If Exodus is going to have women who flourish in their distinct gifts and callings. Women who model what it means to be a godly woman. Then, we are going to need counter cultural men.
Now, this doesn’t mean that women are only fulfilled if they are married or that women are inferior to men. It also doesn’t mean that women are not responsible for their own walks with Jesus. What it does mean is that we need both biblical men and women to rightly display the wonders of the image of God. And when men are fully being men, women are better able to be the women God has made them to be.
So, Paul calls for such men in 1 Timothy 2:8(as well as in 1 Timothy 3:1-7). Men who know that they need God so much that they pray in a posture of dependence. Men who have control of their emotions so that they don’t lash out or seethe in anger. We need Men who lead without fighting but with a confidence that comes from Jesus. We need these men.
So, we need…
- Pastors/Elders who know how to honor, equip and engage women. Who view women as coheirs of the grace of life…not a segment of the congregation to endure and avoid.
- Fathers who know how to raise daughters with a vision for their life that’s God sized and who know how to see that they flourish in a biblical definition of what it means to be a woman of God.
- Husbands who know how to live with their wives in an understanding way so that his wife flourishes as a coheir of the grace of life.
- Brothers in Christ who know how to pray for the women in their lives who know how to treat them like sisters until they are not sisters any more (i.e. they are married to one).
- Friends who know how to treat women with respect and honor them and protect them as a sister
We need counter cultural…biblically faithful…men.
A biographer of George Whitefield wrote…
“[My hope and prayer] is that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more bring into being His special certain young men whom He may use in his glorious employ. And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be fools for Christ’s sake, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labour and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness ‘signs and wonders following’ in the transformation of multitudes of human lives. ”
May it be…Dear Jesus…May it be…
