not really sin-they are just artistic forms of conversation.

8. You can do everything except have sex and still be pure.

9. You can hate your parents without dishonoring God.

10. Life is all about having fun.

If Christian girls decided to ban together and fight against these ten lies, we would see an incredible revolution sweep across our generation. We would change the world as we know it. But it will only work if each of us makes a conscious and firm decision to stand up and lead in these areas. In case you have not noticed, we do not all live on the same block or attend the same school. So we have to work on becoming authentic together yet separately.

Make up your mind in this moment that you are going to dare to be different no matter what the cost may be. Trendy? Yeah, we can be trendy. But we cannot live for the Lord with the world in our pockets, so there will be sacrifices that will have to be made. I will talk more about that later on. It is time to be real here, so I am going to be.

You will have to forgive my brutal honesty at certain places within this book. This is a message that squeezes my heart. We cannot afford to water this one down-we have done that for long enough. There is more to life than meets the eye. Compromise is killing authentic Christianity. And there is only one way to change that: to stand up and be a girl who leads.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Being a Girl Who Leads (BEING A GIRL #3) by Shannon Kubiak Primicerio Excerpted by permission.
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