Many women hesitate to tell their stories, feeling that they don’t have anything to give. For Laney Rene, a season of loss was the catalyst to inspire her to share her own life with other women.
Laney Rene is the author of the new release “Daughter: Becoming Who You Already Are,” and she is founder of The One He Loves ministry. Both the book and the ministry came about to point the way to Jesus and help each woman find her true identity in Him.
The phrase from Revelation 12:11 — “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony” — had a major impact on the direction of Laney Rene’s ministry.
“It hit me that you put the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony in the same sentence, so they both have incredible power. We build our whole life on the belief and knowing of the richness of the blood of the Lamb, but oftentimes we disqualify our testimony. I just believe our testimony has so much power with the blood of the Lamb,” she said.
Facing challenges
During The One He Loves worship nights, participants often share ways that God has met them. Many have walked through really difficult times and can be very broken as a result.
However, the women often come back later and talk about how God filled their hearts, and sometimes the women are now leading women’s groups where they share their own stories.
“Women are being healed by their testimonies. Obviously, it’s not something I can produce on my own but (it’s a result of) the simple message of who Jesus is and what He came to do,” Laney Rene said.
The One He Loves began after a time when Laney Rene felt closer to God than ever before — so much so that she couldn’t put it into words.
One day, seeing tears in her eyes, Laney Rene’s mother asked what was wrong. She responded, “Nothing is wrong. I’m actually really good. I feel Him so close, and I know it’s not just for me, but it’s for other people to share what He’s doing in my heart.”
Then about a month later, Laney Rene lost her baby boy after carrying him for 17 weeks. When she found out he no longer had a heartbeat, it was the “hardest and most shocking news” she had ever experienced.
But in that season, she found out what it truly meant to be a daughter of the King. Tangible love became real. She had shared her pregnancy on social media and decided to also share the loss. Women reached out with similar stories that broke her heart. Many shared that the pain never goes away.
“A big ‘No!’ rose up in me. No, that’s not how we have to live — broken for the rest of our lives. We have a Father, a good Father who, even though we live in a broken world, has truly overcome this world.
“I just had an overwhelming feeling in my spirit that this was something that I needed to encourage other women with — that we have a God who can make us whole and heal our brokenness even though we walk through it,” she said.
Knowledge becomes real
Although she grew up in a Christian home where she learned she was a daughter of the King, this knowledge didn’t become real until her early 20s. Breaking up with her boyfriend after a four-year toxic relationship, she moved to a new city, quit what was her dream job and felt incredibly alone.
One day she asked God, “Who am I?” and remembered a video of herself as a little girl picking up a microphone and saying, “I love Jesus!”
“Seeing myself as a 3-year-old little girl, a daughter, not having anything to prove, nothing to be other than just a daughter, nothing to hide — God used that moment to completely change my life and how I see myself,” she recalled.
Then, during the time she lost her son, God again showed Himself as her refuge and her confidence, like it says in Proverbs 14:26. It reminded her that the one thing each woman needs to hear is that she’s a daughter of Christ, which led to writing “Daughter.”
Though “Daughter” is an exhortation and celebration of the Christian woman’s identity in God, it was written with both the believer and unbeliever in mind. It’s for those who have heard all of the classic Bible stories throughout their lives as well as those who have very little knowledge of the Bible.
Everyone is “welcome on the couch beside her,” either to gain a new perspective on Christ’s love and how it shapes their identities or to meet the One who can provide that identity, that refuge, that confidence.
“I felt like growing up, I knew that I had eternal life in Jesus, but I didn’t really know that identity that He had given me as a daughter. I saw the identity God was giving me in a mirror, more like, ‘You’re beautiful’ — that kind of thing. But I didn’t realize that it was an all-encompassing robe of righteousness and that I had His inheritance.
“I went from believing that I don’t have anything to realizing that I have everything because of Jesus, that He has so much good for my life.”
To find out more about The One He Loves, go to theoneheloves.org. “Daughter” can be found on Amazon or wherever books are sold.
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