Freedom for Women and the Centrality of Christ

This is when I launched a separate website called A Woman’s Freedom in Christ.

The move to the new site was the culmination of several weeks of thinking, pondering, reading, praying, and talking with David. You know that unsettled, restless feeling you get when God is about to move you to do something different or change your way of thinking about something?  I was living with that feeling for a number of weeks.

I came across a few things online that made the pieces all start to fall together. Add to that a couple of email exchanges with my pastor and some email exchanges with another woman blogger who is wrestling with some of the same questions and I just knew.

The first thing that really got it going was the Challies post about not allowing women to read the Scriptures in church. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. That post was the tipping point where I knew that I could no longer sit on the sidelines and not say something. I cannot begin to express how disturbing I found that post. I wrote about it in Should women and children/youth read the Scriptures in church? and it catapulted me forward into realizing that I could no longer stay as I was.

I’m not willing to sit around any longer waiting for “someone” to give me permission to use the gifts I know I have, to advocate for the Christian women I love, and to hopefully do my small part to make the church a better place for Caroline when she is an adult in just thirteen years.

The egalitarian versus complementarian argument is never going to be resolved. There will always be people advocating both views. I’ll be dead if I wait around for a final verdict on this topic. And while I can’t answer every question and objection to the egalitarian view, neither can the complementarians about their view. So this woman who wants everything laid out perfectly is just saying that it is good enough and I’m moving forward.

I was also challenged by a post Wade Burleson put up about the folly of a pastor doing gimmicky things to get attention for his new book on s*x while neglecting to present people with the very thing they truly need above all else – the gospel of Jesus Christ. Pastor Burleson wrote The Frozen Chosen Are Leading the Blind Off a Rooftop Into Hell and I felt a clear call that my own writing online needs to be much more centered on the Gospel of Christ.

Lastly, I found an article via LinkedIn entitled To Grow, Leave What You Know Behind. Though not written from a Biblical perspective, I thought there was much good food for thought there. I felt that each of his three main points hit me where I was, but the last point especially resonated with me: Stop working as a generalist. Coleman writes:

Many of us have lived life so far as generalists — “Jacks of all trades,” so to speak — focused broadly on a variety of skills, functions, or industries. Sure, we may have picked some topics on which to become knowledgeable, we’ve chosen professions, and we’ve completed “majors” or built specific skills. But by-and-large, we’ve cast our nets wide, learning broadly to gain context about the world around us. At some point, however, most of us will need to generate proficiency in a very specific topic, both because it makes us valuable sources of expert knowledge and teaches us the habits of mind to generate deep insight.

In the past my blogging has always been about whatever captured my attention. In my blogging I was a generalist. I found that I no longer wished to write that way, but wanted to focus in on something that meant a great deal to me. Something that would matter to others. Something that God could use to draw others to a deeper walk with Him.

I have always cared deeply about women. Whether it was being president of my sorority, doing InterVarsity ministry and mentoring college women, or leading Bible studies in church, I have always had a heart for women. Desiring to see women be all that God created them to be has been a steady theme in my life that has never wavered whether I was in college, a young single woman, a newly married woman, or a middle aged woman like I am now. Other interests and passions have come and gone. This one has never left.

Almost twelve years ago God gave me two specific verses during my quiet time. To this day, I can see where I was sitting, what the light was like in the room, and how I felt when I read these. The verses were 1 Peter 4:10-11:

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.

I have returned to these verses time and time again, wondering what God meant when He gave them to me. For after giving them to me, He allowed me to embark on what has been a very difficult twelve years. While there have been spots of brightness and joy to be sure, the past twelve years have been filled with relational pain, physical pain, emotional pain, and significant loss. Frankly, it has left me weary and broken. It has taken a physical toll on me. I look at how I served God before this and think that I could never do those things now. And yet as I was reading these verses again last week, something jumped out at me. With the strength God provides. It truly is the only way I can do anything. I don’t have enough strength of my own any longer to serve God in any significant ways. If God is going to do anything with and through me, it will have to be in His strength because I don’t really have any of my own.

I have no idea what God wants to do here. I’m just going to get up every day and ask God what I should write (if anything). And continue to pray that He will bring the right person here at the right time to be encouraged by whatever it is I end up posting.