Powerful Women

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5)

We love power!

Yet there is a power we do not want to be associated with.

Ever heard of someone calling their daughter Jezebel? Yet the lady had immense powers, even the power of life and death in the kingdom she was a part of.

What about Delilah?

Yet she was able to rescue her people from a tyrant. She was a great heroine to the Philistines. You can be sure they sung her praise fora long time.

And Judas? Yet he had been the accountant/ treasurer to the King of kings, even playing all trusty when he was siphoning funds.

Nobody wants to be associated with such power, simply because it was destructive, destructive because it went against God’s agenda and revelation.

It is respectable to kill for a cause, to steal for the poor. Many heroes of the past became such because of doing it.

But it is wicked when it is done for personal gain. It is wicked when it results in oppression or deprives the vulnerable of their rights.

However, we must guard against flipped narratives that will paint the villain as the hero as we see in many freedom movements where the real heroes either ‘disappear’ or are smeared with betrayer tags by the turncoats who were the actual traitors.

I therefore want us to look at the Bible to see what makes a believing woman powerful by looking at some women in the Bible we love to associate with and, if possible, emulate.

The first quality I find common amongst them is self-effacement.

They were meek, or in simpler terms, under the control of someone else, and willingly so.

They did not fight for dominance like many a modern woman.

The other is self-sacrifice.

They willingly surrendered their rights for someone or a cause outside themselves.

I want us to look at a couple of such women, beginning with Mary.

I do not know whether you realise her obedience being looked at from her side was worse than suicide.

A pregnant unmarried girl was stoned to death for adultery.

The second thing was that marriage would be impossible had she even overcome that first hurdle.

Do you not remember Joseph starting the process before God stepped in?

That surrender and sacrifice was therefore immense. No wonder she is talked about with such good words.

And even after Joseph takes her, we do not see her dominating his space at any time. Nor do we see her trying to control her Son or reminding Him of her sacrifice.

The second woman we look at is Rahab the harlot.

She saves the spies from torture and death.

Yet, instead of making demands on them, she actually pleads with them to save her life. And not only her life, but the life of her whole family, beginning with her parents.

That is not how harlots behave.

Ruth allowed Naomi to completely dominate her as if she did not have any rights.

And with her I want us to look at another aspect of these women.

She looked at this bleeding woman and chose to serve her, completely foregoing her dreams and aspirations.

Imagine foregoing marriage to walk with a grieving woman even when she is fighting so hard to ask you to leave her alone.

Hannah behaved the same way.

She prays for a son and then completely gives him away. And that with no assurance that any other child will come.

I do not care to have a child provided they stop calling me barren and (to society) cursed. An answer to her prayer to counter her barrenness ended at that. And she followed it up.

I think that aspect of release/ surrender/ sacrifice is what makes them stand out.

Each of these women gave away something extremely precious.

And of course, we remember the other Mary who poured all her savings on Jesus’ feet until Judas couldn’t take it any more and went to the priests.

I will stop here. But treat it as a pause.

 

Why Serpents 6

I want to develop my last post on this topic by giving scriptural examples of what I meant.

Our first example is Lot.

Though there is nothing wrong he did in following his uncle, he had no calling or understanding of what, where and why Abraham was going.

It is no wonder that when push comes to shove and he is given an option he chooses the physical appeal over spiritual relevance since he must have known the basics of Sodom’s spiritual reality.

No wonder he lost big. Lost his wife and name

The second is Esau.

Again, he did not know the spiritual nature of Abraham’s calling, thinking that his inheritance was purely material.

No wonder he was bypassed so easily. And the fact that when he meets his brother much later he had completely forgotten that he had been cheated of anything since he had been able to make his own wealth anyway.

Gehazi was poised to get the double portion of Elisha’s anointing but lost it when, like Esau, forgot that he was involved in a spiritual enterprise.

Solomon lost it when the miracle and the breakthrough became more important than the One who had performed it. The gift became more important that its giver.

In the New Testament we have Mark when he accompanied his uncle on his first mission.

But I think the ultimate is the Sceva brothers of Acts 19.

Sending is different from being sent.

I think that is the point of this post.