The Defining Series was launched to amplify the experiences and testimonies of members of our community. For the month of March, UN-ASSOCIATED is dedicating its content, including The Defining Series, to the women of our community with the theme for this month being “Defined by His Design”. For this edition of The Defining Series, women of God from our community shared their insights into what it means to be daughters of God and the unique nature of their relationship to God as women.
Editor-in-Chief, Danielle Clayton, sat down with Glory Tomi John, a proud Nigerian native, to reflect on the intentional nature of God’s plan for our lives and the unique design we each have as His children.
D: This is the Defining Series: Women’s Month Edition. My name is Danielle Clayton and you are?
G: Glory Tomi John.
D: I just have to say that is a really beautiful name. And where are you from?
G: Thank you. I was born and raised in Nigerian and now live in Atlanta.
D: Diving right in, what does being a daughter of God mean to you?
G: Being a daughter of God means recognizing my placement in Him, knowing He’s my Father and that my true identity is solely found in Him. It is not in anything that anyone says or does or how anyone views me. It’s recognizing who He is first as my Father, King and Savior and then who I am as His daughter that He created in His image and likeness to reflect His glory.
D: Amen. Building upon being a daughter of God, what is your favorite thing about being a woman of God?
G: I would say my favorite thing about being a woman is our ability to produce, not just in terms of being a mother and being reproductive. Women are so endowed . I see us, I don’t want to say as incubators, but I see all the things and places we’re able to nurture. We take care of things and allow things to grow and come out of us in a way that is different than men. I love men but at the same time, we add a little dazzle. It’s the way God made us, to nurture and to care and I’m so thankful to be able to see the way women can produce something that men cannot and I think that’s beautiful.
D: Speaking of our abilities as women, important is sisterhood and spiritual fellowship to you?
G: Most of my life, I didn’t see the importance of it and that’s because I was the only daughter and I had brothers, so their friends were my friends, so I had a lot of guy friends and when I had girl friends, it just didn’t feel the same. But in college, I joined campus fellowship and we would have life groups. I started learning the importance of community and not just community in the sense of being brothers and sisters in Christ, but the importance of having that sisterhood and being in a space that was created for vulnerability and to share where we are in Christ and not feeling like I’m being judged or looked down upon but having family and covering as well as prayers and intercession. Sometimes, it’s spurring good works into each other and other times, it’s holding each other accountable.
It’s vital for every woman that is a believer in Christ to have a sisterhood and it might look different in different seasons but it’s vital for us because we are created to be in community and even moreso with the people that are walking a similar walk to us.
D: Thinking about this because I see you have your Bible next to you, do you have a favorite woman in the Bible or a woman in the Bible you either relate the most to or whose story resonates the most with you? Or is there a story you keep coming back to?
G: The one that I’ve read the most and can say I resonate with is Esther. I resonate with her because of how the Lord gave a her placement in a land she was not from, how He gave her favor in the sight of the king and how He honored her in her obedience to Him. Just being transparent here, I’m an international student so I’m not from here and there are a lot of things I don’t get the benefit of having or knowing while I’m here. So seeing someone from another place that may not have met the qualifications and how intentional the Lord’s desgin was moving things around for her to get to the palace and for her to be at the palace at the same time Haman was planning to annihilate the entire Jewish community. She was right there at the right time to advocate for her people and yes, she was scared because she was human but she had someone like Mordecai that was willing to say, “I‘m behind you and I’m supporting you and you are here for such a time as this.”
I hate when people use this verse out of context because she was going to die. It was either die or to receive God’s favor and she was willing to take that stand, pray, ask and trust the Lord and take the risk to stand up for her people. She believed the Lord put her in that place for a reason and did not do the most convenient or comfortable thing, but stood for truth. Her story always encourages me because it shows what God can do with your yes and also what He can do even when you’re scared and how He puts people around you to encourage you or to push you to do the right thing. It also shows how He made things align because I don’t think she was the most beautiful and I don’t think she had everything to be queen but she had the favor of God right from the beginning and went so far as to meet the king and that always encourages me.
D: I want to ask you a question about what you said a moment ago. You said that you hate when people use the verse, “for such a time as this” out of context. Can you say more about that?
G: Yeah. When people say things like, “God has put me in this season for such a time as this to do this thing” and I believe that we have callings on our lives and things we’re supposed to do, but I think some of us have jumped the gun on what their calling is and what they’re supposed to be do because they have this tingling or feeling like “I’m called to do this thing.” What if you’re called, but you still need another 10 years? Maybe that “such a time as this” is 2034 but people are like no, it’s now. Honey, it’s not and we have so many people doing premature assignments of God. I don’t like to say premature babies because that’s delicate but there are so many preemies out here who are called but they’re not in the right time or season. But they got a word and “for such a time as this” and put it together and they’re like “Boom. I’m the one. I’m Esther.”
D: That reminds me of something my father always told me and my siblings growing up and he still says it. He told us “I want” are two of the most dangerous words because what you want usually has nothing to do with what God wants for you. That’s precisely why the term is called hellbent because by definition, you are doing something that is against God. If you’re doing all that to make something happen, then it probably isn’t from God and the problem is we feel things but the things we are feeling are not coming from the Spirit.
G: That’s my life story. I don’t want to say unfortunately, but fortunately, I had to learn that myself. I am doing my best to walk and live out the will of God now, but it took me years to get here. At a very young age, I had a dream and a plan for what I wanted to do in my career. I had a vision of who I wanted to be and I didn’t ask the Lord, but I convinced myself it was what the Lord told me to do and equipped me to do and He didn’t. It wasn’t what He wanted for me and it took falling on my face, humbling myself, grieving my dreams, releasing it to Him and asking, “what do you want me to do Lord?” And he said, “I was waiting for you to ask me this for so long. Since the beginning.” I would’ve saved myself years if I just asked.
D: With that in mind, is there anything you would like to tell the younger version of yourself any words that you would give her knowing everything that at this point in your journey?
G: I would tell her a lot of things. She is made of a lot more than she thinks. The Lord already has a unique design for her and she just needs to trust that. It’s a good design and it’s a good plan and she doesn’t need to meet anyone’s standards or expectations of what she is supposed to be. She just needs to please Her father who is God Almighty and everything else will come into alignment. It’s going to be hard, but she has that the One True God that is always with her and will never leave or forsake her as it says in Isaiah 41. She will be okay and she is beautiful.
D: Do you have any words of encouragement for women in the faith, wherever they are on their journey or any words of encouragement?
G: I would just encourage my fellow sisters to know we are called and made by God’s unique design and regardless of what our past has been, God has an ultimate purpose and an alternate will for our lives. We don’t need to compare where we are, we just need to seek Him truly and we will find everything we are looking for and more. He is really all that matters. Everything else is great, but at the end of the day, He is the key to everything and we should build our lives as an anchor to Him. If we feel like we messed up, just come back to Him and we will find Him. There is nothing too big or too small. Nothing can separate us from His love for us. I’m actually going to read that, Romans 8:35-39 and that will be my encouragement.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
