In this encouraging solo episode, Collide founder Willow Weston shares 15 common hindrances that keep us from fully embracing God's purpose. If you've ever felt held back by fear, comparison, busyness, or unbelief, this conversation will help you identify what's standing in your way and inspire you to move forward with courage and faith.
Willow Weston is the founder and director of Collide, an author, Bible teacher, and speaker passionate about helping women experience healing through Jesus. Drawing from Hebrews 12, Willow shares practical wisdom and heartfelt encouragement for women who desire to live boldly, serve faithfully, and believe that God can use their lives to make an eternal impact.
You don't have to wait until you feel more qualified, more confident, or more capable before God can use you. As you listen, you'll be reminded that He delights in working through ordinary women who simply say "yes." Whatever has been holding you back, today can be the day you begin throwing it aside.
Welcome to the Collide Podcast. We're a growing community of everyday chicks colliding with Jesus in our mess, our pain, our joy, and our stories.
We value showing up as we truly are.
So that's what you'll find here, walls and masks being torn down so that we can allow Jesus to meet us where we truly are and hear about other women doing the same. We can't wait to collide with.
Willow Weston:I think for you and I, no matter what we feel called to do, whether it's to enlarge your business because your business is going to bless people, whether it's to start a nonprofit, whether it's that you see a need in your community and you want to meet it, and it seems impossible to actually meet that need. Our greatest hindrance might be our disbelief. Welcome to the We Clied Podcast.
I'm Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide, and I'm just hanging out here having my morning coffee coffee and just thinking about you guys. And I hear from women all the time who say, I want to do big things with my life. I want to be used by God to impact people.
I want to change the world. I want to serve God. I want to do ministry. And I do too. And I'm right there with you.
And this summer, and I shared this a bit on the last podcast I did about some things I learned this summer. I was struck by Hebrews 12:1 through 3, and I'll read it for you today.
It says, therefore, since we're surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders in the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
For the joy set before him. He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. That passage of scripture struck me so much this summer because I had this realization that there was a hindrance that was in my way.
I feel like God is calling me to run this race, to follow him in my calling, to do what I'm made to do. And there's some things that have gotten in the way.
And I don't know if you feel that way at all, but if you do, then this podcast this morning is for you.
This is specifically what I'm going to talk about, is for those of you who feel like you want to serve God and minister and impact and change the world, but some things are getting in the way. I sat down and thought about 15 hindrances that will trip you up, girl.
And so I'm going to just go through those and I'm already going to pre warn you that I turn the heat up a little bit on these because they are hindrances. And scripture says hindrances are ours to throw aside, to move out of the way so we can get in our lane and run.
And so I think part of getting rid of hindrances in our life is naming them. And so I want to just take some time to go through 15 ways that we can be hindered in our service towards God.
And not all of these will resonate with you, but they'll be good for you to hear as you also reflect on people around you, people you lead, people you serve, people who you love who are struggling. These things are tripping them up. So I'm going to start with the I'm too busy woman. Look, we're all busy. Trust me, I'm too busy too.
And if you want to have a competition, there's always someone who will win and it won't be you. And I feel like we all have these super fabulous excuses when we want to ditch on a commitment to do something else.
I see this all the time with people who want to commit to service in our ministry and something fun comes up or something that's a real good excuse to sidestep what they committed to. And they say, oh, I'm busy, I gotta do this thing. The average youth group leader volunteers five to ten hours a week.
The average volunteer coach coaches five to six hours a week. The average Facebook user is on their app almost five hours a week. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. The average TV watcher watches 35.5 hours of TV.
A part of service, part of being intentional in the calling that God has on your life is that you choose. You make a choice and you're intentional and you let your yeses be yeses and your nos no's.
Matthew 5:37 says simply, Let your yes be yes and your no no.
If you said yes to something, said yes to an opportunity, said yes to serving at your church, said yes to the work you want to do with the homeless, said y. A youth pastor. Whatever, whatever it is that God has laid before you, that's a commitment.
And what will trip you up and keep you even busier is all the sort of just mindless stuff that we do that gets in the way of the things we really feel called to do. So be busy doing the right things, be busy doing the important things and forego the unimportant things. We're all busy.
Another hindrance that will trip you up is being the there's the sort of intentions over actions. Woman when we're like this, we say we want to do more, but we don't do more.
We say we want to be used more experience, more purpose, see big miracles happen. We want to see God showing up and doing amazing things. But we're all talking. No action. And we keep ordering our life around.
Our own comforts, our own safety, our own ordered life. And I have learned over the years that one of our greatest hindrances in life is our intentions.
Intentions often feel real because we put them, we put voice to them and we. We say what we want to do. And it's almost as though we've checked it off, as though we've done it, but we actually haven't done it.
But it sounded real. Good intentions do nothing to impact lives unless they're backed up with action.
So if you say you want to lives or change the world or do something for God, you can't just say it. You actually have to back it up. Giving your own intentions credit can be very dangerous. See, ministry can be a noun or a verb.
You can say I am in ministry or I do ministry. The problem is too many people want to be the noun and not the verb. You can say I want to be a leader, but I don't lead. Right?
People want title without the action. They want to be called Mother Teresa, but they don't actually want to live with the poor.
They want to be called leader, but again, they don't want to do the work or the sacrifice that comes with leadership. They want to be a part of big amazing things, but they don't want to have to give until it hurts to get there.
They want to be called servant of God, but they don't want to get the towel out and wash dirty feet. So we need to make sure that our intentions have action to back them up. Otherwise, all our intentions are is a hindrance.
Because the truth is you can't be a minister unless you minister. You can't be a leader unless you lead. You can't be God's servant unless you serve. You can't be a world changer unless you're changing something.
So toss aside intentions that have no action or back them up. Another hindrance that I often see tripping us up is this sort of there's the this is about what I receive woman.
I remember 20 some years ago, I was in youth ministry and there was this youth leader that I served with. And I remember going looking for her. We couldn't find her. And there she was.
She was supposed to be back with the youth leaders at a youth leader meeting. And she's out next to the water in a sort of a small group with these high school girls. She wasn't in high school anymore.
She was supposed to be ministering to high school girls.
And she's just pouring out her life and all her problems and trying to get their advice and their attention and have them hold her and hug her and pray with her. And she was there to serve them, but instead she was looking for them to serve her. Ministry and service for God isn't about what you receive, though.
I'll tell you straight up, when you pour out for others, you will feel more filled up. But service and ministry can't be about you. Jesus showed us that ministry is always about other people.
And one of the greatest hindrances to being used by God to change lives is making it about you. And so often that's what we do. We sign up to be a part of something cool because we're looking to find community. We want to look cool or spiritual.
We want the title leader. But it isn't about you. It's about others. And as soon as you're set on serving others, your life will be used for greatness.
But if it's about you, if your service is about you, your yes to God is about you, your ministry is about you, then you'll either grow bitter or you will grow weary, or you will be ineffective to bring about any real change in other people's lives. Because it's really all about yours. So let's just throw aside this is about what I receive hindrance.
Another hindrance is the hey everyone, look at everything I've done. Chick. The Bible says, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.
Let me tell you what happens in this ministry thing when it becomes all about you, keeping track of how much you do and letting everyone else know about it. Number one, you drive everyone around you crazy.
If you're working with them, if you're serving and volunteering with them, and then you complain or compare or count up your hours, your co servants that you're doing ministry alongside, they're not going to be very impressed. And there's always people out serving us, I promise.
And you'll crash and burn because you'll always be keeping track of how many hours and how many dollars and how many this and how many that. You know, we don't serve to impress God, and we don't serve to impress each other. We serve so others can know and grow in God.
No tit for tat, no counting, no bragging, no comparing, no de elevating someone else while elevating yourself. That's all how the world does giving. But we are a prodigal people. Do you know what the word prodigal means?
It means having or giving something on a lavish scale. The story in Luke 15 is, is an amazing story that theologians later came to title in, in the Bible, the Prodigal Son. Maybe you've heard of it.
If you haven't, you should go read it. But it really should be called the Prodigal Father because it was the Father who gave something on a lavish scale to each one of us. He gave his life.
And I have a feeling when we start counting our volunteer hours and telling everyone about it, the Father thinks to himself, ah, how cute. We serve and should serve for an audience of one. And that one is the Prodigal Father who lavishes generously all he has for each one of us.
So you can go count up your time and your hours and your donations and your this and your that and tell God about it and see how that feels. But don't tell other people, because I promise your left hand already knows what your right hand is doing.
Another hindrance is when we become the runner chick. When we become her, we run from commitment and service and sisterhood and community.
When the going gets tough, when we're exposed, when we make a mistake, when we need grace, we get scared and we quit and we back out. We start self sabotaging and making excuses and guess where we end up?
We end up right back in the place we were trying to get unstuck from when we first said yes to stepping out and risking brave and jumping in to community and saying yes to serving God. And I see this all the time with our volunteers and our ministry team at Kolide.
We always have women who when a moment of time in working on a team with each other requires grace because they made a mistake or they blew it or they forgot something or a pattern of dysfunction sneaks out and people see it, whatever it is, they want to run because people run when they feel vulnerable.
And I can guarantee you, if you said yes to God, to be a part of doing something great, to impact lives, you will experience feeling vulnerable at times. You will mess up up. You will need other people to cover for you.
You will experience tragedy and need to say yes to other people coming near to you and ministering to you. You might have those unhealthy patterns sneaking out and other people will see them. And you can run. But look, you cannot outrun the need for grace.
The only place you can go is into a hole by yourself where your need for grace won't by anyone else. But it's only a hundred percent true that we'll all disappoint each other because we all make mistakes, we all flake, we're all triggered.
We all feel naked sometimes, and we all feel called to take risks. And maybe one of the biggest risks that you can take is to commit in the midst of vulnerability to trust grace instead of running.
So if your usual hindrance is running, I would decidedly see not running as your yes to the beginning of God's healing in your life. Another way that I see women get stuck and hindered when they want to serve is that all. Wait for ministry moments to come to me, Minister.
A lot of people will come to me when I tell stories, when I speak places ask me how I saw God doing something extraordinary or how. How it happens or what I do to see it, or. I think it's very simple. Go after it.
You don't sit in a chair and wait for someone to come to you to talk about their problems. You don't wait for Susie Q. That you know is going through a nasty divorce to call you and tell you how she's doing.
You don't hear a fantastic sermon that's piercing hearts and then see women weeping and wait for them to walk up to you and confess their deepest, darkest secrets. And then you pray that they receive God's forgiveness and they walk out forever changed.
You don't wait for your neighbors to come to you to let you know that they need help. No, you go after it. You go after it. I think I learned this best when I was in college ministry for years.
And I remember there's so many stories, but one of the stories that comes to my mind is one particular week. It was one of the first months of the start of a school year. And these four girls walk out of the service in the middle of the service.
And one of them is bawling, and the other three girls are holding her up. It's almost like she could barely walk. And they go through one set of doors. And I got up and I went and followed them.
And then they were going through the Last set of doors to leave the church. And I said, stop, are you okay? And they all four turned around and the one girl's crying and the other girls look at me and they say she's not okay.
And I've never seen that girl in my life. None of those girls. I didn't know them at all.
And in a sense those three girls handed me their friend and her and I went up and we sat on some stairs in this old church, hundred year old church. And she began to pour out her heart. Why she felt so broken. She'd grown up in a Christian home, she'd gone to church, she knew God, she loved God.
And she came up to Western and she just wanted to be accepted and just wanted to be loved and find friends. And she started partying and she walked away from God, walked away from her faith.
And she hooked up with, with a guy at a party and she thought she was pregnant and she was losing it and she felt contrite and she felt repentant and she felt scared. And I got to sit with her in that.
And I learned way back when in that college ministry that if I would have never gone after her, we would have never had that life changing conversation. And I've seen it again and again that when we go after it, God shows up and does what otherwise wouldn't, wouldn't have happened.
We need to go after people. We're a go after people people right now. Think of four people you know who are suffering.
Maybe they're getting divorced or they're leaving their church because something messy happened or they just had a miscarriage or they're single and deeply longing for a companion and they're lonely and you know it. Who comes to mind? Have you been going after it? Go after it and go after it every day of your life.
We will do this by how we live in our families with our friends and our churches, our neighborhoods, our schools. And we will continue to go after people in all that we do. A misty eye in the workroom is a dead giveaway.
So is an I'm not sure I can make it right now or I have no money to go with you guys or I have no plans this weekend. Look, Chase, ask good questions, follow up and subside the voice that tells you not to, because that voice is just a hindrance.
Go after people, don't wait for them to come to you. The last time I checked, Jesus did not set up a popsicle stand and set up shop and wait for people to come to him.
He went to them he went after it because he knew that it would change their lives. And because Jesus went after it, he changed so many lives that eventually would change your life and my life. So let's be a people that get after it.
Another hindrance is the off mission missionary look. We have this all the time in our ministry.
People want to be a part of Clyde and they want to serve, but they want to carry out the mission feel called to carry out. So they want us to do yoga or they want us to have long 24 hour prayer and fasting groups or they want us to go feed the homeless.
And those are all beautiful things. But guess what? There's an amazing mission doing that. There's an amazing mission serving the homeless.
There's an amazing ministry that is bringing people into prayer and praying over the city. There's an amazing woman doing yoga and inviting Christ into that. You are called to something, friend.
And whatever you're being called by God to do, stay on mission.
Do not get distracted by someone else's mission, but continue to carry out the mission God is calling you to because he uniquely calls each one of us to something. Another hindrance is the I'm above this chicken, right? This girl often shows up to things and thinks she can do it better than other people.
And she gets frustrated if she is asked to do things that are above her pay grade. We see this all the time in Clyde. People ask, they want to speak on the main stage as they call it, but they don't want to work in the kitchen.
They want to do be the lead on the worship team, but they don't want to just sing. They want to do something they consider a big deal. But they don't want to plunge the toilet when the toilet gets plugged.
And at any point that you find yourself thinking that you're above making copies and plunging toilets and handing people water, I guess I would suggest remember two things, Jesus's words when he describes how he will separate the sheep and the goats and it will be baby on very simple things like visiting the prisoner, taking in the stranger, handing the thirsty a cup to drink. All those things Jesus would do. And those are things we can all do. Don't get to a place where you start thinking you're above what Jesus did.
And secondly, remember Romans 12:3 says for by the grace given me, I say to every one of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. I warned you guys. I Was gonna turn up the heat today. What a good reminder that we need to carry ourselves with humility.
And when we do, our hindrance won't be stumbling on pride or lack of unity and judgmentalism. And we will look a lot more like Jesus in the work we feel called to. Another hindrance is the not me girl.
Not only are you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to, but you're also not to think of yourself too lowly. And I'm afraid that you and I have spent a considerable amount of time listening to voices that lie to us about our capabilities.
And we're walking around believing those lies, believing that we don't have what it takes to carry out what God is calling us to do. And those are just lies. And we need to unstick the lies and replace them with truth. And the truth is that God, he can speak through bushes and ashes.
So he can speak through me and he can speak through you. The truth is, is that God made your life for a purpose. So why would he hold you back and not call you to greatness?
The truth is, God's got work to do. And he doesn't need perfection. He needs willingness. The truth is that God's power is made perfect in weakness. He doesn't need your strength.
He needs your brokenness. Because your brokenness points to his healing. Look, I was a Nammi girl and I still can be every single day.
But I'm also screaming from the rooftops, yes, you. God says, yes, you. You can do amazing things.
That's why we wrote the Bible study that you can get on our store online@ WeakLight.net the yes, you Bible study because we are calling women to be empowered to that God can use you to do amazing things with what you have in your hands right now. Another hindrance is the be you, not her. Gal and I talk about this idea all the time.
But you're held back every single time you compare yourself to someone else. You wish you had her voice. You wish you could preach like her. You wish you had her charisma. You wish you had her husband.
You wish you had her Christian family legacy. You wish you had her salary. You wish you had her smart. God cannot use you until you allow him to use you for who you are.
You are not called to be Susie or Sally. You're called to be you. God doesn't need you to be anyone else. In fact, he's waiting for you to show up as you.
And that's when he can show up and use you for amazing things. So don't spend time looking at other people in their lane wishing you were like them. Instead, get in your own lane and run another hindrance.
The my part doesn't matter woman. This woman downplays her role, doesn't think what she's doing is important enough. She thinks her part's insignificant.
And what happens is she might begin to flake out because she doesn't think her part matters. Or she does it the easy way and cuts corners, or she doesn't take part at all. And what she's missing is the body.
She might be the arm, but the body needs the arm as much as it needs the leg and the brain and the heart. And the Bible talks about this, that we're all a part of a body and God's going to use all our parts as a whole to do amazing things.
And I know some of you, you have such a heart and you're chaplining down at the mission loving on homeless people. Now some of you are hanging out with youth kids, going to football games, meeting them for lunch, reminding them that their lives matter.
Some of you are professional counselors and you're sitting with hurting people all day long every hour of your day. Some of you are caretakers going into homes and caring for the elderly and the sick. Some of you are ICU nurses and you're saving babies lives.
I have a friend named Cindy. I was talking to her on the phone yesterday.
She is retired but spent so many years being a seamstress and she's felt called to go down and take this skill that she has and teach homeless women how to sew. So she went on Facebook and asked all these people if they had sewing machines that they could donate to the cause.
And she was going to gather all these sewing, sewing machines and she was telling me yesterday how this has grown so much that they're actually going to set up a room for all these women who are coming and these women are sewing hats and they're sewing, you know, baby clothes and accessories and now there are people who are starting to sell them for the women in local markets. It's such a beautiful thing. She's doing her part in the world. Some of you are volunteering at your kids school every single week.
Whatever your part is, it matters. Do not downplay it. Do not make it insignificant. We're all needed.
We're all parts of the whole and together we make this really hot body that God can use to do amazing things. If you're an arm, you're, you're a very awesome Arm. I just want you to know that another hindrance is that I'll volunteer, but I won't sacrifice.
I'll tell you right now that following after the call of God to serve and impact lives, you get out of ministry in a sense what you put into it.
And the more you give, the more you receive, the more you sacrifice, the more you see the fruit of that sacrifice, the more you pray, the more you see God show up in the details.
The more you chase, the more lives you catch, the more you care, the more people you care for, the more people you care for, the more people God entrusts in your care, the more people God entrusts in your care, the more people whose lives you will affect. A lot of us sign up for ministry like we would sign up to volunteer at a boys and girls club.
Like I'll give three hours of my week and that's great, and do that. But when you live a life resembling sacrifice, modeling your life after that of Jesus, you will see Jesus like things happen all around you.
Because might I remind us that nothing meaningful, nothing important, nothing life changing, comes without sacrifice. At least that's what I see in the life and death of Jesus Christ.
Another hindrance to being used by God is the my name better be in bright lights or nothing mentality. And as I mentioned, I see a lot of this when it comes to people who want to serve at Kolide. And you might see it wherever you're at too.
Maybe you see it in your work or your business owner and you see people, they, they want a promotion to the top of the ladder, but they're not willing to do the work to get there. There's this sort of like, you know, stardom versus service mentality. The irony is, is that greatness isn't born overnight.
Greatness is the culmination of faithfulness over years and years of putting in your time. But even bigger than your own greatness, isn't all of this about Jesus greatness and giving him all the glory and all the props and all the fame?
Ministry is about faithfulness to what God puts in front of you. Do you know how many sheep David shepherded before he had the ability to fight Goliath and win?
Do you know how many mistakes Peter made that led him to be struck by the need for Jesus Christ? And do you know that need was what drove his preaching?
And do you know how often he preached day in and day out to get his name as author in the Bible? Do you know all the places Joseph showed his faithfulness before he had power and authority as leader.
He showed it in jail and in temptation and deep seated bitterness towards his family. And then in a position of leadership to help his people in a famine. Ministry is about faithfulness. It is not about fame.
Another hindrance is that we often become like the tied up elephant. I don't know if you've heard this story before, but there's a story of a man who was passing by some elephants and he was stopped by what he saw.
He noticed that these giant beasts, who weigh between 6 and 13,000 pounds, were tied down in captivity, held back by a small, tiny white rope attached to one leg. And he inquired, how? How can this be?
Surely an elephant could snap that small rope and break free into the life it desires with the slight force of its giant leg.
So the trainer explained that since a very young age, when elephants are much smaller, they use the same size chain to tie them up and constrain them. They're trained and conditioned to believe that they cannot break away.
So when they grow up, they believe, though it not be true, that the tiny white rope that now replaced the chain can still hold them back. They will never break free to live the life they were made for. So why try? You know, I think we're a lot like elephants, and I think Jesus knows that.
And I think that's why God shows up to collide with us, because he wants us to break free. We can run. We can do what we dream to do. We can even handle doing what we don't dream to do, but what we know we're called to.
We're stronger than we think. We're braver than we know. We aren't made to walk in circles. We aren't made to think we're helpless with no escape.
We weren't given life to assume that this is all there is. We weren't made to settle for insecurities and anxiety and baggage and dysfunction and slavery and hindrance tripping.
We weren't given what we've been given, to be held back by fear. No. Jesus knows that we make tiny ropes bigger than we. He knows we get stuck thinking we aren't as capable as we actually are.
He knows that we have this huge, amazing, vast life waiting for us. But we get stuck, bound by lies in big ways and small.
One of the greatest things that will trip you up, the greatest things are the ideas in your head that you think hold you back, that will not hold you back unless you give them that power. Because they aren't real, they're fake. They're ideas, they're mental blocks. They're hypothetical stories. So throw them off.
They're getting in the way of your life. Girl and the last hindrance I'll mention today is that if I can't see, it's possible.
WOMAN so often we believe on God for what we can see, but not for what we can't. We've seen this all the time at collide.
The entire collide story has been this sense where we've kind of been observing and watching where God's going and he's given us a glimpse of his vision and we have to lean into something that we cannot see and do the work and sacrifice and run and watch and, and see how God unfolds it. I find a lot of Christians lean into the possible but not the impossible.
And I don't know about you, but I love seeing God take nothing and make it something. I love God taking pain, which is what he's done in our ministry. He's taken pain and he's made something beautiful with it and he keeps doing that.
I love that God took a small group of broken college age students and did a miracle. And I want to be a part of more stories like that. I want to see thousands and thousands of people's lives change as they collide with Jesus.
And I think for you and I, no matter what we feel called to do, whether it's to enlarge your business because your business is going to bless people, whether it's to start a non profit, whether it's that you see a need in your community and you want to meet it. And it seems impossible to actually meet that need. Our greatest hindrance might be our disbelief.
There's this story in the Bible of this boy who's demon possessed. And the Father comes to Jesus in Matthew 9. The Father says to Jesus if you can. And Jesus is like, if you can, like, are you kidding me?
Like you're doubting my power. But then Jesus says, everything is possible for one who believes. And I love, absolutely love the Father's response. It's beautiful. It's not fake.
Oh, okay. I totally believe them all in. God's gonna do it. It's not what the Father said. The Father said, help me overcome my unbelief.
Help me overcome my unbelief. God, I don't believe it's possible. It seems so impossible for you to do something that big, that miraculous, that supernatural.
I don't believe it helped me overcome my unbelief. And the most impossible thing happened. The deaf mute and demon possessed kid was healed.
Our unbelief might be our greatest hindrance in God doing amazing things through us and the best thing we can do is throw it aside and pray the prayer of this Father. Lord, help me overcome my unbelief. That's my prayer for you and I this week. Thank you for hanging out.
I hope that there will be power found in naming the things that are tripping you up, tripping those up around you so that you can be fully utilized to live into your greatest capacity. So that you can be used by God to do amazing things in this world. We'll catch you next week.
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