CHAPTER 1

Start With What Is in Front of You

“But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose...” Acts 26:16 (KJV)

Purpose Usually Begins Close

We imagine purpose someday, after more time, money, education, confidence, or clarity. Paul first had to stand. He did not need every future instruction before obeying the present one.

Legacy is built in ordinary days: how we speak when tired, whether we tell truth, apologize, show up, pray, and let people experience Christ's character around us.

Stop Waiting to Become Someone Else

God already knows your limitations. Preparation can be part of purpose—study, training, counseling, healing, saving, learning to lead. But preparation can become hiding. There is a difference between not being ready and being afraid to begin.

Sometimes We Decide We Are Disqualified

A lot of what I write began with experience. Experience made me want to understand; understanding made me want to learn; learning made me want to share.

I hesitated to write to men. Why would a man want a woman's perspective on spiritual growth, relationships, purpose, or healing? For a while I believed I needed a man standing beside the work to validate it in men's eyes. I was deciding what God could do before I had even given it to Him.

Then There Were Relationships

I was single, not married, and had relationships that did not work. I wondered who I was to say anything about healthy relationships.

I knew how to care, commit, support, encourage, and love. What I had not known as well was how to expect healthy treatment in return, speak up, recognize what should not be normalized, and establish boundaries without guilt. Experience itself was not the qualification; it made me hungry enough to learn.

Humility and Insecurity

Humility says, “There are things I don't know.” Insecurity says, “Because there are things I don't know, I have nothing worth giving.” Humility learns, listens, seeks wisdom, receives correction, and recognizes when another perspective is needed.

So I Started Where I Was

That is part of why the first retreat I planned was a singles retreat. Singleness was the season I actually knew. I could understand loneliness, community, relationship questions, becoming healthy before building something healthy, and growing in Christ when life did not look as once imagined.

I did not need to wait until marriage to serve. I could ask, “What can I faithfully do from here?” Sometimes experience shows us a need. Maybe we create the thing we were looking for or build the table where we wished there had been a seat.

Bring God What You Have

Learn, prepare, study Scripture, seek counsel, listen to experiences different from yours, take responsibility, heal, and grow. But do not spend your life becoming someone else before allowing God to use what He has already been forming in you.

Billy Graham Back to Edward Kimball

Billy Graham responded to Christ as a teenager during Mordecai Ham's 1934 Charlotte revival meetings. Ham was a traveling evangelist. Before that era, Billy Sunday carried a highly visible evangelistic ministry after his conversion through Chicago's Pacific Garden Mission and later service with J. Wilbur Chapman. Chapman was a Presbyterian pastor and evangelist connected to the evangelistic world shaped by D. L. Moody.

Moody had little formal education and once worked as a young shoe salesman in Boston. His Sunday school teacher, Edward Kimball, became concerned about his soul, went to the shoe store, found him in the stockroom, and spoke to him about Christ. Moody responded.

The Story Is a Web, Not a Perfect Chain

The popular chain is often told as if each man directly converted the next. History is more nuanced: some connections were conversion, others mentorship, opportunity, ministry influence, and evangelistic tradition. That makes the lesson stronger, not weaker.

A prayed. B invited. C preached. D taught. E gave an opportunity. F modeled faithfulness. God gave the increase.

Start With the Person You Can See

You do not need to become Billy Graham for your faithfulness to matter. Maybe your part is teaching, mentoring, inviting, praying, raising a child, writing, supporting, encouraging, or sharing the Gospel.

Kimball could not see generations. He could see Moody. So he went to the shoe store. And God took care of what came after.