thanks for Your provisions for street church! ... and exploring Your word, wanting to know what You want for me, a woman...

23 March 2010

So this morning up at 4:45 am! Made dough for pigs-in-blankets. Also took boiled eggs… and all the stuff I got yesterday for amazing prices (24 doz wieners at $1 a doz, and large tins of coffee for $5 bucks, and lots more! Yay! Thank You, Father, for such great deals! You really are providing for your people. Thank You!). Anyway, my granny cart of full and way overflowing… and I had my backpack full too! Weighed a ton! Just ate a small yogurt before I left home, and by the end of my half-hour walk, I was so dizzy! Good thing R had made a delicious pasta salad with those mac noodles donated yesterday. And I made the pigs-in-blankets and some cheese biscuits: so good fresh baked. Thanks to the church who generously allow us to use their kitchen and dining facilities 4 mornings a week, for free! Wow! Please bless them, Father! Thank You again! Anyway, after I ate some salad and biscuits I felt a lot better. Of course there was toast, and cereal and milk, and boiled eggs, and coffee and juice too. People are sure hungry! But they love coming for our breakfasts, no matter what “strange” food combinations we might have available. Now that’s a joy – for me!

And this afternoon, went walkabout with hubby! Beautiful sunshiny day. Sat on the grass in the park! And mailed our income tax return… yay!

Spent the major part of the day exploring Your Word, Father… You know I really, really want to know You – and to be in the place You want me to be.

I seem to continue to be “haunted” by the whole question of what women can and cannot do. Clearly, women are described as having “sincere faith” (ie Timothy’s mother and grandmother) … and some women are described as teaching (ie Priscilla, with her husband Aquila, teaching Apollos)… and others as prophetesses (ie Philip the evangelist’s 4 daughters)… and we often read of women praying… but the majority of references to women’s roles in the New Testament are centered in the home – their own homes as wives and mothers, and caring for other women’s needs (ie Tabitha), hosting gatherings of the church in their homes (ie Mary, mother of John Mark), offering hospitality to traveling evangelists etc (ie Lydia). The references to women are mainly character-based and action-based… rather than “teaching” or “preaching” or whatever, though we do see some examples of those areas too.

BUT all the way through, the teachings in the New Testament are directed to all the saints – so to women as well as men. Women receive the Holy Spirit just as men do… and thus they have all the potentialities that come with the Holy Spirit! We all live and walk by the Spirit! Clearly, God has big purposes for women – just as He does for men. There are some differences of authority/position… but we are all called to submission and subjection, one way or another.

Galatians is very affirming for us as women!

3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus… 5:1 It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery… 6… faith working through love… 14 for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”… 16.. walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh… 18… but if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law…. 22. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control: against such things there is no law… 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.