How to Find God’s Plan Amid Chaos

Paula: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to yet another episode of Chatting with the Experts TV show where I speak with women primarily from Africa, from the Caribbean, and in the diaspora. These women are professionals and they are successful entrepreneurs and they share my mission, which is to inspire, which is to motivate and empower women globally. Today is no exception. But before I bring my guest on, I wanna tell you what the topic is. Our topic is finding God’s Purpose in The Midst of Uncertainty. And my guest says, what if your waiting season isn’t wasted, but woven into God’s plan? So lemme tell you a little bit about her before she joins us.
Nma Emeh is a highly sought after body image, confidence speaker and coach. [00:01:00] And she’s also the CEO and founder of EE Consulting Group, which is a certified minority women owned small business. Nma is on a mission to empower women and girls to break the generational cycle of hate their bodies, and building a lasting legacy of confidence, resilience, and wellbeing. She strives to cultivate a world where every woman and girl can thrive free from body image insecurity. And that all lines up with our topic, which is Finding God’s Purpose in the Midst of Uncertainty. And so with that, why don’t I welcome Nma to Chatting with the Experts.
Nma: Welcome to the show. Thank you very much Mrs. Okonneh. It is such an honor to be here again, to be able to speak and serve your [00:02:00] audience, your platform. So this is an honor and I’m excited to see what God has for us in the next hour.
Paula: You know, of course I have to say amen because just like you, I’m a believer and I believe without a doubt that our God can do wonders. So thanks for bringing up this topic, because I know this is this time of uncertainty and there’s so many people who have reached out to me to say, I need to hear this message.
Nma: Yes.
Paula: So one of the things I know we spoke about before we came on is why uncertainty doesn’t necessarily mean you’re off track. It all might mean that you’re being rerouted. Expand on that if you can.
Nma: Well, before I get to that, it’s funny how this topic even came up because you know when Mrs. Okonneh reached out to me and welcome everyone. Thank you for joining. I forgot to mention that, and so I really hope that you get a lot [00:03:00] of value from this discussion because it’s a topic that had weighed on my heart just listening to everything that’s happening in our economy today, and just the voices that I’m hearing either from friends or from clients. There’s a lot of angst, a lot of anxiety, a lot of uncertainty, and I just felt like this was something that God wanted me to share. So to help women find some purpose in this season that seems like chaos. So that’s kind of how this topic came up when Mrs. Okonneh reached out to me and was like, Hey, would you like to come on the show? Initially, I was like, well, you know, I have and then I was like, wait. God told me something. I think I have exactly what I’m going to share. So yes, back to your question or comment about uncertainty and how sometimes we may feel like we’re off track or it’s, or that we’re being rerouted. [00:04:00] That is what it is. It’s oftentimes when God is trying to move you into a new season of something, He starts to reroute you in different ways.
And I will speak from my own experience. What I’ve seen every time God wants to move me into a new season, he starts to close certain doors in the form of relationships that no longer serve me or serve me in that season or that purpose. Of life. Sometimes he has physically moved me from one location to another. So for instance, we’ve moved from California to New Jersey, New Jersey to Las Vegas, and now in Pennsylvania. And every time he’s moved, there’s always been a new season, a new purpose. So when I moved from Nigeria to America, to California in that season. It was a season where I would be [00:05:00] developing myself for the calling that he had on my life.
And in that time I had a small business in addition to my regular job where I was serving people, cooking on the side, but yet a portion of those funds were used to fund orphanages in Nigeria because that’s where my heart really was. But now in where I am today, I can see how that little piece, 25 years ago, is playing a significant part in what I’m doing today. So, yeah. So my point being is that uncertainty is not always a bad thing. It’s just God’s way of rerouting you to what he really wants to do in your life. And I really believe that, that purpose that he’s calling you to is something that has to do with what has been a constant theme throughout your life. And that’s something that we all need to sit down and reflect [00:06:00] on over time.
Paula: I totally agree with that, you know about sitting down and reflecting where he’s rerouted us for, you know, at that particular time, especially when we are not sure. Because what I’ve learned in life is that God never puts you somewhere where you’re not going to use whatever you’re going through or whatever you’ve, you know, your experience is. So when you’re going down, there’s like, you’re driving down a road using the plane on the word reroute, and you’re looking to the sides and you’re seeing things you know you’ve never noticed before. And sometime later someone ask you for direction and you realize, oh, it was just that route that I had to take a minute or two or a day or two, and now I can direct that person. So it may not have made sense to suddenly, you know, or I’m used to going this way and now it’s been changed. But for somebody else, it can make a world of difference. So yeah, you’re not off track, you’re just being rerouted.
Nma: Yes, exactly.
Paula: But how do [00:07:00] you recognize that? How do you recognize that, okay, this is the divine direction, and it’s not just us, you know, guiding our own selves, or how do we know it’s God?
Nma: Well, that’s a good question. Again, leaning back on my own personal experience or journey, like I said, it’s usually something that has just been a constant theme at different stages of your life. But one thing, and I have noticed too, in addition to that, is when God is trying to describe or lead you to your purpose, he oftentimes will separate you from the pack and that separation, what that kind of looks like is where sometimes it’s not always linear. We realize that our purpose is is not loud and it’s not always linear. You have to be open to it being, you [00:08:00] know, sort of like a windy road along the way. And right now, in this season that I’m in, I have been reading about women of the Bible and just kind trying to correlate how, where God started with them and where they ended up.
So for instance, in the Book of Ruth, I just finished reading the book of Ruth again to see what God was doing in Ruth’s life. So Ruth’s rise to her purpose was by no means linear. She was a Moabite to start with and she got married with the intent that of course she would have kids and you know, have a nice family and everything. But that didn’t work out that way for her. She lost her husband and ended up committing to staying with her mother-in-law, Naomi. We all know that story. And [00:09:00] so she went back with Naomi and what helped Ruth in that moment, which some of us miss, is that she allowed herself or made space for herself to grow in that she walked in obedience to everything that her mother-in-law told her. She was there to serve and in those moments of her serving and just walking in obedience, that was when she allowed or made room for God to begin to move in her life.
So sometimes our purpose happens, or oftentimes I will say our purpose happens when we’re walking in obedience to what God has told us. It’s the little steps. It doesn’t always have to be something so grand. It’s just a matter of are you taking the next step towards what God has has called you to do? It could be something as simple as just fasting [00:10:00] once a week. Are you gonna be obedient? If God has called you to fast once a week, are you gonna be obedient to fast once a week? It may not make any sense at the time, but as you walk in those steps, as we walk in those steps of obedience, he continues to reveal more and more things as to where he’s leading us.
And that is what happened in the case of Ruth, as she walked in obedience in going to the field to get food for her mother-in-law in caring for her, in staying with her. That was when she met Boaz and found favor with him. And before you knew it, she was, you know, raised to the level that God wanted her to be. So yes, and that’s how she was able to save the people of God when they were being tormented. Yeah.
Paula: You know, every time I think about Ruth and I think about so many other women in the Bible many times, you know, you [00:11:00] see how one quote unquote, seemingly on insignificant moment became a historical moment. You know, like we see how Ruth, she’s in the lineage of Jesus. We see how Rahab, I always think about Rahab and how she’s now, I mean the Bible tells us that she was a woman of the night. She was a prostitute, but now she is in the Bible and reference to in Jesus’s genealogy. And so, you know, it makes you also think that many times, when we can’t see the direction we are going, God knows what the outcome is gonna be. So no matter how unshaky he may be or the uncertainty we feel, He has a plan. There is certainty there. And so it’s difficult during those moments to sometimes believe that or to trust him. But as Christians, when we go back to the word and we see instances where uncertainty has ended up with purpose. And [00:12:00] the purpose has been divinely inspired. We know that there’s, you know, there’s hope for us.
Nma: Exactly. Yes. Exactly. And, and it’s just to, to stay the course. I mean, for me, finding my own purpose hasn’t been easy. You know, sometimes it made no sense. People often ask me, how do you go from doing finance and operations to being a body image confidence speaker? Like, seriously, what’s the connection? But when I did my own reflection, I just remember growing up. My body, physical appearance was always some sort of a topic of discussion, either because I was a big baby when I was born and that one, that kind of really disrupted things from my mom. So I’m the youngest. They had to stop at me. And then growing up as the youngest of seven. Constantly being compared to my sisters and not [00:13:00] necessarily enjoying that.
And then I move into corporate and then, you know, it becomes this thing of where people pay more attention to my appearance than they do my abilities in different ways. Either because people at work sometimes assume that I got promotions because I am more voluptuous. And of course now of course, that in itself was a bit insulting though. But those are the kind of rhetorics that I kept hearing. And so for me, taking that step back and doing the reflection, I’m like, okay, Lord, what is that constant theme? Why is my body a constant theme of discussion? Why am I so passionate about helping, you know, young girls? That’s another thing I would go and serve in orphanages. And when I was on holiday from boarding house, when I was a teenager, my friends were out to parties. I was at an orphanage and that’s what brought me joy.
And my mom could never really understand. Why in the [00:14:00] world would you be serving at an orphanage? But there was just something about nurturing babies. Fast forward to the pandemic when my position was eliminated and I was in that season of, wow, I’ve seen so many people die from Covid. What’s gonna be my legacy? And that’s when I really started to lean into, okay, what do I want to be known for? What does God put me on this earth for? And I really felt the calling to serve women, to serve young girls, to have them begin to look at themselves the way God sees them from the inside out. And you know, and help them understand that beauty is not defined in just one dimension, but that beauty is multidimensional and God sees us beyond just the way we look, but about our abilities and capabilities. And so that led me to the work that I do today. But trust me, finding a purpose, I quickly learned that it requires purity. [00:15:00] And that purity comes from obedience. But in that season of purity, there is pruning and that pruning process is where it hurts. But you can’t get to purity without being pruned.
Paula: You can’t get to purity without being pruned. That’s so true. As you said, pruning can be painful, but the outcome is always so good. In the sense I’m thinking about it from the natural. I’ve become an avid gardener who would ever have believed that. I mean, in my house, the laughing joke was that all plants that came into my possession was sent to plant heaven. And yeah, I had that reputation. But now that, I mean with years of being a gardener, I’ve realized the importance of pruning. You’re getting rid of the things that are not needed and you have to clip them off. So sometimes I think as I’m talking to my plant, this must hurt you, but it’s better for the plant, for the community on the whole.
Nma: Exactly.
Paula: Yes. And so when [00:16:00] you talked about that, I just see how, as you know, a Christian, how when God is pruning and changing things in our life, many times it’s painful.
Nma: Mm-hmm.
Paula: But it’s for a better cause. And He doesn’t have us here, just for ourselves, is for a community. For us to impact others’ lives, to impact the lives of our families, our friends, and even those who we don’t know. And that sometimes, the best examples or the best way is sometimes I feel He reaches us is through the pruning, taking away pride of, you know, self-absorption.
Nma: Yes.
Paula: Things that He knows isn’t good for us and having us ready to meet the person that he wants us to meet and change and help change or help lead to Him. So yes, thanks for talking about that pruning.
Nma: Like I said, it’s a painful process, but it’s necessary. I mean, part of the pruning for me, or pruning season has also been seasons where He just [00:17:00] separates, like I said earlier, he just separates. I’ve had situations where, like right now where, where we live, we move from Las Vegas. If you’ve ever been to Vegas, it is like light action, everything. And where we are now, it is, let’s just say my neighbors all have chickens.
Paula: Ugh.
Nma: And the girl, it’s like farmland and it’s just nothing remotely related to living in Las Vegas. So this is a big separation from, for me, from everything that I have known for years ever since I came to America. But what I’ve seen is that when God wants to bless, He will separate. Separation comes before elevation. If you go through different passages in the Bible and on women, like even Esther, they all had to be separated in one way or the other before God elevated them to a place of [00:18:00] responsibility. So it’s in that separation that He gives you more instruction, guidance, and then he also will start to teach you. I’ll recognize His voice. For me, it’s more like recognizing his voice more and more and being able to identify it or distinguish it from the other voices that may be speaking into our lives. So yeah.
Paula: Amen to that. Yes, I agree. So, you know, the other voices that may be speaking in our lives, but going back to even pruning, you know, when you are pruning and when there’s uncertainty, there’s an element of waiting and sometimes when you are waiting, it’s like, you know, there’s wandering, so you’re like, there’s a wander like you’re asking yourself. And then there’s also the wandering, W-A-N-D-E-R-I-N-G.
Nma: Mm-hmm.
Paula: Is there a difference between, you know, waiting? When do you [00:19:00] know this waiting is not me just wandering in, you know, in any direction? I’m actually waiting specifically for the Lord. And when are you just wandering? Like, you know, I’m just here, I don’t know what’s happening, and I’m just gonna go down this road or do my own thing. Is there a difference?
Nma: I think in the waiting season, you’ve already seen God’s hand and it is just a matter of time, and that’s where obedience is very crucial in that waiting season. You have to be obedient because God is not gonna give you what he knows you’re not ready for.
Paula: Yeah.
Nma: You know, and oftentimes that place He’s taking us to is gonna require a different level of spirituality. It’s a growth. And so he has to really prepare you for it. Now in the wandering as [00:20:00] in where you are, meandering, wandering, that kind of season of life. That’s when and again, this is just my guess is when you are, we’re still searching. , We haven’t quite discovered that purpose where we don’t know, and that’s usually with, I would say, younger people in the Lord who are still searching for who He is, understanding and building that relationship with him versus in the waiting. In the waiting I would say that we have a more established relationship with Him. It’s just part of the growth process to get us to that next level and that next season or that next calling that he’s putting on our life. So that is what I would consider the difference between those two.
Paula: Yeah.
Nma: Mm-hmm.
Paula: Good answer. And I’m also wondering if you can talk about in this season of preparation, you know, we are waiting. How can we [00:21:00] prepare? And not be so caught up with, you know, this has taken forever, but knowing that it’s a season. Does that make sense?
Nma: Yeah, it does. It does. I’m just thinking. So I think in those seasons of preparing, those are the times where you might find yourself being more silent. Again, focusing more on what is God’s will and really walking in it because trust me, the devil is going to do anything to do derail you because in the spiritual realm, the devil knows what God is trying to do. And we may not always know, but I believe that the devil knows and wants to derail. So I think in preparation, those seasons of preparation, you’re going to have to go deeper spiritually. [00:22:00] What that looks like for me, like I feel like I’m in a season of waiting for certain things because I’ve seen the separation physically. I’ve also seen the separation in terms of certain relationships in my life that no longer work. That’s another sign, you know? And i’ve also seen parts of the elevation, but nothing so big. Nothing so grand, but just certain things that God has now put in my life where, for instance, i’ve been asked without even seeking asked, oh, Nma, can you lead the children’s ministry or can you teach the children’s class?
Why me? Of all people, this is in a new church where they have no history, behind who I am. They don’t know that I served in an orphanage for years. But again, it has to be God’s calling. So I’ve served the children’s ministry. So God will start to open certain doors that are sort of [00:23:00] aligned with that purpose, that thing that has been ringing true. For me, it was doors of serving children, serving girls, serving women in different capacities. And this is from people who have no idea what I believe God has called or put on my life, you know? So he will begin to give you those little opportunities to guide you, but what’s important is are you recognizing them and are you saying yes wholeheartedly. Where you are pouring your whole heart and you’re not just doing it because God says so. You’re doing it because you’re doing it as unto the Lord, as in giving a hundred percent of yourself into it. Because when you walk in full obedience, not partial obedience, that is what God is gonna honor and he will continue to open more and more doors.
And if you’re not walking in total obedience to the [00:24:00] little that he’s given you, and just think about the parable of the talent. Then why would he give you more responsibility? So it is being faithful to serve in the children’s ministry even when it’s not convenient or I have to wake up early, stay for two services and serve them, or teaching a women’s conference, and serving the women, and staying after and answering all the questions, even though I’m wondering, okay, where’s my daughter? Where’s this person? Yeah. So it’s just the being obedient in those little things, but at the same time trusting God and pouring your whole heart into it. Not expecting anything, but just doing it truly as unto the Lord, like the Bible says. That is what I would recommend we do in that preparation season. God is preparing your heart and preparing you emotionally, physically, spiritually, for that big next step that he’s leading you to, and you need to prove that you’re [00:25:00] worthy and that you’re ready for that next step.
Paula: I love that answer. I love that answer. Preparing you to prove that you’re ready. You know, it’s like, pregnancy a way where you’re preparing for this child and you can’t see the child. You can see your body changing if you’re a woman, if you’re a man, you see the woman’s body changing, but there’s a preparation going on, and if that child is born too early, like at a month, I mean, I doubt… we have a physician here, so she’ll tell me, but if that child is born too early… every stage of that pregnancy, there’s something intentionally happening in the development of the child. So that nine months later, when that child is born
Nma: mm-hmm.
Paula: Fully formed and you know, you realize that Wow! All along God had, you know, there’s been a process.
Nma: Yes.
Paula: And then in a spiritual realm, you know, waiting is [00:26:00] like pregnancy. You are waiting, expecting and believing that God is getting you ready for what He has in store for you and for the world in general.
Nma: Mm-hmm.
Paula: Because we are not here alone. We are here to impact lives, those close to us and even those far away. ‘Cause even this message is gonna be put out on YouTube and other people are gonna hear it. ’cause so many people messaged me to say, I wanna hear this message. Is it going to be recorded? Oh, oh boy. We ever, we’ve been speaking for almost 30 minutes. If someone wants to get in touch with you, it may not even be in relationship to this, but I’m sure it’s gonna be in relation to this message or any other way. How can they find you online? Do you have a website? Are you on LinkedIn?
Nma: Yes, absolutely. I practically live on LinkedIn, but I also have a website. You can find me @ nmaemeh.com and on LinkedIn, same thing Nma Emeh on LinkedIn. And I’m also on Facebook. Nma [00:27:00] Speaks on Facebook, so, but I’m sure we’ll provide that information later. But yes, so Nma Emeh, you’ll find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, instagram, but LinkedIn is my preference. You know, where I do most of my engagement. Yes.
Paula: And I will drop this in the chat and I’ll also make sure it’s in the show notes. I smile because I love LinkedIn as well. The best place to find me on is LinkedIn, then text me. But for those of you who are listening and to the recording, we have people who have joined us who will stay back and ask questions. So those who are listening, if you wanna be a guest, just as Nma has been on this show, reach out to me on my website, which is chattingwiththeexperts.com. I do speak with the experts.
I’m also on LinkedIn, my favorite place to be, which, and there I am, Paula Okonneh. I also have a business page that I’m building up. There I am on [00:28:00] Instagram. My handle there is at chat_experts_ podcast and I need to remember it. I’m on Facebook as Paula Okonneh. I have a business page there as well, and we are on YouTube. Just look for Chatting with the Experts channel, and you’ll see this recording and all the other recordings that we’ve done. Nma, I wanna thank you so much for being a guest again on Chatting with the Experts and talking about this topic that is so timely. Finding God’s Purpose in the Midst of Uncertainty.
And now we will open up the floor to everyone who has joined us so that they can have an opportunity to ask you questions or even to contribute to what you have shared so well with us.
Nma: Awesome.
Paula: Thank you again. Thank you.
Nma: Thank you.