Kelly Colangelo - Womens Session: Femininity Restored (2021 Steubenville Main Campus 2)

[Music] [Music] well it is so good to be with you all this morning i met many of you last night this conference is rockin it is starting off really really amazing really beautiful and i am so happy to be present with you a few fun facts about myself so i come from tallahassee florida so it is the capital of florida don't be jealous i don't live by the beach um i am a youth minister so i work in a parish work with middle school and high school students every single day and i feel very much called and convicted to share my faith and share the good news and all of the amazing things that god has done in my life and walk with young people day by day side by side reminding them of the truth of who they are and who god created them to be like steve said last night i love love bacon um so i have really uh interesting food taste but i love bacon if you're vegetarian i am so sorry um but i love bacon i love mint chocolate chip ice cream [Applause] that's right now if you like cookies and cream i am sorry but mint chocolate chip is better we can have a little debate about that after um actually my claim to fame is that i ate 14 days in a row mint chocolate chip ice cream for breakfast amazing um yeah yeah um and honestly i love jesus and my goal is to go to heaven and try to bring as many people as i can that is why i'm here today to share about the goodness of god and i don't know you guys but i love you and i say that from a very sincere place like you are my little sisters i care about you i care about your salvation that is why i'm up here so we're gonna spend some time really talking about what does it mean to be a woman how did god create us and what did he create us for again i speak to you from a place of wanting all of you to know that you are deeply loved by the father deeply loved by the father and what i share with all of you i am also sharing with myself so i am not superior i am not holier i am just a person a woman like you on this journey with you in it with you together so i'm so excited i don't know if you smelt that in the room but it just smells so much better without the guys are you are you with me right right and i absolutely love woman sessions because i think it is great opportunity that we could come together as sisters in christ to be together to share with each other to be open to be honest to create friendships where when we go home from this conference we could have accountability partners in a positive way we can have someone say and remind us like you are called to greatness so again i pray that this time is anointed i pray that this time is blessed we're going to end with a time of worship um and be the opportunity that we could go and receive prayer so the question i want to start with i'm going to throw up the first slide here sorry i've got to go through a few intro slides first i apologize okay so i just want you to yell this out to me the world says to be a woman you have to be okay so i heard skinny i heard perfect keep yelling pretty perfect keep going keep going i can't i can't hear everyone else what's awesome great great great love the participation okay so the world says to be a woman that we have to be perfect we have to be flawless we have to be beautiful we have to be thin those are some of the things i heard and what i want to tell you is the world the culture we have been lied to we have been deeply lied to and some of the messages that we are constantly bombarded with look like this so it's like yeah we have to be sexy we have to be thin we have to we're revealing things we have to get attention from other people and sometimes that means degrading ourselves and our bodies so some of these magazines when i was googling images i actually had to cover up different words because they were so inappropriate and sometimes we could scroll on social media we could walk in the grocery store uh we could we could just be sitting in a dentist's office and we'd look at these magazines and they're bombarding us social media this trap we buy into like oh this perf this person is so much more perfect than me they have the perfect life they have the perfect care they have the perfect body they have the perfect boyfriend again the world the enemy sets up a trap for us as woman to say you are not good enough you have to do more you have to be skinnier you have to be more beautiful and i share this with you from a place of when i was in high school i totally bought in to the lies of the world i totally bought into yes i have to wear makeup yes i have to have to have a boyfriend and he has to be on the football team yes i have to go out yes i have to go to all these parties so i could be popular so i could be cool and what i want to tell you today is what the world tells us what these images tells us is a bunch of crap it is a lie we have been lied to and what we need to be reminded of is the truth of who we are who god created us to be in our femininity and how this weekend could be our femininity being restored i want you to think about that i want to dive deep into this st catherine of siena says and this is a very well known very popular quote be who you were created to be and you will set the world on fire so it's not be who you were created to be on instagram or be your instagram profile or be your twitter profile or you have to be insta famous or tick tock famous be that but saint catherine of siena is saying what contrary the world says be who you were created to be and you will set the world on fire what i see here in all of you and what i'm trying to tell you is be holy woman who set the world on fire we in recognizing our worth our value our dignity who we are as women and who god created us to be have the power to change the culture to change the world to reclaim ourselves and to restore our femininity in a very specific way i want to talk about three identities as woman and the first is daughter one who is loved and let's sit with that for a moment daughter one who is loved so at the root at the very core of our identity is that of being a daughter that and resting in our heavenly father that is recognizing who we are as beloved that we are beloved daughters of the father now i know sometimes maybe when we look to god as father we might have a negative reaction or negative connotation because of our own earthly fathers maybe some of us have an experience where earthly fathers have been absent physically or emotionally or maybe we struggle in our relationship with our dads or maybe our dads just aren't there what i want to say to you first and foremost is that i am deeply sorry if your experience of your own earthly dad has been negative in any way but i want to encourage you don't let that be an obstacle because god the father is perfect and you and i we have a good good father we have someone who sees us who knows us who loves us unconditionally and no one can take that away so sorry if we could go back to the previous slide i hit the thing twice i think but our next identity sister one who supports supports so i want you to think about sister yes maybe you have a blood sister awesome maybe you have a sister in christ maybe you have friends community a group of girls who comes together prays together supports each other so your identity as sister is one who supports and i want to share a story when i was in college my best friend who is my roommate all four years of college awesome person um we had a great group of friends that we were constantly hanging out constantly together study groups working out different things like that and my best friend and i who was my roommate we were constantly trying to one-up each other so she'd get out of philosophy class and she'd be like i got an a on the test what'd you get kelly and i'd be like i got an a too uh kelly uh i could bench press this much what could you bench press uh kelly i can do this and we were constantly one-upping each other and trying to outdo the other person but at the same time we were friends our other friends brought this to our attention and said y'all like you're kind of acting like children you're constantly in competition battling against each other and then when they brought this to our attention we're like yeah if we were real friends if we were sisters rather than saying i did this better than you or you're not as good as i am as that we would recognize celebrating each other's victories and that is what you and i are called to do and that is very challenging sometimes as a woman as a female because we have all sorts of things that creep in like jealousy or envy but again as sisters we are called to celebrate each other's victories to support each other to encourage each other to be there for each other to remind each other of your worth your value your dignity when we have the mentality if she is winning then i am losing we need to get rid of that mentality because it is as sisters holding a tight bond together that we will set the world on fire that we will change the face of sisterhood that the face of sisterhood will not look like i am superior i am better but i support you i stand behind you i encourage you i am your biggest fan i am your best cheerleader that is sisterhood that is one who supports and the last mother one who cares and again sometimes maybe when you hear the word mother you could have a similar reaction to father so maybe your mom is absent maybe your mom is absent emotionally physically maybe you struggle in your relationship with your mom whatever it is i am deeply deeply sorry but all of us are called to recognize as woman we have a beautiful gift to embrace while you know all of the young people all of you are not mothers now one day to embrace your feminine genius one day to embrace the beautiful emotions that god has given us as women and not see them as a barrier or not see them as something negative but to see them embracing that what is maternal that what is given to us by god share a story about my mom my mom passed away a year and a half ago um and prior to when she passed away she was sick for about five years four and a half years and my mom showed me and depicted to me every single day what it means to be a mother what it means to lay down your life for your children to sacrifice to be maternal to be caring to be loving and it was a beautiful moment that i had when my mom was in the hospital she didn't say anything she couldn't speak but locking eyes and staring into someone's eyes and knowing the deep love that another person has and being able to recognize in my mom like she she said yes to life she made me she loves me she is a reflection of jesus to me every single day and because of her maternal embrace because of her beautiful feminine heart because of her emotions it made me and it makes me want to be a mom it makes me want to be a god-bearer a life-bearer mother is one who cares and when we recognize these identities so daughter sister mother when we recognize the value the importance that god created these identities so our feminine identity knowing who we are but whose we are that we belong to god that that would be how we go into the world as strong courageous woman not afraid recognizing that god made us recognizing that all of these identities give us purpose give us hope that is how we will change the world is by embracing these identities that god has given us as women i want to show a quick video um and then share quickly a few practical things so if we could roll that video now that would be awesome you look at your eyes look at them speckled colorful each one unique and i created every one of them [Music] i created everything the universe and you i gave you your personality i made you pure complex and every day i give you life i love you but something happened you cheated on me you didn't trust me you sinned you cut yourself off from me and although you're still alive you were slowly dying so you looked for other things to fill the void but nothing works it just kills you faster and it separates us more and more what are you searching for [Music] i don't want you to die i created you not to be destroyed but to know me i became one of you a fragile creation i was tempted but i never sinned i came to save you you have so many sins and they have a cost someone has to die you or me so i took on your sin and traded in my life for yours [Music] and i died in your place because i love you then i rose from the dead i am the way the truth and the life i am jesus i'm not here to condemn you i came to bring you back to life rely on me i will forgive you and give you eternal life i love you and i did all of this to have a relationship with you will you follow me so where does this all come from if we go back to the very first very first book in the bible genesis the story of creation we go to anime and eve and we look um and we look at that story and we look how adam and eve saw each other beautiful saw each other with this purity and then the fall and then they ate the forbidden fruit and then manipulation and then instead of seeing each other as pure and as beautiful they saw each other as objects if we go back to that story and if we look at creation and we look at the original plan for our lives but then sin entered the world and then darkness and as a result of a lot of those things then who we are and the truth of who we are and who we're supposed to be craved to be as woman has been clouded again by the world by the culture i want to share five very simple reminders of how we can continue to be restored as women and the first is you are loved so reminding all of us that we are love beyond measure it does not matter if we are a straight student if we get perfect s.a.t scores if we're amazing as soccer basketball softball drama performances you don't have to do anything to earn earn god's love but god loves you for you recognizing that and if there's anyone who struggles in a particular way if you struggle with who you are with your identity maybe you struggle with same-sex attraction god does not love you less god loves you and the second reminder for all of us you have an amazing contribution to make to this world that only you can make and maybe it doesn't mean to start a non-profit or to serve the homeless people or to find the cure for cancer maybe it means looking in your schools looking to the person who's alone at lunch and reaching out maybe you are the only one who can help that person you have an amazing contribution to make the to this world as woman and in a very special and particular way recognizing who we are as women recognizing our bodies and the contribution we can make to the world in our purity in our chastity and recognizing this great virtue that chastity has given all of us knowing we are making a decision by saying i want to live a chaste life we are making a decision to see other people as souls instead of objects for our pleasure we are making a decision to say i want the very best for this person in regards to my body in regards to my words my actions what i take in what i view what i see and recognizing as women we have an amazing contribution to make to this world saint john paul ii and i want to really share this quote because i love it he says only the chaste man and the chaste woman are capable of true love don't we all want true love don't we all long to be seen to be known and to be loved not as an object but as someone who is seen known and loved in the deepest core of who we are the third reminder you will only find true fulfillment in one person and that is jesus you will only find true fulfillment in one person and that is jesus no friend no boyfriend no parent no family member will fill the deepest longing of our hearts jesus christ and having a relationship with jesus will satisfy our hearts and the fourth you are not your past and i believe this is a lie a lot of us have been told a lot of us think oh because i did a b and c in the past or i did this last week last summer last year like i can't follow jesus or i can't become holy or i can't do this because this is an obstacle this is a barrier for me pursuing my faith that is a lie you are not your past there was something that happened to me when i was in high school that i was deeply deeply hurt by and as a result i believe these lies about me that i wasn't worthy that i would never be good enough that i was damaged that i had this blemish and everyone could see it and this lie was sewn very deep into my heart and it was through prayer it was through meeting jesus in adoration in prayer it was through talking to people that i was able to renounce that lie i was able to say i am not my past but i am a daughter of god and i am a new creation and god restored me you are not your past and the last one the last reminder is the devil is a liar and i'd be remiss if i didn't mention this the devil hates life and the devil hates beauty you are life and your beauty it says in john 10 10 the thief comes to steal slaughter and destroy but god has come to give you life and give you life to the abundance to recognize we have an enemy we have this huge x on our back like a bullseye and the enemy is prowling a bowel and wants to bring up those times from the past that we messed up or we we sinned wants to bring up like all of the bad things we did wants to bring up the struggles we have but with your sisters in christ let us remind each other that you are worthy you are loved you are beautiful it is through supporting each other we could remind ourselves the devil is a liar and i'm not going to believe him he is the father of lies and i'm not going to believe him because i know i am a daughter i'm a daughter of the father i know that i am loved i know that i am beautiful and i know that i am worthy all right right now what we're going to do and i know that i know that was fast but right now what we're going to do we're going to transition into a time of prayer i'm going to give some instruction before we start to pray together but what i'd like i'd like for all of the adults the chaperones group leaders youth leaders and just a moment to come forward and kind of space out and make a line at the front and then i'm going to invite all of you to stand i'm going to invite all of you to stand close your eyes and we're going to have a time of prayer i'm also going to invite katie on the stage and katie and i are just going to invite you if there's a particular area in your life that you need prayer to come forward to your adult chaperones or the youth leaders who are going to be up here and to receive prayer and youth leaders it doesn't have to be a super long prayer a quick prayer and then you guys are going to go back to your seats and you're going to continue to pray and intercede for others for your sisters so i think at this time if we could have all of the adults youth leaders group leaders kind of come up uh stand at the front across the room we're going to invite the music ministers they're gonna lead us in some music as we prayed together then i'm gonna invite all all of you guys all of you girls if you could please stand just as we enter into this time of prayer [Music] and all of the adults we could even maybe go to the side of the room if there's not enough room we could even kind of go to the perimeter ladies i just want to encourage you [Music] let's use this time of prayer for what the lord wants to give us i want to encourage you if you open your hands and think about it like this when we open our hands it is a sign of being open to the lord as a sign of being receptive if you think about it like you open your hands to receive a gift that god the father wants to give you a gift in this prayer time [Music] come holy spirit come holy spirit come

Channel: Steubenville Youth Conferences

Views: 91

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, Charismatic, Youth Conference, Youth, Conference, Evangelization, Steubenville Conferences, Steubenville

Id: V-3b4Opewrc

Length: 32min 10sec (1930 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 18 2021