Tag / Power

by Jennifer Wells

The Powerful Woman

“Your husband is a brooder. And brooders brood.” – Bates (Downton Abbey)

powerFor years I have been working through what I believe about women and power (I call it processing, but really, like Bates, it’s brooding). Because there are two extremes in our culture, and I disagree with both. There is the world’s definition of female power, distorted by our enemy until somehow women choose to do things that are absolutely terrible for us to demonstrate we have the right, and then the church’s definition of female power, which in many places is no power at all, or worse, no voice (although certainly not everywhere). Both extremes make me very uncomfortable.

I’ve not always thought about women and power in a righteous way – in fact most often probably the opposite. The rebellious contrarian nature in me (that aged my parents like my rebellious contrarian child ages me) rises up when someone addresses this issue, and I struggle to understand and work through what I believe about rights, submission, surrender, and the power that is mine as a child of the King. I’ll search the Bible for answers, and feel my spirit lift and fall as I read things that encourage or confuse me when it comes to women and power. Paul, for example, writes some pretty strict limitations on women’s leadership, but shortly after praises a female apostle and writes greetings to several women leaders in the early church, and after that says there is no male and female in the Kingdom. It is confusing, and anyone who tells you it isn’t apparently possesses some secret Bible decoder ring that I’d love to borrow for a month or two or forever. And again I’m a contrarian, so I want to know the truth, but I won’t believe something just because you say it is true.

I’ve always been this way. As a child, in my Christian school, I submitted a science fair project on my attempt to determine the point where life begins, studying it both in the Bible and from a scientific viewpoint, trying to work through what I believed. And let me tell you – the entire project didn’t go over well in the school I attended, despite my genuinely pro-life viewpoint (I think I got a 72). Sometimes questions, even asked innocently, make people uncomfortable.

And that discomfort certainly exists when you start discussing women and power in today’s church. We all have a point of view, often shaped by our experiences. For years I served in churches where women on staff were the absolute minority and relegated to non-ministerial “director” roles. On one staff, I was the only woman on the executive staff (terrifying, right?), and I felt like I had to represent all women at a table full of men, all of the time. It exhausted me. So I left ministry, aside from serving beside my minister husband, because I couldn’t figure out how to be me in those environments.

But in the meantime, I kept being drawn to these women who were both powerful and righteous – and I loved watching them be all God had made them to be. I longed to see more of that from the Church that I love.

So this position comes up at Community of Faith for me to serve full-time on a church staff again.  Honestly, I’ve never cried or agonized over a decision more in my life. I actually said no several times. And then I visited here and saw that this church is defined by so many things that move my heart: mission, Prayer, restoring the broken, redeeming the lost. This place is real and simple and powerful. There is freedom here. Beauty. Vulnerability. God’s presence so thick you can feel it. Prayer like I’ve never experienced. I wanted to be here but I was not sold on my role on the staff until I met a woman who demonstrated quiet graceful strength. She is our Pastor’s wife – but we also call her our Pastor. She doesn’t claim that title or call herself that as if it were her right – but she started COF with her husband and her wisdom saturates this place and she completely fills that role in the right way, so that is what we call her, because we honor her. On the drive back to Dallas, after seeing the church and meeting the Shooks, Justin and I talked and wrestled and prayed and processed like our life was on the line – because it was. During that talk, I cried when I told him that meeting her, I finally saw myself here. I knew if I came on staff I would never have to represent all women, because they are very beautifully represented in the women on staff here already. But more than that, I felt like I had seen the right kind of power displayed and honored, and it felt like coming home.

(There are some who will shut down as you read the last paragraph, and I get it. I  hope my heart is coming across correctly, but I also know we all have entirely too much baggage when it comes to the issue of women and the church. We have seen abuses and been taught rules and boundaries quite forcefully, so I get the complexity and discomfort).

So we decide to move here after the Lord confirms our decision about eleven different ways, and I return to full-time ministry. We are at this church, this church of our dreams, serving with people who are fully alive to the world of the Spirit and fully on-mission to reach the world. Last weekend I filmed sixteen people as they were baptized, and our Pastor stood at the top of the steps of the baptistry and said “I’m proud of you” to each one as they timidly stepped into the water and into the new life of obedience to Christ. This place is not perfect, I know, but it is special and the Lord’s hand is here and we are moved by it week after week after week. So many times since we moved here Justin and I have said to each other, “This is worth giving up our lives.”

But even still, it hasn’t been easy for me. I brood. I feel unsettled. Awkward. Striving. Inadequate. Insecure. Too tall. Too loud. Too much. Not enough. I am fighting to process all of this because it is all so new. This new culture. This new paradigm. Even the new roles Justin and I are filling at home and my role at work. In every area of our life there are massive changes, and I am stuck in my head working through them. Most of all, I’m working through how to walk through this door the Lord so clearly opened for our family. Because it’s amazing and refreshing to meet a woman walking in the right kind of power, but it’s hard to be a woman walking in the right kind of power. I feel a little bit like I’m learning to walk again, wobbling between extremes, trying to find my way. Too fearful one moment, too bold the next. Too confident in my own wisdom, then plagued with self-doubt, all the time not relying enough on the wisdom of my Father. My feelings are all over the map, and although rationally I know my feelings aren’t truth – still I feel so many feelings and it makes me uncomfortable.

Finally I come to tonight – and the reason I am writing. There has been some serious violence in our new area in the past months, and the women on our staff were invited to a prayer meeting to stand together against the forces of evil in our town. So I go with some female staff members and staff wives, and we walk into a room with about 16 people total, where we are led in prayer. And it was powerful. All-caps POWERFUL. We are praying in unison, quiet at first, but with more and more boldness as we go. We are humbling ourselves, begging the Lord to intercede and move and change hearts and rescue. We have been afraid, but we aren’t going to live in fear anymore. Instead we are laying down our requests before the God who controls armies of angels. We are also stepping into the power that is ours to fight against the enemy. The leader of the prayer time says,  “We don’t have to take this – we don’t have to be subject to this violence and the schemes of the enemy. We have power in Christ to push back this darkness” and my spirit felt free to walk in that power. It was glorious… and I’m not a person who uses the word “glorious.” We are women, praying in power, as if we have the right to claim this victory and take back this land for the glory of the Lord. Because we do. And I just kept thinking as I left – this is the right kind of power. This is the undefinable thing that moves me about this place.

(As a sidenote, in that room praying with us was one of the most powerful and influential women in the entire Christian world – a name every single one of you would know without question, crying out to the Lord alongside us, revealing the Source of her very formidable strength. When the Lord shows me something, He often has to repeat Himself until even I can’t miss the lesson).

Tonight these conflicted ideas stopped being conflicted for me. The power is not in me, and yet is in me. I am a simple girl. A mess more often than I admit. I know better than anyone how utterly unqualified I am on my own strength to lead anyone or represent the Lord in ministry to a hurting world. And yet I am a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, so His power is in me. He uses me despite my weakness. He empowers me with His strength. And when I walk in that power, there are no limits to what I can or should do for the Lord and His Kingdom. The difference between power out-of-control and beautiful righteous power is the Spirit in which I am walking. Am I walking in surrender to Christ, filled with the Spirit? Then I am powerful and I have no reason to fear or limit myself.

Pray for me, sweet friends, and I’ll pray for you, that we will walk in the power of Christ in the way we were intended, without fear and without a desire to glorify ourselves. And may we progress from infants struggling to walk in this power to daughters dancing and running, pushing back the darkness and bringing glory to the God who created us male and female, for His glory.

For consider your calling, brothers (and sisters): not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God,righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” I Cor 1:26 – 31.

I think this is appropriate given the subject matter. 🙂

by Jennifer Wells

Planted by Streams of Water

That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers. Psalm 1:3

I am visual and because of what I imagine when I read it, I love this verse.  Doesn’t your heart rate slow when you read this verse and picture that tree?

I read this passage this week and immediately thought “Lord, I feel withered.  I don’t feel planted by streams of water.  I don’t feel like a tree. I feel like a weed.” In that moment, I realized I had a choice – turn from this passage and believe that either this is not really true for Believers or that I am abandoned in my sin, or dig in and figure out why my feelings aren’t matching up with truth.  I realized, quickly, the context of this verse is that the person living deeply invested in the Word of God is the tree.  Ahhh – there is my problem.  I have been disobedient in that area.  So I returned to Him, and sought His presence, and began to feel the streams of water reenter my parched soul.  My perspective began to shift from inside this tiny life I live to the bigger picture of His grace and glory.

And I saw something in this verse.  “Which yields its fruit in season.”  I know from previous study that there is a symbolic meaning to fruit – and I know what this passage is trying to say.  But I also saw something else – another definition of fruit.

One of the MOST amazing things about this past year has been the private messages I have received via Facebook or email, particularly after I reveal some aspect of my terrible nature on this blog.  I have received confessions of weakness or sin from women and men who I’ve known throughout my life, small “me too” messages that reveal that I am not alone in my struggles.  I have received PRECIOUS notes of encouragement from people who have defeated similar sin and many people have joined with me and prayed for me.  I have had the great privilege of praying for, and maybe encouraging, some other people who are struggling alongside me as they have walked their walks with the Lord.  One thing I’ve realized – many many people wait with us on the Lord.   This waiting room is more full than I ever imagined.  But in the waiting room, if we’ll look around, is grace and true Biblical fellowship with other Believers, also waiting.  We can learn from each other.  We can relate to each other.  We can find lifelong friendships.  Amazing.

Another great thing about this time, since I have decided to speak out loudly about our desire to adopt and our desire to support adoptive and foster parents, a number of people have privately messaged me that God is calling them to adopt or foster.  Someone wrote today – it just thrills my soul.  That calling is a daunting one.  I read somewhere that only a very small percentage of people who investigate adoption actually adopt.  And I can understand why.  The process is sometimes confusing and challenging, and it is scary stuff to ask for the permanent care of a child from another environment – not because we fear the child, but often because we don’t feel worthy to handle the challenges that could be associated with adoption and we worry we’ll mess up everyone’s lives in the process.  So I get these quiet messages – “Do you think I could do this?”  I love getting those messages – I love that people trust me with that secret desire and I love that I get to, in that moment, affirm that what God begins in us, He is faithful to complete in His power.  During this past two years, we have gotten the amazing privilege of praying with people, encouraging people, and in tiny measure maybe even helping people do what God has called them to do.  It has been overwhelming and humbling.  When I get those messages, I shake from the honor of being a small part of God’s movement in their lives.

It has been priceless to me.

I wonder had all of my dreams, and my plans, come true in my timing, would I ever have known that community and that privilege?  Had it been up to me – our house would be on its way to being full of little people from around the world.  It is likely I would have been puffed up in my success and busy in my own pursuits, and I would have missed out on the joy of this avenue of true Biblical fellowship.

For that reason, I love this time while we wait.  We can’t adopt now, but we can encourage now. We can pray.  We can advocate.

So this week, when I went to the Lord feeling weak and lifeless, He reminded me that even in Fall and Winter, He is working to bring forth Spring.  And even if I get to be a small part of bringing forth Spring in the lives of others, it is worthy wonderful work.  If that is some of my fruit of this season, I’m in.  I may not be seeing fruit at this moment in our home, but I am seeing others bear fruit and joining with them in community.  Rock on.

So that was a sweet new definition of fruit for me, as pertains to the Psalm 1 passage.

And speaking of bringing forth spring – the Lord has been pruning me so that I can produce fruit in my parenting.  This wait has revealed in me some deficiencies that I needed to correct before I was ready to adopt.  About six months ago, I began to be aware of my inadequacies parenting my girls, in particular Grace.  It was like she was a mirror reflecting the worst side of my nature, and what I saw in myself was ugly.  It killed me.  I longed to parent her with grace and wisdom, and I knew I was failing.  So I prayed.  I begged.  I blogged.  And truthfully, my parenting style, and my sin nature, didn’t revolutionize overnight.  I started having more good days than bad, but sometimes the sin that so easily entangles would overwhelm me.  And I was frustrated.  I felt broken.  I knew my problem, knew some of my wrong thinking, but wasn’t sure how to correct it.  But in my chaos and confusion, the Lord was working quietly and perfectly. Over time, He weaved several seemingly small interactions together that have helped me see my purpose in parenting and helped me identify and correct much of that wrong thinking.  Through a verse, a couple of conversations with friends, some messages from Brandon Thomas, a note from a high school friend over Facebook, a couple of books, the Tapestry Adoption Conference, and the prayers and accountability of precious sisters in Christ, He spoke.  Today I confess that I am not perfect yet (Ha – I wish!), but that I am tapped into the source of change and everyday realizing the grace that is mine both for myself and for parenting my loves.  I am seeing, in Grace, the same struggle I face everyday, the struggle to protect and control what we see as ours, and finally I am feeling empathy for her, not frustration.  Loving, obeying, understanding, and dying to ourselves is not natural.  It is hard, lifelong work.  I am an adult with the person of Christ living in me and yet I struggle, but I expect my three year-old to get it?  It is terribly unfair.  So finally I am seeing that for what it is – sin in me that needs to be dealt with.  Thank you Lord for your refining of me for my and my sweet daughter’s sake.  Protect her Lord from my habitual sin, and continue to be a source of love and grace for my girls.

I remember after therapy realizing that there is power in the knowledge of our brokenness.  Sometimes healing takes work and often it comes later, but a great victory is won when we see ourselves as we truly are – in need of healing and help.  In that moment, we can turn to the Lord and confess our brokenness and He begins to heal.  That is why the enemy of our souls fights to tell us that we are okay, that our problems are always due to other people in our world.  The enemy wants us to believe “It’s all good.  Don’t sweat it.”  But the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin for our benefit, so we can become free.  And I am so grateful to God for that.  He could leave us to walk through life clothed in the stink of death and sin, unaware of our own stench, covered by the grace of His Son’s death but unable to live an abundant life.  But He doesn’t.  He has made us positionally pure in Christ, but He reveals Himself to us and reveals our sin so that we can become completely pure.

That is what streams of water is all about.  Filling with Him so there is no room for our sinful selfish ways until we grow taller and stronger than we ever could have grown in our own power.

Sign me up for that.