Face Your Pharaoh

Alaine Victoria Vaughn

Description

This is a call to action for those who feel captive to realize they can break free and walk into the promises of God.

Face Your Pharaoh is a call to action for those who are tired of feeling held hostage in their own lives. Alaine reaches out to those who have been surviving merely by functioning within dysfunctional situations and sends us a message that reminds us of the authority God has given us to be active participants in our own rescue. Her book sheds a different light on the perspective of Moses’s great call to deliverance. In this book, Alaine challenges her readers to look within and to eliminate defeatist mindsets that are keeping them from the promise of their purpose. Her book empowers us to win from within by seeing that no enemy is stronger than the inner-me, and that we must first conquer ourselves to walk into the promise of our purpose.

Sujets

• Christian Living
• Inspirational
• Philosophie et théologie
• Self-help
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: WestBow Press
• Date de parution: 26 avril 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664227347
• Langue: English

Extrait

FACE YOUR PHARAOH
BREAKING FREE FROM SELF-SABOTAGE & WALKING INTO THE PROMISE OF GOD’S PURPOSE
ALAINE VICTORIA VAUGHN


Copyright © 2021 Alaine Victoria Vaughn.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.
 
 
WestBow Press
A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan
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Bloomington, IN 47403
www.westbowpress.com
844-714-3454
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
 
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
 
Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973 1978 1984 2011 by Biblica, Inc. TM. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
 
Scripture taken from the New King James Version® Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6642-2732-3 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-2733-0 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-2734-7 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021905282
 
 
WestBow Press rev. date: 04/21/2021
CONTENTS
Introduction
1.Sinking
2.Purpose Ain’t No Cake Walk
3.Mums and Dreams
4.Victory in the Places of Defeat
5.Could You Turn that Down?
6.Talented But Trapped
7.Could You Turn the Light On?
8.The Real Inner-Me
9.Walking Around with Our Noses in the “Heir”
Closing Prayer
From Alaine Victoria Vaughn to You
Contact Alaine Victoria Vaughn
Acknowledgments
DEDICATION
To GOD who, when I prayed with concern on how to overcome my own life hardships, He brought to mind His conversation with Moses in Exodus 4 about the rod, and then he reminded me of what was in my own hand. A pen.
To my father, the late Pastor Arnold E. Vaughn, I; lover of God, books, and mankind. I know you would’ve been proud to see this. I love you to Heaven and back, Daddy-Cakes…literally.
And to my mother, Davita Wesley-Vaughn; magnificent writer, phenomenal educator, and amazing mother. Momma, I hope I made you proud. I love you.
To Aunt Alma Faye Hampton. Thank you for believing I could do this. I will never forget your kindness and encouragement. This book is also because of you. I hope I made you proud as well.
To Uncle Marc Wesley… Thank you for saving all of my writings when I was a kid. You’ve always believed in me. I hope you’ll save this one, now.
INTRODUCTION
Well hello, my friend.
If you’re reading this, I’m already free.
For many years, I’d felt as if I were stuck. I had literally lost hope. I was falling apart. I was dying on the inside, but I was functioning on the outside. If anyone had told me back then that the bondage that I was in was voluntary, I would not have believed them. I could think of everyone responsible, but the last person who would have come to mind would have been myself.
However, one day it hit me that one choice could change the direction of my entire life if I were to simply make it in faith. Less than a year later, here I am… living the beginnings of it. And this book is sent to you to tell you that you can break free, too and walk in the purpose you know God has put in you. You don’t have to be a functioning hostage in your own life. You are meant for greater.
You will find that this book is actually more about you than it is Pharaoh or even Moses. This book is moreso about realizing that the potential to be either your greatest ally or your greatest foe lies within yourself. I find most often, that while we “wait on God” to deliver us, that very deliverance we’re waiting on Him for, actually starts with us; and that in order to be our own Moses, we must face our own Pharaoh.
Your decision to be free, if you hadn’t made it already, starts here with this book. Let me show you to freedom. Let me show you how to get to that land God promised to you, too my friend.
Meet me in chapter one.
1
SINKING
WE HAVE GROWN SO ACCUSTOMED to being able to discern who our enemies are. I’m sure we can point out every person in our lives right now who is helping us row our boat or is secretly drilling holes in it, so to speak. We can tell who our Judases are, that betray us. We can even tell who our Peters are, that used to support us but fell off when we times got hard. However, after we’ve separated ourselves from those who were sabotaging us and repair the damages they’ve caused, what happens when we find out that our boat is still sinking? Sometimes, it’s us, my friend. Sometimes, we’re sinking ourselves. We could go on denying this, of course. Or we could open our eyes and see the uncomfortable truth.
We must be able to see ourselves through the eyes of the Holy Spirit. Our natural eyes will only see what we want to see within ourselves and we can put up a good self-front. However, it is only through spiritual eyes, that we see the truth. Sorry to sound Morpheus-ish, here. That is certainly not my intent. I am simply encouraging you to see yourself. Truly. Without bias. Without blame. When we ask God to show us what we look like through His eyes, we may be surprised at what we see. His eyes see past the primping and preening we’ve done to look good. He sees past the functions of our organs. His eyes see us all the way down to our truth. He sees every issue of our hearts, every thought in our minds, every memory of the past, and every action of the present and future.
When I look back on my life, it grieves me that I was able to successfully spot out the inconsistencies in everyone else who was sinking my boat but managed to miss my own. It’s difficult to see a problem when we are the problem. I’m not saying we’re the only problem but yes, usually we are a bigger part of it than we want to believe. When I left certain situations that I felt were pulling me under, my life didn’t miraculously change. There wasn’t some fairy godmother who came, waved her magic wand, and poof ! A new me and a new life! I wish. But no.
When I broke away from toxic people, places, and things, yes, cycles were broken. But I realized there were some other cycles that needed to break. There were some toxicities and unhealthy patterns and cycles at work inside of me. And there is nothing that slaps you in the face harder than your own ugly truths. There were some happenings that I could easily pin the tail on the donkey with. And there were some others that called for the tail to be pinned on me .
This is another reason why it is healthy to learn to be by yourself sometimes. When you’re by yourself, you see things about you that you might have missed while focusing on others around you. I’ve often said that it’s easier to watch someone else’s life through a video camera than it is to look at your own life in the mirror. And whew! I needed work, too! When I stopped pointing fingers about the things that happened in my life and started looking at what I could’ve done differently, I felt true freedom. Accountability is also freedom. There were some decisions I had made in my life that I alone was accountable for. No one held me at gun point and told me make some of the decisions I’d made. I had been forming excuses for my complacencies out of the people and pressures of life. I’d felt like this happened because of so-and-so and if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here, when really at any given time, I could’ve changed what I was allowing. A simple shift of the steer could’ve changed the direction of my boat but many times, I sat back and allowed my boat to hit an iceberg and sink. At the end of the day, when you’re sinking, it doesn’t matter whose fault it was. What matters is why you didn’t step in and change your course when you saw your life heading for disaster.
You still need your captain.

Even so, there are those times when even you are not going to know what to do with your boat, especially in the midst of life’s storms. I can’t tell you how many times I caused unnecessary pain and suffering to myself by thinking I knew what I was doing. I mean, I grew up reading and understanding the Scriptures. I pray. I fast. I’ve got this, right? Wrong. Oh, I was so wrong.
I regrettably used to think that the more scriptures I knew, the more I prayed, the more I heard God, the less I needed Him when troubles came. We often compare this life to a test, where the teacher helps us study and then we should be wise enough to take the test on our own. Oh, but my friend let me tell you that you will still need Him during the test. Life tests aren’t like school tests. So you c