What is Life-Giving LeadHERship?

​So, why…why did I name my blog and book, Life-Giving LeadHERship? Great question. Here is an excerpt from my book that explains Life-Giving LeadHERship. Why are some Christian women life-giving, while others suck the life right out of a room? I believe the answer lies in knowing and understanding grace. Life-giving women are God lovers and because of this great love, they are people lovers too. A Christian that focuses on right behavior and right doctrine strangles the breath out of relationships. A life-giving woman focuses on the love and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and understands that people are more important than right behavior and right beliefs. Relationship trumps rules and law.

Just like Jesus, we, too, can extend the life-giving nature of Christ to the people in our spheres of influence. To become a life-giving woman you must first be born again (John 3:3). Once you have a relationship with the Lord Jesus, you have the choice to live out of the tree of life and the finished work of the cross or the tree of knowledge of good and evil or the law where there is condemnation and a sense of failure in God’s presence.

What is the tree of life? It is first mentioned in Genesis when God had to remove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden because they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Once they ate from that tree, sin entered mankind. There was also the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. If Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of life with their sin nature, they would have lived forever. For this reason they had to leave the garden and God placed cherubim and a flaming sword to guard the tree of life.

​Genesis 3:22-24 says, “Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil, and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever,’ therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the Garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim, and the flaming sword which turned every direction, to guard the way to the tree of life.”

All of scripture can be summed up in the basic principle of love. God is love, and you were created to experience intimacy with your heavenly Father and with people in the context of community. There is nothing more normal than to deeply love God and others. Our goal as life-giving women is to extend grace and mercy to people; to encourage them to have an intimate love with the Heavenly Father.