Nothing to Prove

I just finished the book Nothing to Prove and the workbook Proven. Every Monday, for the past couple of months, 4 other ladies and I got together to discuss this book, pray, and encourage one another.



I really enjoyed this study. I felt like Jennie did a great job encouraging women to cease striving without going soft on the importance of spiritual disciplines and cultivating a true relationship with Christ. I find so many books, studies, and blog posts tend to sway one direction or the other, but she was able to maintain that tension and I was really impressed and encouraged.

"There are no spiritual helicopters out of the desert, just the old, common, gorgeous, lingering roads paved by our forefathers in faith and designed by God. Knees on the ground. Words formed to God in prayer. Bibles marked up and worn out. Hours spent with the only One who satisfies and delights our souls."

"There is nothing holy about authenticity without repentance. Authenticity without repentance is narcissism. Authenticity is the necessary soil for repentance, but if healing comes from Jesus, then confession is only the first step."

The main point of this book is that we cannot please both God and man. Our focus should never be on pleasing people and winning approval from others, but rather pleasing God. We must find our value, worth, and purpose in Him alone. When we do this we can cease striving and come into what he has for us.

"It's not my curse that I believe I am not enough; it's my sin that I keep trying to be."

"We can't make light of the vision, but we also cannot accomplish any of the purposes of God unless we do them with the power and the resources and the energy of God."

"If I were your enemy, this is what I would do:

Make you believe you need permission to lead.

Make you believe you are helpless.

Make you believe you are insignificant.

Make you believe that God wants your decorum and behavior."

"Maybe you belive that Jesus is enough, but then why are you not pulled up near to Him every chance you get? Why do we keep running to everything on earth except Him??

"Jesus lived with a deep security in His identity. He lived settled, content, dependent, with nothing to prove and with a clear goal of displaying His Father's love to every person He encountered....He lived fully engaged with His whole heart, mind, body, emotions."

That sounds amazing to me!

"Do you want to know why we are so tired? Because we don't believe God. There is no remedy for your striving apart from finding your identity in Christ. He is your enough, and the degree to which you believe that is the degree to which you will stop striving, stop performing, stop trying to prove yourself."

Those are much-needed words to a reformed people-pleaser like me.

The weekly study questions in the study guide, Proven, were pretty basic. As we finished the study we realized there is a facilitator guide in the very back of the book and we all felt those discussion questions were much better. Oh well, it was a good group of ladies and we never lacked for discussion.

I'm grateful for this study and am glad to have a hard-copy of the book to keep and refer back to and lend out to others. It was well done and makes me curious to seek out her other studies!