"Blindness is one of those words like cancer, like divorce, like autism, like bankruptcy that we just don’t ever expect to hear, and we certainly don’t expect it to become our word . . ."
Popular mass media perpetually drips messages about gender, sex, and relationships into our minds. The trouble is, it often promotes false or counterfeit images of what womanhood is all about.
Five years ago, this cocky, over-eager college graduate arrived thinking
I would help Revive Our Hearts minister to women. Ha! Turns out I
was the one who was mentored and helped by this ministry.
Running frantically in the opposite direction, they attempted to push
their extremely large bodies through the small six-by-six opening of the
hog-wire fence bordering the property . . .
“We are called to fight the powers of darkness in the name, the power,
and the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, joining with God in a great
rescue operation for the sake of His great Kingdom."
"Recently I had my fourth kidney stone. Have you ever had one? The pain is unrelenting, consuming, and unresponsive to any 'over-the-counter' pain meds. It's a paralyzing, helpless, hopeless kind of feeling. My initial response to the pain was to focus inwardly and whimper to Jesus for relief."
". . . Her departure ushered in a season of loneliness that I hadn’t
experienced since my college years. My stomach still tightens when I remember those early years at Kansas University."
Motherhood gives us feelings of fuzzy blankets and baby rattles and toys
to line the crib. But motherhood is actually one of God’s refining
fires. The reality of motherhood is that it’s a place to learn
surrender, letting go, trusting, and believing that God is God.
It didn’t take long for an opportunity to share some of what I learned with a woman after a swim class. Leslie’s mom was a Feminist,
and Leslie had obviously absorbed much of the Feminist philosophy into
her life. A lesbian in a relationship that she admitted was “not
satisfying,” Leslie said she didn't think she could relate to the
biblical model of womanhood.
If you are breathing, at some point there will be a moment in your life
when you have absolutely NO idea what the Lord is doing, why He doesn’t
seem to be following your life plan, and whether or not He is worthy of
your trust.
"I am no less of a woman in my singleness, and when I embrace God’s purpose in my singleness rather than resenting it, I am able to display trust in a sovereign God to the world around me. This type of trust will reveal much about God’s character to the world around me: 'Therefore, a single woman who lives with that final day in view, and finds Christ to be her all in all here, says something very powerfully and very clearly about her Savior.'”