Kingdom Woman: Embracing Your Purpose, Power, and Possibilities (20 page)

Honoring Without Fear

In the Old Testament, we read of one kingdom woman, Sarah, whose desire for decades had been to have a child. Sarah and Abraham had been trying to have a child for years. You’re familiar with the story; both were old and still had not produced a child together. Through Sarah’s decision to honor God by honoring Abraham, without fear, she was blessed to conceive a child well beyond the child-bearing years.

Sarah’s submission to Abraham, even in the midst of barrenness and pain, is given as one of the greatest illustrations of how a kingdom woman is to live: “like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear” (1 Peter 3:6).

Not only did Sarah submit to Abraham, but she also honored him as “lord.” Honoring your husband is one of the greatest, most powerful things you can do as a kingdom woman. You should be your husband’s biggest cheerleader. Whether you agree or disagree with him, honoring lets him know that you respect his position. And honoring him also summons the favorable attention on God.

As I explained earlier, submission doesn’t mean silence or that you don’t have a will and a mind. Even Jesus talked to God. He fully expressed His thoughts and feelings. Submission, however, means that you willingly come under the authority of another as long as that authority does not require you to disobey God.

No man, not even your husband, has absolute authority over you. What a husband has is called
relative authority
because the moment he stops submitting himself to God, his authority over you becomes compromised. This is because you are told to obey God more than man. Submission is simply giving deference to a role when that role has also given deference to God. When you view submission that way, it takes the fear out of it.

One reason why many women today are not experiencing the miracle that they hope for in their lives is because they have chosen not to honor their husbands in their God-given roles. Yet when Sarah called Abraham “master”—essentially honoring his role in her life—she got her miracle. She became pregnant and gave birth to Isaac. Her submission led to her miracle. Sarah became the visible manifestation of what David wrote about in Psalm 128: “Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house” (verse 3). Not only was Sarah fruitful spiritually—after all, she wound up in the Hebrews Hall of Faith—but she was also fruitful physically, giving birth at an age when it was no longer possible. So do not let your lack of legitimate submission keep you from experiencing your miracle.

The principle of submission that applied to Sarah applies to you. And when you honor it, you will see God honor you in ways that go beyond what you
can fathom. God is so good at being God that He doesn’t need raw materials to create a miracle. God can call into being things that do not exist (Romans 4:17), as He did with Isaac in a barren and lifeless womb. He can take empty things and give them life. He can take a dead womb and create a miraculous intervention so it can house a heartbeat.

In fact, He can take a barren future and give it life. Or a barren career. Or a barren dream. Or a barren heart. God is a master at bringing life from what appears to be barren. If you have a barren hope, relationship, or dream, honor God as a kingdom woman and watch Him go to work on your behalf. If you are single and have been single for a long time, maybe you have given up believing that your future spouse is out there somewhere. As I said in chapter 9, you don’t need to invent a way to meet your man. God is so good at what He does, if you will simply trust Him in faith and stop looking at human solutions to solve a spiritual issue, God can bring your future spouse directly to you. He can create families, careers, futures, and life where there looked to be only barrenness. Trust Him.

Tremendous freedom comes when you realize that your ultimate submission is under a caring and loving God.

A kingdom woman operates and aligns herself under the comprehensive rule of God without fear. If you will align yourself under God and honor Him in light of the distinct functions He has established within marriage and the parenting role, you can expect to experience God in unprecedented ways.

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After a worship service, I enjoy greeting visitors along with those who come to our church regularly. Without fail, a line of people assembles to say hello or make some comment on the message for that day. I heard of a pastor who on one holiday saw someone whom he had seen only sporadically. So after church he said, “You come from time to time. Maybe it would be a good idea if you joined the Army of the Lord and come more regularly.”

To which this lady replied, “I’m already in the Army of the Lord, Pastor.”

“Well, then,” Pastor asked, “how come I only see you on Christmas and Easter?”

She whispered back, “I’m in the Secret Service.”

This kind of scenario happens all the time. Finding someone with a true commitment to church can be a challenge. With all that competes for time and attention, regular church attendance has fallen off of many people’s list of values, let alone a meaningful church involvement.

Yet the opposite may hold true as well. You can find someone who faithfully comes to church and has done so for years, even decades, and yet her life offers only a poor reflection of the image of Jesus Christ.

Going to church doesn’t make a person a Christian, or even a better Christian. A person’s heart needs to be open to the process of discipleship that should be happening within the environment called the church for lasting fruit and transformation to occur.

Too often today people view the church as a hospice rather than as the hospital it was intended to be. A hospice is where people go so that they can be made comfortable while they die. They see the church as a place to feel better rather than to get better.

A hospital, on the other hand, combines staff and strategies in such a way as to make the people within it well. The focus at the hospital isn’t on trying to make the patient feel good. Sometimes the doctors need to cut. Sometimes they need to administer drugs. Sometimes they need to make the person feel uncomfortable. But all of that is done to make the person healthy.

When the goal of those running the church aims at giving people a place to feel good while they die rather than a place to make them well while they live, they have missed Christ’s intention for His church body. That is not the church Jesus Christ established.

When Jesus spoke of His body of believers, He referenced a strong, healthy entity that even hell itself could not prevail against. In fact the term
ecclesia
that is sometimes used in place of the word
church
in the New Testament spoke of a governing council in Greek society that legislated on behalf of the population.
[36]
A governing council could only govern as well as the health and strength of its own members. If the members simply chose to pass the time until they passed away, looking for an enjoyable place to gather with friends, eat, and sing songs, they would not have legislated well on behalf of their community.

The church is intended to be much more than a social club or an entertainment venue. It is to be more than a place for singles to meet eligible men or women. The church is intended to be
a group of people who have been called to bring the governance of God into the relevant application and practice of humankind
.

When Jesus spoke of the church withstanding the forces of the “gates of hell” (Matthew 16:18,
ESV
), He chose the term for “gates” that referred to a place where legislative activities took place. The gate was where the leaders of the culture would meet to enact business and make decisions on behalf of the community.
[37]

The concept of legislation for the body of Christ is reinforced by the fact that “keys” are given to the church to gain access to heaven’s authority and execute it on earth (Matthew 16:19). While Jesus is positioned at the right hand of God to govern from heaven, we are also positioned with Him (Ephesians 2:6), which is why I think God will often choose what He is going to do based on what He sees the church already doing (Ephesians 3:10).

The purpose of the church reaches beyond a mere meeting place for spiritual inspiration or analysis of the culture in which it resides. The purpose of the church,
ecclesia
, is to manifest the values of heaven within the context of humankind.

These values can only be made manifest to the degree that those within the
ecclesia
reflect the values themselves. The visible demonstration of God’s kingdom on earth hinges upon how many members of the body of Christ are either kingdom men or kingdom women. While the foundational context for developing kingdom women is through the nuclear family, that process is to also extend beyond the nuclear family to the local church. This is why the nurturing responsibility of the church is spoken of in feminine terms in Scripture.

The goal of the church is to transmit a biblical worldview so that women begin to think and function like Jesus Christ. Each church ought to make one of its primary priorities having a women’s ministry that offers an opportunity for women to disciple women according to the Titus 2 philosophy. The church’s goal is to have kingdom women encouraging and equipping other women to become kingdom women like themselves. Each church ought to focus heavily on discipleship.
Discipleship
is that “developmental process of the local church that seeks to bring Christians from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity so they are then able to repeat the process with someone else.” The fact that the culture does not offer a specific way to transmit a biblical worldview to future generations should not mean that the church shouldn’t offer it. We are to reflect another culture—a kingdom culture.

Kingdom Disciples

If you want to find out what matters most to someone, read his or her last words. As you seek to be a kingdom woman, you need to know what matters
most to the King, so it can matter most to you. Thankfully, you don’t have to wonder about it. Just before His ascension into heaven, Jesus told us what was most important to Him:

Clearly, Christ’s mandate for the church is to make disciples. That means His will for you is to become a kingdom disciple. To be a disciple of Christ means that you become like Him (Matthew 10:25). This is accomplished not just by coming to church but also by the church being a context for lives touching lives. In Paul’s second letter to Timothy, he specifically said, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others” (2:2). The Greek word translated “men” in this passage is actually
anthr
õ
pos
, which refers to “a human being, whether male or female.”
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God expects discipleship to be done not just by men but also by women.

Great time and effort today go into making women physically attractive. A good deal of both money and time are spent on fashion, skin, hair care, and exercise to achieve a woman’s greatest beauty. Yet even the most exquisite woman on the planet loses charm and magnetism quickly if she opens her mouth and reveals an ugly interior. Far too many women are couture on the outside and bargain basement on the inside. How much time and effort are being offered today to make women spiritually attractive?

In 1979 there was an attempt to bring female representation into the US currency system with the Susan B. Anthony dollar. Unfortunately, the concept did not catch on. One of the primary reasons that this new coin failed was
that the Susan B. Anthony dollar looked too much like a quarter. It had the value of a dollar but the appearance of a quarter. This is in contrast to what many women try to pull off today, which is the appearance of a dollar but the internal richness of only a quarter. This leads to confusion, disappointment, and drama in many ways simply because women have not developed within the church a system for producing quality, costly kingdom women—both inside and out.

Ladies, God doesn’t want you to look like a dollar and only be a quarter. He wants your internal spiritual value to match the efforts you have made externally to be the full expression of the kingdom woman you were created to be.

In Paul’s letter to Titus, he gave specific instructions to women to encourage them to live resplendently with the full glory God intended for each kingdom woman:

First of all, Paul specifically referenced older women. Please note that he didn’t say “old” women. There is a difference. An older woman isn’t necessarily an old woman. It simply means a woman who has completed the substantive part of raising her children. It could be that she has reached the stage of the empty nest. But that doesn’t mean that she is no longer working or actively involved in her home, church, and community. It just means that in terms of the life cycle, the parenting days are most likely over.

Commensurate with the physical age must also be the spiritual age. Paul was speaking of the women who had gone through the spiritual lessons of life, had grown, and had overcome a number of challenging experiences. He was talking about a woman who has lived long enough to see the good, bad, and bitter that life has to offer. Yet she has also learned enough to be in a position to now transmit valuable lessons to the younger women coming behind her. She is
a woman who has been exposed to and applied spiritual truth for a reasonable amount of time.

The use of your gifts in local churches is not merely incidental but is critical for the church to become what it is meant to be. Women are free to act in any aspect of the church ministry except as the final authority.

When Paul used the word
likewise
, he was pointing the reader or the listener back to what he previously said about men. Essentially, he wants the same qualities he just listed—being “temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance” (verse 2)—to also be character qualities of kingdom women. Those character qualities then manifest themselves in reverence. The word
reverent
goes hand in hand with the concept of worship. In stating that the older women are to be reverent women, Paul conjured up an image of a worshipful lifestyle. This type of woman views all of her life as a representation of a holy God.

Reverence doesn’t simply show up when she’s within the church walls, but her behavior highlights it outside the church in how she conducts and carries herself. A worshipful lifestyle entails an orientation that views all of life as sacred. Whether you are at church, home, work, or in your community, whatever you do, it is to the glory of God the Father and Jesus Christ, His Son.

Maybe you grew up around your mother or a grandmother who reflected that lifestyle, so you know what Paul was talking about. I did. My mother would reference anything and everything in life as connecting with God somehow. She wanted us to know that God was in the midst of everything, and that everything in our lives was somehow tied into His providence, involvement, and plan. Even if what she said or did bothered those around her, she wouldn’t budge from connecting the sacred to all of life, because her life was lived in an attitude of worship. Paul indicated that spiritual maturity for a kingdom woman ought to produce a lifestyle of reverence and worship.

You will know that a woman is a kingdom woman if she knows how to hold her tongue. I see many women in the church today living in a spirit of backbiting gossip. To look more spiritual, they say that they are “concerned,” “looking out” for someone’s “best interest,” “warning” someone, or “praying for” someone. But those around them know that they can’t be “concerned” about everyone all the time; it’s just a cover for a woman entangled in the sin of gossip.

Slandering and demeaning words about a third party who is not aware of the conversation is not using your tongue Godward. What it really does is alert others to your own spiritual immaturity. Using your tongue to tear down others ultimately tears down yourself. It is a neon sign of immaturity and a lack of spirituality. It doesn’t matter how old you are, what position of influence you hold, or what your title may be—your tongue reveals the level of your spiritual maturity, and that’s what matters when God goes looking for a kingdom woman to use for His glory and kingdom agenda.

The more mature a woman becomes, the more secure she is in herself and her relationship with God. That frees her up to build others up, help others out, and not pass along a piece of gossip when it crosses her path. For women who gossip as a way of life—I know them and you know them—all they are really demonstrating is their own spiritual lack.