As a Christian, the world will try to silence your roar. The devil may try to silence you or make you roar so loudly obnoxious that you find yourself losing credibility amongst your family, friends, and followers so much that you get even more obnoxious and wake up one day realizing that you are on the losing team. Yes. If satan can’t silence you, he will trick you into slipping from righteous anger into human anger and you will be wearing his jersey fast.

So, how do you discover what your roar is? That’s the question this blog is aiming to help you answer! You find your roar in your story. Your real story. The one that you may be afraid to tell. The one that hasn’t quite been fully surrendered to Christ yet or you are in the process of surrendering. Or, maybe you haven’t even gotten to the point where you’re ready to surrender because you are still questioning if Jesus really does know what’s best for you literally. Wherever you’re at, you still have a roar, and as you learn to use your voice for God, you will become stronger in your surrender, and your roar will continuously gain depth (credibility/trust with others) and power (dangerous to our enemy, the devil).

Many of us have several stories to tell. I can personally testify to bullying, rejection, being unwanted, family betrayal, marriage betrayal, divorce, infidelity, spiritual abuse, and sexual harassment. Those are areas that I can roar into because I can also testify to God’s power and authority in restoring so much of my life and seriously making satan (I don’t capitalize his name) pay me back everything he stole from me as a child, an emerging adult, and even into my 40s. For real. One of my favorite verses from the Bible is Revelation 12:11, “We overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimonies and we did not love our lives unto the death.”

What does that verse mean to you? To me, it means that I do not want to water down one once of my testimony because I want God to fully get ALL the credit and glory due to Him for what He has accomplished in my heart, my mind, and my life! If I don’t share the best and worst moments, others cannot fully grasp the beauty of restoration. There’s a big difference between “we can marriage issues” and “adultery ransacked our marriage.” You know what I mean, Sister? One ignites sympathy, the other ignites righteous anger. So, no watering down a testimony here. It also means to me that some parts of me have to die like my pride, my reputation, and my image to others….and I’m so glad that I did that too.

Trying to look squeaky clean to the Christian community takes a lot of facade and phony tactics. Jesus made it clear to the Pharisees that He hated their fake religious practices and in Proverbs 13:5 we see that a true lover of God hates fake behavior too. “Loves of God hate what is phony and false, but the wicked are full of shame and behave shamefully.”

satan wants you to hide and silence your roar. The enemy does not want you to realize that you roar from a place of victory and that your roar may be the very life-saving message, encouragement, advice, connection, or validation that another woman needs at that moment. Scripture tells us that part of the way we overcome is by sharing our testimonies. We all have a history of something. We can all relate to something that another person is struggling with be it parenting, leadership, singleness, marriage, pregnancy, miscarriage, bullying, rejection, abandonment, or any other demonic entity that tries to hijack our imaginations, cause us emotional pain, and makes us forget (1) how much we are loved by God and (2) our identities as Daughters of the Highest King Ever.

Don’t stay committed to shame and disgrace. No amount of volunteering, financial donations, or morphing yourself into a facade make-up artist is going to help you live a life where you feel free, confident, and loved. It won’t happen, because you’ll always be working to keep the image up and to run from or try to destroy anything that could ruin your phony image. I’ll leave this at this period. (I could actually write a book on why facades are demonic). Ok, one last thing. Remember what Victor Frankle penned after surviving a Jewish Concentration Camp under Hitler, “Prison bars imagined, are no less solid steel.”

You already know what you can and should roar into, but you are hesistant. That’s ok. Start small. Pick one thing and ask God to show you how he wants you to roar. It could be mentoring a younger girl, leading a small group on the topic at church, blogging, opening up that part of your story to others, speaking at a retreat, etc… God can bring to you all kinds of ways to roar and when you do…..

You will fill fulfilled. You will fill empowered. You will be humbled. You will feel useful. You will feel loved. You will want to do it again, and again, and again, and before long you will be making the devil regret that he ever attacked you with whatever you’re roaring about. You may save another lady’s life by sharing your struggle with depression. You may inspire a woman to reach out for help by leading a group about healthy marriages. You may inspire other women to trust Christ with their lives at deeper levels too.

Roar, Sister. YOU deserve to be heard too.