Today’s Victory Call is inspired by television commercials. My observation has been that over and over again, women are depicted in a most unsettling way. And, if I didn’t understand sin and the heart of man apart from Holy God, I’d easily be shocked and surprised.
Any casual observer can’t help but notice that women are in charge. In most sitcoms and commercials, etc., we get the last word; we are the wiser, smarter, dare I say, dominant. We prevail and not without a cost.
Men: our fathers, brothers, sons and especially, our husbands, are shown to be idiots, losers, sluggards, stupid, unintelligent buffoons. And it’s us, women, who are communicating this. Loud and clear we tell men they are incompetent, inadequate and less than capable of meeting our ever-changing, ever-increasing, ever-demanding needs.
I wish I could say that this behavior is nonexistent among us in the household of faith, but I can’t. We, too, have been shaped by the culture we live in and today my challenge to all of us is to decide – decide that we will no longer live as if the curse is real. Instead we will choose to live free in Christ, allow His Spirit, in and through us, to transform and change our stinking thinking.
Remember the garden?
To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” ~ Genesis 3:16 ESV
Since I can’t say it any better than John Piper; here is what he said:
“In other words the result of sin and the curse of our age is conflict between the sexes. This verse is not a description of the way things should be. This is a description of the cursed way things are going to be while sin reigns. Dominating men and devious women. This is not the meaning of male and female in God’s image. It is the ugliness of sin.” 1
Peter says in 1 Peter 3:7, that a Christian husband and wife are ‘fellow heirs of the grace of life.’ What does this mean? It means that in Christ, men and women recover what was meant by being created male and female in God’s image. It means that together as male and female they are to image-forth the glory of God and together as fellow-heirs they are to inherit the glory of God.”2
So dear sisters, our challenge today is simple: will we choose to go forth and image Christ, forsaking any modicum of resemblance to that ruling, controlling woman whom the culture has tricked some of us into imitating? Let’s choose to step into the grace and beauty that is ours to behold in Christ alone. May we be fully female for the glory of God!!
Stephanie
1 ttp://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByTopic/49/679_Male_and_Female_He_Created_Them_in_the_Image_of_God/
2 Same as previous
