The instruction came before the plan did, and I said yes anyway.
The instruction came before the plan did, and I said yes anyway.
I was standing on the deck of a cruise ship, of all places, when the instruction came.
Clear. Specific. A location. A date.
Host my first in-person event.
My first response was not faith. It was math.
I ran through everything that still needed to come together before I ever finished the thought God had started. Logistics due in two weeks. Details I had not worked out yet. Every practical, responsible part of me said, “Wait. Plan more. Come back to this once you actually have it figured out.”
I said yes anyway.
I remember my hand actually shaking a little as I confirmed it. Not from excitement. From fear that I had just done something I could not yet explain to anyone who asked.
For the next several days, doubt showed up right on schedule every morning, usually before I had even finished my coffee.
What if no one comes?
What if this does not come together the way I need it to?
What if this was never God at all, and I just wanted it badly enough to convince myself it was?
I did not silence that doubt by feeling brave.
I silenced it by moving anyway, one small act of obedience at a time, while the fear was still loudly talking.
Then came a second instruction.
If I am honest, this one annoyed me a little because I still had not resolved the fear from the first one.
Host a free virtual gathering for leaders first.
It was something I had never built before, with no roadmap for how to do it.
I remember thinking, quite plainly, “I do not have time to figure out something new right now.”
But I built it anyway.
In eight days.
Mostly at night.
Mostly unsure whether anyone would show up at all.
Eight days later, seven women had registered. Six showed up.
I remember watching the screen fill with faces and feeling something unclench in my chest that I had not realized was clenched.
The women did not come merely to occupy seats on a Zoom screen. They came carrying real questions, real assignments, and a genuine hunger for what God wanted to do next in their lives.
As we gathered, I could see that the instruction had never been only about what God was building through me. It was also about the women He intended to meet through my obedience.
Near the end, one woman made a significant investment in continuing the work we had begun together.
I did not take her decision lightly.
She was not simply evidence that the gathering had “worked.” Her yes represented trust, readiness, and her own act of obedience.
I sat at my desk afterward and cried, the kind of crying that is relief and awe and gratitude all tangled together.
I had spent two weeks afraid that I had made a decision I could not fully explain. But God showed me that obedience creates room for more than my own breakthrough.
My movement had created a place where someone else could move, too.
I tell you that story not to impress you.
I tell you that story because it taught me the difference between two words leaders confuse constantly.
Potential and movement are not the same thing.
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Potential simply means you have the capacity to do something.
It is real.
It is valuable.
It is also, on its own, completely inert.
I had capacity for years before that cruise ship moment. Capacity was never the missing ingredient.
Movement means you take the capacity you already have and put it into motion, on instruction, before the conditions feel ready.
Movement is not the absence of fear.
It is obedience that outpaces the fear.
I did not have a budget. I did not have every component finished. I did not yet have external proof that the path I was building would serve the people God had placed on my heart.
What I had was an instruction and a decision to obey it before I understood how it would resolve.
I want to be honest that obeying did not feel courageous in the moment.
It felt reckless.
Courage was the word I found afterward, once I could see how it turned out. In the moment, it just felt like fear with a decision attached to it.
This is where so many capable leaders quietly stall.
Not for lack of vision.
Not for lack of calling.
They are simply waiting for the moment potential converts itself into readiness.
It never does.
Movement is the only thing that converts potential into anything at all.
I still ask myself why stepping into obedience comes so easily in some seasons and feels so unbearably hard in others.
I do not have a full answer.
Some days I move the instant I hear the instruction. Other days I negotiate with it for a week, looking for a loophole, a delay, or a reason it can wait until I feel more ready.
I have stopped waiting to fully understand that inconsistency in myself.
I have simply learned to move anyway on the days it is hard, because I already know what it costs when I do not.
Do it afraid. The cost of inaction is more than you want to pay.
If you are building something right now, an organization, a ministry, a team, or a next chapter, and you are waiting to feel fully ready before you move, I want to gently interrupt that wait.
Readiness is not a prerequisite for obedience.
It is usually the byproduct of it.
I did not feel ready standing on that deck doing math I could not make work. I only felt ready afterward, looking back at what obedience had already built while I was still afraid.
The leaders who build organizations that last are rarely the ones with the most certainty.
They are the ones willing to move with the instruction they already have before every variable is resolved, before the fear fully quiets down, and before the math makes sense to anyone watching from the outside.
Potential confirms what you could do.
Movement reveals what your obedience can make possible for someone else.
The question is not whether you have enough potential.
The question is:
What instruction are you willing to move on while fear is still talking?
-- Dr. Rhonda
The Next Step: If you are sitting on an instruction you have not yet moved on because you are waiting to feel fully ready, take The Close the Leadership Gap Diagnostic™. It is built to help you name the one next step that turns potential into actual movement.
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