As I look at my daughter, on the brink of womanhood, there is nothing I wish more for her, as a daughter of God, than to embrace her beautiful essence of God –given femininity and for her to impact the world with a kingdom mind-set of true and creative womanhood.

My prayer for her is that she would drown out the clarion call of Society’s pursuit towards feminism as well as the church’s unintentional and oftentimes subtle, yet functional call towards subjugation and subordination. I long for her to see her image-bearing worth through the eyes of God and the words of Scripture.

She is not less than. She is not inferior.

If God does not view her as such, no man or man-made philosophy has the right to do so. May she never enable views such as chauvinism or misogyny with her silence or apathetic acceptance.

‘To understand the meaning of womanhood we have to start with God. If He is indeed “Creator of all things visible and invisible,” then He is certainly in charge of all things, visible and invisible, stupendous and miniscule, magnificent and trivial. God has to be in charge of details if He is going to be in charge of the overall design.’ [Elizabeth Elliot]

When God created the world, there was not sufficient in Adam to reflect God’s image. Neither Adam nor Eve were adequate, on their own, to bear the divine image. Adam, on his own, was not good. It was only after God created woman, that together they complemented each other and filled in what the other lacked with their own unique strengths. It was only then that God could pronounce that His creation was complete and very good and truly beautiful and could give Him glory. It was only then that God stopped creating.

John Piper’s view of true womanhood is captured through his childhood eyes:

‘When I was a boy growing up in Greenville, South Carolina, my father was away from home about two-thirds of every year. What I learned in those days was that my mother was omni-competent. But it never occurred to me to think of my mother and my father in the same category. Both were strong. Both were bright. Both were kind. Both would kiss me and both would spank me. Both were good with words. Both prayed with fervour and loved the Bible. But unmistakably my father was a man and my mother was a woman. They knew it and I knew it. And it was not mainly a biological fact. It was mainly a matter of personhood and relational dynamics.’

In God’s perfect creation design in Genesis, He gave a special place, honour, function and glory to the man and the woman – different from each other but the same, equal in value, worth and dignity. The cultural or creation mandate, to fill the earth and subdue it, was given to both Adam and Eve. Neither could carry out this mandate and mission successfully on their own.

Every culture and society, post Genesis 3 and down through history, has had expressions and attitudes of viewing women as inferior and less than – objectifying them, disrespecting them, discriminating against them or abusing them.

This was never God’s design or way. It comes from Satan, the father of lies, who loves to imprison, keep in bondage and distort the Truth with his well-practised mantra, ‘Did God really say?’

In fighting the war against the world’s view of feminism and its invisible chains, the church has sometimes built a prison for women. Its bars are built from reactionary fear and the mishandling of God’s Truth. It comes from viewing women through a post Genesis 3 lens.

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By expressing our divine design of femininity, in all its wonder and beauty, we not only reflect God and bring Him glory, we feel free and fulfilled.

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Culture, not the Bible, has imposed definitions on words that assume weakness and insignificance. When we take Biblical terminology, words such as ‘helpmeet’, submission’ and ‘weaker vessel’ and we don’t define them biblically through the lens of Genesis 1 and 2, [where they imply strength, dignity and beauty], but rather redefine them through the lens of culture and a worldly societal context, we do much damage. We misrepresent God’s beautiful design and we start empowering feminism and chauvinism in the church context.

In so doing, we play right into Satan’s hands and his game of discrediting God. Women desire to rule over men and men want to rule harshly with women. We are as deceived as Adam and Eve were in Genesis 3. We don’t reflect the Gospel, we reflect the world.

‘It is a naive sort of feminism that insists that women prove their ability to do all the things that men do. This is a distortion and a travesty. Men have never sought to prove that they can do all the things women do.

Why subject women to purely masculine criteria? Women can and ought to be judged by the criteria of femininity, for it is in their femininity that they participate in the human race. And femininity has its limitations. So has masculinity. That is what we’ve been talking about. To do this is not to do that. To be this is not to be that. To be a woman is not to be a man. To be married is not to be single – which may mean not to have a career. To marry this man is not to marry all the others. A choice is a limitation.’  [Elizabeth Elliot ‘Let Me be a Woman’]

Biblical womanhood cannot be simply defined and limited by the two ‘go-to passages’ of Proverbs 31 and Titus 2. That becomes confusing and restrictive and distorts God’s design for true womanhood.

Society and the church’s view of women is to define them by their roles. God’s view of women is far grander, far more glorious and exceedingly more creative and beautiful. God defines women by their image-bearing worth. In God’s eyes, our identity as women comes from who we are in our created image-bearing design. In the eyes of a fallen world, our identity as women comes from an evolutionary design.

I am not as concerned with Society’s view of woman; Society will always get it wrong. I am concerned for the church; that is where we need it to get it right. It is where we can get it right. According to Gods’ Word, a woman is not ‘less than’ in the Church and she is not inferior in the home. This is often reflected in attitudes and mind-sets in the church context. Subservience is glorified because it looks like holiness and humility.

The church needs to see as God sees.

This is hard because tradition is entrenched and the fight against egalitarianism has seen many retreat to the other side, the side of patriarchy and chauvinism. When the pendulum swings from one side to the other, it often takes a long time to settle back in the middle.

Culture has always taken a contrary view to the Bible. The Bible’s view is good, but Culture has taken what is good and called it evil.

Culture considers women as objects, as inferior, as less than. Culture measures worth by ability, man-made standards and Darwinian instincts. The Bible has always regarded women as worthy, noble and honourable.

God drew near to Hagar in the wilderness when she was unfairly banished from Abraham’s home with Ishmael. God punished Onan when he disrespected his duty to Tamar. God saved Rahab, a prostitute abused by men, and honoured her by including her in the lineage of Jesus. God chose to work through women who were stigmatised by ancient societies because they were barren – Sarah, Rebekah, Hannah, Samson’s mother and Elizabeth. God blessed Ruth, a Moabitess, and culturally less worthy. God considered her worthy of being redeemed and becoming the mother to Obed who was in the line of David and Christ. Jesus defended the adulterous women who was discriminated against. Jesus gently revealed who He was to the Samaritan woman at the well, lower in ethnic, religious and social status.

The Bible honours women. Jesus honoured women. Paul, in his letters to the NT churches, honours women.

I want my daughter to see these beautiful Biblical expressions of womanhood honoured in the church. Women who are precious in God’s sight, resourceful and fearless, clothed in strength and dignity, full of wisdom, kindness and grace. Women who fear the Lord and are praised at the gates.

I want her to see godly men in the church respect women and treat them with honour, protection, kindness and gentleness.

I want her to see women flourish, alongside men, in making disciples as Jesus commissioned both men and women to do as the church’s mandate.

I want Society to look at our churches and to not be drawn in by the beautiful steeples and stained glass windows, but rather by the beautiful and countercultural expressions of biblical femininity and masculinity that the Gospel creates and calls us to.

I want my sons to see beautiful examples of women who are ‘omni-competent,’ clothed in strength and dignity, laughing at the days to come, because they fear the Lord. I want them to learn how to serve women by giving up their lives sacrificially for them, just as Christ gave up His life and exemplified submission to His Father.

When Adam set eyes on Eve, after realising that there was no suitable companion for him among the animals, he burst forth in poetic song, celebrating her as a precious gift, honouring her and worshipping God in gratefulness. He recognised Eve as a woman. She was beautifully different from him in form and physiology, but completely like him in her image-bearing design, reflecting their Creator’s master hand. They could communicate together, be creative together and glorify God together.

I want my daughter to see and experience that in the church and in godly Christian homes.                                I want my sons to recognise that unique worth and value in women and celebrate it.

That will happen when it is modelled. That will happen when Godly women celebrate their unique design of femininity and are joyfully content expressing that beautifully. That will happen when Godly men acknowledge it and hold it up as excellent and noble and rise and call her blessed.

Why do warriors go to battle? To fight for and protect their women (and children) from foreign invaders, because women are worthy of being fought for and protected.

Why does the prince rescue the princess? Because she is worthy of being rescued.

She is not less than. She is not inferior.

A woman’s input, in the home and the church, is necessary and valuable. It is invaluable. Men need it. They needed it in Eden, when there was no sin. God saw that and He created woman. It is the way God designed it and it was very good. It was perfect.

‘My plea is let me be a woman, holy through and through, asking for nothing but what God wants to give me.’ [Elizabeth Elliot]

This blogpost was first published here

The post I Am Woman appeared first on Proverbs 31.

She was raised in the largely rural Eastern Cape, and although I was also born there, I spent the larger share of my formative years being molded in the urban streets of Vosloorus, a township south east of Jo’burg.

This is why she often looks at me with a look that is a mixture of bemusement and unease when I bob my head violently upon hearing a Theory Hazit beat, and it is why I often look at her with a look that is a mixture of envy and admiration, when she sings Weslyean Xhosa hymns from memory.

If you could be a fly on our fern green living room wall on some of our home entertainment evenings, you would hear us debating whether to watch an episode of “Gxabhashe” or a Spike Lee joint.

I must admit, there are some aspects in which I often selfishly wish my wife was more like me, but what follows are some brief, random thoughts on those aspects of her character that I pray for more grace to imitate.

Counting Others More Significant Than Herself

It is a chilly Monday morning in our rented apartment in Wellington City.  I am hurriedly making myself presentable for another day at the office.  Mamo sneaks out of the bedroom, careful not to wake our little terrorist children. One minute she is in the lounge, tidying up what looks like the aftermath of a miniature service delivery protest (You can take a South African out of Mzansi they say). The next minute she is in the kitchen, baptising the dishes as if to cleanse them of any guilty stains from our yesternight gluttony.

Why the rush to tidy up so early in the morning? Are we expecting guests? Sort of…  The house cleaners are coming.  Yes, the house cleaners.  Ever since we’ve been married, I have been observing that Mamo has this habit of cleaning up before the cleaners come. While many of us would plan our house parties right on the night before the cleaners are due to come, she reasons that just because they get paid to clean our mess doesn’t mean that we should abuse and taken advantage of them. Talk about counting others more significant than yourself.

Ambitions on Hold

Like many married men, I know more about my wife’s friends than she knows about mine. I can neither confirm nor deny the fact that I am insinuating that women are generally more talkative than men, but if I am ever accused of making such a claim, I withdraw that truth.

The point is this; I have come to learn that nearly all of my wife’s friends, from her once pimple-faced high-school mates, to her varsity colleagues, are swiftly making their way up their respective corporate ladders while she sits at home being the ladder upon which our children climb their way to maturity.

Now I am in no way condemning other married mothers who are career women. Mind you, Mamo may still decide to trade the kitchen for an office sometime in the future. I am merely admiring my her God-given resolve and strength to put her career ambitions on hold (to often face disparaging remarks from friends and family and to often struggle with deep bouts of self-doubt about the decision she has made) for the sake of our children. And every time I observe our children’s confidence and emotional security, when I hear our two year old daughter lisping parts of scripture I know I haven’t made the time to teach her, I cannot help but praise the Lord for the wisdom that has led us down this path.

The ‘S’ Word

If there is anything more deplorable in our society than a woman who chooses to be a stay-at-home-mother, it is a woman who affirms her husband’s role as head of the home.  Many young girls today grown up in environments where they learn to despise the idea of a woman submitting to her husband before they even learn to pronounce the word complementarianism, let alone understand its beautiful meaning.

Not so with my wife. She was nurtured by women who epitomized the word submission. Her mother and the women around her, being fruits of the Classical Pentecostalism of the Assemblies of God, sang from a hymn sheet which has all but been discarded in many parts of today’s society.

Over the almost-four-years of our married life, I have come to realize that the gentle and quite spirit that attracted me to her in the first place was not some kind of courtship make-up to be washed off on the wedding night.  She truly is ‘without wax’.

Grace.

To be sure, Mamo would be the first to admit that she still needs tons of grace to grow in these and many other virtues, but from where I am standing I have some catching up to do.

I am grateful for my wife’s example of counting others more significant than herself, I am grateful for her example of sacrificial living.  I am grateful for those women who became walking commentaries on Proverbs 31 for her to read in her youth.

I am grateful for the jewel that my wife is.

But my gratitude is coloured with not a little tint of fear. Having sinned against her in many ways in the past, and knowing that apart from the grace of God, I may yet sin against her in worse ways, I fear lest I should trample so much upon this beautiful gift that I should be the reason our daughter grows up to join the popular chorus of voices who mock and ridicule women like her mother.

But God is rich in grace.

By Mandla Gqada

The post Imitating My Wife as She Imitates Christ appeared first on Proverbs 31.

ore women need to be a part of the workforce, top business positions should be filled by more women, keep women out of the home, and in the workforce.” This is what the world chants and is very characteristic of today’s society. As women, we want to make it in the business/corporate world that has been, for centuries, dominated by men. We are told that we need equal jobs, equal pay, equal hours at work, and everything else that men have been entitled to for a long time.

Is there something wrong with women working? No. We are working beings, and both men and women are to work. Before I got married, I worked long hours in the corporate world, spent late nights in the office, and was a part of the world of quick turnarounds and long workhours. I was not married and had no dependents, I would arrive at home late at night, have a quick take-out dinner and then I was back to my laptop to work from home. Now, this wasn’t always the case each and every day, but the scenario I am painting is that of a lifestyle spent at work and on taking some ‘me-time’ away from work. Prayer and bible time were mornings and evenings and the rest of the day was jam-packed. Had I been married with children, my husband and I would only get to spend time as a family, for a lesser part of the day, with most of it spent out of the home. Our children would have spent most of the day in the care of someone other than their parents. I know that this is the case with many families in today’s society, but should we be spending time away from our family so much? Is that what a family is intended to be?

There are some who may have less than favorable circumstances to deal with, and I am not criticizing the single mom or dad that has to work more than one job to put food on the table. These situations are not ideal. The picture of an ideal family, as God intended is one in which both parents are teaching children the ways of the Lord, the commandments of the Lord, (Proverbs 2:6) night and day. Both parents together have a role in raising children to the glory of God and each parent individually has their role as mother and as father. The words of the Lord in Deuteronomy 6: 6-9 spell it out quite clearly:

[eltdf_blockquote text=” “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” ” title_tag=”h2″ width=””]

Children are to be taught, 24/7, the commandments of the Lord, from their parents. “When you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up”. Whether you eat or you drink, or whatever you may do, do it all to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). How best to teach children in this way, than to spend most of our time with them? God commands:

• Men to love their wives, lead their wives and children as the head of the household under Christ (Eph 5:23, 1 Cor 11:3), to provide for the household (1 Tim 5:8), to train and discipline children (Eph 6:4, Prov 15:5).
• Women to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord (Eph 5:22, 24, Col 3:18) manage the home (Prov 14:1, 31:27, 1 Tim 5:13-14,Titus 2:5) teach their children( Prov 22:6) and younger women (Titus 2:3), train and discipline children under the authority of her husband.
• Children to honour and obey their parents as unto the Lord. (Col 3:20, Exodus 20:12)

The Lord our God has given us roles within and for the family, which is the bedrock of society.

One thought that I always have when reading in the news, about the atrocities that are taking place in this world, is that those who commit such heinous crimes were once sweet little babies who have/had a mother and a father. Yes, some may have been victims of circumstances such as an absent parent or many may have been orphaned, but the fact remains, that a man and a woman came together to bring forth a child. A child, who, no matter what the circumstances, is a blessing for the Lord. The parents and children, no matter what the circumstances, have a biblical mandate as male and female, mother and father, as children.

The very fabric of society as God intended, has been marred by sin and torn apart at the seams as we try to find all kinds of solutions, work harder, have better schools, have better nannies and daycare centers. It’s a never-ending spiral that we will forever be caught up in, because we cannot find solutions to societies’ problems in this world. Children will grow up to be the robbers, lairs, cheaters, swindlers and killers we see and read about in the news, unless they are raised by Godly parents who are obedient to God’s word. No, not all children will grow up to be killers, they may be good children and grow up to be great adults, but good children and great adults are still accountable to God when they die.(Ecclesiastes 12:14)

All are doomed, unless we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and are saved, unless we repent of our sins and turn to Christ who is the author of our salvation. Only through Christ are we saved, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, are able to see sin for what it is and look to Christ. Only through Him are we justified and sanctified to live our lives in obedience to Him. He created us, he created families, and if we are to have Godly families our eyes should be fixed upon Him. There is no other way to be obedient to His commands.

I left the corporate world that I knew I wouldn’t be a part of for a long time. At the right time, the Lord provided a loving, God-fearing husband who had the same convictions as I did, regarding family and raising children to the glory of God. I now work from, in and for the home, which is the sphere/launching pad that God has given to me. What a blessing it has been to submit to the Lord and honor Him and his commands; to learn at His feet, about how to raise a family for the furtherance of His Kingdom; to teach my child the ways of the Lord and make the home a haven for my family and guests within our gates. Without the Lord Jesus Christ, it isn’t possible. All Glory and honour be unto Him.

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