Own Your Worth in Christ with Cynthia Garrett

Need to tear down any walls of insecurity, fear, or approval addiction? God wants you to own your worth and claim your space!

Today's new episode and blog, will set you free and have you laughing!

 I recently had the pleasure of interviewing the amazing Cynthia Garret! Cynthia is a Long-time U.S. television personality who broke barriers when she became the first African-American woman in the USA to host a network late-night show, NBC’s LATER With Cynthia Garrett. Regularly seen on FOX News’ The Ingraham Angle, starring Laura Ingraham, as well as other Political News Channels, Cynthia currently hosts The Sessions with Cynthia Garrett, airing weekly on TBN and GIRL CLUB streaming on multiple platforms, including her own CGM TV YouTube Channel. 

 She’s an ordained minister and is a highly sought-after speaker domestically and internationally. Having graduated from the USC Gould School of Law, she holds a J.D. and a certificate in comparative law from Oxford University. In 2016, Cynthia published her autobiography, Prodigal Daughter: A Journey Home to Identity, and Her second book, released in 2020, is aptly titled I Choose Victory: Moving From Victim To Victor (Salem/Regnery), a powerful book about our personal responsibility to choose Victory for our own lives!

In this blog, I’m going to share with you the questions I asked Cynthia during our time together and if you’d like, you can listen to the full interview on the STRONG. CONFIDENT. HIS. Podcast here.

Let’s dive in!

What are your thoughts on faith and fitness and unifying the two?

“Most people approach fitness as something separate from how they would approach their spiritual relationship with the Lord. It's like, there's God here, then there's fitness, then there's this, then there's that, and there's that. And there's this. And the reality is, you know, I don't think that most Christians really understand that our temple is really a place where the Spirit of God resides.”

You talk so much about worth and identity struggles. Can you dive into this with us a little deeper?

“Honestly, I would probably direct people to my very first book, which is my testimony called Prodigal Daughter A Journey Home To Identity. That book is my testimony and my journey through confronting my childhood sexual abuse, the low self-esteem and the shame and the body image that went with that. 

When your identity is rooted in Christ, you then begin to find your own personal sphere of beauty, the beauty that God created you to walk in the beauty that you are in your hair, your skin color, your healthy weight, you know, I mean, it's interesting, because I see a lot of these a lot of times I see these comedians, and there'll be sisters of ours who are overweight, right? And part of their comedy becomes about their weight. And then and then they'll say things like, I'm happy with this, I'm happy with this body the way that it is. But then the first thing that they do, when they become famous is they go and they lose weight. 

The Power Zone is living in the truth of God for you. So, the first thing that the world does, is try to strip you and your relationship away from God.”

Why do you think so many women leave God out of their worth and their self-care?

“I'm sitting here thinking about the millions of young girls and guys who follow these quote-unquote, Instagram influencers. And, and so many of them work for this brand called pretty little things. And I've been I've begun over the last couple of years to notice something. The girls that are the models have this line of bikinis, basically, and hot, hot girl clothing, let's call it right. They're all they're all super, super skinny. And they all have big, huge breasts, most of them, you know, fake. So like, you look at like the girl at 14. And you see that by 18, she's completely changed her body, her nose, her mouth is it's all silicone or injections or implants, you know, in the bottom or in the breast. And I mean, I literally, about a week ago, I just cried over one of the girls who came into my hemisphere for a number of reasons. And I just cried, because I'm sitting here looking at this girl who's 27, who's at the top of that secular thing. Like, you know, everyone looks to her.

The depth of the lessons of identity in Christ. I mean, I just all I could do was cry from prostate frustration because I realized, these young women become us. They become older girls, right? They become moms, and they become sisters, they're your friends. They're your daughters. They're all over the place. And they need the voice of truth. And the voice of God spoke into their lives so badly. They need to know that they're beautiful, that they're a daughter, that they're loved, that they're more special than what they're doing, and that the men who are validating them are broken and have issues and problems for basically encouraging them to put themselves out there as so much less than they are they're not eating healthfully.

Identity and identity in Christ is the only thing that sets you free. And that teaches you about your beauty and your health and your mind and heart and how you should be valued today. And, you know, and it's like anything apart from Christ, just males just fail miserably.”

I hear this from women all the time! I lack the confidence to go for their God-given dreams. It's too late. I'm too old. I'm not equipped. I don't have enough Instagram followers. I don't have enough, you know. I don't have a big email list. Can you speak to that?

“I mean, number one, I got there because I mean, I have the success. I had the red carpets. I did all of that. I've had my own TV shows on secular network television. I've you know, I've dated the Oscar winners and the Grammy winners. Been there done it and realized in the middle of it. Yeah. Oh, still not enough. Still missing something on the inside. Whoa, I'm still sad. Whoa, my emotions still feel a little bit all over the place. Whoa, I'm still broken. My success has not fixed me or healed me. It is the same thing that needs to be said to people who are struggling with their identity and their sexuality.

It's like, it does not matter what you do to your body. It does not matter how you dress or what you identify with gender-wise, it doesn't. It won't fix you. It won't heal your broken heart. It won't. It won't fill the void. No matter how many drugs you take, no matter how much alcohol you drink, like you can numb yourself in a million different ways in this world. You can binge eat, you can purge, you can do all that. But until you go back to the core essence of who Christ created you to be and confront potentially your brokenness. I think most people are just broken, and they don't know what to do with all their brokenness. 

In Isaiah 61, when writing about Christ and it's the same scrolls that when Jesus was in the temple as a young man and they all came in, and we're like, who are you? You know, who was like, what are you doing here? Like any opened up their scrolls? Right and he read Isaiah 61, and the end if you've never read it I don't care what you believe or who you are, you got to read it, okay? Because there's a part that gets down to a certain place where Jesus reads from this scroll, I came to bind up the brokenhearted and to set the captives free. And all through the Bible, that is the only part of Jesus's ministry that he did not give to anyone else. He gave the disciples the power to heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead. I mean, we all have, I've prayed for people, and they've gotten healed. I've prayed for people, and they've fallen down on the floor and gotten slain in the Spirit, which blew my mind more than there's because there are things I never even really thought, like, Does that really happen? And then God's like, used me and made it happen. And I'm like, Okay, God, I'm sorry. Never will I doubt you again.”

If you had one thing, you wanted to leave my STRONG. CONFIDENT. HIS. sisters with today, what would it be, Cynthia?

“Oh, my goodness, that you would really fall in love with who God created you to be, which is going to require you to leave this podcast and just open up a Bible or go online. You could go to Blue letter bible.org, I love it. Because every single translation of the Bible is there. And I really I want you to go for an easy translation that you can understand.

when you start studying the Bible, you'll go deeper into a lot of things. But this is just for like if you don't know a lot about this, right? Go ahead and open a Bible and find something about how God created you. There are so many identity scriptures about who we are, you know, how we're fearfully and wonderfully made, how he knit us together in our parent, our mother's womb, and he knew us before we got here, about how we're the first and not the last, about how all things are possible, through Christ who loves us about you know, how we need to be continually transformed by the renewing of our mind in Christ Jesus, it's a progress, guys. It's a journey, you know, we need to be continually transformed. So we got to be feeding ourselves every day with scripture that tells us who we are.”

Before Cynthia and I ended our call, I asked her to lead us in prayer. As you read this prayer, let God speak to you and tell you exactly who you are in Him.

Well, Father, it always boils down to identity. You know, who are we? Who did you create us to be? What did you create us to look like? You know, and why the shame about everything and all of it, Lord. And I just pray today that we take all of our confusion and our shame and our desires to be different. And we just give them to you. I pray that each and every person listening would just deposit all of it now at the foot of the cross. I pray, Lord, that You would help everyone, all of us to trust you. With everything that we're concerned about, afraid about struggling with. And Lord, I ask that you would truly bless each and every one of us to know that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, that we are powerful because of you, Lord, that we can do all things because of you. And most more than anything, Lord, please help us to remember that you want us to come to you because you're a great parent, and you don't expect perfection from us. That you want us to know that our identity is 50% in knowing that you love us and the other 50% in loving you back. And from there, we can do all things through you who strengthen us. 

So in Jesus' name, Lord, I thank you for Kim. I thank you for her efforts to just speak identity into the lives of her listeners. And I thank You, Father, for speaking the truth about the fact that this temple called our body is yours. You live in it, whether we know you or not, whether we acknowledge it or not. You want us only to go good places with this body, and you want us to feel good about our bodies Lord. Do you want us to treat our bodies with kindness and love and grace and forgiveness and to be joyful where we are even on a journey to being more physically fit? So I ask Lord that you would take, take the reins of that battle for all of us, Lord, take the reigns. Help us, Lord help us to lose weight help us to be healthy help us to think right live right see right love right? And do right. 

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Faith fuel

If your mind is set on earthly solutions, you cannot get heavenly help.

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God” (Col. 3:1).

“But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 15:57 

“No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Romans 8:37

Sister, thank you for reading this blog today. I hope that God blesses you in ways you could have never imagined!

You can learn more about Cynthia and purchase her books here: https://linktr.ee/cynthiagarrett