When God Says Go and You Are Not Ready | Kingdom LeadHERship

Is there something God has been asking you to do that you have been putting off until you feel more ready? Maybe it is launching something, starting something, or saying yes to something He has been speaking into your life for months — maybe years.

 In Episode 5, host Stacy Jo tackles one of the most spiritually sophisticated traps the enemy sets for Kingdom-called women: the myth of readiness. This is not about being careless or rushing ahead of God. It is about learning the difference between wisdom and fear — and recognizing which one has been doing the talking in your life.

Stacy Jo gets honest about her own journey of hesitation, including stepping out of the legal field to build Freedom Support Solutions and initially running from the call to found ACBW, and what she learned about obedience on the other side of both.

In this episode:

- Why waiting until you feel ready may be keeping you exactly where the enemy wants you

- The three things hiding underneath the feeling of not being ready: fear of failure, wounds of unworthiness, and the desire for control

- What Esther, Ruth, and Mary teach us about moving before you feel prepared

- 4 practical steps to move forward when everything in you says you are not ready yet

- Isaiah 43:19, Proverbs 3:5-6, and Joshua 1:9 applied to Kingdom leadership

- Reflection questions and your Kingdom challenge for the week

- Closing prayer

 Key Scriptures: Isaiah 43:19 | Proverbs 3:5-6 | Joshua 1:9

This episode is for the woman who has been waiting to feel ready, the woman who knows she is called but keeps finding reasons to prepare a little longer, and the woman who is ready to stop waiting and start moving.

 You do not prepare your way in. You obey your way in.

Reflection Questions for This Week:

1. What is the assignment or next step you have been putting off until you feel ready — and how long have you been waiting?

2. When you look underneath the feeling of not being ready, what do you find? Fear of failure, unworthiness, a desire for control, or something else?

3. What is the next obedient step God is asking you to take right now — before you feel fully ready?

Your Kingdom Challenge: Identify the one thing God is asking you to do that you have been delaying, and this week take one concrete step toward it. Make the call. Send the email. Write the first page. Say yes to the meeting. One step.

Association of Christian Business Women
This episode is brought to you by the Association of Christian Business Women

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Transcript

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Welcome to Kingdom Leadership, the podcast for women pursuing kingdom purpose with faith and intention. This is a space for clarity, encouragement, and conviction. It's a place to pause, refocus, and realign your leadership with what God is asking of you. Whether you're leading in business, ministry, your home, or your community, this podcast is here to remind you that your calling is intentional. Your obedience matters, and your leadership is meant to be aligned with God, not carried in your own strength. I'm your host, Stacey Joe, and together we are leaning into leadership that is whole, obedient, and rooted in purpose. Let's get started. I want to start this episode with a question for each of you. And I want you to sit honestly before you move on. My question is: is there something that God has been asking you to do that you've been putting off until you feel more ready? Maybe it's launching something, starting something, saying yes to something he's been speaking into you for months, maybe even years. And every time it comes up, you have a reason why now is not quite the right time. You need a little more preparation. Maybe I need a little more healing. I need more clarity. I need more confidence. A little more of something before you can truly step out. I want to talk to you about that today because I believe that for many of the women listening right now, the greatest obstacle between where you are and where God is calling you is not a lack of calling. And it's not a lack of gifting. It's not even a lack of healing. It is the belief that you have to be ready before you can be obedient. Does that sit with any of you? Because that belief, however reasonable as it sounds, is keeping you exactly where the enemy wants you. He wants you waiting, preparing, almost there, but never quite stepping out. I'm gonna start with my own story today because this is something that I'm not teaching just from a distance. This is something that I have lived on multiple levels. When God called me out of the legal field to start Freedom Support Solutions, that I had skills, yes. I had experience, yes. But I did not feel ready to step out of everything that was familiar and build something from the ground up in a completely new context. So I hesitated, I questioned, I tried to talk myself into more preparation time. And then after that, he called me into the Association of Christian Businesswomen. And that one I ran from completely. I've shared that with you before. But what I've not said as directly as this part. Who was I to lead a community of Christian businesswomen? What did I know about running an organization like that? What if I got it wrong? What if I was not enough for the assignment? But here's what I know now that I wish I had understood then. God was not looking for my readiness. He was looking for my availability. He was not asking me to show up fully formed and perfectly equipped. He was actually just asking me to show up willing. And he would do the rest. I also want to be honest about something else. As a lifelong entrepreneur, someone who's been building and hustling since I was eight, nine, 10 years old, I had a tendency to think that my readiness was something I could manufacture through more effort, more preparation, more strategy. That kingdom readiness does not work that way. I just want to be totally honest with you. You do not prepare your way into it. You obey your way into it. And the preparation happens on the road, not before you get on the road. I want to talk to you about the myth of readiness, because it is often one of the most spiritually sophisticated traps the enemy sets for women who are called. It does not look like rebellion or disobedience. It looks like wisdom. It looks like responsibility. It looks like being a good steward of the calling that God has given us. I just want to make sure I'm ready. I just want to do it right. I don't want to step out prematurely. And there is a kernel of truth in all that. Preparation matters, wisdom matters, counsel matters, but there's a version of waiting that is not wisdom. It is fear dressed up in the language of stewardship. And God is not fooled by it, even if we are. Real readiness in the kingdom is not a feeling. It's a posture. It's a surrendered heart that says, Lord, I do not have everything I need, but I trust that you do, and I am going anyway. Think about the women in Scripture who moved before they were ready. Esther, one of my favorite stories. I think I've shared that with you before. I love the story of Esther. She went before the king, knowing it could cost her her life. Ruth, who left everything familiar to follow a God she was still learning to trust. Mary, how about Mary, who said yes to an assignment that made no natural sense and would cost her more than she could have ever imagined? Not one of them was ready, but every one of them was obedient. And the kingdom moved because of it. Isaiah 43, 19 says, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up. Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. God does not wait for the conditions to be perfect before he moves. He makes a way in the wilderness. He creates streams in the wasteland, but you have to be willing to step into the wilderness first. You have to trust that streams will appear as you walk, not before you leave. It is almost always spiritual. And if you dig into it, you'll usually find one of three things. First, you may find fear of failure. That was me. The assignment maybe feels too important to get it wrong. The stakes felt too high. And so you kept preparing, keep refining, keep waiting for that moment when you feel certain enough that failure's off the table. But that moment never comes. Because faith, by definition, does not come with guarantees, it comes with a promise. And the promise is not that you will not struggle, it is that he will be with you when you do. That's such a powerful thing to remember, ladies. Fear of failure is such a real thing. And we can't be fearful of what we don't know the outcome will be. We have to trust that he already knows the outcome and he has plans for us. Second, you may find wounds of unworthiness. We have talked about this throughout this podcast, and we will keep coming back to it because it is that pervasive. Who am I to do this? What if people see through me? What if I get out there and it becomes clear that I was never really called to this at all? That is not wisdom talking. That is a wound talking. And it needs to be brought to God, not used as a reason to delay obedience. The third is you may find a desire for control. Yep, I fall into, I fall into all three of these categories, to be quite honest with you. If I wait until I'm ready, I can manage the outcome. I can minimize the risk. I can protect myself from the exposure that comes with stepping out before I'm certain. But kingdom leadership is not a controlled environment. It is a faith environment. And God is far more interested in your trust than your control because He controls it all. He's got it all in the palm of his hand. So who are we to think that we need to control it? Proverbs 3, 5 through 6. I love this scripture because it says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your path straight. So how do you move forward when everything in you is saying you're not ready? I want to give you four things that have helped me and the women I walk with. You have to separate the voice of wisdom from the voice of fear. Wisdom says, let me get counsel, let me pray, let me make sure that this is truly God. That's wisdom. Fear says, Let me find one more reason to wait. Wisdom moves towards the assignment, even while asking the question. And fear uses questions as a reason to stay still. So ask God to show you which voice you've been listening to. Wisdom or fear. Then take the next obedience step, not the whole journey. You know, I I've said it before and I'll say it again. If if I would have seen the whole journey, I would have definitely run in the opposite direction. And I did with ACBW, as you know for a little bit. But you don't have to take the entire road to take the next step. God rarely shows us a full picture before he asks us to move. He shows us enough for now. He shows us enough for right now. What is one step of obedience he's asking of you? Not the whole plan, just the next step. Take that one. And then the next one will become clear to you. Maybe it's performing that LLC. Maybe it's taking that job that you're not sure you're supposed to take. What is it for you? Three, you have to remind yourself of what he's already done. Every time you're tempted to let the feelings of unreadiness stop you, go back to your history with God. Go back and look at where you were to where you are. And think about the times that he showed up when you stepped out. The times that he provided when you couldn't see how things would work out, you couldn't see how things would come together. The times he made a way when there was no way visible, he has a track record with you. Let that track record give you the courage to move. I don't often tell you to look in the rearview mirror because I always say there's a reason the rear view mirror is smaller than the windshield, because we have to be focused ahead, otherwise we'll crash and burn. But to look back at what God has done is a powerful thing. So remind yourself of what God's already done in your life. And then say yes out loud before you feel it internally. Sometimes the declaration of yes has to come before the feeling of yes. And tell God yes with your words, with your actions, with your next decision, before your emotions catch up. Say, yes, God, I will do what you've called me to do. Yes, God, I will step out in obedience. Yes, God, I will take that next step. Because faith is not the absence of fear. Faith is moving in the direction of the calling in spite of fear. And sometimes you have to lead your feelings rather than follow them. For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go, Joshua 1.9. The Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. So here are your reflection questions for the week. Take them to God and to your journal and listen for that still small voice as he speaks to you. What is the assignment or the next step you've been putting off until you feel ready? How long have you been waiting? When you look underneath, here's question two. When you look underneath the feeling of not being ready, what do you find? Is it fear of failure, unworthiness, a desire or control? All three of those? Or maybe it's something else. And then what is the next obedient step God is asking you to take right now before you feel fully ready? Before you feel the yes. What is the obedient next step God's asking you to take? And I want to give you one assignment that may feel uncomfortable. Identify that one thing God is asking you to do that you've been delaying. And this week, take one concrete step towards it. Not the whole thing, just that one step. Make the call, send the email, register for the thing, write the first page, say yes to the meeting. One step. Obedience is moving while you are still becoming. But ladies, with God, nothing is overwhelming. With God, nothing is daunting. My husband listens to a podcast and I love, I love the title of it. It's called Undaunted Life. It's a men's podcast. But undaunted, we are not to fear. We are to walk by faith. I'm going to pray over you right now. Lord, I thank you for every woman who's sitting back with the tension of feeling called, but not ready. You know exactly what she's holding back. You know the fear underneath the preparation. You know the wound underneath the waiting. And I thank you that you are not frustrated with her. You are pursuing her. I pray right now that you would give her the courage to take the next step, not all of them, just the next one. That you would quiet the voice of fear and amplify the voice of faith in her spirit. That you would remind her that you do not call the equipped, you equip the called. And she is called. Go before her, Lord, make the crooked path straight. Make a way in whatever wilderness she's facing, and let her experience the deep, settled joy of a woman who stopped waiting and started moving in the direction of her kingdom assignment. She is ready enough because you are more than God. Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I want to thank you again for being here. And if this episode spoke something in you today, please share it with a woman in your life who needs to hear it. Don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode. And if the Kingdom Lead Herschip podcast has been a blessing to you, consider supporting the show using the link in the show notes. Every bit of support helps us reach more women with this message. Until next time, lead whole, lead obedient, and lead with joy. God bless you. Thank you for spending time with me on Kingdom Leadership. If today's conversation encouraged you or brought clarity, take a moment to reflect on what God highlighted for you. Trust Him even when the path isn't clear, because He is faithful to direct every step. New episodes of Kingdom Leadership are released every Monday, and I invite you to join me again as we continue pursuing Kingdom Purpose with faith and intention. Until next time, lead with wisdom, walk in obedience, and trust God with where He's leading you.