Authority and Submission

On authority and submission within the trinity, from Sharon James' book, 'God's Design For Women':

'To dislike patterns of authority and submission (whether in the family or church or society) implies that we dislike a pattern that is intrinsic to the beauty and glory of God himself.'

Ouch.
That one hit me hard today.

I found out recently that the word for submission in german is 'Unterwerfung' or 'Unterordnung', the former immediately conjuring up, in my mind at least, this horrid picture of throwing a woman under a bus or something. Hm, so not exactly a positive picture...

Yet although we had some qualms about the helper-role of women at first, what really shed new light onto the submission and helper qualities was the understanding of God being named as the 'Helper' and of this characteristic as being a godly one. This is not a helper who is second rate or who is a second class citizen. Rather a helper who plays an essential role in order for the work to be carried out properly.

I think I'm far from understanding all of this but hopefully when we meet again on Sunday evening to cover some texts in John that deal with this issue of authority and submission within the trinity, things will become a little more tangible.

It's funny as I rather thought I'd gotten a lot of this sorted out within my own mind and heart. Oh how wrong you can be.

God's Design For Women

Last night was our first meeting of 'God's Design For Women'. As the books only arrived yesterday afternoon I didn't really have time to prepare anything and so the meeting was really a chance for us to discuss how we wanted our meetings to run and what material we wanted to cover week by week. Reading through the introduction together raised a few questions too which we heartily discussed.

The only problem I see that could possibly arise is over language issues. We'll be doing the Bible Study in english and german, mainly reading in english and speaking german though I reckon we'll probably switch between the two.

When I think of how this all came about I actually find it quite astonishing that I now seem to be hosting, organising and partly leading this string of studies on biblical womanhood! Let's just say I'm more than glad that the material and questions are already prepared! God inspired and used conversations I have had over the last few weeks to make up a group of six women who are eager to learn what it means to live as godly women in this age. It is just so thrilling to see God working and bringing things so perfectly together! I know that I am inadequate and weak but to see God still desiring to work through me is just incredible.

I think it's also now that I'm realising just what spiritual need there is here among women in Germany. Womanhood, according to how God has defined it, just doesn't seem to be being talked about at church, or if it is, I get the feeling from talking to some of my friends that the teaching tends to either be insufficient and never really gets to the heart of feminine issues, or is biased toward societal beliefs. So please pray for us as we meet up over the next few weeks, that we'd have open minds and hearts to receive what the Bible says about how we ought to live.

Hauskreis

In about an hour I'll be off to house group and will be leading the Bible Study on Romans 3. Amazingly I don't feel nervous about it and I can only see that as answer to prayer. I'm not wholly convinced that what I've prepared is going to be awe inspiring, but I trusted God when I started it and still trust Him now to challenge the hearts of those in my house group, particularly as we're dealing with the righteousness of God and our justification. Please pray that this would be a God-centred study and that we wouldn't get side-tracked. We desperately need to understand what it means for our hearts to be totally depraved and how and why such a righteous God should choose to make such sinful people righteous in Christ. Pray for a deeper and more God-glorifying understanding of the gospel in all of us.

'For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.' Romans 3:22-25