Justin Taylor has a post urging Christians to fast and pray for the pro-life movement and John Piper has invited Christians to join him in fasting and praying over lunch today, Wednesday, July 15. Please join us.
“Fasting,” Piper writes, “comes in alongside prayer with all its hunger for God and says,
We are not able in ourselves to win this battle.
We are not able to change hearts or minds.
We are not able to change worldviews and transform culture and save 1.6 million children.
We are not able to reform the judiciary or embolden the legislature or mobilize the slumbering population.
We are not able to heal the endless wounds of godless ideologies and their bloody deeds.
But, O God, you are able!
And we turn from reliance on ourselves to you.
And we cry out to you and plead that for the sake of your name, and for the sake of your glory, and for the advancement of your saving purpose in the world, and for the demonstration of your wisdom and your power and your authority over all things, and for the sway of your Truth and the relief of the poor and the helpless, act, O God.
This much we hunger for the revelation of your power.
With all our thinking and all our writing and all our doing, we pray and we fast.
“Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up; God is our salvation. Selah.” (Psalm 68:19)
I’ve been suffering from various mild ailments for what seems like a month now. This is an especially busy week for me and I have been tempted to self-pity over my lack of strength.
This morning my husband prayed this verse for me. The note from my Reformation Study Bible sent me to Isaiah 46:1-4. Here the Lord contrasts the “bearing ability” of idols to that of the One True God:
“Bel bows down; Nebo stoops; their idols are on beasts and livestock; these things you carry are borne as burdens on weary beasts. They stoop; they bow down together; they cannot save the burden, but themselves go into captivity. ‘Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.’”
What is your burden today? They come in countless shapes and sizes—from clingy colds to crushing cares. But one thing’s for sure: our idols cannot bear their load. Leisure and escape don’t provide true rest. Sinful anger cannot relieve the pressure. Even friends are not strong enough to bear up under their full weight.
But have we forgotten? We have been borne by Christ since birth. He carried us from the womb and will not stop even when we are old and bent and gray. He alone has borne the full weight of our sin, and He alone can bear the burdens of life in a sinful world.
He doesn’t pop in once a week or every month to relieve us of our heavy load. Daily, everyday, today, He promises to bear us up. He will carry and he will save. Today. So big or small, let’s cast our burdens on Him. God is our salvation.
By the tender age of thirteen, I was already an accidental feminist. I wasn’t reading Gloria Steinem or asking to join NOW rallies. In fact, growing up in a strong Christian family and gospel-preaching church, I had limited exposure to feminist ideology. But I do remember thinking that I wanted to do something more important than be a wife, mother, and homemaker. Those jobs were all right for some women, but they weren’t good enough for me. I was going to change the world.
Around this time, my mom decided to take me and my sisters through Elisabeth Elliot’s Let Me Be A Woman—letters to her own daughter on the biblical meaning of womanhood. Only recently, somewhat to my amusement, did I learn that this was for my benefit. My wise mother realized that I needed to anchor my developing convictions to God’s truths about womanhood. Her teaching me through that book changed my life.
“Ecclesiastes tells us that there is nothing new under the sun (1:9). Feminism, while it may seem like a new concept, is really an ideology of the oldest kind.”
“We have all asked the question, ‘Did God actually say…?’ Sound familiar? A lady named Eve thought the same thing (Genesis 3). If we are going to make any progress in understanding what it means to be a woman in this crazy world we live in, we must first understand that we come from the same stock. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, we have been in a battle of the sexes, but—more importantly—we have been in a battle against our Creator.”
This age-old battle is exacerbated today by the pervasive influence of feminist ideology. “Like so much of the feminist movement,” writes Courtney, “the good that has come out of it is mixed with bad”:
“Feminism is in our bones now, and many of us do not even know it…Feminism is in the core of our hearts apart from the saving work of the shed blood of Christ….We are all feminists in need of recovery. We have all shaken our fists at God and wanted something different from his good design for us.”
The thrust of Courtney’s book is not merely to expose the accidental feminist in all of us, but to survey, once again, the beauty and glory of God’s gracious plan for women. She covers topics such as singleness, marriage, homemaking, modesty, motherhood, and a woman’s role in the church. She wants to point us past the mommy wars and the battle of the sexes to God’s inerrant Word:
“We are not part of a rebellion against a generation gone by. We aren’t thumbing our noses at the feminists of our mother’s generation. Rather, we desire full-fledged restoration to what God intended for us from the very beginning.”
“But to understand what it means to be a woman in God’s economy, we must first understand his design and plan for us. Then we will see that womanhood has nothing to do with our capabilities, and everything to do with what we were created for.”
Not only did I appreciate this book as a refreshing reminder of God’s gracious and exciting call on our lives as women, I’m tucking it away to use with my daughters someday soon. Because, like my mom before me, I want to raise young women who delight in God’s design for womanhood. I want to raise my daughters to change the world.
