Show Me How To Love Like You Have Loved Me
Today during the prayer session after sermon, God pressed something dear and important into my heart. It was regarding an issue I knew mattered but not to the point that I understood or even came close to fathoming its relevance to my walk as a Christian.
After climbing out of a period of heartache and wrestling with the intricate twists of relationships, I have come to question what it truly means to understand my worth as a woman in this world, who has been called a daughter of God.
This generation and the generations before are still grappling with realising what it means to have men as leaders at home, at work, and in relationships. I never believed women are made to 'rule' this world alone with grit and gumption that recalls misplaced male power than reveal feminine character. Why? What has gone wrong in the process? What is wrong with possessing and displaying feminine beauty and its own strength?
Men have long learned how to 'master' women's beauty to their own advantage. Not that they intended bad right from the start. A lot of it is how we are naturally wired. How many times have women just submitted to how men want to see ourselves, offering our beauty and our bodies to them thinking this gets us their attention or love? But we know we desire something more meaningful in relationships, not that physical attraction is bad but such pleasure is not enough. We know that the touch can never fully allow our beauty to be appreciated in all its depth and breadth.
Are you afraid of our beauty? Are you afraid of your own beauty? How many relationships have you gone through which have gradually eaten away at your wholeness? That you can be vulnerable, emotional, trembling, real, strong, assured and still a revelation of God's awesome beauty both inside and out?
How many times have men exploited our softer side, our bodies, and stepped on our femininity as they try to find their standing in the world? To equate dominance with strength? We are more than a pretty face on a magazine cover or an exposed body in a pornographic video or a body delivered straight out of a cosmetic surgeon's room. Not just a rape victim, an abused wife, a teenager who has had one night stand too many. It does not even have to be so dramatic. The whistle on the streets, the lustful stares, the sneering, teasing, verbal insults - so much that we have brushed aside and taken as something natural and tolerable.
I am not advocating a violent backlash against the male population. For so long they have tried to prove their power by diminishing women, not realising that we do not stand in opposition to one another but rather in partnership. Men are created to lead and women to support them. But when they lose their focus and are unable to find the purpose to drive them forward, we find ourselves thrust into the role of leading.
So where am I now? Today it came to me: we cannot look to each other for answers. Both of us want the other gender to fill up the part of us we find lacking. But we are made to complement not to merely supplement. And women have been hurt so many times by the things or words men have said or done.
He is calling us back to Him that we may find wholeness and direction once more. Relationships are meant to lift us up not pull us down. The world has mismanaged beauty. It has either focused exceedingly compellingly on the physical or have cultivated a talk which goes like - I don't care about the physical it is just the inside that matters.
But when the inside is alive does it not show on the outside? Your smile sets your face aglow, your hair is blazing with glorious strength, your body expresses confidence, you pour out love, tenderness, grace and your eyes know its direction. Leaving your brokenness, disappointments and heartaches with Him that you can step into the world as a woman made just the way you are. You are as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside. One part of you is not made to be divorced from the others. You are no lesser than the female role models you have grown up admiring. You are more because there is no one else in the world like you and what is there to be ashamed of? The Creator of this world, the One who created stars and call them by name loves you. He loves you and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, He will not do to win your love.
This generation needs fathers, fathers of substance and character. Women are the ones who give birth to these fathers. Together with men we will nurture these fathers that we will become a generation that before anything else, knows what love and hope are.
After climbing out of a period of heartache and wrestling with the intricate twists of relationships, I have come to question what it truly means to understand my worth as a woman in this world, who has been called a daughter of God.
This generation and the generations before are still grappling with realising what it means to have men as leaders at home, at work, and in relationships. I never believed women are made to 'rule' this world alone with grit and gumption that recalls misplaced male power than reveal feminine character. Why? What has gone wrong in the process? What is wrong with possessing and displaying feminine beauty and its own strength?
Men have long learned how to 'master' women's beauty to their own advantage. Not that they intended bad right from the start. A lot of it is how we are naturally wired. How many times have women just submitted to how men want to see ourselves, offering our beauty and our bodies to them thinking this gets us their attention or love? But we know we desire something more meaningful in relationships, not that physical attraction is bad but such pleasure is not enough. We know that the touch can never fully allow our beauty to be appreciated in all its depth and breadth.
Are you afraid of our beauty? Are you afraid of your own beauty? How many relationships have you gone through which have gradually eaten away at your wholeness? That you can be vulnerable, emotional, trembling, real, strong, assured and still a revelation of God's awesome beauty both inside and out?
How many times have men exploited our softer side, our bodies, and stepped on our femininity as they try to find their standing in the world? To equate dominance with strength? We are more than a pretty face on a magazine cover or an exposed body in a pornographic video or a body delivered straight out of a cosmetic surgeon's room. Not just a rape victim, an abused wife, a teenager who has had one night stand too many. It does not even have to be so dramatic. The whistle on the streets, the lustful stares, the sneering, teasing, verbal insults - so much that we have brushed aside and taken as something natural and tolerable.
I am not advocating a violent backlash against the male population. For so long they have tried to prove their power by diminishing women, not realising that we do not stand in opposition to one another but rather in partnership. Men are created to lead and women to support them. But when they lose their focus and are unable to find the purpose to drive them forward, we find ourselves thrust into the role of leading.
So where am I now? Today it came to me: we cannot look to each other for answers. Both of us want the other gender to fill up the part of us we find lacking. But we are made to complement not to merely supplement. And women have been hurt so many times by the things or words men have said or done.
He is calling us back to Him that we may find wholeness and direction once more. Relationships are meant to lift us up not pull us down. The world has mismanaged beauty. It has either focused exceedingly compellingly on the physical or have cultivated a talk which goes like - I don't care about the physical it is just the inside that matters.
But when the inside is alive does it not show on the outside? Your smile sets your face aglow, your hair is blazing with glorious strength, your body expresses confidence, you pour out love, tenderness, grace and your eyes know its direction. Leaving your brokenness, disappointments and heartaches with Him that you can step into the world as a woman made just the way you are. You are as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside. One part of you is not made to be divorced from the others. You are no lesser than the female role models you have grown up admiring. You are more because there is no one else in the world like you and what is there to be ashamed of? The Creator of this world, the One who created stars and call them by name loves you. He loves you and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, He will not do to win your love.
This generation needs fathers, fathers of substance and character. Women are the ones who give birth to these fathers. Together with men we will nurture these fathers that we will become a generation that before anything else, knows what love and hope are.
amen =)