Twanna Henderson: Welcome to T Time: Spiritual Conversations For, With and About Women. I'm your host, Twana Henderson, and I want to remind you to take a moment to like this podcast and share it with your friends and other women. Well, I am super excited about today's guests and the topic we will tackle. Today's guest is Nona Jones. Nona is an international speaker, preacher, author and the head of global faith-based partnerships at Meta, formerly known as Facebook. Previously, Nona held executive leadership roles across the private, public and nonprofit sectors. She most recently served as secretary of the Florida Juvenile Justice Association Board of Directors and on the Georgia statewide Human Trafficking Task Force. She is a graduate of Leadership Florida and the Presidential Leadership Scholars Program, a unique leadership development initiative led by President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush. Nona and her husband lead a church in Gainesville, Florida, and I'm so glad to see her again. Welcome to T Time, Nona.
Nona Jones: Hey, thanks for having me.
Twanna Henderson: I'm so glad to have you. Of course, you have an impressive bio and a whole lot of accomplishments. And because of that, I'm so excited to talk about your newly released book, which is entitled, Killing Comparison: Reject the Lie You Aren't Good Enough and Live Confident in Who God Made You to Be. We could spend a whole lot of time right there. But this is an area that women, they privately deal with. And so I'm really interested. And I first want to know, where did you get the book title from?
Nona Jones: Good question. Well, so I did not start out writing a book. What happened was, you know, back in 2020, before the pandemic spun up, I had a full calendar of speaking engagements; it was going to be a great year. I was going to be traveling the world speaking. I had two books coming out. And then when the pandemic happened, you know, so many events got canceled or postponed indefinitely. And one morning, I went onto Instagram to respond to people's comments and happened to catch a glimpse of my newsfeed. And I saw a post from a friend and she said she was so excited because she was going to be speaking at this huge virtual women's conference that normally met in person but would be going virtual because of the pandemic. And I saw the post and thought, Man, that's really great. Well, I scrolled down a bit more, and another friend of mine made the same post that she was so excited she'd be speaking at this conference. And I was like, Okay, that's cool. I scrolled down a little more, and another friend made the same announcement, then there was another friend and another and another. And it ended up where I knew all of the speakers. I knew the host. And I wondered why wasn't I invited? Like, you know, they know me; they know I'm a speaker. Why wasn't I invited? Why wasn't I good enough? Why didn't I measure up? Then I clicked on their profiles. I was like, how many followers do they have compared to me? I clicked on their websites. I was like, how many other events are they speaking at in comparison to me? And I started to do all of this, like comparison calculus, until I heard the Holy Spirit ask, "Nona, why does it matter?" And that question caused me to look at myself and ask, why does it matter that I wasn't invited? And I realized at that moment that comparison was toxic because I felt very discouraged. I was feeling angry, like, I just had all these negative emotions in me. And so I realized it was toxic and over the course of about a year, I started to really lean into the Holy Spirit. And, like, Lord, show me and help me understand why seeing somebody else's success makes me feel like a failure. And over the course of that year, God gave me so many insights that I decided I got invited to speak at a church in South Carolina, and I decided to share what I had learned. And I called the message, Killing comparison because it felt like comparison, on the one hand, will kill our sense of identity, but then, on the other hand, it felt like, well, we have the power to defeat it; we have the power to kill it. And so I preached the message, and the way the room responded was so overwhelming that I realized, okay, I think there's something here. And that's when I decided to start putting it in a book. And that's what we have today. The long, long answer to the question, but that's where it came from.
Twanna Henderson: You know that is so good because that is something I think that all of us either at some time or other have dealt with and have had to really, you know, tackle that and not even tackle it. Not even realize that we were doing that. So what exactly is the book about?
Nona Jones: So it's about tracing because see, here's the thing, I work in, as you said in the introduction, I work in social technology. I work for the world's largest social media company. And social media is often blamed for causing insecurity. But, because I work in social media and am in ministry, I know that social media exposes our insecurity and social media is not the source of our insecurity. And so killing comparison is really about tracing back to the source, what is the thing that created a fracture in our identity, so much so that we see another person as the measuring stick for our worthiness, so much so that we only feel good, if we're better than so and so, or we don't feel good, if so, and so is better, quote-unquote, than us. And so, one of the insights God gave me as I was going through my own journey doing my work is that we tend to think insecurity is a derivative of low self-esteem. But that's not true. Because if that were the case, memorizing scriptures about being fearfully and wonderfully made and, you know, being a royal priesthood. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, memorizing those scriptures, would make us secure. But that's not true. So insecurity is not a function of self-esteem. It's a question of what your identity is secured to. And if it's secured to an insecure foundation, something that is subject to another person's approval, or evaluation, you're going to feel insecure, you're going to be insecure. And so, ultimately, the book is about tracing the source of our insecurity back to its roots so that we can get free because all of those lies that have made us believe we're not good enough are from the pit of hell. So it's time for the truth of God's word to cancel out those lies, so we can live confident in who God created us to be.
Twanna Henderson: Yeah, that is so good. I want to dig deeper. Because, you know, as we talked about, just, you know, those messages that we get, you know, and you said that the Holy Spirit was speaking to you, you know, were you able to trace where some of those messages came in your life?
Nona Jones: Absolutely. Yeah, I think it's Proverbs 18:21 that says, "life and death are in the power of the tongue." And when I started to really pray and ask God to show me what was going on with me, God began to take me all the way back to my earliest memories, and how words that people spoke over me, how they damaged my understanding of my worth. They damaged my understanding of my value. And if you think about it, when that scripture says life and death are in the power of the tongue, that word power is the Hebrew word Yod, which means hand. And just as a hand can, you know, use a hammer to build a house, a hand can also use a hammer to bludgeon someone to death, right? Like the hand can be used to build up and can be used to tear down. And so when I started to trace the hand of the tongue that had shaped me, I remembered things like being called ugly—being told that I wasn't smart. Early on, I think, in elementary school, teachers told me I had a learning disability. And I was told I would never be anything. And so those words really fractured the foundation of my identity and what it did is it caused me to have to look externally to try to counter those words, like when somebody would say, you're not smart, well, I would have to look for an example of somebody who performed even more poorly than I did academically, to try to say, well, that's not true, because I'm better than them. And so what happens is it creates this, this almost like false weight system, where I only have as much value as another person has less value. So that's what it did. So I had to trace those words back and begin to reclaim the ground that had been, in many ways, damaged by those words.
Twanna Henderson: You know that is so true. Words do have power, and, you know, we often don't realize the importance and the weight. When I was growing up, they said, "sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you." Yes, they will.
Nona Jones: Yes, they do.
Twanna Henderson: They do, and we're learning now that words do have power. And I know you talk about approval filters. What exactly are approval filters? And why do you think that we seek them?
Nona Jones: Approval filters taking it back to social technology as an example; approval filters are like augmented reality. So if you go into Snapchat, or you go into Instagram, you can take an image and you can filter it to the point where you can change the color of it, you can maybe add some hearts on top of it, you can do all types of things, to make the image more appealing to other people. So an approval filter is anything we use to make us more appealing to other people. And as an example, I have some friends in families with a very particular political ideology that they don't agree with. But they will use that political ideology as a filter to try to win their family's approval. They don't agree with it, but they will wear that ideology like a filter to get their approval. Physical appearance is another one. Academic credentials are another; some people will only go to a certain type of school because, in their mind, if they go to this school, they'll get the people's approval. And so fundamentally, what an approval filter does is it augments the reality of who we are. But here's the thing, augmented reality doesn't change reality. It simply changes another person's experience of reality. Because at the base of it, that image is still the same. That person is still the same. We're just using these filters to try to make them like us more. And so that becomes dangerous because, you know, the filter that you use is the filter you have to keep using to stay in their good graces.
Twanna Henderson: And that's got to take a lot of energy.
Nona Jones: It does, yeah—a whole lot.
It takes a lot of energy to do that and that's why we have to seek to be free. I love how you talk about the story of Jonathan and David. And you know, I think you have a very unique perspective on that story. Talk to us about how Jonathan's story really struck you.
Well, here's what's amazing about God. I mean, just the way he does things is so perfect. It happened that when that whole thing went down with the conference and all my friends posting about speaking at it, I was studying in the book of First Samuel. Because I have such a full calendar of speaking engagements, I normally spend a lot of time preparing for messages. But because so many engagements had been canceled, I had a lot of free time, so I was reading the Bible for the fun of it. And I was in First Samuel, and I was reading about Saul and David. But then I got to, and it's First Samuel chapter 20, verse 31, where Saul said something really interesting.
What happened was, you know, Saul was jealous of David because David, you know, had the approval of the people. Jonathan being, Saul's son, was David's best friend and Saul wanted to kill David. Jonathan said to his father, "Why would you want to harm him?" He's done nothing but benefit you. He was defending David. He was protecting David. While Saul said to Jonathan, do you not know that as long as David lives, as long as the son of Jesse lives, neither you nor your kingdom will be established. The reason why that was so powerful is because I had heard the story of Saul and David, you know, taught for years, for decades. And it was always taught that David was a threat to Saul and that Saul saw David as a threat. But if you really listen to what Saul said, David wasn't a threat to Saul; David was a threat to Jonathan because Saul was the king. He was already king. He was appointed. It was Jonathan who was next in line, who was threatened and yet Jonathan loved David and defended David and encouraged David. He even equipped David to be more successful. In the scene, I think it's First Samuel chapter 18 where, you know, Saul and David returned from battle and the people are singing, Saul has slain his 1000s and David has 10s of 1000s. The Bible says that it was at that moment that Saul began to eye David. That he became jealous of David. But three verses before that happened, Jonathan went over to David and gave David his garment and his tunic and his weapons. It was like a high five, brother. So excited for you. And that struck me because I was like, man, what is it about Jonathan to where Saul saw a threat, Jonathan saw a brother. He wasn't threatened by David at all and then I began to read backward.
I was like, well, let me find out more about Jonathan. And there's not a whole lot written about him, but in First Samuel, chapter 13, we're introduced to him, Jonathan goes, and he basically starts a war between the Philistines and the Israelites by himself. He went and attacked the Philistines by himself. And then in First Samuel 14 verse 6, he takes his young armor-bearer and goes by himself to another outpost of two dozen Philistines. And he says nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few. So that hit me because I realized when I read it, I said, you know what, the reason why Jonathan wasn't threatened by David is that he knew David was not a competition for him. He knew that when God is for you, no one can be against you. And so Jonathan didn't see David as a threat. He knew God for real. And so he knew that he wasn't in competition with anyone. And that blessed me; frankly, it changed my perspective about comparison and insecurity and seeing somebody else's win as my loss. It was like, No, you know, what God has for me is for me, and I don't have to worry about anybody else.
Twanna Henderson: Yeah. And that's what I was thinking that whole saying that, you know, what God has for you is for you. And we say that, but I don't know; we always believe that. And I think the thing that's so interesting about Saul is, you know, a lot of times I think we walk in Saul's shoes because people, you know, sometimes we do have the kingdom, we do have things that God has given to us, but we don't recognize what God has given to us. And because we are in that place where we're not free, we tend to think that someone can take from us what God has already securely given us. And it speaks to that whole idea of not being free. So you talk about some keys to freedom and what you label a three-step detox from toxic comparison. What are those? What is that process? What does that look like?
Nona Jones: Yeah, so the three-step is: are recognize, reframe and release. The first step is crucial in this idea that you can't change what you don't acknowledge. And so you first have to recognize when your insecurity is triggered, you know, when you see somebody achieve the thing that maybe you've been wishing for yourself, and you start to think thoughts, like, oh, man, I could never do that, or why did they get to do that? Or maybe you feel sad or even angry, like, you know, just recognizing when that happens. We spend more energy denying insecurity than defeating insecurity. And so we have to flip that. So we first have to recognize it and then reframe the thing that triggered our insecurity so that it activates our potential. And as an example, you know, I have several friends who are beautiful and successful. And they're also single and praying for a husband and I had a friend recently tell me, she said, Nona, I gotta be honest, you know, every time a friend of mine announces her engagement, I'm happy for her, but then I also feel like, "why couldn't it be me?" And that's hard. And what I encourage her and anyone in a similar situation to do is begin to reframe their thinking. Because the question, "why can't that be me" doesn't solve the problem. All it does is it creates another problem, which is seeing yourself as less than. To reframe something is to see it from a different vantage point. To change the way you see it. So instead of, why couldn't that be me, the reframe is: Wow, my singleness gives me an opportunity to help make her day amazing. Or my singleness gives me an opportunity to do things that I wouldn't be able to do if I were married. And now you see your state as a benefit rather than a liability. And then the last step in the detox, from recognize to reframe, is to release. And this is a daily process.
Multiple times a day, I have to release those things that trigger my insecurity. I recognize it, I reframe it, and I let it go. I'm like, I'm not going to allow this lie to have residents in my heart. I'm releasing myself from it. To give you a concrete example, a friend of mine released a book. This was maybe a month, and I don't know, about a month before mine. And everything was going so great, you know, getting a lot of media and a lot of attention. And I heard the enemy begin to say, your books are not going to do well, you're not going to get that intention, you know, she's going to have an incredible book release, and yours is going to fail. And I heard all of that and so what I did is I immediately went on Amazon, I found her book, I ordered the book, I went to my bedside, I put a pillow on the floor, I prayed for her, I asked God to bless her Lord, enlarge her territory, exceed her expectations. Then, when I finished praying, I sent her a text, encouraged her, and let her know that I was praying for her. And that helped to guard my heart and release that trigger, so it didn't have power over me. So those are the three steps: recognize, reframe and release.
Twanna Henderson: Yeah. And reframing is so important because, you know, it is a process and we go through so many different things. And, you know, you can know the Word of God and what you need to do and all that stuff. But, I mean, to be honest with you, but you know, in reality, taking the whole single thing, you know, and I know a lot of single women who are successful and beautiful, all these different things. And the last thing they want to hear is, I need to pray for somebody else who's, you know, they are sort of like, I've done that and now what? But I think getting to that place where you do reframe the whole idea of comparison, and recognizing that, you know, the season and we don't always know how long a season is but trusting God, I think it really does go back to really trusting him and knowing that what he does have for us is for us. It is so easy to, you know, look over there, so to speak, and see what we think is good and it may not even be that good. But we think that it is and instead of really just trusting that where he has us is where we're supposed to be.
Nona Jones: Amen. That's good.
Twanna Henderson: I know you, you know, you get very transparent, you know, in the book and you talk about something that some of our listeners may not be familiar with, which is the BBL.
Nona Jones: Yeah.
Twanna Henderson: Do you mind just talking about that and sharing what you learned from that experience? And I'll let you tell them what it is.
Nona Jones: Oh, of course, of course. Well, if people look at me today, you may not know, but I lost about 100 at this point, around 110 pounds about 10 years ago, through eating right and working out. And I talk about it in the book how the vast majority of my life, I was morbidly obese. Part of it was because of trauma. I ate a lot of food to cope with physical and sexual abuse in my childhood and just kind of carried those practices into adulthood. But I lost the weight, and I committed. And you know, I was in the gym faithfully.
Now here's the thing to know about me y'all. I got my father's chest and my mom's butt. All right? So I had lost all this weight. I had a flat chest and a flat booty. I did all the squats, donkey Kicks, and all that, and you know you're a personal trainer, so you get it. I did all the things for years and did not increase my butt by one centimeter. So I decided. I was like, You know what? I saw how people were getting a BBL. It's called a Brazilian Butt Lift. I saw how people were getting this procedure that would essentially be a fat transfer, where they transfer fat to your butt. You get a round booty and I was like, all right, I'm gonna get me a booty. I'm gonna get me a booty. And I went. I prayed to the Lord. I was like, Lord, I want to get this procedure. I want you to protect me and keep me safe during the procedure. I heard the Holy Spirit say if I wanted you to have a booty, I would have given you a booty. I didn't give you a booty to keep you humble. And I heard the Lord say that and I was like, got it. I still got on the plane. Flew to LA. I heard the Holy Spirit say again while I was on the plane, If I wanted you to have a booty, I would have given you a booty. I did not give you a booty to keep you humble. Because I knew the voice was God, I honestly should have just parachuted out of the plane and saved my money. But I went through with the process, and the doctor told me, he said, you know, because this is a fat transfer, you know, I know you work out very intensely, you can't do that anymore, because you'll burn the fat. And I heard him, but I was like, Oh, I'll be fine. I'm not going to have a booty and an unhealthy body. So yeah, I went back to working out as vigorously as before and yeah, within six months, I burned my booty completely off. And it's funny because, I mean, it's funny now, but I look back on it. And I realized that what caused me to even go through with that is that I had secured my identity to the insecure foundation of physical appearance. You know, as a black woman, I saw that the ideal for us was curves, which I did not have. And so that was a source of insecurity for me. I went through that process, did that whole thing, and liked the results for a few months, and then it went away. And I had to laugh and say, look, the Lord told me, don't do it, which is why one of the points I make in the book is, you know, what, even what we lack, has a purpose. Like even our deficiencies are designed by God. God knew. Listen, being fully transparent. God knew that if I had a booty, I don't know where I
Twanna Henderson: You have a booty now.
Nona Jones: I have a rear end, but it is not a booty, okay? I mean, hey, I don't know where it would be. I mean, I may not be having this conversation. I would be somewhere off the chain. I don't know. God knew that that's what I needed to keep myself grounded.
Twanna Henderson: And I think that, you know, it may not be a bbl for people; it may be a tummy tuck, a breast implant, a nose job, or whatever.
Nona Jones: So many things.
Twanna Henderson: So many different things that we feel like we have to change or enhance because we're just looking at somebody else and thinking that where we are again is not enough. But I so love Second Corinthians nine and eight, which says, "God is able to make all grace overflow to you, always having all sufficiency in everything so that you may have an abundance for every good deed." As we prepare to close, tell us how we can train our hearts to celebrate sufficiency instead of grieving deficiency.
Nona Jones: Yeah, it's something we definitely do have to be intentional about because there's something in the human condition. And I believe it goes back to even the Garden of Eden, how when Adam and Eve broke fellowship with God, there was a part of them that we know died. And I think part of that, and maybe all have it, that died was the wholeness, the sense of completion that we should have when we're in a relationship with God. And so we tend to look for the deficiency because that's like hardwired into our flesh. I think we recognize the sufficiency by placing the full weight of our identity on what God has said about us. You know when the enemy begins to say things like you're not good enough. Look how so and so over there is thriving, and you're struggling, like, all of that is, it's just, it's a distraction. It's a distraction from the truth that our sufficiency is not in ourselves. It's in the grace of God.
Twanna Henderson: Yeah.
Nona Jones: I mean, the word of God tells us that His grace is sufficient for us. And so we don't have to look to other people. We don't need compliments or applause or surgical procedures; we don't need any of that, even academic credentials. Like we don't have to have a long, you know, alphabet soup behind our name to matter. So I think that we have to place the full weight of our identity on what God has already said about us and reflect back on that every time the enemy tries to speak a lie into our hearts about our worth and our value, reflect back on what God has said and reject it. No, that's not true. That's absolutely not true. And frankly, the more we stand on the truth of God, the more peace we will experience because he is peace.
Twanna Henderson: Yeah. And pray that He gives us a Jonathan in our lives.
Nona Jones: Yeah. We all need a Jonathan!
Twanna Henderson: Well, I want to ask you as we close to pray for those listeners who may be struggling with comparison; it could be that woman who appears to have it all together on the outside but finds herself never really measuring up. Or that daughter or granddaughter who is comparing herself to the images she sees on IG on Tik Tok on all the different media outlets and all those different things. And so if you can pray for them and just pray that God would allow them to get to a place of freedom in him.
Nona Jones: I would love to. I would love to pray. Father, you see everyone listening to this, God. And you know our hearts. You know, Father, the lies that have been spoken over us have caused us to doubt the truth of your word, Father. Your word says that before we were born, you set us apart. That means that before we were even born, we had so much worth and so much value that you decided that we had a special purpose to play out in this world. So I pray, God, that you will help us all to believe the truth of your word. God, help us to receive the truth of who you are and that you are a good father. That you have good intentions for each of us. I pray that you will connect us with a Jonathan or Jonathan's. People, Father, who can encourage us. God who can see the worth in us even when we don't see it in ourselves, God people who will defend us when we're not around Lord. I'm just so grateful for the example of Jonathan. I pray that you'll connect us with people like him and help us live out the duration of our life to the fullest of the purpose that You created us for, God. Help us enter into glory, having squeezed every ounce of potential out of our lives for your glory, not so we're making somebody else jealous of us. Not even so that we can prove our worth to somebody else, God, but so that you will be pleased with the way we've lived our life, God and we do it to your glory and for your glory. In Jesus' name, we pray, amen.
Twanna Henderson: Amen. Well, Nona, thank you so much for your transparency and just sharing your past roles. I know that it has encouraged someone who is listening. You can follow Nona at www.nonajones.com. And her book is available everywhere. I believe everywhere that books are sold. So to all of our listeners, I'm Twana Henderson.
I look forward to connecting with you the next time. Be blessed of the Lord.