When you're already home
"And then it hit me. The Samaritan didn't need to change roads to encounter God. He was walking his road, minding his business, when God brought someone into his path. And then he had a choice: notice and do something, or ignore and move along." (p. 64)
This quote is from a book I finished recently called Invited: The Power of Hospitality in an Age of Loneliness by Leslie Verner. I liked the book and recommend it, though it still plays into my vague angst about our house being barely large enough for the people who live here much less adding other people.
But this isn't really about hospitality, the quote I began with just happened to be in a book about hospitality. Instead I've been chewing on the less than... gracious, Christian, humble, loving, encouraging, kind (you fill in the blank, they all fit)... comment from John MacArthur in regards to Beth Moore's ministry. If you've missed it, just search those two names and you'll immediately have more options of listening to you than really want or need. I could only watch it once because his snide and condescending tone made me want to hit my computer with something. That is not a very Christ-like response on my part I realize, nor would it be very good for my computer, so I decided not to listen a second time, though it was so over the top that I almost wanted to just to be sure I really heard him say the things he said.
In a nutshell, he told Beth Moore, and by extension any woman in ministry, that she should go home, meaning that public ministry was not her place. I'm not going to address the egregious theological errors about this; others have done a beautiful job addressing that already. But to my ears, not only did John MacArthur discount what women such as Beth Moore are doing, but in a rather nasty backhanded way, he also completely discounted the women who are doing Jesus' work at home. He clearly sees us as no threat to his hold on ecclesiastical power, and make no mistake, his comments later on make it perfectly clear that he is threatened by strong, intelligent, God-fearing women. This is all about power and nothing about serving Jesus.
But to discount women who are at home, is to completely discount Christ as well. Those of us who are serving God in our homes are very often doing so because we have children to care for. For some, those children grow and mature allowing those mothers to move on to other ways of serving which are not so home centered. For others of us, and I now know more than a few women, who, like me, have children who are never going to grow and mature and become independent. Because of the needs of our children, our free time to pursue things we might very well want to pursue is curtailed. This has been something I have been personally wrestling with for the past year or two. For better or worse, I am home, and for the foreseeable future this is where I'll be. I can tell you it doesn't make it any easier to be completely discounted by a person who is supposed to encourage people to serve the 'least of these'.
I think this is why that quote I wrote out at the top so struck me. Just as the Samaritan didn't need to change roads to encounter God and serve Him, neither do I. I don't need to strive to do valuable work, because God will place that work in my path. I don't need to go out searching for it, which is good, because that isn't feasible at the moment.
God can use well known Bible teachers just as easily and just as much as He can use women who are at home. What John MacArthur seems to forget is that it is not the people with power that matter to God, but the people who love Him, turn to Him, humble themselves, and do His will. Those are the people, the unexpected, unknown people, whom God uses to bring about His story.
This quote is from a book I finished recently called Invited: The Power of Hospitality in an Age of Loneliness by Leslie Verner. I liked the book and recommend it, though it still plays into my vague angst about our house being barely large enough for the people who live here much less adding other people.
But this isn't really about hospitality, the quote I began with just happened to be in a book about hospitality. Instead I've been chewing on the less than... gracious, Christian, humble, loving, encouraging, kind (you fill in the blank, they all fit)... comment from John MacArthur in regards to Beth Moore's ministry. If you've missed it, just search those two names and you'll immediately have more options of listening to you than really want or need. I could only watch it once because his snide and condescending tone made me want to hit my computer with something. That is not a very Christ-like response on my part I realize, nor would it be very good for my computer, so I decided not to listen a second time, though it was so over the top that I almost wanted to just to be sure I really heard him say the things he said.
In a nutshell, he told Beth Moore, and by extension any woman in ministry, that she should go home, meaning that public ministry was not her place. I'm not going to address the egregious theological errors about this; others have done a beautiful job addressing that already. But to my ears, not only did John MacArthur discount what women such as Beth Moore are doing, but in a rather nasty backhanded way, he also completely discounted the women who are doing Jesus' work at home. He clearly sees us as no threat to his hold on ecclesiastical power, and make no mistake, his comments later on make it perfectly clear that he is threatened by strong, intelligent, God-fearing women. This is all about power and nothing about serving Jesus.
But to discount women who are at home, is to completely discount Christ as well. Those of us who are serving God in our homes are very often doing so because we have children to care for. For some, those children grow and mature allowing those mothers to move on to other ways of serving which are not so home centered. For others of us, and I now know more than a few women, who, like me, have children who are never going to grow and mature and become independent. Because of the needs of our children, our free time to pursue things we might very well want to pursue is curtailed. This has been something I have been personally wrestling with for the past year or two. For better or worse, I am home, and for the foreseeable future this is where I'll be. I can tell you it doesn't make it any easier to be completely discounted by a person who is supposed to encourage people to serve the 'least of these'.
I think this is why that quote I wrote out at the top so struck me. Just as the Samaritan didn't need to change roads to encounter God and serve Him, neither do I. I don't need to strive to do valuable work, because God will place that work in my path. I don't need to go out searching for it, which is good, because that isn't feasible at the moment.
God can use well known Bible teachers just as easily and just as much as He can use women who are at home. What John MacArthur seems to forget is that it is not the people with power that matter to God, but the people who love Him, turn to Him, humble themselves, and do His will. Those are the people, the unexpected, unknown people, whom God uses to bring about His story.
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