I have been receiving via email daily teachings through Proverbs 31 by DeMoss. The above quote comes from the teaching on verse 27, which talks about the virtuous wife watching over the ways of her household. This statement reiterates to me what God has been impressing on my heart lately, about how important our daily lives and homes are as a testimony to the gospel. Last night, Andy and I were talking to some friends, a couple who are in a serious relaltionship. Andy shared with them some principles we had learned before we got married...that although each of us felt, at the time, called in somewhat different directions ministry-wise, God did not make a mistake putting us together. I have noticed that Christian girls (I am talking especially about myself right now!) seem to fear that they may marry a man that will distract them from fulfilling the calling God has given them. I think we have a tendency to overspiritualize here...In my experience, I had long felt God had burdened and gifted me to work with children - orphans especially, in missions. Then Andy came into my life...and he was definitely from God. But I worried that I had to choose one or the other, Andy or missions. Marriage or missions. I worried about what was the more spiritual choice! And I have since talked to many other Christian girls who hold the same fears in their own relationships with their own Godly men. They worry, like I did, that they have to make a choice, and that choosing the man will somehow get them off course from Gods divine plan for them.
Andy said to our friends last night that we had to realize in our own relationship that God knew what He was doing, He didn't make a mistake, and His putting us together was all a part of Gods callings on our lives. Now I see that this was exactly what God was doing with me and Andy. Through our marriage, God has used us to sharpen each other and to serve in ways together as a couple that we never could have apart. God didn't make mistakes in giving us each some lofty calling (as we saw it) and then distracting us (as we may have seen it) by giving us each other. No, God was working every detail together for His glory. Even as He still is.
This brings me to the other side of this conversation. Andy told our friends last night that God values marriage even over missions. This can be a difficult topic...but I am beginning to see the truth in this. I think it is our definition of missions, also, that brings light to this statement. We tend to hold to a connotation of missions that it implies sacrificing all and going overseas to bring the gospel. Which I believe strongly that it often is. Andy and I are very missions-minded in this sense, and God has united our hearts in our burden for overseas (as well as local) missions. God has worked in both our hearts the dream to serve Him in overseas, full-time ministry in the future. BUT, perhaps in the Church today we have partaken in a mindset that a calling to missions is a lofty, mystical, definite call that some people receive. It refers to some point in the future when we get to a certain destination. But in reality, perhaps Gods calling on all of His people to be missionaries is so much more than this. Perhaps it IS in fact more united with marriage and family and daily life than we see it to be. Perhaps God wants to raise up missionaries in every Christian home showing what Gods relationship to His people is, just by the way they relate to each other in their own homes. Perhaps we think it is too simple, too natural, but perhaps God wants to work in this way. Because maybe being a godly wife, being faithful to your husband, taking care of your children, and ensuring that your home is safe and remains unbroken among a neighborhood full of broken homes, is in fact the way God wants to show the people in your community that God lives in your home. Maybe taking care of the family God gave you is not just for you, or just for them, but for the watching world - and, whats more, for His glory.
Again, I am not saying that we should take lightly the command of God to GO into all the world and preach the gospel. This is a command taken TOO lightly by too many Christians, and it is a command I hold dear to my own heart. However, I just believe God is showing me lately that the way we do live in our homes and families is more important to His mission, His Kingdom, and His gospel than we have realized. And THAT is precisely why, I believe, family and marriage has been under such attack. Perhaps it is even why the enemy deceives women into thinking it is more spiritual to choose some great, sacrificial ministry over marriage and raising a godly family.
DeMoss quotes an 1882 author named J.R. Miller. He sums up this thought so articulately:
There have been wives who in their zeal for Christ’s work outside have neglected Christ’s work inside their own doors. They have had eyes and hearts for human need and human sorrow in the broad fields lying far out, but neither eye nor heart for the work of love about their own feet.
The result has been that while they were doing angelic work in the lanes and streets, the angels were mourning over their neglected duties within the hallowed walls of their own homes. While they were winning a place in the hearts of the poor or the sick or the orphan, they were losing their rightful place in the hearts of their own household.
Let it be remembered that Christ’s work in the home is the first that he gives to every wife, and that no amount of consecrated activities in other spheres will atone in this world or the next for neglect or failure there (pp. 67-68).
So you see, I never had to make a choice between marriage and missions. For the truth is, they are one in the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment