This is from God's World News at gwnews.com
Light and Shadow
"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea." The world doesn't understand the Psalms. But even in the shadow of death, God reveals his strength for all to see.
"Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord."
For decades, "rights" groups fought to outlaw God's word and prayer in America's public life, public schools, and courtrooms. Judges blessed their efforts. Television scorned Christians and prayer. Then nine years ago this month, the 9/11 World Trade Center attack plunged thousands of families into mourning. The Pentagon attack in the nation's capital proclaimed America's frailty.
In its weakness God bowed America's head. And those enemies of prayer became unusually silent. President George W. Bush and many high officials bowed in worship at the National Cathedral. The Bible was read to the nation. No one chanted "separation of church and state."
Senators and Congressmen gathered before the Capitol and sang "God Bless America." Later, they held a prayer meeting. Churches overflowed. Crowds in town squares across America sought the "ever-present help in trouble." And in Jesus' name they prayed.
The well-known old hymn "Abide with Me" says, "Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day." Our time on earth is very little. "Earth's glories pass away," says the hymn. The 9/11 attacks severely forced Americans to think about that.
How many of them thought about this: "I triumph still, if thou abide with me"?
Nine years ago, President Bush promised triumph over America's enemies. Yes, bringing justice to mass murderers is good and right. But the "triumph" in that hymn is far bigger than military triumph. Many of the terrorists' victims saw that clearly. They saw the Lord face to face.
Christ has triumphed over sin and death for all believers. And God will at last triumph over his enemies. He will crush them and punish them forever. "'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord" (Romans 12:19). God's revenge is good and right.
So what about human revenge?
"Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath," writes the Apostle Paul (12:19). It is a sin for individual people to take revenge. Jesus told people--not nations--to turn the other cheek. God gives his vengeance authority instead to governments. That why he tells us, "If you do wrong, be afraid," for the government "does not bear the sword for nothing" (13:4).
But some people do not "leave room for God's wrath." They like to say the Lord changed from a God of wrath in the Old Testament to a God of love in the New Testament. Wrong. "I the Lord do not change" (Malachi 3:6). God has always been a God of love. He is still a God of wrath.
The World Trade Center was a symbol of U.S. business success. The Pentagon is a symbol of U.S. military power. Those tragic 9/11 attacks reminded us Americans not to place our hope in our vast wealth and power. They reminded us that there is no lasting triumph apart from Christ. They reminded us of the utter evil of God's enemies.
The United States is full of sin. It's hard to call it "Christian" anymore. But in the eyes of Islam, it is the world's Christian stronghold. That's mainly why Muslim terrorists hate America. Their false religion allows them to believe Allah will reward them for murdering "infidels" (enemies of Islam).
During the 1990s, America's highest leaders, as they are doing today, did much to tear down U.S. military strength. Military officers warned against it. But they obeyed orders. Then President Bush called for making national defense stronger again. Many liberal opponents disagreed with him. Some--especially in the media--even mocked him.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd ridiculed Mr. Bush. He fears "The Threat That Doesn't Exist," she wrote. Federal funds for national defense, she said, should instead be spent on education.
The 9-11 attacks occurred two days later. How foolish to pretend that the world is full of good people that simply need more education.
The New Testament in Romans 13 declares government "God's servant, an agent of wrath"--not an agent of education. That servant may take revenge. In this world of false gods and sinful people, sometimes it must.
A strong national defense is necessary. But even triumph over terrorism is not enough to save America. Evil is the enemy. And education on the world's terms plays into its hands. The only defense--the only triumph--is in the true and living God of the Bible. That means Christian education.
"In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me."
-- Norm Bomer
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
U.S. to fund radical feminist group (OneNewsNow.com)
The United Nations has created a super agency for feminists, but one female leader thinks it's unnecessary.
The U.N. General Assembly recently voted to consolidate four different groups into a single one that could eventually be fueled by a $1 billion a year, and many of those dollars would come from the U.S.
Continue reading at U.S. to fund radical feminist group (OneNewsNow.com)
The U.N. General Assembly recently voted to consolidate four different groups into a single one that could eventually be fueled by a $1 billion a year, and many of those dollars would come from the U.S.
Continue reading at U.S. to fund radical feminist group (OneNewsNow.com)
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Are Children Truly a Blessing from the Lord?
Leslie: Children are a blessing even for imperfect people.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: You may have a seriously messed up family tree, and you might have fearful thoughts about bringing more children into that family line. But just a reminder that God is the Redeeming God, and Christ can redeem your family line.
Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Thursday, June 24.
Statistics tell us there are more televisions per household than children per household, but the Bible doesn’t say, “Television is a blessing from the Lord.” Find out why the Bible described children as a blessing as Nancy continues the series, Affirmations of the True Woman Manifesto, Part 3.
Nancy: I have some very dear friends who last week were taking care of three of their grandchildren, three little granddaughters who were age 5 and under for five days so that the mom and dad, their daughter and son-in-law, could take a special anniversary trip. As you might imagine, this was not an easy thing.
I got an email in the middle of that period from “Gramps,” as they call him, and he described to me what he and Nana had gone through that day. Here’s what he said:
6:45 - Three and five-year-olds jump into bed and begin disputing with each other.
7:30 - Dirty diapers and dress time.
8:00 - Breakfast with less-than-happy campers.
9:00 - Played with grandkids:
Laid on concrete so they could draw chalk around me.
Sat on asphalt so they could play push ball with me.
Wrestled in the grass so they could climb on me.
Rode bicycles where they crashed into me.
That was the morning.
12:00 - Peanut and butter jelly sandwiches.
12:30 - Two more grandkids show up—now there are five.
1:30 - Road bikes again.
2:00 - Pet horses and climb tree.
3:00 - Purchased my first Blizzard in ten years.
3:30 - Go to park and sit on bench while grandkids hit every apparatus. 4:30 - Total social injustice—kids call me “mean” on the way home after all I did for them.
5:00 - Go home to get ready for supper.
5:45 - Go out for supper where my three join up with six more.
8:00 - Home to give kids baths.
8:30 - Kids crying, whining and all-round unhappy (past their bedtimes).
8:30 - Do dishes while Nana puts kids to bed.
9:30 - Hope to talk to my wife.
Well, some of you’ve been there, and as I read that, my heart went out to Gramps and Nana, and then my heart really went out to the daughter who is home with these three children the other 360 days of the year and actually has a fourth now—the fourth was with her—so she has four children age five and under. She loves being a mother, loves her children, and considers them a blessing even though there are days when you say nothing else gets done.
But this brings us to a happy point in our True Woman Manifesto, and one that I think we want to particularly emphasize, and that is that children are a blessing from God, and that’s this next statement in the Manifesto. Let me read the whole affirmation:
Children are a blessing from God; women are uniquely designed to be bearers and nurturers of life, whether it be their own biological or adopted children, or other children in their sphere of influence.
I read an article while I was putting this session together called “Born to Nurture?” The author said,
With few exceptions, the global trend from—east to west is later marriage, delayed motherhood and fewer children. And in some countries, pampered pets. In the U.K. the pet industry is booming—3.5 billion pounds a year—as more couples opt to have pets instead of babies.
These trends have altered definitions of "family" and have even spawned new words such as DINKS—the acronym describing couples with "Dual Income, No Kids." Meanwhile, in the U.S., the number of fertility clinics has increased nine-fold since 1986, as more women who delay conceiving find it difficult to do so in their later 30s and 40s.1
In fact, on average in the United States today, there are 2.24 TV's per household and 1.89 children per household—more TV's per household than children.
The world—not everybody in the world, but the essential world—view of children, particularly in our modern era, is that children past a certain point, past that 1.89 children, that children are a burden; that they’re too expensive (“We can’t afford to have children.”); that they’re an interruption to our lives, to our plans. They are an inconvenience.
How contrary this is to God’s view of children.
Do a study sometime if you really wonder about this, so you want to know, “How should you feel about children?” As you’re praying and thinking, if you’re in the season of life where you’re asking the Lord, “Should you have children, and how many children should you have?”—which, by the way, I cannot answer that question for you. Okay? Some of you are going to write and say, “How many children should I have? Should I have more children?” I cannot tell you the answer to that question, but what I can encourage you to do is to go to God’s Word.
Use a concordance and look up every reference you can find to children. Now, this will take you a while because there are a lot of references to children in the Old and in the New Testaments. Just look at the context and see what God’s Word has to say about children. Now, there were good children and bad children, righteous children and evil children, righteous parents, evil parents. You’ll find a lot of things. But look at how God used children. As you get into God’s Word, you will come to the inescapable conclusion that children are a gift. Children are a blessing, and they come from God.
As you read through the biblical account, you’ll see in the Scripture that children were longed for. They were prayed for. They were received with joy, even in old age, and some of them a really old age. Remember Sarah at 90? But Sarah, Rachel, Elisabeth, Hannah, these were women who longed for children, who prayed for children, who considered children a good gift from the Lord.
You see children as being a blessing from God. In Genesis chapter 17, God said to Abraham in relation to his wife Sarah, “I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her” (verse 16, NASB). Blessing and children often go together. He says, “Then I will bless her and she shall be a mother of nations.” Not just one child, but a mother of nations. And He’s talking about a post-menopausal woman. This is a blessing, "Kings of peoples will come from her."
Then in Genesis 28, we see Isaac blessing his son Jacob. He says, “God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples.” This was considered a favor, a mark of divine blessing that your children would have children and their children would have children.
In Genesis 33:5, there’s a passage where the brothers, twins, Jacob and Esau, are seeing each other for the first time in many years after being alienated and separated. Jacob comes with this whole host of women and children with him. Esau lifts up his eyes, he sees the women and the children, and he says, “Who are these with you? Jacob said, 'The children whom God has graciously given your servant.'" That’s the mindset that you see about children throughout the Scripture. They are a gracious gift from the Lord.
You remember the story of Ruth and Boaz. In chapter 4 of Ruth, on their wedding day, Ruth having been widowed but now God brings a husband, Boaz, into her life, and on their wedding day, the witnesses give a blessing to Boaz. They say, “May the LORD make the woman, who is coming into your house [that is Ruth], like Rachel and Leah [those were the two wives of Jacob], who together built up the house of Israel” (verse 11).
Their prayer is that Ruth will be fruitful, that she will be fruitful, that she will have numerous offspring, and there’s a recognition that it’s God who opens the womb. “May the Lord make your wife fruitful.” It’s God who opens and closes the womb.
The mention there of Rachel, who herself was barren until God did open her womb, as Ruth had been barren in Moab. The prayer, the blessing, is that, “May God now give your wife children.” Of course, we’re so thankful that God did give children to Ruth and Boaz because through that line came Christ our Messiah.
They go on to say in this blessing, “And may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman” (Ruth 4:12). “The offspring that the Lord will give you.” That’s another acknowledgement that children are a gift from God. There’s no question where these children come from. They are a gift from God.
Now this house of Perez whom Tamar bore to Judah, that’s a reference you probably haven’t thought a lot about, may not have researched carefully. It’s a fascinating passage, and it brings up a whole series of family circumstances that rival any modern-day soap opera.
Judah, who was one of the 12 sons of Jacob, had married a Canaanite woman. They had three sons. God took the lives of the two older sons because they were wicked, and after Judah’s Canaanite wife died, he was intimate with a woman who was disguised as a prostitute who turned out to be the widow of his firstborn son. Her name was Tamar.
Now, you probably didn’t get all that, but you probably did get that it was a really convoluted, messed-up story. Judah and Tamar, his widowed daughter-in-law, who he thinks is a prostitute, gave birth to twins sons, the eldest of whom was named Perez.
You say, “What a mess was that!” That’s a family background that by any definition would be called dysfunctional. But God is a redeeming God, and He is able to bring good out of the tangled messes of our lives.
Perez, you don’t hear anybody naming their kids Perez these days, but he was an important character. He was an ancestor of Boaz, and through the line from Perez to Boaz, married to Ruth, would come Israel’s two greatest kings: King David and the ultimate King, King Jesus.
Now take that home for just a moment. One or more of your children may be the result of sinful or foolish choices—yours or others—choices that were within your control or choices that weren’t. You may have a seriously messed-up family tree, and you might have fearful thoughts about bringing more children into that family line. But just a reminder that God is the Redeeming God. He redeemed this family line. Christ came to us through this line of Perez, and Christ can redeem your family line.
So the blessing here is: “May your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman" (Ruth 4:12).
Yes, there’s a mess in the background here, but may it be like a family line that God redeems and restores and brings something really beautiful out of it.
So we see throughout Scripture that children are a blessing from the Lord and that childbearing is for women both a privilege and a responsibility within the will of God.
Now, let me take you for just a moment. I’m going where angels fear to tread by doing this, but I’m going to take you to what one commentator has called, “One of the most difficult verses in the New Testament to interpret.” I’m not going to interpret it. I just want to get us to look at this first just for a moment.
First Timothy chapter 2, many of you are familiar with this passage. The context here is talking about men and women and differences between men and women in the context of the local church. I’m not going to take time to give you all the context for this passage. I’m not even going to take time to exegete the passage or really walk you through it, but I wanted you to see one point that I think it makes pretty clearly.
First Timothy 2, beginning with verse 13,
For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression (verses 13-14).
Now, here’s the first thing I want you to look at: verse 15. It’s one of the hardest verses in the New Testament to interpret. “Women will be preserved through the bearing of children.” Your translation may say, “They will be saved through childbearing” (NASB). “Women will be preserved through the bearing of children,” or “saved through childbearing if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint” (NASB).
Now, let me make it clear what this verse is not saying. It for sure is not saying that our souls will be eternally saved or justified through childbearing. That would contradict all the rest of Scripture that says we are saved by grace alone through faith alone. So the word saved must mean something different here, and it does mean something different. A better translation, it’s the word preserved. They will be preserved through the bearing of children.
That word preserved can mean "to rescue, to deliver, to preserve safe and unharmed." So what does Paul mean here that “women will be preserved through the bearing of children”? In what sense could we say that women are saved or preserved through childbearing? Well, again, we could spend eons on this verse, and I have actually talked about this verse in other series, but just think here about how the first woman Eve influenced and led her husband, and therefore the rest of the human race, into sin.
That’s a pretty heavy responsibility for Eve to bear and for us as women to bear, but through the bearing of children and raising those children up to know and follow Christ, God has graciously given to women the privilege of influencing generations for righteousness. As Eve’s sin influenced many, many generations toward unrighteousness, so as women give birth to and nurture children, they can be part of passing that legacy of righteousness on to subsequent generations.
So as a woman embraces and fulfills God’s calling in her life as a wife and mother, when it’s that season:
She is preserved from the stigma of the fall.
She is preserved from uselessness.
She is preserved from insignificance.
Now, Paul is not saying that all women can or should be married or have children. That’s clearly not true. For some women, God does not bring husbands into their lives. And some women who do marry, there’s some sitting in this room perhaps who have struggled with infertility. For some, God does not open their womb, for reasons that only He knows. That doesn’t mean that God is withholding blessing or judging. There’s a lot more we could say about this, but Paul is certainly not saying that all women should be married and have children.
I do think he’s stating a general principle that is emphasizing the significance of our calling as women to be bearers and nurturers of life, whether physical and/or spiritual children. It is such a joy to receive emails and letters and receive comments on our True Woman and Revive Our Hearts blogs from women who are really embracing this calling to be bearers and nurturers of life, and who are finding that children really are a blessing when they see them from God’s point of view.
We had, not too long ago, on the True Woman blog a video clip of a woman named Kari who came to one of our True Woman conferences and one of our videographers caught her. She gave this really precious testimony about how God had given her a new heart for her seven children, how she had been resentful—felt that they had just kind of stolen her life and kept her from being able to do things she’d wanted to do—and how God had just given her a new perspective and that she was coming to see that these children really are a blessing from the Lord.
We posted that little couple-minute clip on the True Woman blog and then lots of other women started chiming in—women who have children, women who don’t have children, women in different seasons of life—responding to this comment that Kari had made. Let me read just two or three of those comments that came in. One woman said:
God has given us six blessings and counting. I resented God and my husband for several years. I resented the loss of my desires and plans. I resented not being able to pick up and go to Target whenever I wanted. It’s been a journey to agree with God that every child is a reward and a life to cherish. Many of our friends are not able to conceive. How can I compare a child with the freedom to go to a store? It’s amazing how ultra-feminist, anti-biblical philosophies have subtly influenced my thinking and our culture.
Another woman said:
I only have four children, but I went through the same thing: focusing on what having all these young children has deprived me of rather than on the gift that they really are. My oldest is twelve; my youngest is four, and I am finally loving being a mom. I’m just sad it took me so long.
Then another woman chimed in. I’m glad she did because it reflects women who are listening to me today. She said:
I’m on the other end of the spectrum—almost forty, not married, and truly desirous to have children. Shortly after becoming a Christian at the age of 17, and after understanding the significant and wonderful calling of being a wife and mother, I looked forward to one day marrying and having a big family. I wanted six children of my own, especially since I’m an only child. It hasn’t happened, and some days I get very discouraged, but I know that God’s will for me is always good, and He brings me into contact with children in so many precious ways.
Now that brings to mind many comments. First of all, no blogging and interfacing with women on this subject can take away the pain a woman feels who has that unfulfilled longing for children, and there’s some in this room that would be true of, and writing about it doesn’t make the unfulfilled longing go away. Surrendering it to the Lord doesn’t make the unfulfilled longing go away.
We will all have unfulfilled longings this side of eternity, and as Amy Carmichael reminded us, "Unfulfilled longings are really material for sacrifice, something we can offer up to the Lord."
What strikes me is that both, the women who have the children and the woman who does not have the children, both have contentment issues to deal with. The women who don’t have the husband or children think, “If I could just have a husband and children, I would be fulfilled.” Then you have these women who have six or seven children, and they’re saying, “I wish I could go to Target.”
So really, discontentment is a function of the human heart. Some of you, your hands are full of little children right now, and you think, “Will I ever have a chance to go to the bathroom by myself without a little kid?” It’s very consuming. Some of you are in that 24/7 care with lots of little ones.
Some of you in this room are empty nesters, and you are wishing you could hear those pattering of feet and the hands coming under the bathroom door saying, “Mommy!” You’d give anything for that.
Some of you have lost a child, and you’d love to have some of the troubles again of the blessing of children.
Contentment comes from saying, “Lord, I receive whatever You choose for me as a gift from You. If that gift is children, I will welcome them as a blessing. I will receive them from Your hand.”
Then contentment as a woman comes from acknowledging that God has uniquely designed us to be bearers and nurturers of life. That can be done in a lot of different ways, and we’ll look at some of those ways in the next program. But God called us to be bearers and nurturers of life, and to just say, “Thank You, Lord, for making me a woman. Thank You for that calling. Thank You for that privilege. Amen.”
Leslie: The Bible describes children as a blessing. Nancy Leigh DeMoss has been exploring all that this means.
Janet Parshall is a mom who has seen firsthand that children are a blessing from the Lord. She writes about this blessing in the new book, Voices of the True Woman Movement. Her chapter is called “A Woman after God’s Own Heart.” It describes the pain that comes from wanting children and not having any, and it describes some of the pain that comes after having children. Through these pages you’ll see why children are a blessing even through the pain.
This is only one of many helpful chapters by a variety of godly women and one man in the book, Voices of the True Woman Movement. We’ll send this book as a way of saying, “Thanks,” when you send Revive Our Hearts a donation of any amount. Donate at ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Nancy?
Nancy: Today’s message on embracing children as a blessing makes me think of a comment that one woman wrote after attending the True Woman Conference in Chattanooga. She told us, “I’d only been home several hours and my son told me already I’m a better mom.”
Sadly, a lot of women who believe that children are a blessing don’t always act like it day after day. That’s why the True Woman conference is so helpful. It gives you time to get away, reflect on your life, learn from powerful speakers, and get encouragement from other women, then come back home different.
Please consider joining us for the True Woman conference in September in Indianapolis or in October in Ft. Worth, and remember that if you get a group of women to go with you, you can get considerable savings on each registration.
To get the information about all of that, just call us on the True Woman phone number at 1-877-966-2608, or log onto our website, ReviveOurHearts.com, and you can get the information there.
Leslie: You don’t have to have biological children in order to value and appreciate motherhood. Nancy explains why tomorrow. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.
Revive Our Hearts is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.
All Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.
1 Stacey Wiebe. "Born to Nurture." www.WomenTodayMagazine.com
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Note: Special offers available only during the broadcast of the radio series.
Leslie: Children are a blessing even for imperfect people.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: You may have a seriously messed up family tree, and you might have fearful thoughts about bringing more children into that family line. But just a reminder that God is the Redeeming God, and Christ can redeem your family line.
Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Thursday, June 24.
Statistics tell us there are more televisions per household than children per household, but the Bible doesn’t say, “Television is a blessing from the Lord.” Find out why the Bible described children as a blessing as Nancy continues the series, Affirmations of the True Woman Manifesto, Part 3.
Nancy: I have some very dear friends who last week were taking care of three of their grandchildren, three little granddaughters who were age 5 and under for five days so that the mom and dad, their daughter and son-in-law, could take a special anniversary trip. As you might imagine, this was not an easy thing.
I got an email in the middle of that period from “Gramps,” as they call him, and he described to me what he and Nana had gone through that day. Here’s what he said:
6:45 - Three and five-year-olds jump into bed and begin disputing with each other.
7:30 - Dirty diapers and dress time.
8:00 - Breakfast with less-than-happy campers.
9:00 - Played with grandkids:
Laid on concrete so they could draw chalk around me.
Sat on asphalt so they could play push ball with me.
Wrestled in the grass so they could climb on me.
Rode bicycles where they crashed into me.
That was the morning.
12:00 - Peanut and butter jelly sandwiches.
12:30 - Two more grandkids show up—now there are five.
1:30 - Road bikes again.
2:00 - Pet horses and climb tree.
3:00 - Purchased my first Blizzard in ten years.
3:30 - Go to park and sit on bench while grandkids hit every apparatus. 4:30 - Total social injustice—kids call me “mean” on the way home after all I did for them.
5:00 - Go home to get ready for supper.
5:45 - Go out for supper where my three join up with six more.
8:00 - Home to give kids baths.
8:30 - Kids crying, whining and all-round unhappy (past their bedtimes).
8:30 - Do dishes while Nana puts kids to bed.
9:30 - Hope to talk to my wife.
Well, some of you’ve been there, and as I read that, my heart went out to Gramps and Nana, and then my heart really went out to the daughter who is home with these three children the other 360 days of the year and actually has a fourth now—the fourth was with her—so she has four children age five and under. She loves being a mother, loves her children, and considers them a blessing even though there are days when you say nothing else gets done.
But this brings us to a happy point in our True Woman Manifesto, and one that I think we want to particularly emphasize, and that is that children are a blessing from God, and that’s this next statement in the Manifesto. Let me read the whole affirmation:
Children are a blessing from God; women are uniquely designed to be bearers and nurturers of life, whether it be their own biological or adopted children, or other children in their sphere of influence.
I read an article while I was putting this session together called “Born to Nurture?” The author said,
With few exceptions, the global trend from—east to west is later marriage, delayed motherhood and fewer children. And in some countries, pampered pets. In the U.K. the pet industry is booming—3.5 billion pounds a year—as more couples opt to have pets instead of babies.
These trends have altered definitions of "family" and have even spawned new words such as DINKS—the acronym describing couples with "Dual Income, No Kids." Meanwhile, in the U.S., the number of fertility clinics has increased nine-fold since 1986, as more women who delay conceiving find it difficult to do so in their later 30s and 40s.1
In fact, on average in the United States today, there are 2.24 TV's per household and 1.89 children per household—more TV's per household than children.
The world—not everybody in the world, but the essential world—view of children, particularly in our modern era, is that children past a certain point, past that 1.89 children, that children are a burden; that they’re too expensive (“We can’t afford to have children.”); that they’re an interruption to our lives, to our plans. They are an inconvenience.
How contrary this is to God’s view of children.
Do a study sometime if you really wonder about this, so you want to know, “How should you feel about children?” As you’re praying and thinking, if you’re in the season of life where you’re asking the Lord, “Should you have children, and how many children should you have?”—which, by the way, I cannot answer that question for you. Okay? Some of you are going to write and say, “How many children should I have? Should I have more children?” I cannot tell you the answer to that question, but what I can encourage you to do is to go to God’s Word.
Use a concordance and look up every reference you can find to children. Now, this will take you a while because there are a lot of references to children in the Old and in the New Testaments. Just look at the context and see what God’s Word has to say about children. Now, there were good children and bad children, righteous children and evil children, righteous parents, evil parents. You’ll find a lot of things. But look at how God used children. As you get into God’s Word, you will come to the inescapable conclusion that children are a gift. Children are a blessing, and they come from God.
As you read through the biblical account, you’ll see in the Scripture that children were longed for. They were prayed for. They were received with joy, even in old age, and some of them a really old age. Remember Sarah at 90? But Sarah, Rachel, Elisabeth, Hannah, these were women who longed for children, who prayed for children, who considered children a good gift from the Lord.
You see children as being a blessing from God. In Genesis chapter 17, God said to Abraham in relation to his wife Sarah, “I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her” (verse 16, NASB). Blessing and children often go together. He says, “Then I will bless her and she shall be a mother of nations.” Not just one child, but a mother of nations. And He’s talking about a post-menopausal woman. This is a blessing, "Kings of peoples will come from her."
Then in Genesis 28, we see Isaac blessing his son Jacob. He says, “God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples.” This was considered a favor, a mark of divine blessing that your children would have children and their children would have children.
In Genesis 33:5, there’s a passage where the brothers, twins, Jacob and Esau, are seeing each other for the first time in many years after being alienated and separated. Jacob comes with this whole host of women and children with him. Esau lifts up his eyes, he sees the women and the children, and he says, “Who are these with you? Jacob said, 'The children whom God has graciously given your servant.'" That’s the mindset that you see about children throughout the Scripture. They are a gracious gift from the Lord.
You remember the story of Ruth and Boaz. In chapter 4 of Ruth, on their wedding day, Ruth having been widowed but now God brings a husband, Boaz, into her life, and on their wedding day, the witnesses give a blessing to Boaz. They say, “May the LORD make the woman, who is coming into your house [that is Ruth], like Rachel and Leah [those were the two wives of Jacob], who together built up the house of Israel” (verse 11).
Their prayer is that Ruth will be fruitful, that she will be fruitful, that she will have numerous offspring, and there’s a recognition that it’s God who opens the womb. “May the Lord make your wife fruitful.” It’s God who opens and closes the womb.
The mention there of Rachel, who herself was barren until God did open her womb, as Ruth had been barren in Moab. The prayer, the blessing, is that, “May God now give your wife children.” Of course, we’re so thankful that God did give children to Ruth and Boaz because through that line came Christ our Messiah.
They go on to say in this blessing, “And may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman” (Ruth 4:12). “The offspring that the Lord will give you.” That’s another acknowledgement that children are a gift from God. There’s no question where these children come from. They are a gift from God.
Now this house of Perez whom Tamar bore to Judah, that’s a reference you probably haven’t thought a lot about, may not have researched carefully. It’s a fascinating passage, and it brings up a whole series of family circumstances that rival any modern-day soap opera.
Judah, who was one of the 12 sons of Jacob, had married a Canaanite woman. They had three sons. God took the lives of the two older sons because they were wicked, and after Judah’s Canaanite wife died, he was intimate with a woman who was disguised as a prostitute who turned out to be the widow of his firstborn son. Her name was Tamar.
Now, you probably didn’t get all that, but you probably did get that it was a really convoluted, messed-up story. Judah and Tamar, his widowed daughter-in-law, who he thinks is a prostitute, gave birth to twins sons, the eldest of whom was named Perez.
You say, “What a mess was that!” That’s a family background that by any definition would be called dysfunctional. But God is a redeeming God, and He is able to bring good out of the tangled messes of our lives.
Perez, you don’t hear anybody naming their kids Perez these days, but he was an important character. He was an ancestor of Boaz, and through the line from Perez to Boaz, married to Ruth, would come Israel’s two greatest kings: King David and the ultimate King, King Jesus.
Now take that home for just a moment. One or more of your children may be the result of sinful or foolish choices—yours or others—choices that were within your control or choices that weren’t. You may have a seriously messed-up family tree, and you might have fearful thoughts about bringing more children into that family line. But just a reminder that God is the Redeeming God. He redeemed this family line. Christ came to us through this line of Perez, and Christ can redeem your family line.
So the blessing here is: “May your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman" (Ruth 4:12).
Yes, there’s a mess in the background here, but may it be like a family line that God redeems and restores and brings something really beautiful out of it.
So we see throughout Scripture that children are a blessing from the Lord and that childbearing is for women both a privilege and a responsibility within the will of God.
Now, let me take you for just a moment. I’m going where angels fear to tread by doing this, but I’m going to take you to what one commentator has called, “One of the most difficult verses in the New Testament to interpret.” I’m not going to interpret it. I just want to get us to look at this first just for a moment.
First Timothy chapter 2, many of you are familiar with this passage. The context here is talking about men and women and differences between men and women in the context of the local church. I’m not going to take time to give you all the context for this passage. I’m not even going to take time to exegete the passage or really walk you through it, but I wanted you to see one point that I think it makes pretty clearly.
First Timothy 2, beginning with verse 13,
For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression (verses 13-14).
Now, here’s the first thing I want you to look at: verse 15. It’s one of the hardest verses in the New Testament to interpret. “Women will be preserved through the bearing of children.” Your translation may say, “They will be saved through childbearing” (NASB). “Women will be preserved through the bearing of children,” or “saved through childbearing if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint” (NASB).
Now, let me make it clear what this verse is not saying. It for sure is not saying that our souls will be eternally saved or justified through childbearing. That would contradict all the rest of Scripture that says we are saved by grace alone through faith alone. So the word saved must mean something different here, and it does mean something different. A better translation, it’s the word preserved. They will be preserved through the bearing of children.
That word preserved can mean "to rescue, to deliver, to preserve safe and unharmed." So what does Paul mean here that “women will be preserved through the bearing of children”? In what sense could we say that women are saved or preserved through childbearing? Well, again, we could spend eons on this verse, and I have actually talked about this verse in other series, but just think here about how the first woman Eve influenced and led her husband, and therefore the rest of the human race, into sin.
That’s a pretty heavy responsibility for Eve to bear and for us as women to bear, but through the bearing of children and raising those children up to know and follow Christ, God has graciously given to women the privilege of influencing generations for righteousness. As Eve’s sin influenced many, many generations toward unrighteousness, so as women give birth to and nurture children, they can be part of passing that legacy of righteousness on to subsequent generations.
So as a woman embraces and fulfills God’s calling in her life as a wife and mother, when it’s that season:
She is preserved from the stigma of the fall.
She is preserved from uselessness.
She is preserved from insignificance.
Now, Paul is not saying that all women can or should be married or have children. That’s clearly not true. For some women, God does not bring husbands into their lives. And some women who do marry, there’s some sitting in this room perhaps who have struggled with infertility. For some, God does not open their womb, for reasons that only He knows. That doesn’t mean that God is withholding blessing or judging. There’s a lot more we could say about this, but Paul is certainly not saying that all women should be married and have children.
I do think he’s stating a general principle that is emphasizing the significance of our calling as women to be bearers and nurturers of life, whether physical and/or spiritual children. It is such a joy to receive emails and letters and receive comments on our True Woman and Revive Our Hearts blogs from women who are really embracing this calling to be bearers and nurturers of life, and who are finding that children really are a blessing when they see them from God’s point of view.
We had, not too long ago, on the True Woman blog a video clip of a woman named Kari who came to one of our True Woman conferences and one of our videographers caught her. She gave this really precious testimony about how God had given her a new heart for her seven children, how she had been resentful—felt that they had just kind of stolen her life and kept her from being able to do things she’d wanted to do—and how God had just given her a new perspective and that she was coming to see that these children really are a blessing from the Lord.
We posted that little couple-minute clip on the True Woman blog and then lots of other women started chiming in—women who have children, women who don’t have children, women in different seasons of life—responding to this comment that Kari had made. Let me read just two or three of those comments that came in. One woman said:
God has given us six blessings and counting. I resented God and my husband for several years. I resented the loss of my desires and plans. I resented not being able to pick up and go to Target whenever I wanted. It’s been a journey to agree with God that every child is a reward and a life to cherish. Many of our friends are not able to conceive. How can I compare a child with the freedom to go to a store? It’s amazing how ultra-feminist, anti-biblical philosophies have subtly influenced my thinking and our culture.
Another woman said:
I only have four children, but I went through the same thing: focusing on what having all these young children has deprived me of rather than on the gift that they really are. My oldest is twelve; my youngest is four, and I am finally loving being a mom. I’m just sad it took me so long.
Then another woman chimed in. I’m glad she did because it reflects women who are listening to me today. She said:
I’m on the other end of the spectrum—almost forty, not married, and truly desirous to have children. Shortly after becoming a Christian at the age of 17, and after understanding the significant and wonderful calling of being a wife and mother, I looked forward to one day marrying and having a big family. I wanted six children of my own, especially since I’m an only child. It hasn’t happened, and some days I get very discouraged, but I know that God’s will for me is always good, and He brings me into contact with children in so many precious ways.
Now that brings to mind many comments. First of all, no blogging and interfacing with women on this subject can take away the pain a woman feels who has that unfulfilled longing for children, and there’s some in this room that would be true of, and writing about it doesn’t make the unfulfilled longing go away. Surrendering it to the Lord doesn’t make the unfulfilled longing go away.
We will all have unfulfilled longings this side of eternity, and as Amy Carmichael reminded us, "Unfulfilled longings are really material for sacrifice, something we can offer up to the Lord."
What strikes me is that both, the women who have the children and the woman who does not have the children, both have contentment issues to deal with. The women who don’t have the husband or children think, “If I could just have a husband and children, I would be fulfilled.” Then you have these women who have six or seven children, and they’re saying, “I wish I could go to Target.”
So really, discontentment is a function of the human heart. Some of you, your hands are full of little children right now, and you think, “Will I ever have a chance to go to the bathroom by myself without a little kid?” It’s very consuming. Some of you are in that 24/7 care with lots of little ones.
Some of you in this room are empty nesters, and you are wishing you could hear those pattering of feet and the hands coming under the bathroom door saying, “Mommy!” You’d give anything for that.
Some of you have lost a child, and you’d love to have some of the troubles again of the blessing of children.
Contentment comes from saying, “Lord, I receive whatever You choose for me as a gift from You. If that gift is children, I will welcome them as a blessing. I will receive them from Your hand.”
Then contentment as a woman comes from acknowledging that God has uniquely designed us to be bearers and nurturers of life. That can be done in a lot of different ways, and we’ll look at some of those ways in the next program. But God called us to be bearers and nurturers of life, and to just say, “Thank You, Lord, for making me a woman. Thank You for that calling. Thank You for that privilege. Amen.”
Leslie: The Bible describes children as a blessing. Nancy Leigh DeMoss has been exploring all that this means.
Janet Parshall is a mom who has seen firsthand that children are a blessing from the Lord. She writes about this blessing in the new book, Voices of the True Woman Movement. Her chapter is called “A Woman after God’s Own Heart.” It describes the pain that comes from wanting children and not having any, and it describes some of the pain that comes after having children. Through these pages you’ll see why children are a blessing even through the pain.
This is only one of many helpful chapters by a variety of godly women and one man in the book, Voices of the True Woman Movement. We’ll send this book as a way of saying, “Thanks,” when you send Revive Our Hearts a donation of any amount. Donate at ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Nancy?
Nancy: Today’s message on embracing children as a blessing makes me think of a comment that one woman wrote after attending the True Woman Conference in Chattanooga. She told us, “I’d only been home several hours and my son told me already I’m a better mom.”
Sadly, a lot of women who believe that children are a blessing don’t always act like it day after day. That’s why the True Woman conference is so helpful. It gives you time to get away, reflect on your life, learn from powerful speakers, and get encouragement from other women, then come back home different.
Please consider joining us for the True Woman conference in September in Indianapolis or in October in Ft. Worth, and remember that if you get a group of women to go with you, you can get considerable savings on each registration.
To get the information about all of that, just call us on the True Woman phone number at 1-877-966-2608, or log onto our website, ReviveOurHearts.com, and you can get the information there.
Leslie: You don’t have to have biological children in order to value and appreciate motherhood. Nancy explains why tomorrow. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.
Revive Our Hearts is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.
All Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.
1 Stacey Wiebe. "Born to Nurture." www.WomenTodayMagazine.com
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Monday, July 12, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Predicting the Future
“…a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion…will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief…which this sin-rent world has ever seen.”
A. A. Hodge, Princeton Professor, 1887
How was professor Hodge able to foresee such wretched consequences of godless, centralized education? Hodge’s ability to see one-hundred years into the future was based upon a solid Christian tradition arising from the Protestant Reformation. That tradition rooted itself into the soil of Scripture Alone.
Is there a question about who should educate children? The Bible has an answer for that.
Is there a question about what a child should learn? The Bible has an answer for that.
We need not feed at the trough of humanistic thinking to deal with the important questions of today. Rather, we should seek out the Words of Life, the Bible.
The hard part is understanding how to properly digest this heavenly Food. Professor Hodge was able to absorb the truth of it so well that he foresaw the doom of America. Again, how?
The fact of the Bible alone as the source of truth and practice also came with the tools of interpretation and application needed to dig into the Truth. The Puritans refined these tools (which are in the Bible itself) into eight simple rules; one of which states: “where a duty is commanded, the contrary sin is forbidden; and, where a sin is forbidden, the contrary duty is commanded.” Ephesians 4:28 offers a clear picture of this truth: “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needs.”
When God states that murder is forbidden, it also means that preserving life is commanded. If we are not to lie, we are to tell the truth instead. And when He commands that God should be the center of our lives and children should be instructed in the fear of the Lord, He forbids education “separated from religion.”
If we wish to see one-hundred years into the future, Christians need to return to their spiritual roots in the Bible. And they need to learn how to once again feed upon the Word for the expansion of the Kingdom, just like professor Hodge.
“…a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion…will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief…which this sin-rent world has ever seen.”
A. A. Hodge, Princeton Professor, 1887
How was professor Hodge able to foresee such wretched consequences of godless, centralized education? Hodge’s ability to see one-hundred years into the future was based upon a solid Christian tradition arising from the Protestant Reformation. That tradition rooted itself into the soil of Scripture Alone.
Is there a question about who should educate children? The Bible has an answer for that.
Is there a question about what a child should learn? The Bible has an answer for that.
We need not feed at the trough of humanistic thinking to deal with the important questions of today. Rather, we should seek out the Words of Life, the Bible.
The hard part is understanding how to properly digest this heavenly Food. Professor Hodge was able to absorb the truth of it so well that he foresaw the doom of America. Again, how?
The fact of the Bible alone as the source of truth and practice also came with the tools of interpretation and application needed to dig into the Truth. The Puritans refined these tools (which are in the Bible itself) into eight simple rules; one of which states: “where a duty is commanded, the contrary sin is forbidden; and, where a sin is forbidden, the contrary duty is commanded.” Ephesians 4:28 offers a clear picture of this truth: “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needs.”
When God states that murder is forbidden, it also means that preserving life is commanded. If we are not to lie, we are to tell the truth instead. And when He commands that God should be the center of our lives and children should be instructed in the fear of the Lord, He forbids education “separated from religion.”
If we wish to see one-hundred years into the future, Christians need to return to their spiritual roots in the Bible. And they need to learn how to once again feed upon the Word for the expansion of the Kingdom, just like professor Hodge.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Why We Need Enumeration
Volume 98, Program 10
7/2/2010
If a right is protected by the Constitution, is that good enough? It depends…. On today’s Home School Heartbeat, host Mike Farris explains why a Parental Rights Amendment is necessary, even when the right of parents to teach their children is already protected by the Constitution.
Mike Farris:
Ten years ago, Justice Scalia said in the case of Troxel v. Granville that “a right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is among the ‘unalienable Rights’ which the Declaration of Independence proclaims ‘all Men … are endowed by their Creator.’” In other words, parental authority is one of the “unenumerated rights” protected by the Ninth Amendment. Now, if this is true—and it is—then parental rights are already a part of the Constitution. So why do we need a Parental Rights Amendment?
Well, here’s why.
In this same case, Justice Scalia goes on to say, “I do not believe that the power which the Constitution confers upon me as a judge entitles me to deny legal effect to laws that … infringe upon … that unenumerated right [of parental authority].” In other words, judges cannot grant you protection for your inalienable rights if those rights are not specifically recognized by the Constitution.
Scalia says that if a law passed by Congress or by a state legislature infringes on one of your unenumerated Ninth-Amendment rights, he can’t do anything about it—you’ll have to take it up with the legislature. But if that right is “enumerated” in the Constitution—or in an Amendment—then he, as a judge, can protect it.
Should we need a Parental Rights Amendment? No, we shouldn’t.
But do we need a Parental Rights Amendment in light of what the Supreme Court has done? Unquestionably. I’m Mike Farris.
Volume 98, Program 10
7/2/2010
If a right is protected by the Constitution, is that good enough? It depends…. On today’s Home School Heartbeat, host Mike Farris explains why a Parental Rights Amendment is necessary, even when the right of parents to teach their children is already protected by the Constitution.
Mike Farris:
Ten years ago, Justice Scalia said in the case of Troxel v. Granville that “a right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is among the ‘unalienable Rights’ which the Declaration of Independence proclaims ‘all Men … are endowed by their Creator.’” In other words, parental authority is one of the “unenumerated rights” protected by the Ninth Amendment. Now, if this is true—and it is—then parental rights are already a part of the Constitution. So why do we need a Parental Rights Amendment?
Well, here’s why.
In this same case, Justice Scalia goes on to say, “I do not believe that the power which the Constitution confers upon me as a judge entitles me to deny legal effect to laws that … infringe upon … that unenumerated right [of parental authority].” In other words, judges cannot grant you protection for your inalienable rights if those rights are not specifically recognized by the Constitution.
Scalia says that if a law passed by Congress or by a state legislature infringes on one of your unenumerated Ninth-Amendment rights, he can’t do anything about it—you’ll have to take it up with the legislature. But if that right is “enumerated” in the Constitution—or in an Amendment—then he, as a judge, can protect it.
Should we need a Parental Rights Amendment? No, we shouldn’t.
But do we need a Parental Rights Amendment in light of what the Supreme Court has done? Unquestionably. I’m Mike Farris.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
David Barton of Wallbuilder on Glenn Beck
Watch David Barton on the
Glenn Beck Program this Friday, July 2!
From Home School Heartbeat
Inalienable = Fundamental
Are “fundamental rights” the same as the Declaration of Independence’s “unalienable rights”? Today on Home School Heartbeat, host Mike Farris responds to another criticism of the Parental Rights Amendment by digging into the historical record.
Mike Farris:
I’ve heard criticism leveled at the Parental Rights Amendment because it calls parental rights “fundamental” instead of “inalienable.” This objection states that the term “fundamental rights” was recently invented by the Supreme Court and is not from the era of the Founding Fathers.
Well, the historical record shows to the contrary. For example, in 1786, James Madison, who’s the “father of the Constitution,” wrote of the people’s “fundamental right of choosing their own legislators.”
And the anti-federalists, who campaigned effectively for a bill of rights, often employed the term “fundamental rights” to describe what was missing from our Constitution.
Take for example Letters from a Federal Farmer No. 16, penned in 1788. It repeatedly uses the term “fundamental rights” in reference to trial by jury, habeas corpus, and freedom of the press.
The anti-federalists argued that these rights should be spelled out, and the plain historical fact is that they won. The outcome of that argument gave us the First Amendment.
Even in more recent Supreme Court decisions, the overwhelming view is that “fundamental rights” describe all of our basic liberties—those rights which may never be taken away by government.
The Parental Rights Amendment states that the liberty of parents to direct their children's upbringing and education is a fundamental right. Which, historically, means exactly the same thing as an “inalienable” right. It’s the perfect language to use in amending our Constitution. I’m Mike Farris.
Are “fundamental rights” the same as the Declaration of Independence’s “unalienable rights”? Today on Home School Heartbeat, host Mike Farris responds to another criticism of the Parental Rights Amendment by digging into the historical record.
Mike Farris:
I’ve heard criticism leveled at the Parental Rights Amendment because it calls parental rights “fundamental” instead of “inalienable.” This objection states that the term “fundamental rights” was recently invented by the Supreme Court and is not from the era of the Founding Fathers.
Well, the historical record shows to the contrary. For example, in 1786, James Madison, who’s the “father of the Constitution,” wrote of the people’s “fundamental right of choosing their own legislators.”
And the anti-federalists, who campaigned effectively for a bill of rights, often employed the term “fundamental rights” to describe what was missing from our Constitution.
Take for example Letters from a Federal Farmer No. 16, penned in 1788. It repeatedly uses the term “fundamental rights” in reference to trial by jury, habeas corpus, and freedom of the press.
The anti-federalists argued that these rights should be spelled out, and the plain historical fact is that they won. The outcome of that argument gave us the First Amendment.
Even in more recent Supreme Court decisions, the overwhelming view is that “fundamental rights” describe all of our basic liberties—those rights which may never be taken away by government.
The Parental Rights Amendment states that the liberty of parents to direct their children's upbringing and education is a fundamental right. Which, historically, means exactly the same thing as an “inalienable” right. It’s the perfect language to use in amending our Constitution. I’m Mike Farris.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
The Core of Femininity
Leslie Basham: Nancy Leigh DeMoss says all women, whether married or single, are called to display femininity.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Now that doesn’t mean that we have to wear ruffles and pink, okay? It does mean we have to have a feminine heart, to exhibit a distinctively feminine spirit.
Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Monday, June 28. No one likes being stereotyped. God created you as an individual and has called you to live out biblical femininity in a unique way. Here’s Nancy to help you get to the heart of femininity.
Nancy: Now we come today to a statement, an affirmation in the True Woman Manifesto that addresses women in every season of life. The Manifesto says,
God’s plan for gender is wider than marriage; all women, whether married or single, are to model femininity in your various relationships, by exhibiting a distinctive modesty, responsiveness, and gentleness of spirit.
Every Christian woman, regardless of our season of life is called to glorify God and to reflect Christ to our world and to edify both men and women around us by living out our distinctive femininity. Now that’s a bit of a hard word to say. It’s not an easy word to spell for some.
The word carries with it a lot of baggage today. There are a lot of misperceptions about femininity, a lot of confusion in people’s minds about what that means. In fact, I would venture to say that if we took a poll today and people in this room would be really honest, that even many of you who have come here for a Revive Our Hearts radio recording session might say that that word, femininity, conjures up negative thoughts in your mind. Now, not every woman would say that, but I bet some would. Negative connotations of what femininity is.
I sometimes in preparation for teaching sessions will get on a conference call or together with a group of women from different seasons of life just to pick their brains and to get input and insights about different things we’re going to be talking about. So I had a conference call a couple of weeks ago for this section of the Manifesto that we’re teaching right now. When this thing came up about femininity, it’s interesting how the opinions started to fly.
But it was interesting to hear the things they were honest about in terms of their past or present perception of femininity. One younger woman, still in her late 20s, said, “That word just has a negative connotation.” She said, “In my flesh when I hear that word I think weak; walk all over me; it’s okay, I’m nothing.”
And then she said, “When I knew we were going to be talking about this, I started asking myself what is femininity? I don’t have a clue what it is,” she said. And here’s a woman who is serving the Lord in a ministry. Now, she does have a clue what it is, but she’s realized that it’s a tough thing to really understand and there is some negative baggage that she has associated with this term.
There’s some today who define femininity in terms of a specific look, certain clothing or hairstyles, or specific activities. It’s interesting, when we touch on the issue of femininity on our teenage girls' blog, Lies Young Women Believe, oh, do the comments start to fly. These girls have opinions! If you want an education about what teenage girls are thinking, from Christian homes most of them, go on to that blog.
One girl commented on that blog, and she said,
When I was little, I think I beat up every guy at my school. LOL [laugh out loud]. So basically I’m just not that feminine. I don’t collect hundreds of lipstick colors. I think I have two. I don’t look through Southern Living décor books. I look through Sports Illustrated instead. I, like, only go to the mall maybe three times a year. I’m not trying to be manly or a guy (and I haven’t beat up any guys for a few years now, LOL). But I’m just not that feminine.
Now she has reduced femininity, as have a lot of us subconsciously perhaps, to things you do, certain activities, certain ways of looking or dressing, or certain demographics—married, mother. Are these things that define our femininity? It would be a mistake to say that femininity has nothing to do with marriage or motherhood or with the way that women dress or appear or the activities they enjoy, but these things are not the essence of what it means to be a woman.
They are simply expressions of what is in our hearts. And some of those expressions may look different for different women in different seasons of life, in different eras, and in different cultures that may look different. If you make these things—your marital status, how many children you do or don’t have, your wardrobe, your activities—if you make those things the essence of femininity, you can totally miss the real heart of the matter.
As someone said on our conference call a couple weeks ago, "You can dress like a church lady but have the heart of a prostitute." Now, I will confess that this session on femininity is the most difficult one for me that I have tackled thus far in the True Woman Manifesto, not because I don’t like the subject, not because I don’t care about it, but because trying to really define what is the essence of femininity I found was much harder than I would have anticipated.
I found myself grappling with questions. What is cultural? What is biblical? I am just going to teach this session based on the insights the Lord has given me to this point. If I were to teach this a year from now or ten years from now, I’m sure there are additional insights that the Lord would give to me because I’m growing in my understanding of the essence of my womanhood.
Elisabeth Elliot said, “In order to learn what it means to be a woman, we must start with the One who made her.” And she’s absolutely right. The Designer and Architect of life is the One we need to look to to help us understand who we are and how we’re wired, and what that means, and how we are the same as men and how we are different from men.
Scripture, thankfully, reveals God’s original pattern for male and female. Now it doesn’t fill in all the details, and some of us are list makers. That’s what we want. But it does give us a sketch, a picture that God’s Holy Spirit will help make application to our lives as to what this looks like for us.
But let me again just go back to the book of Genesis—Genesis 1 and 2. That’s where so much of this started—male and female—and it helps us to get a grasp of what it means to be a woman. Genesis 1, verse 27, we’ve talked about this verse in this series.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
So we see that from the outset male and female are distinct. They are not interchangeable parts. Together they were created to reflect what God is like. Man and woman together in their complementary relationships represent the image of God in a way that neither male nor female can fully do alone.
Now, we need to be careful in saying that because it doesn’t mean that as a woman you cannot reflect the image of God or that you are not fully human or you are not complete because God may not give you a husband. But God created male and female together to reflect His image in a way that cannot be done as magnificently if there were just male or just female.
In Genesis 2 we have a little bit more detailed account of the creation of male and female. Let me just read it to you. It’s so familiar and the problem is some of us have been around this stuff too long and we start to get glazed eyes when we look at these familiar passages. We need the wonder of what these Scriptures say to us and how they speak to us in our season of life.
Genesis 2, verse 18:
Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him."
Now that helper fit for him is made by God for a man who is not complete by himself. That says a whole lot about what it means to be a woman. Our femininity—so much of it is found in that concept of why God made the woman in the first place. Verse 19:
Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was it’s name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
So the LORD God [I think it’s after Adam realized there is not anyone on this planet who corresponds to me. After he realized that, that not one of these animals would do, God] caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. [So different from the way God created other living creatures.]And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman and brought her to the man (verses 19-22).
What an incredible picture this is. The first woman fashioned by God. Now for starters, that’s breathtaking, that we were made by God. And the way God designed us is best. It’s good. It’s holy. It’s beautiful. It’s sacred. God designed us. He made us.
The first woman was fashioned by God for the man. She was designed to be a helper fit for him, suitable for him, corresponding to him, complementing him. Again, we’ve done whole series on Revive Our Hearts on different aspects of this True Woman Manifesto, so I’m just picking on highlights of each of these points in this series. You can go back to our archives and get a lot more teaching on each of these points.
She was fashioned by God for the man. She was made from the man, not out of the ground or the dust as the man and the animals were, but out of Adam’s very bone. Bone of his bone. Flesh of his flesh. She was made for the man. She was made from the man, and she was given by God to the man. Given by God to the man.
And when the man received that gift, he had a celebration. He was thrilled. He was effusive. You can’t tell that in the English translation here, but you get just a sense.
Then the man said, “This at last [at last what I have needed] is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man (verse 23).
Now by naming the woman, Adam was taking responsibility to be her husband, to protect her, to care for her, to provide for her. And in verse 23 we have a marvelous play on words that you can tell best in the Hebrew language. “She shall be called Woman,” the Hebrew word Ishsha, “because she was taken out of Man,” the Hebrew word Ish.
These two Hebrew words sound almost identical, but their meanings are different and they reflect the complementary relationship between the woman and the man. Ish, the word for man, comes from a root that means "strength." You add a feminine ending to the word Ish and you get Ishsha, almost identical sounding word. That word comes from a root that means "soft." Ish for man comes from a word that means strength. Ishsha, the word for woman, comes from a word that means soft.
Mary Kassian is one of the bloggers on the True Woman blog, a dear friend, an incredible intellect. She’s a theologian. She’s a scholar, and she has provided such a service to the body of Christ with many of the things that she has written, including her newer book, Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild. If you don’t have that book, you want to get a hold of that.
She has written this about that difference between Ish and Ishsha, strength and soft. She says, “The implication becomes clearer when we observe the biblical meaning of a man’s 'strength.'" She gives several Scripture references where it speaks of a man’s strength. Then she draws this conclusion from those Scriptures.
Strength refers to a man’s manhood, his potency, virility, and procreative power. By contrast, a woman’s "softness" has to do with her pregnability, penetrability, and vulnerability (in a very positive sense).
Another writer, Stu Weber, has said it this way.
The ancient Hebrew word for man is Ish, [which he says, relates to the word] "piercer." The term for a woman is Ishsha, "pierced one." While the anatomical or sexual elements are clear, the force of the words is much larger in scope.
Biology, physiology bears this out. One is the initiator. One is the receiver. But he says the meaning here is far more significant than the obvious physical. He says,
The physical is a parable of the spiritual. At his core, a man is an initiator—a piercer, one who penetrates, moves forward, advances toward the horizon, leads. At the core of masculinity is initiation—the provision of direction, security, stability, and connection.1
Now if that’s true and I believe that it is; there are many other parts of Scripture that would bear this out. If at the core of masculinity is initiation, then at the core of femininity is responsiveness, receptivity.
Now when I talk about all this, we need to remember that we are dealing with a mystery. That’s what Paul says in Ephesians, chapter 5, that our human sexuality, manhood, womanhood, marriage, that’s all a mystery that represents the even deeper, more profound mystery of the relationship of Christ with His Church. There’s no way to fully fathom or grasp the significance or the meaning of manhood or womanhood any more than we can fully grasp the mystery, the significance of Christ’s relationship with His Church.
There is a danger of trying to reduce our manhood, our womanhood to a set of lists, to a set of bullet points. This is feminine, this is masculine. But in spite of the fact that we don’t want to reduce it to a set of lists, we still need to recognize it’s importance and to remember that all women, whether married or single, are to model femininity—distinctive womanhood—in their various relationships by exhibiting a distinctive modesty, responsiveness, and gentleness of spirit.
I think when I say those things you can picture some of the opposite of those characteristics. A woman who is using her body, her feminine wiles, to lure in men. That’s not distinctively feminine. Now that may be the world’s view of femininity but that is not a biblical type of femininity.
Aggressive women have this attitude. They’re in your face. There’s a harshness, a brazenness, a hardness in so many women today, and I look at this and I sense it, and you know what I’m talking about, and you feel she’s missing so much of what God created her to do and to be. Women who are controlling, who are manipulative, who are stubborn. This is the opposite of this modest, responsive femininity, this gentleness of spirit.
Now that doesn’t mean that we have to wear ruffles and pink, okay? It does mean we have to have a feminine heart, to exhibit a distinctively feminine spirit. It does not mean that we have to have a timid personality, to be sedate, to be a wallflower type of person. In fact, to the contrary, we are called to be bold, courageous, women of faith.
But there’s a courageous femininity that is distinct from courageous masculinity. It looks different. It feels different. You may not be able to explain it fully, and I’ve struggled to explain it myself. But you know it when you see it. You know it when you experience it or its opposite.
This femininity doesn’t mean that we never speak. It does mean that we say the right thing at the right time in the right way. It’s distinctively fulfilling what God has made us to be as women that is different from men.
Now I realize that it is a fallen world and there are a lot of women today who have never married, are widowed, divorced, single moms, and they’re forced to step into some of those roles of provider, protector for themselves and their children. Women in this room who are carrying those responsibilities. But let me say you can do those things and still have a feminine spirit.
Unfortunately for most of us, there are very few positive role models today when it comes to the matter of femininity. In fact, as you look around in our culture, you’re hard pressed to point to really great models of womanhood. We have quite the opposite in so many women who are well known. Some of you are raising daughters, you’ve got teenage daughters, daughters in their 20s and they’re looking to these icons of the world and that’s what they’re basing their understanding of womanhood on, and it’s taking them in all kinds of wrong directions, unhealthy directions.
I want to encourage you to look to the Scripture rather than to culture for your role models. That’s something that I have done over the years that has been a huge help. My flesh as much as anybody else’s needs to be sanctified when it comes to living out my biblical womanhood. There is a lot in me, in my flesh, that does not represent Christ-like, biblical femininity.
So I go to women of the Scripture, and I’m helped to see their lives. Sometimes by their negative role models. Who comes to mind? Jezebel. Not someone you want to follow. But you look at the traits in her life and you realize there’s a Jezebel in all of us. But thank God, there’s some wonderful, positive role models in the Scripture and some women who were some of both.
I think of Sarah. There are a lot of positive things to emulate about her, some not so positive things. Miriam. We’ve done whole series on some of these women on Revive Our Hearts. A lot of positive things to emulate about Miriam, some not so positive things. Other women: Ruth, Esther, Deborah, Mary of Bethany, Mary of Nazareth, Elizabeth, Dorcas, and Lydia. As you study the lives of these women, you see how did God use them, how did they glorify God, how were they distinctively womanly? It gives us some positive role models and some help from their examples.
Now why does this all matter? Does it all really matter? Is the loss of femininity in our culture such a serious thing? There are a lot of other truths we could focus on. We do talk about a lot of other things on Revive Our Hearts. But is it really important to keep coming back to this one point? Biblical womanhood. Femininity.
Let me just give you two quick reasons why it does matter a lot. Number one, it matters because what God made is good. It’s beautiful. It’s best and it brings blessing to those who align their lives with it. When we reject God’s pattern, God’s plan for our lives, as women or as men, we experience pain and consequences. So it’s the way to fullness. It’s the way to blessing. It’s the way to life, to live out our womanhood as women of God.
Number two, it matters supremely because it is part of a bigger picture. Our womanhood, manhood, masculinity, femininity and how we interact with each other and how we complement each other tells an incredible story. Our manhood and womanhood, male, female. It’s the vehicle that God has chosen to reflect His image and to display His glory and to show the world His great redemptive plan.
Male and female. It’s so much bigger than gender. It’s a picture that God has designed to portray the gospel. As men reflect, we read this again in Ephesians 5, the sacrificial, covenant-keeping love of Christ who laid down His life for His Bride. As women reflect the responsiveness of Christ to her Lord to His salvation, as we reflect with men and women together the roles within the Trinity.
Again, we’ve done whole series that talk about these things, but just to stay here. This is a lot at stake. There’s a bigger picture here. The picture that God has designed of manhood and womanhood to display the gospel for the fame of His Name so that the world may praise Him, may rejoice in Him, may turn to Christ, may love Him, may pursue Him and may understand His incredible covenant-keeping love and redemptive plan. That’s the biggest reason that I want to be and I want you to be a true woman of God. It really does matter.
Leslie: When you embrace biblical womanhood, the purpose isn’t to be fulfilled or to forward a social program or fit a stereotype. Nancy Leigh DeMoss has been taking us to the heart of this issue. Will you embrace God’s calling on your life to show a picture of the gospel?
Thousands of women are coming together to learn how to do that more effectively. At a True Woman conference you’ll study God’s Word alongside others hungry to know God’s call on their lives. The speakers have a passion not just for telling funny stories or amusing a crowd. They want you to know God’s Word and God’s truth. Those speakers, like Nancy, Joni Eareckson Tada, Kay Arthur, Janet Parshall, Karen Loritts and many others will help you explore the Scriptures and learn to be God’s true woman in our day.
Would you get more information on the True Woman conferences coming to Indianapolis in September or Fort Worth in October? Just get the details on the speaker lineup at each location and make your plans to take part in an event that will send you home a different woman. The details are at ReviveOurHearts.com. You can also call our special True Woman number at 877-966-2608.
Here’s some sobering news. Everyone is going to go through suffering in this life. The good news is that your suffering can serve an important purpose. Learn to find the meaning in suffering when Nancy’s back tomorrow for Revive Our Hearts.
Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.
All Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version.
1 Stu Weber. Tender Warrior: God's Intention for a Man. p. 45.
Leslie Basham: Nancy Leigh DeMoss says all women, whether married or single, are called to display femininity.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Now that doesn’t mean that we have to wear ruffles and pink, okay? It does mean we have to have a feminine heart, to exhibit a distinctively feminine spirit.
Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Monday, June 28. No one likes being stereotyped. God created you as an individual and has called you to live out biblical femininity in a unique way. Here’s Nancy to help you get to the heart of femininity.
Nancy: Now we come today to a statement, an affirmation in the True Woman Manifesto that addresses women in every season of life. The Manifesto says,
God’s plan for gender is wider than marriage; all women, whether married or single, are to model femininity in your various relationships, by exhibiting a distinctive modesty, responsiveness, and gentleness of spirit.
Every Christian woman, regardless of our season of life is called to glorify God and to reflect Christ to our world and to edify both men and women around us by living out our distinctive femininity. Now that’s a bit of a hard word to say. It’s not an easy word to spell for some.
The word carries with it a lot of baggage today. There are a lot of misperceptions about femininity, a lot of confusion in people’s minds about what that means. In fact, I would venture to say that if we took a poll today and people in this room would be really honest, that even many of you who have come here for a Revive Our Hearts radio recording session might say that that word, femininity, conjures up negative thoughts in your mind. Now, not every woman would say that, but I bet some would. Negative connotations of what femininity is.
I sometimes in preparation for teaching sessions will get on a conference call or together with a group of women from different seasons of life just to pick their brains and to get input and insights about different things we’re going to be talking about. So I had a conference call a couple of weeks ago for this section of the Manifesto that we’re teaching right now. When this thing came up about femininity, it’s interesting how the opinions started to fly.
But it was interesting to hear the things they were honest about in terms of their past or present perception of femininity. One younger woman, still in her late 20s, said, “That word just has a negative connotation.” She said, “In my flesh when I hear that word I think weak; walk all over me; it’s okay, I’m nothing.”
And then she said, “When I knew we were going to be talking about this, I started asking myself what is femininity? I don’t have a clue what it is,” she said. And here’s a woman who is serving the Lord in a ministry. Now, she does have a clue what it is, but she’s realized that it’s a tough thing to really understand and there is some negative baggage that she has associated with this term.
There’s some today who define femininity in terms of a specific look, certain clothing or hairstyles, or specific activities. It’s interesting, when we touch on the issue of femininity on our teenage girls' blog, Lies Young Women Believe, oh, do the comments start to fly. These girls have opinions! If you want an education about what teenage girls are thinking, from Christian homes most of them, go on to that blog.
One girl commented on that blog, and she said,
When I was little, I think I beat up every guy at my school. LOL [laugh out loud]. So basically I’m just not that feminine. I don’t collect hundreds of lipstick colors. I think I have two. I don’t look through Southern Living décor books. I look through Sports Illustrated instead. I, like, only go to the mall maybe three times a year. I’m not trying to be manly or a guy (and I haven’t beat up any guys for a few years now, LOL). But I’m just not that feminine.
Now she has reduced femininity, as have a lot of us subconsciously perhaps, to things you do, certain activities, certain ways of looking or dressing, or certain demographics—married, mother. Are these things that define our femininity? It would be a mistake to say that femininity has nothing to do with marriage or motherhood or with the way that women dress or appear or the activities they enjoy, but these things are not the essence of what it means to be a woman.
They are simply expressions of what is in our hearts. And some of those expressions may look different for different women in different seasons of life, in different eras, and in different cultures that may look different. If you make these things—your marital status, how many children you do or don’t have, your wardrobe, your activities—if you make those things the essence of femininity, you can totally miss the real heart of the matter.
As someone said on our conference call a couple weeks ago, "You can dress like a church lady but have the heart of a prostitute." Now, I will confess that this session on femininity is the most difficult one for me that I have tackled thus far in the True Woman Manifesto, not because I don’t like the subject, not because I don’t care about it, but because trying to really define what is the essence of femininity I found was much harder than I would have anticipated.
I found myself grappling with questions. What is cultural? What is biblical? I am just going to teach this session based on the insights the Lord has given me to this point. If I were to teach this a year from now or ten years from now, I’m sure there are additional insights that the Lord would give to me because I’m growing in my understanding of the essence of my womanhood.
Elisabeth Elliot said, “In order to learn what it means to be a woman, we must start with the One who made her.” And she’s absolutely right. The Designer and Architect of life is the One we need to look to to help us understand who we are and how we’re wired, and what that means, and how we are the same as men and how we are different from men.
Scripture, thankfully, reveals God’s original pattern for male and female. Now it doesn’t fill in all the details, and some of us are list makers. That’s what we want. But it does give us a sketch, a picture that God’s Holy Spirit will help make application to our lives as to what this looks like for us.
But let me again just go back to the book of Genesis—Genesis 1 and 2. That’s where so much of this started—male and female—and it helps us to get a grasp of what it means to be a woman. Genesis 1, verse 27, we’ve talked about this verse in this series.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
So we see that from the outset male and female are distinct. They are not interchangeable parts. Together they were created to reflect what God is like. Man and woman together in their complementary relationships represent the image of God in a way that neither male nor female can fully do alone.
Now, we need to be careful in saying that because it doesn’t mean that as a woman you cannot reflect the image of God or that you are not fully human or you are not complete because God may not give you a husband. But God created male and female together to reflect His image in a way that cannot be done as magnificently if there were just male or just female.
In Genesis 2 we have a little bit more detailed account of the creation of male and female. Let me just read it to you. It’s so familiar and the problem is some of us have been around this stuff too long and we start to get glazed eyes when we look at these familiar passages. We need the wonder of what these Scriptures say to us and how they speak to us in our season of life.
Genesis 2, verse 18:
Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him."
Now that helper fit for him is made by God for a man who is not complete by himself. That says a whole lot about what it means to be a woman. Our femininity—so much of it is found in that concept of why God made the woman in the first place. Verse 19:
Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was it’s name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
So the LORD God [I think it’s after Adam realized there is not anyone on this planet who corresponds to me. After he realized that, that not one of these animals would do, God] caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. [So different from the way God created other living creatures.]And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman and brought her to the man (verses 19-22).
What an incredible picture this is. The first woman fashioned by God. Now for starters, that’s breathtaking, that we were made by God. And the way God designed us is best. It’s good. It’s holy. It’s beautiful. It’s sacred. God designed us. He made us.
The first woman was fashioned by God for the man. She was designed to be a helper fit for him, suitable for him, corresponding to him, complementing him. Again, we’ve done whole series on Revive Our Hearts on different aspects of this True Woman Manifesto, so I’m just picking on highlights of each of these points in this series. You can go back to our archives and get a lot more teaching on each of these points.
She was fashioned by God for the man. She was made from the man, not out of the ground or the dust as the man and the animals were, but out of Adam’s very bone. Bone of his bone. Flesh of his flesh. She was made for the man. She was made from the man, and she was given by God to the man. Given by God to the man.
And when the man received that gift, he had a celebration. He was thrilled. He was effusive. You can’t tell that in the English translation here, but you get just a sense.
Then the man said, “This at last [at last what I have needed] is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man (verse 23).
Now by naming the woman, Adam was taking responsibility to be her husband, to protect her, to care for her, to provide for her. And in verse 23 we have a marvelous play on words that you can tell best in the Hebrew language. “She shall be called Woman,” the Hebrew word Ishsha, “because she was taken out of Man,” the Hebrew word Ish.
These two Hebrew words sound almost identical, but their meanings are different and they reflect the complementary relationship between the woman and the man. Ish, the word for man, comes from a root that means "strength." You add a feminine ending to the word Ish and you get Ishsha, almost identical sounding word. That word comes from a root that means "soft." Ish for man comes from a word that means strength. Ishsha, the word for woman, comes from a word that means soft.
Mary Kassian is one of the bloggers on the True Woman blog, a dear friend, an incredible intellect. She’s a theologian. She’s a scholar, and she has provided such a service to the body of Christ with many of the things that she has written, including her newer book, Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild. If you don’t have that book, you want to get a hold of that.
She has written this about that difference between Ish and Ishsha, strength and soft. She says, “The implication becomes clearer when we observe the biblical meaning of a man’s 'strength.'" She gives several Scripture references where it speaks of a man’s strength. Then she draws this conclusion from those Scriptures.
Strength refers to a man’s manhood, his potency, virility, and procreative power. By contrast, a woman’s "softness" has to do with her pregnability, penetrability, and vulnerability (in a very positive sense).
Another writer, Stu Weber, has said it this way.
The ancient Hebrew word for man is Ish, [which he says, relates to the word] "piercer." The term for a woman is Ishsha, "pierced one." While the anatomical or sexual elements are clear, the force of the words is much larger in scope.
Biology, physiology bears this out. One is the initiator. One is the receiver. But he says the meaning here is far more significant than the obvious physical. He says,
The physical is a parable of the spiritual. At his core, a man is an initiator—a piercer, one who penetrates, moves forward, advances toward the horizon, leads. At the core of masculinity is initiation—the provision of direction, security, stability, and connection.1
Now if that’s true and I believe that it is; there are many other parts of Scripture that would bear this out. If at the core of masculinity is initiation, then at the core of femininity is responsiveness, receptivity.
Now when I talk about all this, we need to remember that we are dealing with a mystery. That’s what Paul says in Ephesians, chapter 5, that our human sexuality, manhood, womanhood, marriage, that’s all a mystery that represents the even deeper, more profound mystery of the relationship of Christ with His Church. There’s no way to fully fathom or grasp the significance or the meaning of manhood or womanhood any more than we can fully grasp the mystery, the significance of Christ’s relationship with His Church.
There is a danger of trying to reduce our manhood, our womanhood to a set of lists, to a set of bullet points. This is feminine, this is masculine. But in spite of the fact that we don’t want to reduce it to a set of lists, we still need to recognize it’s importance and to remember that all women, whether married or single, are to model femininity—distinctive womanhood—in their various relationships by exhibiting a distinctive modesty, responsiveness, and gentleness of spirit.
I think when I say those things you can picture some of the opposite of those characteristics. A woman who is using her body, her feminine wiles, to lure in men. That’s not distinctively feminine. Now that may be the world’s view of femininity but that is not a biblical type of femininity.
Aggressive women have this attitude. They’re in your face. There’s a harshness, a brazenness, a hardness in so many women today, and I look at this and I sense it, and you know what I’m talking about, and you feel she’s missing so much of what God created her to do and to be. Women who are controlling, who are manipulative, who are stubborn. This is the opposite of this modest, responsive femininity, this gentleness of spirit.
Now that doesn’t mean that we have to wear ruffles and pink, okay? It does mean we have to have a feminine heart, to exhibit a distinctively feminine spirit. It does not mean that we have to have a timid personality, to be sedate, to be a wallflower type of person. In fact, to the contrary, we are called to be bold, courageous, women of faith.
But there’s a courageous femininity that is distinct from courageous masculinity. It looks different. It feels different. You may not be able to explain it fully, and I’ve struggled to explain it myself. But you know it when you see it. You know it when you experience it or its opposite.
This femininity doesn’t mean that we never speak. It does mean that we say the right thing at the right time in the right way. It’s distinctively fulfilling what God has made us to be as women that is different from men.
Now I realize that it is a fallen world and there are a lot of women today who have never married, are widowed, divorced, single moms, and they’re forced to step into some of those roles of provider, protector for themselves and their children. Women in this room who are carrying those responsibilities. But let me say you can do those things and still have a feminine spirit.
Unfortunately for most of us, there are very few positive role models today when it comes to the matter of femininity. In fact, as you look around in our culture, you’re hard pressed to point to really great models of womanhood. We have quite the opposite in so many women who are well known. Some of you are raising daughters, you’ve got teenage daughters, daughters in their 20s and they’re looking to these icons of the world and that’s what they’re basing their understanding of womanhood on, and it’s taking them in all kinds of wrong directions, unhealthy directions.
I want to encourage you to look to the Scripture rather than to culture for your role models. That’s something that I have done over the years that has been a huge help. My flesh as much as anybody else’s needs to be sanctified when it comes to living out my biblical womanhood. There is a lot in me, in my flesh, that does not represent Christ-like, biblical femininity.
So I go to women of the Scripture, and I’m helped to see their lives. Sometimes by their negative role models. Who comes to mind? Jezebel. Not someone you want to follow. But you look at the traits in her life and you realize there’s a Jezebel in all of us. But thank God, there’s some wonderful, positive role models in the Scripture and some women who were some of both.
I think of Sarah. There are a lot of positive things to emulate about her, some not so positive things. Miriam. We’ve done whole series on some of these women on Revive Our Hearts. A lot of positive things to emulate about Miriam, some not so positive things. Other women: Ruth, Esther, Deborah, Mary of Bethany, Mary of Nazareth, Elizabeth, Dorcas, and Lydia. As you study the lives of these women, you see how did God use them, how did they glorify God, how were they distinctively womanly? It gives us some positive role models and some help from their examples.
Now why does this all matter? Does it all really matter? Is the loss of femininity in our culture such a serious thing? There are a lot of other truths we could focus on. We do talk about a lot of other things on Revive Our Hearts. But is it really important to keep coming back to this one point? Biblical womanhood. Femininity.
Let me just give you two quick reasons why it does matter a lot. Number one, it matters because what God made is good. It’s beautiful. It’s best and it brings blessing to those who align their lives with it. When we reject God’s pattern, God’s plan for our lives, as women or as men, we experience pain and consequences. So it’s the way to fullness. It’s the way to blessing. It’s the way to life, to live out our womanhood as women of God.
Number two, it matters supremely because it is part of a bigger picture. Our womanhood, manhood, masculinity, femininity and how we interact with each other and how we complement each other tells an incredible story. Our manhood and womanhood, male, female. It’s the vehicle that God has chosen to reflect His image and to display His glory and to show the world His great redemptive plan.
Male and female. It’s so much bigger than gender. It’s a picture that God has designed to portray the gospel. As men reflect, we read this again in Ephesians 5, the sacrificial, covenant-keeping love of Christ who laid down His life for His Bride. As women reflect the responsiveness of Christ to her Lord to His salvation, as we reflect with men and women together the roles within the Trinity.
Again, we’ve done whole series that talk about these things, but just to stay here. This is a lot at stake. There’s a bigger picture here. The picture that God has designed of manhood and womanhood to display the gospel for the fame of His Name so that the world may praise Him, may rejoice in Him, may turn to Christ, may love Him, may pursue Him and may understand His incredible covenant-keeping love and redemptive plan. That’s the biggest reason that I want to be and I want you to be a true woman of God. It really does matter.
Leslie: When you embrace biblical womanhood, the purpose isn’t to be fulfilled or to forward a social program or fit a stereotype. Nancy Leigh DeMoss has been taking us to the heart of this issue. Will you embrace God’s calling on your life to show a picture of the gospel?
Thousands of women are coming together to learn how to do that more effectively. At a True Woman conference you’ll study God’s Word alongside others hungry to know God’s call on their lives. The speakers have a passion not just for telling funny stories or amusing a crowd. They want you to know God’s Word and God’s truth. Those speakers, like Nancy, Joni Eareckson Tada, Kay Arthur, Janet Parshall, Karen Loritts and many others will help you explore the Scriptures and learn to be God’s true woman in our day.
Would you get more information on the True Woman conferences coming to Indianapolis in September or Fort Worth in October? Just get the details on the speaker lineup at each location and make your plans to take part in an event that will send you home a different woman. The details are at ReviveOurHearts.com. You can also call our special True Woman number at 877-966-2608.
Here’s some sobering news. Everyone is going to go through suffering in this life. The good news is that your suffering can serve an important purpose. Learn to find the meaning in suffering when Nancy’s back tomorrow for Revive Our Hearts.
Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.
All Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version.
1 Stu Weber. Tender Warrior: God's Intention for a Man. p. 45.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
The Oppression of Women
When I attended a chapel during my Christian university’s week of gender reconciliation chapels, I found that many of the women on the panel had begun to consider the question of whether or not they experience oppression as women in their daily lives. One woman’s comment was particularly intriguing. She said, “Before coming to this university, I’d never really even thought about the fact that I was a woman or that women were oppressed in the church.”
I was interested in what this woman had to say because of all the women on the panel, she was surprisingly the least “feminist,” while having the most reasons to hate men, after suffering through an abusive early marriage, a gang-rape, and an abduction to be a sex-slave.
She continued on to say, “Before I learned about how women are oppressed in the church, I was just happy to be saved and to serve in all sorts of ministries in the church. I didn’t think about women not being able to preach.” In other words, before coming to work at our university, and meeting the hardened feminist professors, she was rejoicing in her salvation and content to pursue serving the church in the variety of ways that were legitimately open to her as a woman.
In addition to this woman (who was only a clerk at the university), there were several female professors who sat on the panel as well. These women spoke of oppression and discrimination, but failed to give any concrete examples that I could buy into. For all their use of these words, I had to wonder if most of the female oppression that they spoke about came simply from the books they’d read.
When the women spoke of oppression, they gave examples such as their male coworkers asking if they would be staying home after they gave birth to their babies. Then they expressed their indignation at being asked the same thing by multitudes of people at church.
I’m sorry, but this is not oppression, folks! It’s an honest question, and probably something that most people would ask just to make conversation! However, the women on the panel seemed to feel that by merely asking such questions, people were making judgments about what they should be doing with their lives once they had children. I don’t think this is the case (especially in today’s world, where most mothers don’t stay home with their children), and honestly, I have to wonder if they women are just letting the guilt that they feel in leaving their children seep into the conversations they have with others.
This same goes for the way that they interact with their male co-workers. Because feminism is so popular in modern America, women seem to actually be on the lookout for oppression, and I have to wonder if a lot of the things they take as insulting or “anti-women” are caused merely by their insecurity or sensitivity to such issues. In a lot of cases—not all, of course—discrimination is found when you go looking for it.
I, personally, have never felt oppressed as a woman, and perhaps that’s why I react with surprise when other women express these kinds of feelings. I’ve never felt that being a woman was something to apologize or fight against. I’ve never envied men for the supposed “privileges” they have as males in America. I love the realm of women and femininity, and frankly, I’m glad I’m not a man. Feminists confuse me for pushing for special rights and privileges that will “liberate” them from the things that make them distinctly female. Logically, I’d think that those who promoted the cause of women would not push to make women more like men, but would whole-heartedly embrace their uniquely-female abilities, like childbearing and mothering, instead of finding ways to extricate themselves from the “burden” by promoting abortion and the like.
As I listened to the women on the panel speak, I couldn’t help but feel that they were just complaining about small, insignificant issues. As they sat discussing a joke that their male coworkers had made, my mind began to wander, and I thought of the women in China who were having abortions forced upon them, women being beaten in Iraq, and the little girls being forced into prostitution in Thailand. You know, those real kinds of female oppression and subjugation.
Yes, female oppression really does exist. It exists across the globe–as well as in America, in select cases–and it probably always will as long as we have naturally weaker bodies than men. But, I don’t think feminism (aka: pushing for our rights—which isn’t a very Christian thing to do in the first place) is the answer to the ills and grievances of women—neither physically nor emotionally. Christ is the only answer, both for the sin that causes men to hurt and oppress women, and for the emotional insecurity that women feel about their roles in society. I think Christian feminists have forgotten what Christ said about taking a supportive, background, or serving role:
“The greatest among you will be your servant.” ~Matthew 23:11
Amen.
As long as we can be servants, there is no need to become angry with God, bend Scriptures to fit the sentiments of the time, or shake our fists at the universe because we can’t be pastors or preach. Our quest to be like Christ by being a servant should be more than enough to fulfill us, and if it isn’t, we probably should be examining our hearts and minds to figure out just who we’re really working for when we push for the ability to gain recognition and more prominent roles.
This article originally appeared on Tiffany’s blog True Femininity
When I attended a chapel during my Christian university’s week of gender reconciliation chapels, I found that many of the women on the panel had begun to consider the question of whether or not they experience oppression as women in their daily lives. One woman’s comment was particularly intriguing. She said, “Before coming to this university, I’d never really even thought about the fact that I was a woman or that women were oppressed in the church.”
I was interested in what this woman had to say because of all the women on the panel, she was surprisingly the least “feminist,” while having the most reasons to hate men, after suffering through an abusive early marriage, a gang-rape, and an abduction to be a sex-slave.
She continued on to say, “Before I learned about how women are oppressed in the church, I was just happy to be saved and to serve in all sorts of ministries in the church. I didn’t think about women not being able to preach.” In other words, before coming to work at our university, and meeting the hardened feminist professors, she was rejoicing in her salvation and content to pursue serving the church in the variety of ways that were legitimately open to her as a woman.
In addition to this woman (who was only a clerk at the university), there were several female professors who sat on the panel as well. These women spoke of oppression and discrimination, but failed to give any concrete examples that I could buy into. For all their use of these words, I had to wonder if most of the female oppression that they spoke about came simply from the books they’d read.
When the women spoke of oppression, they gave examples such as their male coworkers asking if they would be staying home after they gave birth to their babies. Then they expressed their indignation at being asked the same thing by multitudes of people at church.
I’m sorry, but this is not oppression, folks! It’s an honest question, and probably something that most people would ask just to make conversation! However, the women on the panel seemed to feel that by merely asking such questions, people were making judgments about what they should be doing with their lives once they had children. I don’t think this is the case (especially in today’s world, where most mothers don’t stay home with their children), and honestly, I have to wonder if they women are just letting the guilt that they feel in leaving their children seep into the conversations they have with others.
This same goes for the way that they interact with their male co-workers. Because feminism is so popular in modern America, women seem to actually be on the lookout for oppression, and I have to wonder if a lot of the things they take as insulting or “anti-women” are caused merely by their insecurity or sensitivity to such issues. In a lot of cases—not all, of course—discrimination is found when you go looking for it.
I, personally, have never felt oppressed as a woman, and perhaps that’s why I react with surprise when other women express these kinds of feelings. I’ve never felt that being a woman was something to apologize or fight against. I’ve never envied men for the supposed “privileges” they have as males in America. I love the realm of women and femininity, and frankly, I’m glad I’m not a man. Feminists confuse me for pushing for special rights and privileges that will “liberate” them from the things that make them distinctly female. Logically, I’d think that those who promoted the cause of women would not push to make women more like men, but would whole-heartedly embrace their uniquely-female abilities, like childbearing and mothering, instead of finding ways to extricate themselves from the “burden” by promoting abortion and the like.
As I listened to the women on the panel speak, I couldn’t help but feel that they were just complaining about small, insignificant issues. As they sat discussing a joke that their male coworkers had made, my mind began to wander, and I thought of the women in China who were having abortions forced upon them, women being beaten in Iraq, and the little girls being forced into prostitution in Thailand. You know, those real kinds of female oppression and subjugation.
Yes, female oppression really does exist. It exists across the globe–as well as in America, in select cases–and it probably always will as long as we have naturally weaker bodies than men. But, I don’t think feminism (aka: pushing for our rights—which isn’t a very Christian thing to do in the first place) is the answer to the ills and grievances of women—neither physically nor emotionally. Christ is the only answer, both for the sin that causes men to hurt and oppress women, and for the emotional insecurity that women feel about their roles in society. I think Christian feminists have forgotten what Christ said about taking a supportive, background, or serving role:
“The greatest among you will be your servant.” ~Matthew 23:11
Amen.
As long as we can be servants, there is no need to become angry with God, bend Scriptures to fit the sentiments of the time, or shake our fists at the universe because we can’t be pastors or preach. Our quest to be like Christ by being a servant should be more than enough to fulfill us, and if it isn’t, we probably should be examining our hearts and minds to figure out just who we’re really working for when we push for the ability to gain recognition and more prominent roles.
This article originally appeared on Tiffany’s blog True Femininity
Friday, June 25, 2010
Is It OK for Moms to Have Jobs Outside of the Home?
The following is an edited transcript of the audio.
Is it biblically acceptable for a mother to hold a full time job outside of the home?
It can be. It is like the alcohol question, it can be.
In fact I would say, outside of the home is a complex statement. Only after the industrial revolution was home and work separated, by and large. Everywhere there is an agrarian kind of culture, home and work are together. If all the kids are weaving the baskets that you sell to make a living, are you home? If the garden around the house is what supports the family and the husband is out there building a barn, and you're doing this, are you home?
All that is to say the very question is ambiguous, and it is today. My niece has a full time job, and her office is in her home. She works for a company three states away.
Having said it can be, I want to discourage it because mothering and homemaking are huge and glorious jobs. What children need at age one, five, six, fourteen, eighteen is simply amazing, and so is what those needs call forth from a woman's creativity and heart and mind, personally for each one of these little ones that are coming along.
And, just being able to focus on the home where ministry can happen—not being enslaved by anybody's clock—you can say, "I want to work my tail off for king Jesus, but I don't want anybody to pay me for it. I'm going to do it right here in this neighborhood with my husband's connections and my connections. We're going to lavish grace on people's lives."
So, I'm calling for ministry full-time when I say "don't work full-time if you have a family." Turn your family into ministry. Turn your family into a global dream for what this family might become, or what this man might be, or what we might be together as we are home.
Those are the kind of dreams I want to offer the younger women that are coming along so that they don't think, "If I don't get a career and make lots of money and be equal with men in pay and time and everything, I've somehow sold out to something small or something that doesn't require intellectual capabilities."
It is a great and glorious calling to be a mother and a homemaker and a wife and a neighborhood make-it-happen kind of person and a church minister. Who knows what God might be pleased to do.
The following is an edited transcript of the audio.
Is it biblically acceptable for a mother to hold a full time job outside of the home?
It can be. It is like the alcohol question, it can be.
In fact I would say, outside of the home is a complex statement. Only after the industrial revolution was home and work separated, by and large. Everywhere there is an agrarian kind of culture, home and work are together. If all the kids are weaving the baskets that you sell to make a living, are you home? If the garden around the house is what supports the family and the husband is out there building a barn, and you're doing this, are you home?
All that is to say the very question is ambiguous, and it is today. My niece has a full time job, and her office is in her home. She works for a company three states away.
Having said it can be, I want to discourage it because mothering and homemaking are huge and glorious jobs. What children need at age one, five, six, fourteen, eighteen is simply amazing, and so is what those needs call forth from a woman's creativity and heart and mind, personally for each one of these little ones that are coming along.
And, just being able to focus on the home where ministry can happen—not being enslaved by anybody's clock—you can say, "I want to work my tail off for king Jesus, but I don't want anybody to pay me for it. I'm going to do it right here in this neighborhood with my husband's connections and my connections. We're going to lavish grace on people's lives."
So, I'm calling for ministry full-time when I say "don't work full-time if you have a family." Turn your family into ministry. Turn your family into a global dream for what this family might become, or what this man might be, or what we might be together as we are home.
Those are the kind of dreams I want to offer the younger women that are coming along so that they don't think, "If I don't get a career and make lots of money and be equal with men in pay and time and everything, I've somehow sold out to something small or something that doesn't require intellectual capabilities."
It is a great and glorious calling to be a mother and a homemaker and a wife and a neighborhood make-it-happen kind of person and a church minister. Who knows what God might be pleased to do.
Are You a Feminist?
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Author Mary Kassian says worldly thinking has permeated the church.
Mary Kassian: I think we have all been influenced by feminism—all of us. Some of the ideas that we accept as truth and as standard ideas have not come to us through our study of Scripture but have just come to us through culture.
Nancy: My friend Kim admits this was true the first 15 years of her marriage.
Kim: I exemplified feminism, and I did not even realize it. I would have said I was not a feminist. I was submissive to my husband. If he told me to do something, I would do it. But I did not honor and respect my husband in my treatment of him.
Nancy: Perhaps you’d never call yourself a feminist either. But what do your words and actions communicate? A desire to control your husband? Or a heart for supporting and encouraging his leadership?
With Seeking Him, I’m Nancy Leigh DeMoss.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Author Mary Kassian says worldly thinking has permeated the church.
Mary Kassian: I think we have all been influenced by feminism—all of us. Some of the ideas that we accept as truth and as standard ideas have not come to us through our study of Scripture but have just come to us through culture.
Nancy: My friend Kim admits this was true the first 15 years of her marriage.
Kim: I exemplified feminism, and I did not even realize it. I would have said I was not a feminist. I was submissive to my husband. If he told me to do something, I would do it. But I did not honor and respect my husband in my treatment of him.
Nancy: Perhaps you’d never call yourself a feminist either. But what do your words and actions communicate? A desire to control your husband? Or a heart for supporting and encouraging his leadership?
With Seeking Him, I’m Nancy Leigh DeMoss.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
How can ‘mother’ be a sexist stereotype?
Carolyn Moynihan
4 Jun 2010
While most Europeans worry their heads off about what is happening to the euro and the economy, certain members of the European political bureaucracy are getting on with more important things. Like drafting long resolutions about how to combat gender stereotypes in the media and having even longer meetings to get their ideas endorsed.
Let me say, straight off, that there are media stereotypes that undermine women’s dignity and in some cases are downright insulting. Why, for example, does the weather girl -- I should say female weather person -- on my local television network always, always, summer and winter, appear with half her chest exposed, unless it is to add sex appeal to what is an intrinsically boring segment of the news hour? Since her male counterpart is always well covered up (and still more interesting to listen to) we have to conclude that the value of a woman announcer is her sexuality, not her personality, let alone her expertise.
Read the rest of the article here.
Carolyn Moynihan
4 Jun 2010
While most Europeans worry their heads off about what is happening to the euro and the economy, certain members of the European political bureaucracy are getting on with more important things. Like drafting long resolutions about how to combat gender stereotypes in the media and having even longer meetings to get their ideas endorsed.
Let me say, straight off, that there are media stereotypes that undermine women’s dignity and in some cases are downright insulting. Why, for example, does the weather girl -- I should say female weather person -- on my local television network always, always, summer and winter, appear with half her chest exposed, unless it is to add sex appeal to what is an intrinsically boring segment of the news hour? Since her male counterpart is always well covered up (and still more interesting to listen to) we have to conclude that the value of a woman announcer is her sexuality, not her personality, let alone her expertise.
Read the rest of the article here.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Quotes
"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."
-- Albert Einstein
(1879-1955) Physicist and Professor, Nobel Prize 1921
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Albert.Einstein.Quote.D405
"If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government,
our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
-- Samuel Adams
(1722-1803), was known as the "Father of the American Revolution."
1780
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Samuel.Adams.Quote.414E
"Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
(1874-1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Winston.Churchill.Quote.EB68
-- Albert Einstein
(1879-1955) Physicist and Professor, Nobel Prize 1921
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Albert.Einstein.Quote.D405
"If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government,
our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
-- Samuel Adams
(1722-1803), was known as the "Father of the American Revolution."
1780
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Samuel.Adams.Quote.414E
"Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
(1874-1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Winston.Churchill.Quote.EB68
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
The truth about Israel
I received an email today from American Family Association. There is an option to contact the President below the email.
By now you are aware of the confrontation between Israeli naval forces and a Turkish flotilla off the coast of the Gaza Strip.
What you have not heard is the truth from the mainstream media.
Here is the truth:
Israel cannot allow ships to go directly to Gaza for security reasons. Innocent Israeli families are threatened daily with missile attacks launched from Gaza, and Israel must make sure weapons are not being smuggled into Gaza in "humanitarian" cargoes. Israel offered to offload all humanitarian supplies on board this ship and deliver them to Gaza.
These Turkish ships know that the U.N. will deliver any and all humanitarian supplies after first examining shipments to make sure they contain no weapons. Thus it appears they deliberately provoked this incident for propaganda purposes.
Israeli commanders were attacked and beaten by the "humanitarian" workers on this ship who were armed with iron bars and knives. One soldier was thrown off an upper deck and fell thirty feet to the deck below, sustaining significant injuries to his head.
Israeli soldiers repeatedly told each other "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" as they rappelled to the surface of the ship. They fired only as a last resort and in self-defense.
According to the Weekly Standard, the organization behind this flotilla belongs to the Union of Good, which was created for the specific purpose of transferring tens of millions of dollars a year to Hamas-controlled entities in the Gaza Strip and whose leaders have been designated by our State Department as Specially Designated Global Terrorists.
Today is the day to stand with Israel. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and our only reliable ally in the region. And Christian America owes a spiritual debt to Israel for preserving the time-honored moral standards which are the foundation of our nation.
TAKE ACTION NOW Send an e-mail to President Obama today and insist that he stand firmly and unapologetically with Israel
By now you are aware of the confrontation between Israeli naval forces and a Turkish flotilla off the coast of the Gaza Strip.
What you have not heard is the truth from the mainstream media.
Here is the truth:
Israel cannot allow ships to go directly to Gaza for security reasons. Innocent Israeli families are threatened daily with missile attacks launched from Gaza, and Israel must make sure weapons are not being smuggled into Gaza in "humanitarian" cargoes. Israel offered to offload all humanitarian supplies on board this ship and deliver them to Gaza.
These Turkish ships know that the U.N. will deliver any and all humanitarian supplies after first examining shipments to make sure they contain no weapons. Thus it appears they deliberately provoked this incident for propaganda purposes.
Israeli commanders were attacked and beaten by the "humanitarian" workers on this ship who were armed with iron bars and knives. One soldier was thrown off an upper deck and fell thirty feet to the deck below, sustaining significant injuries to his head.
Israeli soldiers repeatedly told each other "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" as they rappelled to the surface of the ship. They fired only as a last resort and in self-defense.
According to the Weekly Standard, the organization behind this flotilla belongs to the Union of Good, which was created for the specific purpose of transferring tens of millions of dollars a year to Hamas-controlled entities in the Gaza Strip and whose leaders have been designated by our State Department as Specially Designated Global Terrorists.
Today is the day to stand with Israel. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and our only reliable ally in the region. And Christian America owes a spiritual debt to Israel for preserving the time-honored moral standards which are the foundation of our nation.
TAKE ACTION NOW Send an e-mail to President Obama today and insist that he stand firmly and unapologetically with Israel
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