Overcoming Imposter Syndrome: Answering the Call to Christian Blogging Regardless of Self-Doubt

Do you ever feel like a fraud in the realm of Christian blogging? I've been there too. This episode uncovers the widespread issue of imposter syndrome among Christian bloggers, a struggle I personally navigated on my journey in starting the Kingdom Bloggers Ministry. I'll share my story of starting a ministry with a limited understanding of prayer and scripture, revealing how God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. 

Let's dive into a powerful conversation about how Jesus' selection of his disciples - social outcasts who had no theological education - reinforces that we don't need to be perfect or highly qualified to share His word. I'll also share my personal experience with overcoming the seeds of doubt planted by the enemy and how I found confidence through faith. The focus in this episode is not about being called by God because you are qualified but being qualified because you are called. So, if you've been feeling inadequate or unqualified, tune in to discover the transformative power of obedience and get the inspiration you need to say "yes" to God's plan, regardless of your perceived limitations.

If you are interested in taking your digital discipleship to the next level through blogging, YouTube, social media, and/or online Bible study groups, be sure to join my private FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/kingdombloggers
You can also follow me on YouTube where you will find a variety of helpful tutorials for navigating each of these important platforms: https://www.youtube.com/@KingdomBloggers

Transcript

LeeAnn Fox: 0:02

Welcome to the Kingdom Influencers podcast, where our mission is to get more Jesus online. This podcast will equip and empower ministry leaders as well as regular everyday Christians, to take the message of Jesus Christ throughout the digital realm. I'm your host, LeeAnn Fox, digital Ministry Coach and the creator of the Kingdom Bloggers Ministry, and I am so excited and honored to be a part of this journey with you. Let's get started. Hey everyone, leanne here from Kingdom Bloggers. So today I want to talk about something that I think impacts almost every single Christian blogger when they first get started, and that is the idea that who am I to be doing this? Like I'm not an ordained minister? I haven't been to seminary school. For many of you it may be. My life is so jacked up right now. How could I possibly go out into the world and, you know, do this blogging stuff? Like I barely even know scripture, how can I now teach it? And so it's this ongoing struggle of your identity and your value and your worth, and you're being qualified to do this. I think, ultimately, that's what it comes down to. How am I qualified to do this? And I want to remind you of a couple of things that are said in the Bible, mark 1615, tells us go out into the world and make disciples of all nations. There's three things that God calls every single Christian to do. Like once you say come into my heart, lord. Like be my Lord, be my Savior, so you're now in the family of God. He asked three very specific things of us, and that is to love Him, love others and share the gospel. That means every single one of us are not only qualified, if you will, but we're expected to do it. Now let's get back to the qualified part. So I've been watching the chosen series Like to be honest, I'm literally on my fourth go around. Right, these sessions or seasons one, two and three were waiting for four, but I just keep watching them over and over because I get so much from rewatching them things I didn't catch before.

LeeAnn Fox: 1:59

But there's a very specific scene where Jesus is telling his disciples to go out and they're going to go two by two out into the world and they're going to heal and they're going to do the things that Jesus himself had been doing up to this point and they were kind of like you want us to do that? Like we're not qualified, we are still learning from you, right? He basically tells them, like you have to watch this play out on the screen to really get the full visual effect of it. But he tells them he's like you know, if I wanted teachers and you know those who've been through so many years of school and things like that. He doesn't use these exact words, but he's talking about the Pharisees and things like that If I wanted experts, frankly I wouldn't have chosen all of you In the scene. It pans around to all of them.

LeeAnn Fox: 2:48

And if you are familiar which I'm guessing you are the story of each of the disciples, who they were his initial 12 disciples. You had a tax collector, one of the most hated people that was doing things against his own people, and so who was he to be qualified to now go out and say follow Jesus, this is, you know what you should do. And then you had, you know, a swindler. You had you know the fisherman. You have people from all walks of life, none of which were professional. You know Pharisee types like teachers of the Bible and things like that. These were a bunch of social rejects, if we want to be honest, like in kind of today's terminology, right, we're like just people with the most jacked up lives and, of course, some of them had really like, gone to school and learned all that you know growing up, because in Jewish culture that's what they did, but they weren't at applying it to their life in most respects. Most of them, for anyone who's struggling with that identity struggle right now like who am I to be doing this? I'm not qualified.

LeeAnn Fox: 3:45

Let me give you a little backstory on how the Kingdom bloggers ministry got started. So I started going to church like for real, like I grew up Southern Baptist in the Bible Belt of Texas when I was very, very young and I remember going to like Sunday morning, sunday school and Sunday night and then Wednesday and I went to church camp and all of that, but I never really knew Jesus. It's just like she's what you did as a kid at that time. Right, that was like back in the I don't know late 70s, early 80s, and then I just stopped my parents' divorce and all these things happened and so I spent basically my, my teenagers, my young adult, into my 40s not setting foot inside a church and through all this I mean my life was like the definition of jacked up, multiple divorces, kids out of wedlock, all these things, and you know as many do.

LeeAnn Fox: 4:30

I ended up at church because I felt like I didn't know where else to go and that was the beginning of the change of my life and the beginning of this ministry and someone. I had joined a life group. I was learning the blogging stuff at the time and SEO and all of that, and but I literally had just barely given my life to Christ. I just barely started going to church and so, like I wasn't reading my Bible, I was barely like probably not even praying at this point, because I really didn't understand the concept of all of it and I definitely didn't know scripture. And so when a person in this life group had said, you know, leanne, you should teach this stuff to other Christian bloggers. Like, help others get this stuff out there in front of others. Like, help others who know it to share it, right, so that part about we're, we're called to share the gospel, and so at the time I really didn't understand the whole calling concept.

LeeAnn Fox: 5:20

I was just like, all right, whatever, I don't have a job. So I mean as well, like literally I didn't have a job at this point. I was really struggling to pay my bills at a minimum and I was single mom. Actually, I was going through a separation, I was living with someone out of wedlock, of course, and kind of was trying to end that relationship, and just there was just all these things. And so, from a sin perspective, I was like I am so sinful right now I can't be out there doing this stuff, but all the doors that I was trying to open, like to find a job and to do other things I can't get in chat slam door, slam door, slam door. And so I had nothing else to do about this, right, and so I continued forth.

LeeAnn Fox: 5:56

And what has happened? I mean many of you are very familiar with like kind of how the progression of Kingdom Luggers has happened, through the initial website now reaching over 165,000 people every single month, with two additional websites, a YouTube channel and Etsy shop podcasts. I mean just all of these things and all of that's great. It's great to say, yes, I've done all these things. God, you know, being faithful and obedient. God has blessed me with these things, but I will tell you this the one thing that has blessed me with the most is that he did has actually forced me to dive into scripture. It has forced me to read my Bible and pray and learn the importance of prayer, because, as I would research blog posts, I would have to actually research right and read this stuff, meaning the Bible, my writers, when they would send me content. Of course I have to edit it and in doing so I would have to read. So these aren't even things I wrote. It's stuff other people wrote. But I feel that I'm a better Christian now as far as understanding scripture and things like that. I mean, nobody can ever be the best Christian, let's just clarify that. But I've gotten better over time and more confident in my identity as a child of God. I've become more knowledgeable of scripture and the meaning of scripture and how to apply it to my life.

LeeAnn Fox: 7:07

So back to the whole point of this who was I to? Like? I'm not qualified to do this? Number one God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the called right.

LeeAnn Fox: 7:19

So when you have that feeling that God's calling you, pulling you in some direction, you're most likely not going to be in a comfort zone. He's pulling you out of your normal place. Now, for some of you, you may already sort of be in this and you're like I need to take it to the next step. And that's fine too. That happens quite often actually, but I would say for the majority and myself included, this was me that feeling that you're being called to aside from. You have no idea how to like. I was still learning SEO, I was still learning the tech side of WordPress and just all of that. I was not formally trained on any of this, I was just learning it from being online all the time. But all along the way, in the last five years, god has sent me the resources to learn what I needed, to learn to do what he called me to do. So there's that, okay.

LeeAnn Fox: 8:02

But number two your doubt. The doubt that you start facing, like and it'll be immediate that doubt is the enemy, because the enemy knows that an empowered Christian, a Christian who's empowered with knowledge and empowered with confidence, will do so many great things for the kingdom of heaven. And so the easiest way to get you off your game, to get you not to take that leap of faith, to not take that next step, is to put that little seed of doubt in your mind that you are not good enough, that you are not qualified, that you are not like you should be a certain way in order to do this job right, like that's. That's immediately what we start thinking I probably should go to seminary, or I should probably do this or that. That's not how God works. Y'all, god wants you to put your faith in him and he wants you to understand that he has something bigger down the road from you.

LeeAnn Fox: 8:52

For me, it was really being able to get, and it's because I struggle with ADHD most of you all know that and so sitting down and reading the Bible, like my brain it hurts, like it's hard for me to sit still and just read, and so diving into the Bible in this way has actually helped me learn it better. You're not supposed to know it all. You're not supposed to be fully qualified. God called every single one of us to go into the world, go into the nation, and the internet is the world now, and he wants you to go into it and do his work, and so he doesn't want to. I mean not saying you qualified those of you who have been to seminary. I'm not saying you can do this. Of course you need to learn how to do it in the digital space, but that was your calling to go into ministry in that capacity.

LeeAnn Fox: 9:34

But for everybody else, just remember the 12 apostles. Remember Matthew the tax collector. Remember just all of them and how none of them, for the most part, had any qualification, if you will, other than saying yes to God. That was their qualification, because, I mean, anyone could have said no. Like in the movie, in the show, there's some added stuff into it. It's not really in the Bible to kind of show that part when people pass that opportunity and kind of say no to God because they want to follow the world instead. And so I really encourage you to go watch it if you have not.

LeeAnn Fox: 10:07

But we're called to do what God wants us to do, and if we say yes to him, he's going to make sure that we get the tools we need, we get the resources, we get the knowledge. But do know this the enemy is going to come at you and he's going to get so creative in the ways that he comes at you because he knows that what you are doing is going to be powerful. And so just remember those seeds of doubt that you're feeling right now. That's the devil talking and he's like la, la, la, la, la, right, like that's a day thing. I'm not listening to you crank up that air one or whatever you know gospel music, listen to crank it up loud, drown out those little seeds of doubt and start doing what God has called you to do with confidence.

LeeAnn Fox: 10:45

All right, okay, everyone, that's all I just. I just felt to share that with you. I've had a few people reach out telling me you know the struggling with those kind of doubtful thoughts and I just wanted to share my own story so you understand, like I literally understand what you're talking about. But look what has happened through this ministry. Like I'm here talking to you right now because I tuned out those seeds and I are those sounds and voices and I'm like, no, god, let's do this, what you want, go right. And so I just encourage you to kind of remember that God doesn't want perfect people, he wants obedient people.