Good morning making space for God friends. We are a community of Christian believers who focus on ensuring that we follow Jesus’ command to seek His kingdom first above all else and He will then provide what we need. It is hard though. So many things pull us in different directions. Following Jesus at the break of dawn and then all day long often gets lost in the laundry basket, our jobs, our responsibilities as women who multi-task well but find ourselves distracted. Most of my blogs are for men and women, but today is directed to women. It is taken from the Mother’s Day sermon I preached recently and from a dream that I will share.
The dream was of a glass room filled with women. In the dream, the Lord handed me a rock and said to break the glass ceiling. I hesitated shattering this beautiful ceiling, but we all know it doesn’t work out well if we don’t listen to the voice of God! I took the rock and shattered the glass and the women ran out of the building free. I had such a great sense of relief and remember waking and recognizing that this dream had big meaning. Upon reflecting on the dream’s meaning, the sense that I had is that the culture in which we live has put a few, if not a lot, of heavy yokes on women. We have had to fight for the right to vote and for equal pay, all necessary and important, but it occurred to me that some have moved into a fighting mode leaving God behind in the dust. Jesus told us:
Come to me all who are weary and heavy burdened. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.
I see way too many women who are burdened fighting their way in our world. But God never told us to conform to the culture’s ways of fighting. He reminded me that in the dream, Jesus represented the rock and we fight as women, the heart of the home, differently than the world. We fight from a position of beholding Jesus; of beholding and becoming shaped by Him and not shaped by the world. As women we are uniquely wired for intimacy: uniquely wired to understand what it means to gaze/behold Jesus.
Women are weary of trying to conform to an image the world has created. We have been striving and pushing ourselves to the extreme. I call this the superwoman syndrome. The culture has pushed us into a position of weakness not strength. Our strength lies in our unique ability to nurture, to behold Jesus and understand the value of intimacy. The glass ceiling in the dream represented the burdens placed on us to be superwoman. Our strength lies in our unique ability to connect with Jesus and from that place forge ahead in our strength IN HIM.
As we cling to Jesus the Vine and behold/gaze at Him, we become like Him and the more we are like Him, the stranger we are and the more we can say NO to the hustle of life and YES to the peace of life found in Him.
So what can be done? Take inventory of what you are doing. Are you overly busy taking on more than you can physically do? Are you saying yes to the things to which you are called and no to the other things? Are you making space for God at the top of your day? Spend time today pondering these questions. Perhaps like me you will recognize that it’s time to dial some things back and center on God. He will lead and show you the way and peace will be like a warm blanket around your heart.
