Alyssa Barlow Speaks Out -

Matthew 12:34- "...For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks"

Hey everyone! So we've now officially launched "Speak Out". Let me give a little background on this so you all know what you are about to get yourselves into...:) We felt with this new album that it wasn't just about us girls getting up on stage every night talking about God's calling on our lives, or what we are passionate about; instead we felt like God has been emphasizing that it's not just about us -- it's about the call He has for our generation right now. That as we are living in such a dark world -- we are all called to speak truth in the midst of deception, hope in the midst of darkness, and life in the midst of death. 

We know that so many of you have stories of how you are speaking in your schools, to unsaved friends, in your home, etc. We really feel it's time for you all to have a voice also and we want to hear it! For example...I'll go first and share one way I have always tried to speak out.....It has always bothered me how totally inappropriate magazine covers are today. The women are rarely dressed and the subject matter is even more disturbing and it's always perfectly placed at every checkout from grocery stores to hardware stores. So somehow we have gotten into the habit of turning over the magazines as we wait in the checkout lines. I'm pretty sure people think we're a little crazy. Oh well! We've also gotten into the habit of speaking with the clerks or managers about how we feel. We've gotten many reactions. It's amazing how many actually thank us for speaking up because they feel the same way but just never said anything. Now yes there have been a few that look at us like we're aliens, one guy even laughed at me and tried to tell me that Maxim wasn't a pornographic magazine. Am I rude to the managers? Heck no my mom would kill me! Do we fight with them and try to convince them they are wrong? No, we just politely explain and leave it at that.

Over the next few weeks we'd love to hear your stories of how you are speaking out. You can even share stories of how you speak out about yourself. For so long I struggled with how I looked. I just never seemed to feel as pretty as the other girls and I was always so upset about how God just didn't make me as beautiful and tall as I would have liked Him to. It went on for so long and only got worse. I remember one day as I was reading my Bible I read 1 Samuel 16:7 "Do not consider His appearance or his height. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."  Right away I wrote that on a piece of paper and taped in onto my mirror. Every day for the next five years I had to look at that verse every time I was tempted to look in my mirror and speak negative words about how I looked. Instead I would speak that verse. That would then remind me to speak verses over myself that God had given me about how I was made, or who I was called to be. How are we speaking to ourselves?  Proverbs 18:21 says that "the tongue has the power of life and death...."

So, there's two of my own stories to get you rolling. So go on...speak...no really...I'm waiting.....