55. "Speaking Up and Seeing the Good" with Ally Henny

Where Ya From? Podcast

How can we possibly see the good when it feels like the world is on fire around us? Writer, speaker, and activist Ally Henny shares how her strong faith has carried her through racial trauma and other challenging situations, and how God used all of that to prepare her life’s call of being a voice for liberation, freedom, and justice.

Guest Bio:

Ally Henny is a writer, speaker, advocate-minister, and vice president of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, an organization committed to encouraging, engaging, and empowering Black Christians toward liberation from racism. Her new book is titled I Won't Shut Up: Finding Your Voice When the World Tries to Silence You.

She completed her MDiv from Fuller Seminary with an emphasis in race, cultural identity, and reconciliation, and she hopes to lead a church someday. Ally has been leading conversations about race on her social media and blog, The Armchair Commentary, since 2014, and her posts reach millions each month. She is a proud Chicago Southsider.

Notes & Quotes:

• …I recognize that the impulses that God has placed in me to do His will… a desire to make those things in my faith, those aspects of my faith, not just to be a personal, individualized, kind of thing, but for it to really be an aspect of the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of God being within me and bringing the Kingdom and the reign of God…
• God didn’t want me to experience all these different traumas…God wasn’t the author of that, but I realized that God can use that.
• … I realized that the Lord has brought me into the work, it’s not been people. And so the Lord is the one who can also take me out of the work. And at whatever point He decides to take me out of it, okay.
• There were times when I wanted to give up, there were times whenever I wanted to just be like, “I’m not doing this anymore,” and the Lord was the one who kept giving me the words, who kept pushing me, who kept encouraging me.
• …being able to be that source of nourishment, to be that river in the desert for some people, it’s really an assignment that I don’t take lightly because we see this every day where so many people, they’re fainting because they’re not seeing the goodness.

Links Mentioned:

• FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
• To learn more about Ally’s work with The Witness, check out their website.
• Check out Ally’s book, I Won’t Shut Up, on Amazon.
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• Check out VOICES from Our Daily Bread Ministries
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Verses Mentioned:

• Psalm 35
• Matthew 13
• Isaiah 40

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