Breaking Through in Bogged Down Times

CEBU, Philippines - It’s summertime once more, which means another She Day to look forward to!

On its 4th run as an annual women’s event, She Day 2009 focuses on the theme “Breakthrough: Rising Above Today’s Challenges.” Though women already face daily challenges on multiple levels, the current crises and uncertainties highlight the need for a sure foundation from which to surmount increasing difficulties.

Every She Day event inspires through what has become a distinctive feature—the warmth of the speakers. Each year, personable ladies share their lives with the audience in such an easygoing way that you feel they’ve specially invited you into their home for a chat over tea!

This year upholds that pleasant tradition of heart-to-heart connection while maintaining the relevance of real-life issues faced by today’s women. She Day speaker Cindy Soriano will relate her experiences with financial breakthrough; speaker Cata de Jesus will share lessons learned about breakthroughs in prayer; and guest author Grace Chong will present her insights from two of her books, Gifts of Grace 3 and SuperDevos.

As a career woman, Cindy Soriano had to exchange certain mindsets about finances for God’s view of things, though she admits it was a tough shift. “The main root of my surrender was acknowledging that God is the provider and that He assigned that role to my husband,” she explains.

This doesn’t mean that she has it down perfectly yet though, as she describes her growing faith in the financial area, “My best lessons were those I learned from mistakes and wrong decisions. Definitely, thoughts do pop up and always will. The main idea is that God uses these to test our faith. How we respond…will either build up our faith muscle or tear it down.”

What about the concept that people who are close to God are exempt from hardship? Soriano disagrees, as she reminds of our Biblically outlined role as “living stones”: “We will face trials and difficulties. Stones are chiseled, shaped; it will hurt, and it will go through fire.”

However, our personal actions carry weight as well. “We must remember that there is a great chunk of our difficulties that are our own doing,” Soriano points out. “Maybe we failed to follow God’s guidelines, thus made wrong decisions that led to our own downfall, and now the consequences are surfacing.”

So where is the hope amidst current financial despair? Cindy Soriano looks to the One Whose economy is founded in wisdom. “God has financial principles in His Word that help believers make sound decisions and trust Him for His provisions,” she encourages. Even in light of the present economic situation, Soriano says, “God is giving us a magnificent opportunity because everyone is now feeling the crunch. Every Christian woman can share the Biblical financial view by first experiencing God’s personal provision in her life. She needs to exercise her own faith in this area before she can be effective. How can she share what she herself has not experienced?”

Hardships and difficulties can also cause a sense of spiritual drowning. Oftentimes, we use prayer only as a last resort, or we find it hard to pray at all. Cata de Jesus describes her prayer life not as a scheduled time and place, but as a continuous conversation.

“(God) teaches me to be in a running conversation with Him daily- from the time I wake up and say, ‘All right, Lord, what are we gonna do today?’ to little prayers that put me to sleep,” she expounds. “My prayer time with God is largely unstructured because He relates to me that way. He freely intervenes, intercepts, interjects and inserts things at any given time in my life.”

Just as life has its seasons, de Jesus characterizes growth in prayer as going through phases. “My growth spurts in prayer came mostly in my times of crises and absolute victories: my mountain top experiences and the pits. But in spite of God’s apparent tenacity in teaching me to pray, I’ve had really bad prayer slumps, just like bad hair days,” she intimates.

So what’s a woman to do when her faith is sorely in need of an energy boost? Cata de Jesus recommends going off on a one- or two-day prayer retreat every once in a while for an infusion of freshness: “It’s amazing what God will tell you when you spend an uninterrupted full day in a quiet place, once a month, listening and talking only to Him.”

Author Grace Chong rounds things up with special features from her latest books, each written to be a blessing to women in the variety of their God-given roles.

Chong decided to come up with Gifts of Grace 3, a collection of soulful essays dipped in humor about the beauty of life’s relationships, because she believes there are so many stories of grace that need to be told. “I have always believed that grace is endless,” she asserts, “and therefore books on grace, whether by me or any other author, should be endless as well.” 

Her other featured title, SuperDevos, contains 365 devotions for kids, each with an interwoven story, verse, and prayer, as well as Manga illustrations for kids’ visual interest! And, as Chong points out, “Reading an entry takes only, at the most, two minutes. Modern parents are very busy, and they need every help they can get to talk to their children about the One who created their young ones ‘fearfully and wonderfully.’”

“SuperDevos also comes at a time when there isn’t any devotional book yet written by a Filipino author for Filipino children,” Chong expounds on the contextualization of stories. “Each one is written for any parent who wants his child to grow up on good, old-fashioned values we Filipinos hold dear, like those enshrined in the motto of our country: Love of God, People, Country, and the Environment.”

And so, in one jam-packed afternoon, women will come together to be refreshed in spirit as well as reinvigorated in mind, with lots of pleasant surprises scattered all throughout! For women of all roles, whether mother, daughter, wife, grandma, or all of the above, She Day ‘09 will serve as a pocket of encouragement during what can tend to be stress-filled times. Get ready to sit back, relax, and let the heart-peace reach down deep—with God, you can break through!

And here’s another thing these ladies have in common: they are all set share more of their life stories on She Day 2009: Breathrough! Rising Above Today’s Challenges. Be there and be inspired—don’t miss this exciting event for women!