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Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Whole Being

6 / 6 / 219 / 6 / 22
By lizziejank | Filed under Uncategorized | Tags: Uncategorized

When the twins were born, I was not ready. I had two toddlers, a small rented house, we still had a business downtown (for a few months) and we used software from this paystub example to make payments. We didn’t have a lot of money, we didn’t have a lot of time, we didn’t have any volunteer live in help (worst luck). Life was full. Full of diapers and wipes, lost shoes, crying infants. Leaking milk, croup in the night. My full time job was being touched. I was deliriously tired nursing the twins, and the older two were hardly hands off.  It was a time of life when 45 minutes seemed like an eternity, when I might not cry when my husband came in the door and asked how the day was.

This was the year when our toddlers got a bunch of toys for Christmas (the twins were barely one month then) – the kind that had lots of pieces – and I actually packed them into a black garbage bag and hid them behind our bed ( I don’t think they noticed). God had promoted me right out of my comfort zone, and into a new and way more demanding lifestyle – one that I couldn’t help but notice I was not naturally good at. I wanted to start smoking at this time – because when I saw people outside in the cold sucking hard on a cigarette that just really looked good. It looked quiet. And alone. And perfect.

Now I didn’t start smoking, and I didn’t die – although I am sure I suggested I would many times. I cried a lot and I laughed a lot, and I learned a lot. I learned about losing your patience because you haven’t slept like people are supposed to. I learned about asking toddlers to forgive you and trying to explain why to them. I learned not letting my fleshly attitudes win. I learned about how I actually could keep on going when I thought I couldn’t. And at the heart of all this, I learned about God. I learned that there is a tremendous amount of scope for spiritual growth in the home. I learned that far from being a haven of peaceful domestic bliss, the home can be a straight up battlefield for the faith. Believing what God has said, acting in faith, praying for grace, repenting of sins, teaching children to abandon their sins, cleaning bathrooms for the kingdom, loving people close to you when you don’t want to. Children can be a refining fire, burning out all kinds of dross. And God delights in our being purified through this.

That time in my life was physically awful. I was physically stressed, physically broken, physically sleep deprived and physically a major mess. But looking back on it is was spiritually rich. Every one of those very bodily weaknesses drove me to a very spiritual strength in Christ. Physical stress drove me to spiritual peace. Physical brokenness taught me about  wholeness in Christ. Physical exhaustion taught me about spiritual renewal. Physical mess drove me to spiritual tidiness. As the house got messier faster, my attitude got tidier quicker. This is because Jesus Christ was there with me. I knew that no matter my situation, Christ was the first answer. If I need sleep and I am angry, it is still sin, and His blood is still the answer. If I am selfish, even if I have my reasons, it is sin, and looking to Christ is the only way out. If I am despairing,  I need to look to Christ.

As Christians, we believe that we are both spiritual and physical beings. An illness can drive us to get our soul in order. Bodily trials are like compost for your spiritual garden. We cannot divorce our bodies and our souls from one another. We are whole beings.

This brings me to the heart of what I wanted to say, which is that the first answer, the first response – must always be Jesus Christ. It must always be calling on God and seeking His will. After we have done that, there may be physical helps. Maybe making yourself a cup of coffee would be a good idea. Maybe trying a soothing oil. Maybe magnesium lotion will be great for you. Maybe salts and teas and vitamins and stretches and remedies of diverse origins will help something. But if you haven’t gotten things right with God, maybe they are only clouding the issue. If you are constantly irritated with your children, the answer is Christ – not a lotion, not a bath, not a healthy bacteria. If you don’t feel like loving your husband, maybe you need to ask God to look at your heart first – and maybe looking into the medicine cabinet will only make the actual problem worse.

Imagine a situation where a woman describes to you her symptoms: she is crabby with the kids, really low on energy, can’t sleep, is anxious, feels like giving up, doesn’t like her body, wants to quit, and any other extreme sad time you can think of.

What do you think of first? What help do you offer? Is it an arsenal of oils? A prescription you heard about? A special salt? A scream in the closet? Is it no grain? Is it more fat? Is it vitamin D? Is it an exercise regime? If you ask a room full of Christian women what to do about these things – you will get testimonial after testimonial for products.

The sad truth is that many Christian women have been caught without a testimony to Christ. We don’t treat our worries, our hurts, our stresses like they belong to him.

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A Day Without A Woman

3 / 8 / 1710 / 18 / 22
By rebekah | Filed under Uncategorized

Today, as we all know, the feminists are being silly again. In a sort of “that’ll learn ‘em” move, the feminists are urging women to refrain from doing any work today. A day without women working will apparently land us all in a huge mess which will teach us a lesson of some sort. There are so many levels of funny about this that it’s difficult to know where to begin.

But the thing that’s shocking is the rest of the nation which puts up with this. Don’t we all know the basic rules that you should never negotiate with terrorists? Granted, compared to real terrorists these women are just gesturing menacingly with their parasols, but the principle is the same. If you give in to that behavior then you have  guaranteed you’ll get more of what you just subsidized.

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Where is Wisdom?

9 / 8 / 16
By Nancy Ann | Filed under Uncategorized

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Wisdom is intensely practical once you find it, and finding it is what we are to be doing. We are to “seek her as for silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures” (Proverbs 2:4).

But, ah, where do we find wisdom? This is Job’s question: “But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?” (Job 28:12). If we are supposed to seek and search, where do we start digging?

Before the question is answered, Job points out two things: You can’t find wisdom anywhere on earth; and even if you could, there is not enough wealth on earth to buy it. Think of trying to put a price tag on the Pacific Ocean. And if the value could be ascertained, no one could afford it. That is like wisdom.

Job asks the question again in verse 20: “From where then does wisdom come? And where is the place of understanding?”

Answer: It is hidden from both the living and the dead (verses 21-22).

However, “God understands its way, and He knows its place” (vs. 23).

And then God provides us with the full answer: “And to man He said, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding'” (vs. 28).

So we have a two-fold answer to the question. We find wisdom by (1) fearing God, and we find understanding by (2) departing from evil.

We see this pairing of wisdom and understanding together elsewhere in Scripture, and we find the pairing of fearing God and departing from evil together as well.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all those who do His commandments” (Psalm 111:10).

The more distance we put between ourselves and sin, the more we grow in wisdom. The more we obey God, the wiser we become. “There is no wisdom or understanding or counsel against the Lord” (Prov. 21:30). If you are getting advice or ideas that are contrary to the Lord and His Word, whatever it is, it is not wisdom. There is absolutely no wisdom that is against the Lord. Period.

“For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding; He stores up sound wisdom for the upright; He is a shield to those who walk uprightly” (Prov. 2:6-7).

Wisdom is for the upright.  God has plenty stored up for those who want to do what He says. But for those who disobey God, those who interpret His commands loosely or disregard them all together,  they are shut out from wisdom. They are wise in their own eyes, and that is the extent of their wisdom.

“Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and depart from evil” (Prov. 3:7). There it is again. Fear God. Obey His commands. Rather, be wise in God’s estimation, not your own. Fear God and do what He says.

 

 

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Women Freed

11 / 24 / 15
By Nancy Ann | Filed under Uncategorized

Some courageous women from Christ Church have started their own blog called Women Freed where they tell their stories of past abuse and the road to healing.

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Tater Tot Feminism

9 / 29 / 159 / 29 / 15
By rebekah | Filed under Uncategorized

Tots

Jory Micah had another response to my last blog post, and once again she proved herself able to handle a disagreement in a mature fashion. Kudos on going to an exegetical argument – that’s the place where this discussion can actually get some traction.

One possible confusion, however, is that I think Jory may be interacting with what she thinks is my view on gender roles, but which I myself would never claim. She seems to think that the fact that I disagree with feminism tells her all she needs to know about my position. But I grew up in Moscow, and Doug Wilson is my dad, and to be honest that’s like saying I grew up in Sherwood Forest. Lines are drawn a bit differently here and we don’t fit neatly into categories. People can shout all they want about Doug the Great Misogynist Oppressor, but he started the schools which his daughters attended, and he made sure that we had years of Latin and years of Greek and Physics and Logic and Classical History and Classical Lit and Church History and Philosophy and Apologetics and Doctrine and Rhetoric and Poetry. He raised his girls (who are now raising his grand-daughters) to argue and scrap and think for themselves and study and own businesses and write books and, yes, submit to their own husbands as to the Lord. But he also made dang sure that those husbands were worth submitting to. (I can hear the internet yelling already! Aagh! Courtship model! The injustice! Where are my smelling salts!?!) Read More

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I’ll take whiskey

9 / 27 / 159 / 27 / 15
By rebekah | Filed under Uncategorized

Whiskey

There was a lot of outcry over my last blog post, and much of it was not really “interact-able” if you will. (Shrieks and howls aren’t terribly well-reasoned, and thus are hard to answer in any meaningful way.) One notable exception, however, was from Jory Micah – who wrote a response which was both sane and charitable. I’d like to walk through her post, but before I get to that I want to just make a general observation.

I wrote that last post entirely pointed at a particular form of “patriarchy” (or “complementarianism” if your prefer)  which I have seen with my own two eyes, and to which I object on every level. That was the point of the post. Yes, I made it clear that I don’t believe feminism is the answer to the problem . . . but the point of the post was to emphasize that I actually understand the feminists’ antagonism to certain kinds of patriarchy.

And yet, it is noticeable that not a single squawk did I hear from any misogynists, telling me to not be so rude to them. On the other hand, many feminists are currently still rolling on the ground, clutching their skinned knees and shouting about their hurt feelings or my terrible manners, busily being deeply wounded on behalf of abused women everywhere, or just calling me names. That tells me something about their general thin-ness of skin, and also about their ability to read carefully and follow an argument.

But like I said, Jory’s post was not like that. Read More

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