Stewardship

How to self-publish a book with Eevi Jones

How to self-publish a book with Eevi Jones

In today's interview, I will be talking about how to self-publish a book with none other than the amazing best-selling author that is Eevi Jones (of http://www.eevijones.com/).

By the end of this video you will know:

  • How to self-publish your own book

  • 2 of Eevi's favourite marketing strategies and how to implement them

  • How to not launch to "crickets"

  • And much more!

Sound like your cup of tea, lovely?

Great! You can do whatever it is you need to do to get comfortable and press play to access this awesome conversation, below:

Lessons from 5 Rebel Girls of the Bible

Lessons from 5 Rebel Girls of the Bible

This blog post was originally featured on Rising Tswana.

 

Recently I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed when I came across a video from Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo (of Rebelgirls.co) called “If Cinderella were a Guy”. Through this video, they highlight the fact that women are impacted by misogyny as early as childhood for the following reasons:  

which then give way to confidence issues by the time most girls reach primary or elementary school- more so than boys. In answer to the question of why this is so, Favilli and Cavallo pose one of their own: 

“They say that ‘If you can see it, you can be it.’ But what happens if you never see someone like you making the headlines? What happens when all that you see around you is movies, cartoons, books and TV shows dominated by men?” 

To counteract this, they created a book called “Goodnight Stories of Rebel Girls”- a collection of: 

“100 stories of real women who have achieved incredible things, despite all odds [because] every girl… deserves to grow up thinking that she can be anything she wants.” 

When I saw this video it instantly resonated with me. This, I noted, is definitely a problem in the secular world but it is also a problem within the church. Christian women therefore not only have to navigate systemic sexism such as gender pay gaps, mansplaining and rape culture, they also have  the added baggage of the misogyny that occurs within church, which includes the:  

  • Exacerbation of the problem of limited female representation (in terms of how little we are spoken of generally and in what contexts we are spoken about when we are discussed, particularly where the matriarchs of the faith are concerned)
  • Objectification of women's bodies (either as weapons for "tempting godly men" or for the sole purpose of pleasuring our husbands and having their babies) 
  • Depreciation of women's roles and identity (hence the continued debates around female leadership and preachers, and the idea that being a wife and mother is the "ultimate stamp of womanhood")  

All of these issues were highlighted via this recent article. Issues which I am personally acquainted with and served as both the frustration and inspiration behind launching this website last year.  

This website has allowed me the pleasure of challenging these stereotypes by interviewing a diverse range of Christian women from all walks of life (globally). I also continue to achieve this by discussing the “rebel girls” of the Bible through my weekly devotionals- women who shift traditional paradigms surrounding (Christian) femininity, such as: 

Lessons from Wisdom on How to be a Helper

Lessons from Wisdom on How to be a Helper

To excerpt from my guidebook, The Ultimate Guide to Eve-

The Holy Spirit (like God) has many different names, each reflecting an aspect of His nature. For example, He is called “the Spirit of truth,” (John 16:13; John 14:17; John 15:26), “the eternal Spirit” (Hebrews 9:14) and much more. However when Jesus first announced His coming, He addressed Him as “another Helper” (John 14:26; John 14:16) and outlined His role, which is basically to dwell within those that accept Jesus so that they might:

This is why on announcing the arrival of the Holy Spirit Jesus told His disciples that, although God’s presence had dwelt with them through Him up to that point, He would soon be in them (John 14:17). Through this indwelling of the Holy Spirit God is still able to manifest His powers through those who believe in Jesus, just like when He was present on the earth in human form. It is in this way that we are able to abide in Jesus as He abides in the Father and vice versa (John 15:5).

It is interesting to note Jesus’ use of the word “another” before the title Helper as it suggests that there had been a different type of helper prior to Jesus’ announcement, and there was- in the person of Eve- particularly in her role of wife (Genesis 2:18-25). The word “helper” is used to describe Eve specifically in Genesis 2:18, which suggests that Eve’s role as helper (and that of subsequent females) is actually symbolic of the Holy Spirit’s relationship to those who have accepted Christ (especially as marriage is a symbol of Christ's relationship with the church).

Lessons from El Shaddai on How Women Physically Reflect the Image of God

Lessons from El Shaddai on How Women Physically Reflect the Image of God

Before I started studying Eve and other women of the Bible, one of the things that I was really interested in uncovering was any feminine representations of God. I think that this was because the fact that God is typically spoken about in masculine terms meant that:

  • I didn't quite understand how I could be totally "made in His image"
  • I didn't always see myself reflected or represented in God or His word
  • This made me question my worth, place and purpose (as a woman) within the Kingdom of God

Wanting to reconcile these issues for myself, and others within the Far Above Rubies Collective, I did a 2-part series on scriptures that talked about God in feminine terms a few months ago- most especially as mother (if you missed that you can read them here and here).

In today's devotional, we're going to be taking lessons from El Shaddai on how women reflect the image of God in their bodies.

Lessons from Eve On Stewardship

Lessons from Eve On Stewardship

Just before my 26th birthday, people started to nudge me about “the next stage in life” (i.e. marriage and children), implying that this would be my ultimate stamp of womanhood. The problem? I had my reservations. Why? Well, I guess this is what happens when you grow up seeing most of your female role-models sell themselves short or stay in abusive situations due to factors such as tradition, control and low self-worth.

 

You see, as much as my elders loved me and invested me with great skills and values, I didn’t have any older women (in my immediate circle) that I really looked at and felt that I wanted to be like, or have a relationship similar to. I knew this to be true of most of the people in my social circle too; yet I saw many women of my age group taking up the mantle of our fore-runners and repeating their history.

And that’s how I came to my crossroads…

I didn’t want to conform to social norms, building my future on the opinions of men and repeating their histories (as I’d seen others do). I wanted to become the woman God had ordained me to be; so, I became really interested in comparing these notions to what the Bible had to say about topics such as women, womanhood and my purpose as one.

I literally decided to go through the Bible looking at each woman and the spiritual truths we can garner from their stories, which is what started my passion for the women of the Bible (but especially Eve). My book, “The Ultimate Guide to Eve,” is basically a collation of my findings. Here is an excerpt on what Eve teaches us about the fact that we are called to rule: