Do you know how you read familiar Bible passages over and over
again and then one day, it’s like you are reading that same passage for the
first time ever? That happened to me last week. Actually, I was reading through
several books of the Bible for my New Testament class and lost track of where I was and ran
across this passage:
“The older women likewise, that they be reverent in
behavior, not slanders, not given to much wine, teachers of good things—that they
admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be
discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their husbands, that the word
of God may not be blasphemed.”
It’s embarrassing to admit how many times I’ve shared this
passage in various women’s groups. But up until now, it’s always been shared as
a challenge to older women and how much we, as younger women, need them and their
example. We need them to pour into us and to show us how to live godly lives
through mentoring. I had it down to a science what they needed to do for us not realizing that time has a way of sneaking upon us causing the tables to turn.
Yet as I read that passage last week, my pen went crazy
underlining different parts of it. I began wondering why I had never read these verses before and then checked the reference. My mouth fell open in shock as I discovered it
was Titus 2:3-5, the most famous mentoring passage ever! Wait, what?!?! How could that be especially when it's been the basis of several devotionals/lessons I've shared over the years???
It was the first time I ever viewed Titus 2 with “old woman" eyes.
I’m no longer that young one craving instruction in these areas (although there
will always be women I look to as mentors and will continually glean from), but rather I’m
the older woman with younger women in my care…six of them to be exact. Six lively
and talented preteens had just spent that morning with me and their faces came to mind as I read these verses.
It suddenly became scary to read some of these things and to
see my responsibility to them. They are the younger women wanting an older
woman to invest them, to show them the way, and to point them to God in the ways that I was
pointed to Him through the lives of many older women in my church.
The list in
Titus 2:3-5 instructs as well as convicts, yet it all boils down to
gospel-centered living. Am I living out the gospel every single day of my life
so that “the word of God may not be blasphemed”? Because if I’m living out the
gospel, it will reflect in the things
I do, in the ways I talk to and about others, in the ways I love and care for my
own family, and in the ways I act and react to life.
As God keeps using my seminary classes to help me work out what it really means to live out the gospel daily, may He also give me “old woman" eyes so
that I can be a part of building the church and building future generations
of the church.
Linking up with Leigh Kramer and "What I'm Into" this month. It's a fun way to keep track of things that jumped out at me over the past few months.
Read & Reading
Read:
1. I Am a Church Member by Thom S. Rainer
This is a power-packed, read-in-one-sitting kind of book that puts church members into their place as it reiterates our role and purpose as church members. It's easy to let preferences and entitlement sneak into our perspective and hinder what all God intends for the church to be for us and others as we both attend and serve the church. I Am a Church Member covers these six areas:
I Will Be a Unifying Church Member
I Will Not Let the Church Be About My Preferences and Desires
I Will Pray for My Church Leaders
I Will Lead My Family to Be Healthy Church Members
I Will Be a Functioning Member
I Will Treasure Church Membership as a Gift
Favorite Quotes:
"I am a church member. I will not let my church be about my preferences and desires. That is self-serving. I am in this church to serve others and to serve Christ. My Savior went to a cross for me. I can deal with any inconveniences and matters that are just not my preference or style."
2. Spiritual Mothering by Susan Hunt
This book just got added to my growing list of "must read" books for women's ministry--books I wish I had 15 years ago when I entered ministry that offer specific wisdom from the trenches and from God's Word. What lessons and heart aches would've been spared if I had known some of these things. But at the same time, those lessons were opportunities for learning, pruning, and growth.
Spiritual mothering is a concept that touches me deeply for God has blessed me with many spiritual mothers to stand in the gap throughout my life. It literally has taken a village (or a church) of women to raise me all throughout my life (even still today). God has used older women so powerfully to teach me many things about God, life, marriage, ministry, and myself as I experienced firsthand the tremendous blessings and slicing heartaches of good and bad spiritual mothers. The thing that made the biggest difference with all of my spiritual moms is that they have consistently pointed me back to God through their conduct, example, and prayers. That is priceless!
As I read this book, Susan Hunt captured the essence of a spiritual mothering relationship which is simply "When a woman possessing faith and spiritual maturity enters into a nurturing relationship with a younger woman in order to encourage and equip her to live for God's glory." It's saying, "It's not enough for me to want to live for God's glory and for you to want to live for God's glory. I must want to help you live for God's glory. I must honestly want God's glory for your life."
And the God-factor is what sticks with a woman far beyond a season of investment into another woman's life. My favorite part of the book is how Hunt went beyond the usual illustrations from Ruth and Naomi's relationship and dissected Mary and Elizabeth's relationship as well as other women in the Bible bringing these relationships into a new light. This is, by far, one of the least fluffy books I've ever read on mentoring because it doesn't give the step-by-step "how to" approach as much as it outlines the "why" that is firmly routed in Scripture. Spiritual mothering has to begin with your relationship with God and your heart condition before it extends into a relationship with another woman.
In many ways, this book is a mentoring session in itself as the author shares her mothering heart and instructs and challenges us from the Word in a gentle yet straight forward, encouraging way. She removes the curriculum and program of mentoring and focuses it all back on God as the source and reason for it all in every area of our life (marriage, church, self-discipline, etc.). She concludes the book with this: "Involvement means taking risks, getting tired, and sometimes getting hurt. But I challenge you, my sister, to write your story into the fabric of another woman's life. This is not a call to a life of ease. It is a call to a life of involvement in serving the King by nurturing his daughters."
Favorite Quotes from Spiritual Mothering
(There are waaaay too many to choose from...)
"It's interesting that of all the ways Paul could have told the women to combat the decadence of their culture, he told them to invest their energies in training the younger women to live Christianly in their society. ... Paul was smart enough to know that women need women to train them how to apply God's Word to areas of our lives that are uniquely feminine. ... This is not a ministry of minutia; it is a vital part of church life that must not be pushed to the back-burner." (Titus 2)
"Until a woman has submitted her speech to the Lord, she surely cannot influence a younger women to build right relationships. Critical words destroy relationships. Younger women need to be taught how to affirm and encourage, how to love and accept, how to influence but not demand."
"Older Christian women must communicate a vision of the beauty of a marriage that endures. ... Only a passion for God's glory can overpower our self-interest. ... When a woman realizes the power of her loving acceptance of her husband and makes an all-out commitment to be his completor and not his competitor, he reaches heights he could never obtain without her."
"A woman who struggles with poor self-image is so enslaved that she cannot be a servant/nurturer. The only adequate antidote for the self-image problem is a Biblical knowledge of ourselves. ... Dorcas had experienced the encouragement that comes in knowing she had been accepted by Christ; this motivated her to accept others. Dorcas had a unifying effect in her church; God is glorified when believers are unified. And unity is impossible apart from acceptance."
"Failure to accept another reveals pride in my own heart: "I know what you should be, what you should do, and how you should do it--my way is right and best." It also reveals a lack of trust: "God is not changing you fast enough, so I must help Him."
3. Forward by Ronnie W. Floyd
This is a very simple leadership book reminding us that you need to keep moving forward as you lead others.
Favorite quotes from Forward:
"If Satan cannot get you to do the wrong thing, he will get you to do the right thing in the wrong way."
"Forward leaders are futuristic thinkers. They are not so impressed with their past that they become paralyzed. They are not so intoxicated with their present that they always celebrate and party. They always look ahead, preparing for what could be."
"If we have to tell people we are in charge, we probably are not in charge."
"It is the presence of God that sets each of us apart from other leaders."
"If we do not pray at all, we are depending on ourselves."
4. Move On by Vicki Courtney
It took me awhile to get into this book and to find the meat in it, but it ended up being a solid reminder of God's grace and mercy and the power of the cross.
Favorite Quotes from Move On:
"Healing comes when we learn to ignore the accuser's shameful reminders of our past sins. In doing so, shame loses the power of control in our lives."
"Far too many women are living in the past, defined by their sin, rather than being defined by God's grace in the present. ... Putting the past behind us is the result of not forgetting our past sins, but rather remembering their place on the cross. We can't move forward until we decide to forget the past. ... Rather, as we move forward, we do so with a vision of our sins nailed to the cross in our rearview mirror."
"Legalists feel safer in a world where progress can be evaluated and measured. A world where there are distinct markers (even if they are self-imposed) to gauge their spirituality."
"We must emphasize grace before we talk about commitment, because once grace becomes a believer's identity, commitment will follow." (in response to the Great Commission)
"Charles Spurgeon once said, "I have found, in my own spiritual life, that the more rules I lay down for myself, the more sins I commit." (See Colossians 2:20-23.)
5. The Best Yes by Lysa Terkeurst
This book is perfect for the woman who constantly finds herself drained and stuck doing a bunch of good things while continually sacrificing the things that she knows God wants her to do but doesn't have time to do. I've put off reading this book for awhile because I knew it would mean change. That's not a bad thing, but there is an odd sense of security that comes from busyness...it's predictable and safe and there is never a dull moment. Yet God has been making it clear in many ways that my security is coming from the wrong place. He has something for my life but I keep crowding it (and Him) out through busyness.
It was desperation to find a different way that drew me back to this book. It's one of those books that took several weeks to read because there was so much in it for my Type A, overachiever, I-know-I-can-be-Super Woman (but I'm about to collapse from the sheer busyness of everything) personality to digest. It was a tool that God wanted to use to lay out guidelines to help me weed out what is of Him and what's not of Him (even though it's for Him). Some of my yeses can't be undone right now and there are commitments to finish seeing through, but I can at least move forward from here by saying yes and no in the right way--God's way.
There were two things that stuck out above all else that I've been trying to implement as I discern whether to give a yes or no (oh, how I'm tired of giving yeses only to get into it and realize it should've been a no).
The first is, "Do I have the resources to handle this request along with my current responsibilities? Could this fit: physically? financially? spiritually? emotionally?"
Most of the time, I know when and where I'm overloaded, but this is the first time in my life where I've found my emotional resources all tied up and depleted. It's been a new experience to be in the midst of something and discover that there no emotional capacity left to deal with situations or people and my head literally feels like it's about to explode because of the sheer brain power or emotional investment that's been expended. And that's not healthy at all. It's actually kind of scary to be in that moment when you know if someone says/does the wrong thing, that's it, you're walking away because you have nothing left even though that's not your personality to do so. It's really forced me to evaluate, ask hard questions, and let go of things in order to reclaim capacity.
Second, there's got to be a way to get this list tattooed somewhere so it'll be the first thing I see whenever I consider whether or not to do something. Honestly, if I took the time to answer these questions, I wouldn't be doing half of what I'm doing today (scary thought!). Here are Lysa's suggestions for determining if the expectations that come from agreeing to a yes are realistic or not:
"It feels thrilling to say yes to this now. But how will this yes feel two weeks, two months, and six months from now?
Do any of the expectations that come from this yes feel forced or frantic?
Could any part of this yes be tied to people pleasing and allowing that desire to skew my judgment of what's realistic and unrealistic?
Which wise (older, grounded in God's Word, more experienced, and more mature) people in my life think this is a good idea?
Are there any facts I try to avoid or hide when discussing this with my wise advisors."
6. Praying in Color--Drawing a New Path to God by Sybil MacBeth
Sometimes we can become too legalistic with our prayers. We forget that God has given us freedom from formulas (aside from the Lord's Prayer) and that that He has given us freedom of expression and designed us in His creativity. When you carry that freedom into your prayer life, prayer comes alive. Praying in color is simply taking your prayers and instead of speaking them or journaling them, you're doodling them in such a way to focus your thoughts and actively engage in prayer. It's taking prayer requests or scripture and artfully meditating on it and praying over it where each line, each color, each design means something as you pray over the request or Scripture. It's great for the person who has a wandering mind when it comes to prayer. It's combining words with pictures and color to make a lasting impression in your mind that may pop up later and remind you to pray. I was introduced to Praying in Color in 2012 and it's something that I'll pull out every now and then to remind me that prayer is an expression of our faith that isn't bound by words. It revitalizes my prayer life and reminds me that prayer can be more than black and white words. God wants our prayer lives to be vibrant and full of life, so it makes sense to pray with crayons, markers, and paper. It took a lot of work for my conservative Baptist mind to wrap around the idea of praying in a visual way, but it's become special over the years to see what God has done with the doodled prayers and how He honors and answers those just as much as He answers the spoken word. This book is great for reminding us that prayer is about relationship and that God has given us all different ways to connect with Him creatively.
Music
Uncluttered by Gwen Smith
"So I'm cleaning out some closets, tearing down some walls. Things I've never needed that have been there way too long. Give myself completely with nothing in between, like the kind of love He has for me 'cause I want my love for Him to be always be uncluttered."
Grace Wins by Matthew West
There's a war between guilt and grace / And they're fighting for a sacred space / But I'm living proof / Grace wins every time
Reading Winter Morgan's Minecraft novels to my child. Two chapters each night are never enough (even for this mama). Morgan's has a way of bringing together my child's love for Minecraft and his vivid imagination through her stories. Plus, he keeps learning new game tricks through the characters' adventures.
Celebrating our 12th anniversary!! Twelve years later and I can still say that there is nothing more special than waking up and falling asleep next to your best friend. This year has added some new challenges as we enter into business together and experience life transitions, but these moments of celebration remind us of who we fell in love with and the beauty of our marriage when we are unified and seeking Christ together instead of merely co-existing and surviving the day to day without direction and purpose.
Field tripping with my family! We recently attended the Homeschool Day at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. We are looking forward to cooler weather so we can get out more and do field trips. Late fall and winter are to us what summer is to everyone else. We take a lot of time off school for hands-on learning, traveling, and vacationing while the environmental allergens aren't as bad and then we buckle down with school during spring and summer. It's a little backward, but it works for us plus vacation and field trip destinations aren't insanely busy in the off-season so we get most of the places to ourselves.
"Get wisdom! Get understanding! Do not forget, nor turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will preserve you; Love her, and she will keep you. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding." Proverbs 4:5-7
My biggest piece of leadership advice from 2012 for any young leader is to let wisdom and discretion be your guide in everything, including relationships! If you have those unexplainable gut feelings and red flags, never, ever ignore them! Ignoring them can cost you greatly! Proverbs is soooo true about how wisdom shows you the way and how necessary it is to chase after her and maintain sure footing!
Yet when we lay wisdom aside, we find ourselves in places we never intended to go! In 2012, I needed those unintended places so I could realize my identity in Christ. But wow, did the lessons have to be so hard and painful? Maybe so, for they taught me that as a leader, wife, mom and daughter of God, I'm accountable for everything I say and do. Some consequences are ones you'll never see on the outside, but ones I see so clearly on the inside as God has shown me what He could have done but couldn't because of me (either by choices, playing games with Him or holding back from Him).
There still are moments when feelings of pure embarrassment and foolishness rush in from situations during 2012. Yet, these feelings serve as scars--scars that remind me of God's forgiveness, grace and love. Without understanding what He has done for me on the cross and how that affects every aspect of life and ministry, I couldn't move forward. These scars also remind me of the price we pay when our identity isn't solidly in Christ and when we get side-tracked by others or things we think we need (or are missing out on). And, these scars remind me of 2012...a year of mistakes that I don't care to repeat again.
In 2012, I learned the hard way that leaders have to be careful in who they trust...it matters greatly and affects waaaaaay more than you can imagine when you trust the wrong person. I've seen it happen to others in the past, but this is the first time it's ever happened to me. Sometimes, people you regard as a great leader or mentor will use you (yes, that's a tough fact to swallow), look you straight in the eye and lie to you (and then you begin to notice how they do it to others), and they say things they know you want to hear in order to get what they want from you.
And, be leery of the words, "This stays between us!" Use that phrase as a warning! If those words have to be uttered pre-conversation, then maybe this isn't a conversation worth having with that person. People you fully trust and who trust you, don't need those words because trust and confidentiality is a given. However, live by the fact that everything you say can be repeated (and added on to) so be careful in what you say and who you choose to say it to.
I also learned to not always take people at face value, to make people earn my trust rather than freely give it to them (that's a work in progress), and to speak up and not be afraid to ask questions (even if they are older or are a mentor).
I learned that just because someone is older than you and has been in ministry longer than you doesn't mean that they are automatically living in God's power and have a devoted relationship with Him. So choose your mentors wisely...they will affect you either positively or negatively. Sometimes, it's not until after the mentoring relationship is over that you see how much they were preying on your weaknesses (sins) and how "not right" for you that relationship was. And as you look back, you start seeing where God was like, "Hey! ... Hi!? ... Hello???? ...." and you totally missed it because you were standing on someone else instead of God!
See why living by the Proverbs is crucial to a young leader? It spares you from the hard life lessons! It's never too late to start listening to Proverbs. Sure, it might make you feel foolish all over again as you read your situations in black and white, but there is something strangely comforting about seeing your life lessons in the Word because it's where you begin to see God's hand even in your mistakes, God's love that never fails, and God's desire for us to live a better way! So, carry on ... but wisely! :)
Last Friday, another mass school shooting rocked our
world.As the days have passed by, media and America
has increased its cry for something to be done.Neither political party seems to have an answer and no "expert"
on guns, education, and psychiatry can manage an intelligible answer except for
"we need to have more conversations."
Do Americans not realize that we are wasting time by
talking about the need to have conversations on the tough issues when we could simply start having these conversations?The need was there long before last week...why
weren't we talking then?And what about
those who have been trying to talk all along but their message hasn't been
heard?A knee-jerk response will create
ineffective legislation which will hurt, label and probably tax more than help.But then prolonging the conversations will
make our instant-gratification society bored and quickly forget what is
important and why.
In talking, we must not forget the conversations within our
churches.Why not
consider looking at what Christians have allowed our churches to become?What are we doing to help the mentally ill
aside from raising our eyebrows at their vulnerability when they admit that
they are taking meds and later gossiping about them (via the "prayer
request" method) as if we have never struggled with seasons of anxiety,
depression or loneliness ourselves?What
are we doing to reach out to today's young adults aside from saying, "Yes,
we want you in church!" but then fail to reach out to them outside of
their own programming or give support beyond the Sunday or Wednesday
service?What are we doing to be voices
in our community when we can't even find our own voices in our own churches to
stand up against compromise, cliques and comfortable faith?
We have created this bubble that exists within our
churches.Within this bubble, we are
comfortable and safe.And, whoa!Shame on the person who dares to speak up against
that bubble!I learned that the hard way
this week as I made a FB comment about the shooter and then quickly deleted it
after being reprimanded.
We are the ones who have graded ours (and everyone else's) sins.We are the ones who created standards and then rationalized them when we couldn't keep them ourselves.We are the ones who have taken over God's
decision on who is worthy of God's love and who is not!We've fooled ourselves into thinking that we
aren't that bad but in reality, we are all mere choices away from committing a
heinous crime.The only difference is
that we are choosing Christ.We have
chosen to experience His mercy, forgiveness and grace!
While we saw lostness in the worst way last week, I can’t
help but see that God’s love still overshadows everything!Are we supposed to ignore the fact that this
shooter and every other criminal is made in God's image just like us?That if that criminal accepted Christ, then he would be
in heaven next to us?That thought is a
little nauseating, honestly. And then I have to stop and listen to myself as I
judge this man and hold him to what I think God wants while totally ignoring my
own sins in the process.Is not envy or gossip or failing to rest in the same Ten Commandments list
as murder and adultery?Did not the same
God who fashioned me with His hands fashion that murderer with His hands also?Did not the same God who sent His
son to die on the cross die for that man as well?Doesn't the Bible mention that God is not a respecter
of persons so that means God offers mercy, love, forgiveness and judgment to
everyone equally? And that all of this comes down to personal choice?
What missions/ministry opportunities have been lost
because we failed to see and love others as God does?Please know that in no way
am I condoning what happened last week, but I can't help but see a broken, lost young man--a man that, who knows, might have made a completely opposite choice had the Body of Christ stepped in and ministered to his family from the beginning.This family might have made different choices
had a Believer taken time to simply hear the desperate cries of this mother who
was at her wits end.Or, they might have been
led to resources and/or connections to Christian professionals who believed
in the power of prayer and in the power of God to transform lives.
I look around me and see broken people
everywhere...no one is exempt from brokenness. How many times do I pretend not to see brokenness because I don't know what to say or do? How many times have we wished that someone (even
someone from our own churches) would step outside of Facebook and/or the Sunday
services and be a real face, a real ear, a real hug or a real voice? What if that was the one chance that would
change the course of everything in that person’s life? What if that was the one chance that could have prevented last week's deaths from happening?
After last week, we have got to pop that safe Christian
bubble that we're in!We have to go
against the grain, have courage to leave our church cliques and man-made ideals behind and look at life through
God’s eyes!We also have to nurse
the broken in our churches so we can nurse the broken outside of our churches.
Yes, it’s uncomfortable, it's messy and it's real.When we get beyond ourselves and see the
heart of God yet fail to act, our lives become equally uncomfortable, messy and
real as we make a blatant choice to ignore God and reap the consequences of it (been
there, done that and it's not fun)!
I keep sensing this urgency that we are missing the mark as
the church and it's time to stop playing around, time to stop sitting in our
comfy churchy bubbles and truly live out what the Bible says.For those who already are, hope is around the
corner and we have to stay the course and know Who we are looking at regardless
of who is (or isn’t) walking alongside us! It's tough and it's lonely sometimes, but keep hanging on!
“A fool lets it all hang out; a sage quietly mulls it
over.When a leader listens to malicious
gossip, all the workers get infected with evil.”Proverbs 29:11-12
So many leadership books, so little time.However, no leadership book is as insightful,
thorough, powerful, challenging, convicting and directing as Proverbs.For extra “umph”, try Proverbs
in “The Message” translation!Sometimes
I wonder why I’m so determined to read all these other leadership books and
fail to give time and attention to the Bible.Everything I want in a leadership book is spelled out in Proverbs.
Proverbs has a way of taking what seems complicated and
breaking it down in simple format, black and white, that you just can’t miss
what makes and breaks a leader.I find
it interesting that guarding your speech is one of the top reoccurring themes
in Proverbs.It’s also one of the top reoccurring
themes in my life as I speak with women and listen to women.
I tend to rationalize my speech quite often by thinking that
everyone vents, everyone gossips, everyone says what’s on their mind (good and
bad), and sometimes you just have to get things off your chest.But through Proverbs I see over and over
again that God wants more from His leaders.He has a clear path already set out for us that isn’t marked with holes
that we dug for ourselves nor is it lined with words that reveal our immaturity, insecurity or irrationality.
Proverbs 29:11-12 (above) is one of those verses that gets
me every time I read it as I have seen where my speech has affected those
around me and not always for the positive.And I have also seen where speech from other leaders has permeated
through the ranks and affected the spirit of those under them. As I listen to others, it reminds me of myself and I pray
that I do not sound like that, but sadly, I know I do at times.
As a leader, do we even understand how much influence our
words carry and how quickly it can discredit ourselves and our ministries?
Are our opinions being taken as fact by the listeners when
in reality it’s our own faulty interpretations coming across?
Are we silently giving others permission to share information
without considering if it’s right or wrong before we pass it along?
Where do we draw the line between sharing information about a
situation with those we lead versus gossip? And then how do we participate in those conversations with other leaders without crossing
that line?
What kind of leadership are we promoting if we participate
in conversations that aren’t edifying about others?
Finally, as women leaders, how do we rise above gossip in
the realm of women’s ministry whether big or small?
Tough questions, yet even tougher to keep our mouths shut! However, as tough as it is to be the quiet one,
we can be encouraged by Proverbs 31:26:“When
she speaks she has something worthwhile to say, and she always says it kindly.”The same God who fashioned the Proverbs 31
woman fashioned us and just as she is an example, we can be one, too! It's not impossible, it's just going to take some work! ;-)
