David Wilkerson, one of the great men of God in America over the last 80 years, died on Wednesday in a car crash.  To say that this is a great loss to the church is a massive understatement.  If you have never sat and listened to any of his teaching or read about his exploits of faith, you have truly missed out.  He is a rare man of a rare breed of great men who preach straight from the heart of God.  He did not walk in the fear of man nor preach to tickle men’s ears but instead preached a powerful gospel of salvation, a relationship with a holy God through Jesus Christ that brings true joy, true power, true victory.

I would recommend to every believer to get ahold of and listen to his sermon titled A Call to Anguish and listen to it at least twice a year.  It is prophetic and profound and is applicable with great urgency to the times we live in.  sermon index link

In my last post, I announced the birth of our son Malachi John and wrote about the desire that he walk in clear discernment and be a prophetic messenger to God’s people of repentance of a turning out of darkness and into light.  David Wilkerson was a man that walked in this understanding and this conviction.  My prayer for Malachi and all my boys is that they be this kind of man.

Below I am posting the contents of a sermon that Wilkerson preached in the 1990’s as a prophetic message to his denomination.  Is it not so clear the clarity of his understanding?  I think you will be sobered by this message. (BTW, I don’t wear a suit to church and I don’t particularly like choirs but that is not his point in this sermon, his point is that the message of the gospel has been changed to not offend people but to tickle their ears and that this message will keep people from finding true salvation)

The Dangers of The Gospel of Accommodation
A sermon given by David Wilkerson at an Assemblies of God headquarters chapel service.

By David Wilkerson

I am not coming to you as a pastor but with a prophetic word. God so shook me recently with this message that I should bring it somewhere, sometime in Springfield. This morning the Lord, by His Spirit, spoke to my heart that this is the time. He has called me to be one of His watchmen, and I have wept over this and prayed that He will help me deliver the message in a spirit of love. This is not a chastisement but a warning for the Assemblies of God.

A New Gospel

Accommodate means to adapt, to make suitable and acceptable, to make convenient. A gospel of accommodation is creeping into the United States. It’s an American cultural invention to appease the lifestyle of luxury and pleasure. Primarily a Caucasian, suburban gospel, it’s also in our major cities and is sweeping the nation, influencing ministers of every denomination, and giving birth to megachurches with thousands who come to hear a nonconfronting message. It’s an adaptable gospel that is spoon-fed through humorous skits, drama, and short, nonabrasive sermonettes on how to cope—called a seeker-friendly or sinner-friendly gospel.

To begin with, those terms are unscriptural. The gospel of Jesus Christ has always been confronting—there is no such thing as a friendly gospel but a friendly grace.

This new gospel is being propagated by bright, young, talented ministers. They have come upon a formula which states you can go into any town or city; and if you have the right formula, within a short time you can raise a megachurch.

If you are a young man and have certain skills, you find those skills and a part of the city that would best suit you. You move into that area, poll it, and find out what the nonchurchgoers want:

“You don’t like choirs. Well, would you go to a church that didn’t have a choir?” Yes.

“You don’t like to wear suits. Would you go where it’s informal?” Yes.

Then you go to your computer and design a gospel that will not confront but will shoot out the desires and the needs of the people. After you have gathered a handful of people, you keep interviewing them to find out what they want; then you design your message to help people cope with their needs. The program you design is intended to make the church comfortable and friendly for all sinners who wish to attend.

This gospel is fast becoming the most prosperous and flourishing of all religious movements. Thousands attend these churches. The pastor is the CEO, and it becomes a business. They make no bones about it: They are following Madison Avenue tactics and can make a success of it. Their formula for quick church growth is cleverly packaged and is being sold especially to young ministers—those who want to be a part of the big boys and what’s happening on a fast track. They want it to happen quickly.

Paul’s Warning

Paul warned of the coming of another gospel and another Jesus (2 Corinthians 11:4). He warned the church that it’s really not another gospel but a perversion of the true gospel of Jesus Christ. If you hear any other gospel, he said, let that preacher be accursed. In other words, no matter how pleasant, how pious, or how sincere, if the message is not the death of sin through the cross of Jesus Christ, let it be accursed.

I tremble when I read in the Scriptures that in the last days Satan is going to come right into the church posing as an angel of light. He’s going to take ministers who, at one time, had the touch of God, and he’s going to transform them into angels of light to become his tool of deception. That’s frightening. It causes me to fall on my face before God for such false, deceitful workers transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. No marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore, it’s no great thing if ministers also are transformed as the ministers of righteousness whose end shall be according to their works.

Paul said they are going to glory in the flesh, in their bigness, their numbers, their influence, and their contemporariness. They will boast they are contemporary, that there is a gospel that is out of style that doesn’t reach human need anymore. They will glory in the world’s acceptance. Jesus warned, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matthew 7:15). The context of that warning was: “Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth to life, and few there be that find it” (verse 14).

His warning was to beware of the wolves who are going to say it’s really not that narrow and straight—they are going to come posing as submissive sheep. Jesus put His finger on the cause: ambition—ambitious ravening wolves. In the Greek it means “starved for recognition and quick gratification, quick growth.”

Jesus left no doubt about His meaning. For example, He was addressing a struggling pastor who has worked for years and hasn’t seen the kind of growth he wants to see. A young man with an accommodating gospel moves into town and and within a very short time has a megachurch. People are flocking there because there is entertainment; it’s a gospel of fun. I’ve been in some of them. It’s the gospel of entertainment that has no conviction whatsoever. There is very little in their gospel that speaks to sinners of repentance, brokenness, and cross-bearing. A Christ is preached, Jesus’ name is mentioned, but Paul said their’s is another gospel, another Jesus.

Paul warned that if you are caught in this trap, if you want that hook of entertainment, that hook of sudden growth, this is the hook: The enemy will put in your path a teaching.

I have two preacher sons. One of them confessed to me, “Dad, I was that close to being sucked in because I fasted and prayed and didn’t see the growth I wanted to see, and I saw these others grow. That hook was there, and I almost bought it.”

That is something this Movement and every movement is going to have to look at and deal with: It is possible, through unholy ambition, to be transformed from a man of God, who has been seeking God and getting a word from heaven, to an unholy ambition and a tool of Satan. Let every pastor heed this warning: The moment you begin to consider the “competition,” seeds of accommodation will be planted in your heart. Suddenly, Satan will put in your path a wolf in sheep’s clothing—a man who will try to seduce you into ungodly ambition and achieving church growth at any cost. Yet the truth is, it could cost you your soul.

The Right Formula

If you find the right formula, according to the accommodation gospel, you can succeed in any field of endeavor.

An editorial in the New York Times (March 1, 1998) was entitled, How To Manufacture a Best-Seller. It told the story of John Baldwin, a 53-year-old carpenter and a would-be writer, who had struggled for years to make a living from writing. He determined to become famous and rich overnight by writing a best-selling medical thriller. He studied five or six best thrillers. After 7 years’ research he found 10 steps to producing a best-selling medical novel. He honed it with some Hollywood writers and agents, and here is the 10-step formula he used:

The hero is an expert.
The villain is an expert.
You must watch all the villain’s activities over his shoulder.
The hero has a team of experts behind him, working in various fields.
Two or more on the team must fall in love.
Two or more on the team must die.
The villain must turn his attention from his initial goal to the team.
The villain and the hero must live to do battle again in the sequel.
All deaths must proceed from the individual to the group.
If the story bogs down, just kill somebody.
John Baldwin had the formula but no story, so he read of research by John Marr who was studying the epidemiological causes of the 10 plagues, hoping to explain their causes scientifically. The two men formed a partnership, and using Baldwin’s 10–step formula, together wrote a 640 page manuscript called The Eleventh Plague. Harper Collins bought it for almost $2 million.

Baldwin, who has no passion for writing, said, “If I get the formula, I’m going to be a multimillionaire and famous.” Well, he’s going to make another $3 million on the movie rights, and he’s laughing all the way to the bank. His philosophy: “If you have the right formula, you can be a success at anything.”

You see, this is the gospel of accommodation—the formula. You get the formula, you get what people want, and you can be a success. I am here to tell you that a formula-based, accommodating gospel is contrary to everything in the Scriptures.

God’s Method

Certain men of God met at Antioch to send out men to preach the gospel and establish churches (Acts 13). Here is God’s method:

1. They ministered to the Lord and fasted. This was their planning session—worshiping, fasting, waiting on the Lord, and calling for direction from the Holy Ghost. They did not move until the Holy Ghost spoke. There were no formulas, no surveys, no door-to-door asking people what they wanted and then serving it to them.

2. They prayed—no strategizing, no network, and not one step until the Holy Ghost spoke His mind. Then and only then did they lay hands upon them, anoint them, and send them out in the power and demonstration of the Holy Ghost.

Paul lived his whole religious life on religious formulas, and he said they didn’t work. He gave up on formulas and said, “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). Paul boasted unashamedly, “We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:23). He was saying, “Gentlemen (he was talking to his peers), they want us to accommodate. The Jews are looking for signs in our gospel. The Greeks want the wisdom. They want to know how to cope, but I’m not compromising. There’s only one message. Our gospel has been and will be the Cross and its demands as well as its victories. As for me, I’m determined to preach nothing among you but Christ and Him crucified.”

What the Gospel of Accommodation Does (1)

I see three things in the gospel of accommodation:

1. It is the accommodation of man’s love for pleasure.

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers…of pleasures more than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:1–4). The Greek for pleasure is “sensuous, lustful, voluptuous, exciting, gratifying, sensual pleasure.” If you move toward this gospel of accommodation, you are going to have to accommodate the people’s lust because they are not going to give up their love for excitement. They’ve made gods of sports, pleasure, and lust. Unless that is confronted by the gospel of Jesus Christ, unless there is a truth that comes forth, you have to accommodate this lust that is in the American lifestyle.

I was shocked by an article in the New York Times.1 Philip Wogaman, President Clinton’s pastor, said, “Sexual misconduct does not automatically render a leader immoral. Morality should also be judged by indicators like courage, concern for the poor, fostering world peace, running the economy responsibly, and furthering racial equality. Heterosexuality and homosexuality are merely cultural expressions.” In other words, Mr. Clinton has been told that he has enough good indicators to overrule another that would be immoral in his life.

God said that men who preach doctrines like these resist the truth; they are men of corrupt minds counterfeiting the faith.

In disbelief I watched a televised Sunday night service of a seeker-friendly church—seeker-friendly by its own admission. To a packed church where thousands attend, the pastor said, “This is fun night, a David Letterman night.” The youth pastor came out and did his monologue as David Letterman. Then they showed 10 of the most boring things teenagers do during preaching. Three of the 10 were throwing spitballs, yawning, and picking their noses. The crowd went crazy. After the service, the pastor brazenly announced, “We’re not here to offend people, but to make church comfortable for everyone.” I wept.

I ask you, how long do you think that audience would stay in church if the pastor was gripped by the Holy Ghost, convicted for “entertaining” people toward hell, and suddenly preached a message entitled, “Be sure your sins will find you out”? How long would people keep coming back if a gospel of holy living and separation from the world was preached? Two things would happen: (1) Those who are misguided, hungry, and didn’t know any better would weep and run to the altar. (2) Those who are judiciously blinded by their pleasures in madness would flee from the church and never come again. The church doors would close.

I keep this foremost in my mind and before my eyes, because every minister of the gospel one day has to face it when he stands before the Lord. He will say, “Son of man, I made thee a watchman. You were to hear the words of My mouth and give them warnings from Me. You were to tell the wicked, ‘Thou shalt surely die.’ And you gave them no warning nor spoke to warn the wicked to turn from their wicked ways to save their lives. These same wicked men died in their sins, but their blood I’ll require at your hands.”

What the Gospel of Accommodation Does (2)

2. This gospel of accommodation accommodates all man’s aversion to self-denial.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is one of self-denial. Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Self-denial is not something you give. It’s someone you give up—the giving up of yourself, giving up everything you are. It’s a living sacrifice to the Lord Jesus Christ to present your body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. God has every right to say to His church, “If you expect to give Me your body, your resurrected body, all through eternity, I have every right—it’s only reasonable of Me and your reasonable service—to ask your body why you’re here on earth. I want every part of you. I want you to be spiritually minded. I want to possess you.”

The gospel we preach must bring people under the total possession of the Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, it’s a gospel of accommodation.

The seeker-friendly gospel accommodates the body. The human body belongs to Him. What we see in America is a neognosticism where you take your physical body on one side and do as you please as long as your spirit is right with God. This is coming even out of the White House, this dividing of personality. No, we are one personality, and it all belongs to Jesus Christ. This neognosticism is destroying the faith of many throughout the nation.

What the Gospel of Accommodation Does (3)

3. There is an accommodation of man’s offense to the gospel.

The Scriptures state, “Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense.” Paul spoke of the offense of the Cross. This is the heart of God’s anger. We’re not called to the Cross but to go through the Cross—to experience the same thing Jesus did, not only coming to the Cross but dying and going into the grave with Jesus Christ and then being raised from the dead to a newness of life.

It’s cruel, pastor, to lead sinners to the Cross, tell them they are forgiven by faith, and then allow them to go back to their habits and lusts of the flesh, unchanged and still in the devil’s shackles. If the preaching of grace doesn’t have as its goal the producing of a walk of righteousness, then it’s another gospel, another Jesus.

I listened in horror to a man, who attended one of the largest seeker-friendly churches, being interviewed by CBS. He said, “I come to this church because I’m comfortable. I’m never made to feel uneasy. I bring my Jewish friends and my business friends, and I know nothing will ever be said that will offend them. The best part of it is, the whole thing only lasts an hour.”

Take it from me: You can get your big church and be one of the big boys, but it’s going to cost you your soul if you preach with a focus only on earthly things, rather than on the things of God.

I’ve lived in New York City 35 years. We have 103 nationalities from all walks of life—from the poorest to the richest. Probably 300 or more from the United Nations live there. But I look over a congregation (so does my dear friend, Jim Cymbala, in Brooklyn) and see men who have just walked in from the porno shops and are wild animals. I see a businessman friend who was CEO of a multimillion–dollar company, but he started snorting coke, lost everything, and is now a bum on the street. He sits in the congregation. A little 14-year-old girl with AIDS is up on 8th Avenue performing lewd acts before dirty old men. She comes to church and keeps saying, “Pastor Dave, I’ve got to get out. I’ve got to get help.”

I’m not about to put up a silly skit and preach a 15-minute message on how to cope to a multitude of people who are dying and going to hell. I tremble at the thought.

People don’t like to hear this, but we’re headed for perilous times—just a few years away from a collapse like the world has never known. When that happens, all who preached prosperity are going to disappear because the people will say, “Your gospel has failed me.” When that time comes, I want to grasp onto Jesus, and I want everyone I’ve preached to to have faith in the keeping power of Jesus Christ. I want them to know Him in His fullness. I want to know that I’ve done it in love, in grace, that they would know the difference between the holy and the profane.

May God, in Jesus’ name, spare the Assemblies of God forever. If I have ever given a prophetic message in my lifetime that God intended for a purpose, it is now.

Many are being deceived. If they are not awakened, what I warn you about will happen.

I pray that God will keep the Assemblies of God in its original purposes. In New York City, He has proved that the people come to hear a straight gospel, and thousands will come where the Word of God is being preached without compromise and yet with grace. May the young men who are discouraged in the Movement not try for a shortcut but be broken and on their faces before the Lord.

May we get our eyes off growth and onto a new revelation of who Jesus is.

Malachi John McDowell

The name Malachi means “My messenger”. The name John means “God is gracious”. The strongest desire of our heart regarding our Malachi is to raise him to be a bold and fearless messenger of the graciousness of God manifest in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That the whole of his heart would belong to God and that with his life and his voice he would wholly serve the Lord.

The prophet Malachi’s prophecies make up the final book of the Old Testament and are God’s final words to the His people before sending Jesus some 400 years later. In Malachi, God confronts the lovelessness of His people who are involved in the rituals and day to day business of religion but with hardened hearts, uncertain of His love and unconcerned by their sin.

God’s response is to confront his people’s indifference but also to declare the future arrival of “Elijah the prophet” who would “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers”. This prophecy was fulfilled in the coming of John the Baptist, a messenger from God who prepared the way of the Lord Jesus, and preached a message of repentance of sins and a turning of hearts back to God.

For Suzanna and I, Malachi’s birth coincides with a period in our lives where we have been burdened for God’s people the Church. Our hearts are anguished by the lack of discernment in the Church and the lack of the fear of the Lord that hinders the revival fire that we and so many others cry out for. It is difficult to watch the simplicity and joy of the Gospel to be lost in a deluge of powerless religious activity, but we know that God longs to restore the joy of salvation to His people.

Our prayer for our son is that he will walk in the conviction and clarity of these men, the prophets Malachi and John the Baptist. That he will rightly divide good from evil. That he will walk in the fear of the Lord and teach others the same. That he will serve in the Church and in the world as a bright and shining light that helps bring clarity where there is confusion. That the testimony of his life will be a loud shout of JOY of the simple transformational power and victory found in Jesus Christ for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord listened and heard them; so a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who mediate on His name. “They shall be mine,” says the Lord of hosts, “On the day that I make them my jewels. And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him. Then you shall again discern between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him. - from the book of Malachi

It always gives us such joy to remember the simplicity of receiving His word like a little child and the joy that is found in reading the Gospel and obeying it!  Oh to find one person in America that would receive His word this way….

The Kimyal People Receive the New Testament from UFM Worldwide on Vimeo.

Everybody knows the nightmare where you try to scream, but you can’t.  It’s one of the worst feelings ever.  The theme is the sound of insignificance…voicelessness.

When it comes to communicating your heart, you know that you are under the tablecloth to someone else when they don’t hear you, even though you are talking.  You know that you are under the tablecloth to yourself when you don’t know what you’d say.  You know that you’ve been under there for a long time when you can’t remember when you stopped trying.  This is something that so often happens in childhood, in the home, that I don’t want to address it without talking a little bit about forgiveness first.

In the first post, I mentioned how God had created this beautiful chain of life through women, through the womb, that would link every human being ever born directly back to Him.  Life from LIFE, created by Him, in His image, valuable and significant beyond imagination.  But then I spoke of how Satan had twisted that very bond to communicate chains of INsignificance from generation to generation.

A short time ago, I was leading a group of women through these five ways to communicate significance to from mother to child.  I asked for a show of hands from any woman whose recollections of her own mother were marked by these five things.  One out of thirteen raised her hand.  To even get that data, I had to make them read the list with a pen in hand, marking one by one what they remembered from their relationship with mom.  I had to make them have pens, because all they could think about reading the list was how far they fell short with their own children.  The guilt came immediately and with ease.  The understanding had to be strained for.

My intention was not to make them mad at their moms.  The point was, like I said in the last post, “You can’t get water from a rock.”  You can’t give away what you’ve not received.  You just try and fail.   To break the chain of insignificance from one generation to the next, you have to address where it holds you.  This is really hard for women.  They don’t want to deal with what’s hurting down in their hearts, especially if it has to do with mom.  ”Don’t you talk about my mama…”  :)  Nine times out of ten, they’d rather just read a list of standards and feel like a failure.

But Jesus made a way, my friends.  These things can be faced.   Think of an area where your mom never ministered to your heart or gave you what you needed on a spiritual level and let’s call that “making pies”.   When I realize that I don’t know how to make pies because my mom never made pies and so she never taught me to make pies (this is a silly analogy for the deeper things of the heart, like not being heard, or fear based control in the home), I can just…get this… you will be changed forever… FORGIVE, yes, FORGIVE mom for never making pies.  I don’t have to rage at her, judge her, criticize her, or reject her (if you look back at your past relationship with her, you’ll often find you have already done these things, maybe in your teens, but just hadn’t identified accurately why).  I don’t dishonor all the AWESOME cakes and doughnuts she DID make.  I just need to be totally honest about the pies, and what it has meant to me that she didn’t ever make pies and what it cost me at the heart level.  I turn to Jesus and say, “Lord, YOU are the true pie-maker.  You have all the pies I need.  I release mom’s pie-making debt, and I ask you to make me a pie-maker like you.  Teach me what mom couldn’t.  I choose to make pies for my children, trusting You to provide everything I need.”

I just made that so silly, but hopefully you’re catching my drift.  In real life, it won’t play out silly.  What you are lacking that your heart cries out for is real and it is the real root of your anger, your striving, your fear of failure, and your anxiety.   It does need to be ministered to, you do need to FORGIVE, and you do need to be changed so that you do not pass insignificance down to your children.

One of the truly dumbest movies I’ve seen in a long time had one GREAT scene in it.  The heroine of the movie, whose mother had abandoned her as a child, was befriended by her suitor’s grandmother.  The girl was upset about something, when the grandmother, while conversing with her, picked up a brush and started brushing out her long hair.  The girl began to cry.  In the middle of the world’s dumbest plot-line, so did I.  It was downright powerful.  Like an arrow hitting a target, the grandma bypassed all the layers of the girl’s confusion with precision.  Without words, she said, “This is what is really hurting.  Nobody has taken care of you.”

My pie story won’t move your heart, but the Holy Spirit will, like the grandma did with that girl, in your own hair-brushing moment…gently exposing the place where you needed mom so badly, but for whatever reason she wasn’t there.  And then, I hope you remember the pies, forgive her, and turn to Jesus, with whom we are never voiceless.  If you release mom’s debt and turn it over to Jesus, you break that chain, and reconnect with Him, the Source of Living Water.  You’ll find it flows not only to your children, but back to mom, restoring and reconnecting you to her, as well.

Side note:  I hope the practicality and simplicity of forgiveness strikes every mama who reads this. As moms, we need the Lord’s forgiveness (as we mess up with our kids) so many times a day, that if we’re disconnected from its availability and power, we’ll live in a suffocating swamp of failure.  Living Water is very far from the woman who cannot forgive (even if it be because of denial of the wound) or receive forgiveness because she will not easily run to the Lord to get His forgiveness.

So, armed with the incredible tool of forgiveness, let’s look at the 4th way a mother practically communicates significance to her child, and fight insignificance’s favorite tool of voicelessness…

4.  Listening so as to understand.

• “You do not understand your heart, but I will attend to it.” I once witnessed a moment I’ll never forget between a mom and her toddler in a clothing/variety store.  The toddler was strapped into the cart’s seat, and mom, who was dressed to the nines, was pushing the cart and searching the racks.  The baby was making noises and reaching out to grab everything within reach.  A gorgeous, developmentally healthy child.  Mom responded to baby by hissing, “Shut up!  Don’t touch that, you brat!” and swatting his hands away from everything.  In my mind’s eye, I pictured her in five years, yelling at him for being completely passive, and then in fifteen years, crying in a police station, bewildered as to why her rage-filled son was criminal.  The price that child would pay because his mom didn’t care to understand his heart and his needs would be unquantifiable.  Soon they would come into conflict as he would begin to try to communicate his needs (probably in the form of anger), but the tragedy of his tender age highlighted his total vulnerability…he had no ability to understand, defend or explain himself.  This is an extreme example, but it highlights two things.  A)  Children aren’t able to comprehend their own hearts or needs.  B)  Nor are they able to communicate them.  This is mom’s role, and over the years she’ll develop their ability to do both for themselves.  Ways that mom can’t or doesn’t do this have consequences.  The significant mom is watching over the child’s heart, development, challenges, and needs to shape his world on his behalf, rather than react from moment to moment according to how he is fitting with her agenda.  She is setting him up to win, even in moments of discipline.  (E.G. Several times, Ariel has acted out on her brothers in anger, being really mean.  In talking about it, she cries out something like, “There’s just too much boys!!!”  It would be easy to just come down on her awful behavior and miss that she was really needing something, that her femininity was being unwittingly trampled by yet another army/airplane/wrestling game, that she is quite gentle and they are…not.  She couldn’t really understand why she was so angry, but I needed to, and to facilitate her limits, as well as addressing her behavior.)
• “My agenda does not trump your needs, my ultimate agenda IS your needs.” Part of understanding your child’s heart and meeting their needs is understanding that the child is a sinner.  That they were born that way and the need for discipline in their lives should NOT surprise you.  If mom is surprised when baby’s will begins to manifest selfishness as a toddler, and then that he tries out lying, that he whines constantly for his way (until it’s firmly addressed), that he steals from his brother, etc…she’s in for a rough time.  :)  If she perceives meeting his needs as only the “legitimate ones,” (the physical, the good-natured, the amicable) and doesn’t realize that she will encounter the ugliness of human nature in her child, she will not be prepared to respond correctly.  Many mothers respond to their child’s sinfulness with withholding, judgment, and rejection hoping that the withholding of love and affection will “really show him” how bad he’s being and he’ll change.  But if a  mom knows the truth and perceives that her child’s need for discipline is as normal as the child’s need for food (the biblical perspective), a) she understands her child’s heart (it is sincere, beautiful, and deeply marred by sinful self, especially rebellion) and b) she considers that discipline to be her job.  Being angry and rejecting the child have no place.  The child does not lose security or significance in the process of being parented and disciplined out of his sin. Mom is not personally wounded by child’s (disciplinary) needs, complaining about them, or exasperated.  She’s expecting them.
• “You will not have to fight to be understood.” How many marriage tensions could be boiled down to this, “I’m not so much angry (or crying) because you don’t understand me, as because I know that you would and could understand me, if you only wanted to understand more than you want to … (to defend yourself, to get this over with, to be right, etc.)”  Insignificance says, “What is there to understand?  What’s the big deal?”  It forces people to manipulate and strain for another’s attention through negative means, or even worse, just to give up.  Imagine getting a phone call from the president on a bad connection.  The effort one would put in to strain to hear what he had to say in a personal call would be extraordinary.  If you believe someone is significant, you try to hear what they are really saying, even if its difficult to perceive.  When we consider someone significant, we must know what it is they are communicating.  On the other hand, when it’s a sales call from the neighborhood newspaper, we hang up on them.  It’s that simple.  This is often a major area of forgiveness to work through from mother to child (and in marriage).  Lack of caring to listen what the other is saying is that viral sort of sin of omission that is everywhere.
• Again, this requires time. Busyness is the ultimate enemy of all these simple forms of establishing significance.  It can be why moms who would sweat, bleed, and give both kidneys for their kids still manage to build major tension with their children lasting into adulthood, pass on generations of insignificance, and find that the fruit of their parenting does not at all measure up to their intentions, or the effort they feel they made.  Days will pass quick as a blink if we don’t stop and make sure our mommy life is submitted to the Lord.  There must be a breaking ties with the standards of the world, and seeking the Lord for what he says the lifestyle, schedule, and agenda must be.  He understands children’s hearts and knows exactly what they need.  (for example.  A family considers it normal to visit all the relatives and do sports camps all summer, but if they would listen, the Lord says that they need to recoup from the school year and focus on family unity, especially for the sake of the youngest, who is dealing with insecurity and misses the increasingly busy teenage siblings.)

• “I am seeking your best, not to be ‘off the hook’.” There are things in parenting that are downright agonizing.  Constant whining, quarreling, begging, or rebellion leave a parent EXHAUSTED.  Because the world doesn’t know that there is a solution for these things, they constantly recommend me-time.  They don’t know that there can be peace in the home.  Peace in the home, however, comes at a hefty price.  Throughout the child’s development, there will be cycles of establishment followed by maintenance.  If you don’t do the hard work of establishment, you won’t ever get to maintenance (peace).  (EG,  So many parents simply don’t know what the battle will be to establish real heart-obedience in the toddler years, and so they live in an ungodly “normal” that is increasingly off track for the rest of the child’s development.  If you talk about peace, they assume you have better genes or luck.  They are in constant tension with their child.  In this difficult spot, Mom’s heart is just barely staying alive, and seeking every possible chance for a break.)  How to get to breakthrough is not what I’m addressing in this post, but for now, the point is that when you see your child’s significance, your heart INSISTS on getting to the breakthrough, no matter how costly or how long it takes.  Keeping everybody alive, and getting away for breaks is not enough.  Minimizing time with the child through childcare or school or minimizing the number of children because it is too difficult are not solutions.  Unbelief and hopelessness dwell with insignificance.  Significance presses for victory.
• “I’m watching with the Lord’s eyes.” When I look at my child, I want to see what the Lord sees.  I want to notice that the compliant one is trapped in sorrow, and address her needs with the same determination as I do the loud one that tends toward defiance.  Significance says, “The Lord does not call my child melancholy or a loner!  I will not be complacent because she’s quiet…I’m not satisfied until I see this little one be who God made her to be!”  In other words, my goals don’t center on a certain comfort level for myself and the family, but on WHO God says my children are to be, and how to DEVELOP them according to His individual blueprints.
• “I am in charge, and set limits long before you understand them.” It is almost impossible for a Mom who is trapped in insignificance to walk in strong authority with her children, especially if they display any strength of will.  If she does not come out of insignificance, either the children will rule her, or she’ll resort to control and manipulation to restrain them.  Whether it works or not in the short term, that road will end in destruction.  Mom has to know who she is and walk in her God-given authority as leader, even if by nature, she has a milder personality than they.  Limits can’t be set out of negotiation, but out of vision.
• See with spiritual eyes, not natural ones.  See what comes against the child, not merely how they react to it.  This is so important.  If we operate in natural wisdom, we will miss it!  We must be able to 1) understand our children’s hearts (”see” them, as we’ve been saying throughout the posts), and 2) understand the spiritual dynamics that affect them.  (EG, 3 year old suddenly won’t stay in her bed but repeatedly comes out crying.  Mom is stressed out by finances and fearful that Dad is going to lose his job.   She addresses 3 yr old’s “disobedience” with a crack down, not discerning the open door to a spirit of fear in the home.  After repeated discipline, child finally stays in bed.  After a few similar situations, child begins displaying anger and rebellion.)

So, really.  The significance of children?  Am I the first one to think of this?  How many politicians’ campaigns are practically run on cliched phrases about what we’re leaving to our children, how we’re educating our children, peace for our children, etc.?

How many women could say along with me, “I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, but then I looked into my baby’s eyes for the first time…and my whole world was upside down…”  Millions and billions.  How many books, movies, songs, conferences about the worth of children?

How about Wess Stafford’s incredible book, Too Small to Ignore?  Note:  DO read that book if your parents were in ministry/missions, you are in ministry/missions and have kids, or you will ever lead people who are in ministry/missions and have children.  DO NOT read that book if you are wearing non-waterproof mascara.

The point is, yes, motherhood is awesome and wonderful and incredibly significant, because children are all these things.  I already alluded (briefly) to what happens if you try to restore the significance of women without children.  But what happens if you try to restore the significance of children without restoring the significance of women?  I think this actually happens a lot, especially in Christian circles.

Macro:  You get movements, activist women, and dogmatics.  La Leche League (breastfeeding ONLY…for years!), Attachment parenting ONLY, strange NO family planning doctrine, Home-school ONLY dogmatism, Natural Birth ONLY activists, parenting method/book X ONLY proponents…the legal list can go on and on.  These movements create legals lists which dictate ad nauseum what children require, but have only cost and striving to speak to women.  Women who’ve rejected the selfish spirit of the modern age are drawn in, but their hearts are left brittle.  These kind of movements, even if they’re as small as a couple families at the church, are marked by control, and the strongest voices are usually the women, not the men.  (Not always.)  These die-hard mamas may know something about the significance of children, but they often miss God’s heart for women.

Micro: Well, there’s a laundry list here.  But ultimately, you get burnt.  Burnt mamas, burnt marriages, and lopsided children.  You get women who sign up again and again to give it all for their kids, but from day to day are tired, aching, and needing another shot of adrenaline (mother-vision) in order to give their guts.  In other words, it’s not fun.  And it’s supposed to (in between the doggone difficult moments) REALLY, REALLY FUN.  Happy mamas, satiated husbands, and joyful subjects in the realm (i.e. the kids).  You know, abundant life.  (John 10:10)  The kind Jesus gives.

Abundant life produces life.  Good ideas in parenting, however well-meaning, cannot produce significant, life-filled children from exhausted, insignificant mothers.

So…we cannot push children out from under the tablecloth, and leave the mamas under there.  This probably seems like very ethereal talk.  Let’s look to our practical list to understand the dynamic.  The second basic way that significance is communicated from mother to child is as follows:

2. Joy-filled Empowerment “You can…!”  Raising up daughters into mama’s shoes, sons into daddy’s shoes.

The attitude is:  ”You ARE like me, you WILL BE like me, isn’t it so awesome that you are just like me?!?”  I hope you can hear the joy.  Do you see why mom has to walk in incredible significance in order to pass on her identity in the home from day to day?  What if mom sees herself as merely the grocery-buying, buns-wiping chauffeur?  What if she describes her role as referee/maid/cook?  What if mom hates her job?  What kind of identity can she give her kids?

HOWEVER, if mom walks in truth…if mom sees herself FIRST as salt of the earth, light of the world, disciple of Jesus Christ, indwelt temple of the Holy Spirit, chosen daughter of the King, discipler, teacher of the eternal WORD OF GOD, royal priest, holy and set apart by God, trainer, cherished Bride (of Christ and of her husband), eternal Beauty (according to 1 Peter), QUEEN ESTHER IN HER DOMAIN…well, then.  Now, we’re talking.

I have seen women who want to talk the above talk, but don’t believe for it in her home.  They are looking for significance elsewhere.  And THAT is the gong I want to strike.  YOU CAN’T HAVE ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER!!!  The lie so many are believing is that because it’s not manifesting in the home, it’s “out there” somewhere.  (’It’ being significance.)  No, ladies, the tablecloth is not over your home, it’s over your heart.  Significance has to be restored through Jesus Christ, and then it has to flow like Living Water to your children.

• Always teaching, because development is the goal, not behavior. A significant mommy is a teacher/trainer.  Achieving standards of behavior is just an agenda.  Reproducing yourself requires understanding being passed on.  (E.G.  Not:  ”Hey, 8 year old!  Be quiet in church.”  But:  ”Here’s my heart when the Word of God is being spoken:  I’m hungry for it like starving person.  I’m thirsty for it like a marathon runner.  I’m desperate to honor God with my WHOLE body.”)
• Do they understand why?  This is my job. The transfer described above (which, by the way, is not one that would take place IN church, obviously, thus the need for unhurried time mentioned in #1) creates a WHY? in the child’s heart that is the place from which you want to form their behavior.  ”Why do like the Bible so much?  Why do you sing so loud and lift your hands?  Why do you pray like you’re angry sometimes?”  Answering is Mama’s job.  WAY more interesting than “Read your Bible.  Be respectful during worship!  Renounce sin and the enemy.”
• Passing on skills through repeated practice. Again, this requires laying down rights.  “To do this, you will have to be next to me and do what I do not nearly as well as I do it.  And I will encourage you in that, rather than taking over.”  This is not 24/7…it wouldn’t work!  Ha!  I’m picturing a three hour nightly dinner prep with a 3 yr. old daughter.  No, but it’s a heart attitude that creates an environment of training, that looks for opportunities to raise them up.  I’ve found these come much earlier than some people say, and much later than others.  It depends on the child, their interests, and what needs to be developed in them.  Judah LOVES to help me with the laundry and gather the upstairs trash.  Having simple responsibilities has literally brought him incredible LIFE.  I have never had Ariel regularly help me with laundry.  But she’s begging to change baby’s diaper when he comes. God leads in what the individual child needs.
• “I believe in who you are.”  Child is not defined or limited by their mistakes, struggles, or strongholds. A significant mama knows about process, because she has been in one with the Lord.  Every bit of strength, wisdom and righteousness in her life has come through His cross and its power in her life, so perfectionism has no place.  She knows that some character traits take years to develop and she failed 400 x’s before she succeeded.  She understands that this is the way with humans.  There are no “good children.”  There are only carefully developed, redeemed ones.  Bad days are bad, and sometimes they’re very bad.  But she is stubbornly convinced about who her child is because she is stubbornly convinced that the Lord is that committed to her, and so He will help her get them there (through careful application of His Word).
• Faith:  ”We will overcome, because you are precious and purposeful.” This is similar to the above, but holds a VERY important word: Purpose.  Insignificance is found in the mama who has no grasp of the great PURPOSE her days hold, the eternal weight behind what she does in her home, how much is at stake with her own self and her children.  If it matters whether or not her sons are self-controlled, if a nation’s salvation depends on it, or if her daughter’s kindness will heal a community, or if the glory of God is displayed when her husband still delights in her 35 years into their marriage and by that point it has impacted 5,000 young couples who’d never seen such a thing…well, then.  Now, you’re talking.

To unpack the destruction of women and children, the key concept is this:  Insignificance.  It’s a word I use a lot, but find difficult to really convey.  It’s a tidy little word for an unbelievably cruel form of destruction.  Let me try to fill in the picture.

It has become clear to me that most of the atrocities in the world don’t file through an open door of hatred, malice, and rage.  The worst of the widespread worsts come through a much less noticeable and offensive door.  Insignificance.  It’s what is in place when a person cannot see another person as having worth, dignity, value.  It’s our incredible ability to look at another person and see…nothing.

Think of these difficult things from the past and present.  How does a Southern gentleman go to church on Sunday and sleep at night planning to sell a mother down the river away from her babies?  How does an English lord ponder the quality of his sherry while his stewards evict starving Irish families off their tiny plots of land?  How do Brahmins step without distress over diseased untouchables dying slowly in their path?  How does your cordial neighbor who’d happily grab your mail while you’re on vacation carry a strong conviction that a woman should be allowed to tear her child limb from limb in her womb, if she chooses?

This is the human condition.  Sure, there’s rage, there’s hatred, there’s anger.  Some slave owners, Nazis, Anglo-Irish aristocracy, pro-choice activists had or have rage and hatred for their victims.  But not most.  Mostly, there’s just numb, blind indifference in a fog of busy self-focus.  This is the sinful human heart…all of us.  When we look at certain kinds of people, we don’t see anything.  Make sense?

Insignificance is like a drab tablecloth that you don’t notice, and so never wonder what is underneath.  God NEVER, EVER, EVER does this.  Because He is LOVE, and love sees.  It’s actually, contrary to popular thought, the one thing that is NOT blind.  This is ALMOST beyond our comprehension.

I love this verse:  The Lord then answered him and said, “Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it?  So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound—think of it—for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?”  And when He said these things, all His adversaries were put to shame; and all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him.  Luke 13:15-17

THINK OF IT!  The Lord Jesus has to shake people awake from blind slumber.  THINK OF IT!  She’s a person.  A real person.  Think of her suffering.  Is she not worth more than an animal?  Does she not matter?  Can you not see her at all?  The pharisees were debating what was right.  Jesus was appalled by their blindness.  The woman was a nothing to them, worth less consideration than a valuable animal.

THIS is what women are fighting against, for centuries and generations and decades, all the way back to the curse, when we were told that our desire would be for our husband (a man), but that he would be consumed, desperate to overcome futility and uselessness in his toil.  She would be looking at him, and he would be looking at his hands.  Struggle, lack, and disappointment.  Enter:  the tablecloth.

I don’t know exactly what it was like for Eve before that, to have her husband’s complete delight, attention, to be fully satisfying, to be perfectly dignified, queened, beautiful, and fruitful.  To be completely significant.  But I imagine it was a little like the situation for a growing baby in the womb, enveloped in ceaseless embrace and total provision.  Just about perfect.  (Oh, and probably a lot like how it feels to encounter Jesus.)

Side note:  the quickest way for a woman to feel like she’s out from under the tablecloth is through her physical appearance.  Instant attention and recognition, the ability to pull a man’s eyes away from himself.  This is why you find new mommies dieting, exercising and obsessing about their post-baby figure.  This insanity does not come from post-partum hormones.  It comes from desperate fear of going under the tablecloth, being worthless, becoming a nothing.

There are a million ways women fight the tablecloth of insignificance.  Through usefulness, status, her work, education, ministry, philanthropy, birthing more children than her neighbor with less drugs, the whole vast array.  But when men leave women under the tablecloth, and women are busy fighting their way out, guess who gets left under there completely?

Children.

This is why you find women pumping breast milk in the office bathroom while her eight week old takes a bottle from a stranger.  This is why you find stay at home moms antsy, depressed, desperate for something to give their days meaning, actually seeking out busyness and preoccupation.  This is why our grandmas could take perfect care of the furniture, but tear ruthlessly into their daughters with criticism and control.  This is why the birthrate for Westerners is around 1.2-1.7, not even enough to replace the parents’ generation.

Children:  we just can’t see them.

Can’t perceive their worth.  Even if we would say they are our highest priority (just like most men would say their wife is the most important person in their world), we just don’t feel what they feel, aren’t engaged by their personhood, aren’t emotionally impacted or able to intuit their needs.

I’ve got to stop, b/c I’m trying to fit a book into a blog post.  There’s so much more to say.  I know I said I would offer something practical, though, so here’s a little bit of what the Lord’s been showing us as we’ve sought how to walk out of insignificance as mothers and as women.  We asked for some practical ways that a mother in Christ flies in the face of all this destruction and communicates significance to her children, rather than insignificance.  Here is the first of five:

1. Time with touch

• Unhurried time, b/c you ARE my agenda.  Even for moms who stay at home with their kids, it is so easy to find that the agenda has ceased to be the development and nurturing of the children.  It becomes practical, or distraction driven, or anything but focused on what they really need. ( E.G.  a child needs breakthrough out of rebellion, but the plan for the week is filled with fun activities.  What the child needs is to stay home and deal with the heart issues with discipline and intentionality, but instead, mom heads out and wrestles screaming child at tumbling, music, and the park.  Mom is exhausted and resentful.  Her agenda was in the way of seeing what was really needed.)
• Physical acceptance, laying down of the rights to my body.  Children needs TONS of touch, and having recently come from mom’s body, kind of perceive it as theirs.  :)  Mom is not a jungle gym by any means, but it is crucial to lay down the right to “personal space,” as the security that comes from physical closeness is irreplaceable.  No amount of college savings, hallmark cards, or a car at sixteen can make up for what is built in a child in the early years when mom is accessible for touch and physical comfort.
• Enjoyment of every aspect of the child, including their appearance.  When a child delights a parent, insignificance can’t get a foothold!  Letting delight cover every aspect of relating to your child is RIGHT and GOOD.  Celebrate their beauty!  Laugh at their jokes!  Highlight their talents!  Expect favor and goodness for them wherever they go.  They’re the Lord’s children!  Watch for little ways that fear and insignificance would steal from the celebration of your children.  The need to “tone it down” is not from God, and is useless in trying to teach humility or righteousness.
• “We are at peace.”  Mom= home and home = safety, peace…  This is what the world will not acknowledge.  In the early years, mom is home.  Dad is hugely important, of course, but mom is where the kids live, if you will.  They don’t care about what make the car is, if they have a spacious room, or about the pottery barn kids catalogue.  They need peace in the home, and where mom is is home.  Mom’s peace is the investment point, the urgent need of the hour, and represents the security of the children.  If Mom lives without peace, don’t waste time on non-essentials, and don’t bypass it.  Seek the Lord to find out why.  (E.G.  if mom lives busy and exhausted, Dad doesn’t just need to get her a pedicure, they need to seek the Lord and make changes, even if they’re major.)

Eight months ago, Suzanna and I started leading a small home group.  The goal was to train some couples on the power of the Gospel, freedom prayer, and discipleship.  After a few months, we realized that leading a small group into lasting transformation was much more fulfilling than constantly teaching larger groups the freedom class (which basically is an introduction to discipleship). For us, momentarily touching the tip of a giant iceberg with a group, seeing them temporarily engage, and then seeing them distracted again by the next conference, the next movement, the next big thing that seems better or more attractive than the Gospel was severely disappointing.   Our hearts have longed to see the people of God understand the Gospel as THE message, THE movement, THE answer for our generation and for this world.

The Lord has clearly shown us what the content and the message of the Gospel is.  We have understood and REJOICED in what a great power there is in Jesus to transform lives and to destroy the works of the devil in people’s lives.  But what we were lacking was an understanding of how to reproduce this on a large scale.

We have traveled to many places in the world to teach this restored understanding of the Gospel to other believers.  We have taught multiple groups of very hungry believers who have been so excited to hear about freedom and the power of Christ within.  During these times it has been so encouraging to see them engage for a few days or a week with the incredible power available to us in Christ to break strongholds and to come into freedom and joy.   However, when we would leave a place after a trip there or in the conversations with the believers one month, six months, or a year later, we would see how little lasting impact we were able to have.  We began to realize that a week of teaching, a conference here or there, even a special school do not equip a believer to walk in power or understanding.  Even in a large, healthy church with consistently good biblical teaching, personal discipleship can be lacking.  The disconnect between what is true theoretically and what is actually true in a person’s life is very strong.  This disconnect in the church is implanted so deep, that even quality teaching and an earnest personal desire to “be on fire for God” are not enough for the reformation needed to produce a church that multiplies.

So as we wrestled to know how to see God’s power, His truths, multiplied across the earth, an answer came from God that was so different than what I had expected.  Smaller, not bigger. As we accidentally stumbled into leading this home group that has become a home church, we realized that we had entered into a way of worship, a way of life, a mode of discipleship much more biblical than anything we had experienced before.

We starting moving forward with leading a small home church with a goal towards training individuals and families to walk in the power of the Gospel in every area of their lives from marriage to children to their interactions daily with other believers and with unbelievers.  We preached multiplication as a lifestyle, not a program or a class or a movement.  In the midst of this, we were sort of shell-shocked.  Most of our thinking up to this time had been on trying to get larger and larger groups into some sort of school or conference or training atmosphere where they could get free, get trained, and get ready to GO.  Now we were realizing how impossible and unproductive this was for the church as a whole.

Most believers are called to GO exactly where they are.  They have children and wives and families and jobs and houses and responsibilities to the community God has called them.  How then do we help these believers in bringing the Gospel where they are?  The answer is in the Gospel.  The answer is in Jesus.  The answer is in discipleship.  The answer is in the Church that Jesus is building.  A church of LIVING STONES, real people filled with Christ himself, the hope of glory, living out the Gospel and multiplying themselves where they are.

A book I have been reading is called Houses that Change the World by Wolfgang Simson.  In the beginning he lays out 15 Theses for how to change the basic structure of how we do church.  While I don’t think these changes are powerful in and of themselves, I see that they are God’s plan for the best structure to multiply the powerful message of the Gospel.  The core of this book is understanding the most basic truth of discipleship. In order to change the world with the Gospel, we have to have quality transformation at the most basic level, the individual believer, before we can see mass transformation and proclamation.

We have been exploring restoring significance, importance, and worth to women, and have decided it can’t be done.

Well, not that it can’t be done completely, but that it can’t be done in a vaccuum, divorced from the relationships that matter most to women.  Especially, women’s significance as mothers, carriers and nurturers of life.

In the later decades of the last century our culture (and subsequently much of the church) has tried to right centuries of wrongs, millions of mistreatments, and the utter degradation and abuse of women by freeing them from…the very core of who they are.

There’s so much to say about this, and I have an incredibly personal testimony of transformation, as a woman who desperately wanted to make a significant mark in this world and hated/desperately feared the role of motherhood.  I saw it as the least significant role I could possibly fulfill, a hefty distraction from what would be a truly worthwhile use of my “incredible talents.”  Over time, as my heart was being wooed to discipleship by the Lord Jesus, this attitude neatly conformed to new and more “eternal” goals.  I would do “significant” things for God.  Motherhood would hopefully not get in the way.

When I share it, my testimony can sound a little extreme, for a church girl.  But it’s not.  Friends, it’s no coincidence that my generation, about the same age as Roe v. Wade, has seen astonishing drop in birth rates worldwide, is having fewer babies later and later, is dropping them off at day-care to pursue more worthwhile endeavors, and as mothers are experiencing what often amounts to a daily nightmare of anxiety, isolation, and exhaustion.  Not to mention failure.

AAP, you can give us more booster seats for the couple children we can fit in our crossovers, or someone (Jesus) could actually HELP us by hearing a heart cry.  A heart cry to understand what in the world has happened to us as women in a world gone mad.  A world where the most important, life-altering, costly, exhausting, and miraculous marathon of our entire existence (in which we will produce a generation that replaces us ALL on the planet) is reduced to meeting basic physical needs under higher and higher pressures of fear with less and less time to do so, with almost no mentors, in often almost total isolation, in the face of general indifference of society (except for magazine covers that undress celebrities to expose how quickly they get back in shape) and with a generation of fathers who may have not even taken the time to marry us.

How can we be healed?

It did not heal me to be told I could be anything I wanted to be, and did not have to be a mother.  It did not restore me to tell my husband to split duties with me, fifty-fifty (this cannot be done).  It will not honor me to offer me more day-care choices subsidized by the government.  It will not free me to have the church elevate me into positions so I’m not “just a mom.”  Oh, and Parenting, get a clue.  There is not enough “me-time” in the world to soothe a mommy’s soul, which is even more exhausted and fragile than her sleepless body.  So quit offering that tired, old answer.

There is only one placed to be healed, to have dignity restored, to be returned to honor, to find abundant provision, to hear the WISDOM that finally brings peace.  It is the Father’s House, the HEART of God.  It is discovering how He feels about women, which can’t be done without understanding something of how he feels about children, which will lead to uncovering what a great charge He has commissioned to husbands/fathers.  This discovery is entirely unearthly.  It is LOVE, from start to finish.

There is so much to write on this topic.  I think I will pick it up in the next blog, when I want to talk about turning the tide practically.  Seeing that while God has designed that the generations be like a chain of love, significance, and identity all the way back to Him, satan has has sought to turn the chain into one where worthlessness, insignificance, and confusion get passed down from mother to child, generation to generation.  Hopefully, though my broad, dramatic strokes won’t speak to everyone’s situation, there’ll be something for every woman in it.  :)

As I approach the brink of being mom to a trio of boys (boy #3 will join us the end of April), instead of just a duo, I’ve been pondering what this means.  Especially on Saturday mornings.  On Saturday mornings, Judah has been playing in a little soccer league with a bunch of other preschoolers in a hilarious display of pure boyhood exerted on hapless little soccer balls they call “bobcats.”

“What happens if we touch ‘bob’ with our hands?  OWWWWWWWW!!!!!  That’s right!  He bites us!  We always use our feet!”  You get the picture.

Girls are welcome, too, and cute as pie with their little pink shin-guards and ribboned piggies.  But the boys…well, there are obviously way more of them, and unleashed on the itty-bitty turf fields, the boys are just TOO AWESOME.  I can’t help it.  I LOVE BOYS.

I love that they’re happy, that they can’t sit still, that they want to be in charge, that they cry over ego-bruises, that they yell when they try to whisper, and that they are filled with raw, boundless LIFE.

Back when I was a girl, I used to not like boys.  I don’t mean that I wasn’t attracted to them.  Just that I used to not like that they can’t sit still, used to HATE that they always wanted to be in charge, used to bruise their egos on purpose, used to try to shut them up, and despised their wildLIFE.  :(  I’m so sorry.

But God set me free.  He had to…so I could marry one of the wildest men of them all.  And then raise up three (thus far) MIGHTY MEN:  hard-charging, tender-hearted, free-spirited but self-controlled BOYS.  And considering God keeps giving them to OJ and me, I’ve realized He must be serious about how we do it.  So what’s been brewing in me on Saturday mornings is the beginnings of a manifesto.  A charter for manhood, if you will.  Some of the targets we’ll have in sight as we parent these small giants.  I’m sure we’ll modify it some over the years, but here goes:

The McDowell Mighty MAN-ifesto

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.       Mat. 22:36-38

1. We are like Jesus. Jesus Christ was the manliest man who ever was.  He was stronger, wiser, and more courageous than any king, sage, or hero before or after Him.  No one has led a stronger army, defeated more enemies, rescued more captives, conquered more of the world, sacrificed more painfully or loved more radically than He.

2. We are productive, not passive. In our generation, millions of males will waste their lives on video games and movies.  We were made to bear eternal fruit, and every tree that does not bear fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.  We hate wasted lives.  We will rest well when it’s time, but first we will get to work.

3. We are hardcore. We are willing to be consistently intense.  We exercise our weaknesses as well as our strengths.  If we are smart, that is no excuse to be lazy.  If we are strong, that is no excuse to be a fool.  If we are gifted, that is no reason to be lofty.  We’ll do what we’re good at excellently, and do what we’re poor at better every time.

4. We love women. Women are what we are not and can never be.  They are other, they produce life, and they are sacred to the Lord, and so we carry an awe and reverence for each one, even if she will not carry it for herself.  No woman God assigns to our care will be forced to unduly protect, lead, or provide for her self, her honor, or her purity.

5. We guard children.  Our eyes are open, not shut, to the weak and the vulnerable.  Every time we meet a child we are encountering maximized opportunity to display God as loving Father, strong protector, and kind authority.  Every child is a mission field, and no ground is softer.

6. We are like Dad, and we like it that way. We were wired from birth to adore and emulate Dad.  Mommy knows that her boys will at some level hate themselves unless they honor Dad.  Dad is King in the home, and it is our privilege to honor him as the Mightiest Man of them all.

7.  We value time above money. Money comes and goes, but time just goes.  Our days in this life are very short, and every single one counts.   We will not fool ourselves into thinking we have used our time well because of how much money we’ve produced.  Jesus Christ came to save men’s souls.  We’re bold to use what is temporal blithely to buy what is eternal.

8. We have courageous hearts. Cowardly men go numb.  We “guard our hearts,” choosing to feel as tenderly as God does.  We will allow our hearts to hate evil, weep over injustice, cry out for mercy, delight in God, rejoice in triumph, and love passionately.

9.  We are always seeking wisdom. The fool hates correction, and the fool is doomed to destruction.  We  search for wisdom like silver and gold.  We’ll hunt high and low for good instruction and wise counsel.  However, we know how rare wisdom is, so while we live desperate for counsel, we’ll not take it from an unfruitful man or woman, no matter what their credentials may be.  We see through titles, positions, and professors, searching for the voices of those who fear the Lord.

10.  We were made to lead in our generation. To be great leaders, we can have no part with rebellion.  We’ll obey our parents to learn to obey the Lord.  We will honor our delegated authorities.  We know that if we agree to the tension of meeting pressure from authorities above us (either godly or ungodly) with a submitted, flexible spirit, while drawing our thoughts from immovable roots that go deep into the word of God, then we will find ourselves in God’s school of training for Great Men.

11.  We will laugh really, really hard just about every day. We’ll be clear about what’s serious, but anything else is fair game in the great contest to make our sister cry from laughing and our brother pee his pants.

12. We will remember that we were raised in a home with two parents who loved us and each other with all their hearts, prayed for us incessantly, and devoted themselves to discipling us in the fear of the Lord.  We will remember that in our generation, very few souls will have ever experienced that kind of love, security, and truth.  Because of this, we will not cease to preach the gospel, which opens the door of God’s family home to every orphaned soul in this entire world.  We will owe each person we meet a debt of love, give out constant grace, and remember that to whom much is given, much will be required.

Well, it’s time for our biannual apology for going offline!  We’re back, after many hours of shenanigans with our domain renewal.  Whew…thank goodness that the sharks who’ve been trying to buy “ojandsuz.com” for a few measly tens of thousands missed the chance to swoop in and steal it from under our noses.  :)

Oh, and after a LOOOONG hiatus from writing, my fingers are itching and my mind is whirling…and my belly is GROWING!  So while it could seem like I sure don’t have time for writing now, good sense tells me I’ve got loads of time compared to oh, say, the month of May…

So as long as I can reach the keyboard, I’m going to take the opportunity to get some things off my chest, while I have no such powers over the belly…which is not going anywhere…for another seven weeks.  :)

So…Sorry, hello again, and here we go!!!

One of the most compelling authors on the life of a prophet and on authentic Christian living is Art Katz.  He went to be with the Lord a few years back, but his teachings are still alive on his website.  http://artkatzministries.org/

His book Reality: The Hope of Glory is the most stirring book on life in the Spirit I have ever read.  It cuts through rhetoric and religiosity with precision and heat.  There is no Christian book I can compare it to (except his other great book Apostolic Foundations).  Here is an interesting quote from his book that had me thinking.

“For me to live is Christ” Phil 1:21.  For me to speak is Christ.  For me to carry on a conversation is Christ.  I was once a very engaging personality.  An hour with Art Katz over a cup of coffee would be filled with bright and witty conversation on almost any topic.  Now Katz is lousy company; I am gray, lifeless, inert, except that He is my life.  If there is any graciousness in me, it is His graciousness.  If there is any real wisdom, it is His wisdom.  When it pleases Him not to be engaging, speaking bright things, then neither am I:  “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. (Col. 3:3,4)  We have no glory independent of His glory.  He is my life.

The theme of this quote is similar to the theme of Watchman Nee’s book, Release of the Spirit, which is this:  that God wants the soulish part of a man, his personality, his wit, his sense of humor to become increasingly broken and dead so that Christ by the Holy Spirit might use that man.  That a man’s soul would become a tool of the Spirit instead of the soul hindering the work of the Spirit in that man.

Of course there is a danger in this way of thinking in that a man might come to a place where he even hates or despises the gifts of God in himself and would think that dull and lifeless living was virtuous in some way.  I don’t believe that Nee or Katz intend this outcome nor is this God’s desire.

However, I have seen in God’s dealings with me that this part of me is dying that wants to “be liked” or to impress upon others my intelligence, my personality, even my wit.  I see that God still uses these parts of me at particular times in particular ways for His glory.  Yet increasingly, it is according to Christ in me that I live and move and have my being and less according to my own fleshly compulsions.

The outcome of this in day to day relationships and conversations is remarkable and very humbling.  In the company where in the flesh I most desire to be lively and filled with external manifestations of the Spirit to prove in some way my spiritual “greatness”, the Spirit compels me to silence and even a certain degree of deadness.  Its hard to tell why except that it seems God is dealing with my fleshly need to be somebody and to “show” how spiritually lively and wise I am.  Also, there is the element in which God will not be mocked.  The whole ‘no pearls before swine” principle.  God reserves the best things for the hungry and desperate and saves the deep things of the Spirit for where they can be received.

Its in the ordinary moments, where I am not desiring to be puffed up or “show off” my spiritual prowess that I find God moving through me in remarkable ways.  Sometimes in the most ordinary moments of life or ministry in which I am simply obeying God to be there and to say what He wants me to say, I listen as words of life pour out of my mouth, shocked internally that I hear my voice speaking and observing in wonder as streams of living water flow out.  Christ is doing His work through me, a dead man.  The dying (which is difficult, have no doubt) is now serving its purpose in that every trial, every rejection, every humiliation, every lifeless moment of waiting becomes beautifully exchanged for seeing His power and life manifest in me.

1 Cor 4:20  “For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power.”

(Letter to the Lost)

You matter.

You matter because there is a case pending against you that all of history hinges on.  You, God’s masterpiece, knit together out of a secret DNA code that only He could write and science is still beginning to try to decipher.  Too much beauty is contained in that code to describe.  A thousand pictures could not capture how it makes those who love you feel when you laugh.  Too much wisdom is written in those helices for our most brilliant minds to comprehend.  Like the wisdom that teaches the feet of the illiterate to balance their weight perfectly on symmetrical legs.  Too much joy is written into those strands to be expressed; even your parents didn’t come close on the day of your birth.  The only appropriate celebration for your grandeur is of heavenly proportions…but that does hang in the balance.

Because your DNA was hijacked and your beauty marred and the wisdom despised and the joy stifled.  Because you and I have participated in the greatest treachery of all time.  The One who designed, crafted, and rejoiced over you for Love has been denied His heart’s desire:  full fellowship with you.  Your soul’s DNA no longer reads, “Lover of God with all heart, soul, mind and strength.”  It’s been changed to read, “Seeker of self for pleasure, glorification, identity, and source.”  The design is so grossly perverted that you have to be told…TO BE TOLD IN WORDS…to love the most beautiful, perfect Lover conceivable.  To love Love Himself.  You and I, we must be commanded to love Love (for which we were made).  To see Light (for which our eyes were formed).  To do Justice (which is HIs only possible course).  To cherish Mercy, by which we continue to breathe from moment to moment.

So because He must, He commands it.  And still, after the command, written long form in 66 books over hundreds of years, shouted by prophets who were thrown in jail and sawn in half, and then embodied in His own Son made flesh, still after all…still the Word is neglected and disbelieved, the prophets despised, and the Love, Light, the Son of God, made into a pendant.  Crucified by religion daily, His righteousness undesired.  And here you are in the now of history, with thousands of years of defiance of men before you and the return of the King to come, and everything is hinging on how you will respond.

You matter.  The case against you is unchangeable, insurmountable, terrifying.  You were made for greatness, one way or the other.  And you have been pursued in the sea of humanity for rescue by the Son of Man and the Son of God.  One and the same, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.  Have you heard His name?  Then you have been pursued eternally and offered the world’s only hope.  Have you seen His book?  Then He has cried out to you in a loud voice.  Have you been told of His death?  Then you have been confronted with the most astounding injustice the greatest imagination could ever conceive of, the greatest story ever told, and the greatest act of Love any man or spirit could attempt.  The immortal God dying slowly at the hands of the rebels, the underlings, the traitors.  The created killing Creator.  The Omnipotent nailed up by weaklings.  Voluntarily.

And YOU are the one at the center of the story.  The ONE for whom Christ died.  You matter.  You matter.  You could not matter more.  There is no more certain guarantee of your worth than this, Jesus Christ hanging on the cross outside the camp, bloody beyond recognition.  You matter.  If there is one question on which you dare not waste another moment it is the question of whether you are loved and important.  Do you see Him there on the Cross?  You matter.

No, the question is not whether you are loved, or whether you are significant.  You must disbelieve the Cross and reject history to remain asking what has been so resoundingly answered for all time.  No, the question is if you esteem Him.  Whether you see Him as worthwhile and significant.  Him, the King of Glory.  All Creation is groaning for His return, but He holds off, offering you another day and another breath to engage all the angels of heaven in celebration.  Will you repent?  Will you turn?  Will you bow and surrender to love, or defy not only the Righteous Judge, but your own Advocate and Redeemer, in the end standing only in agreement with your accuser and abuser, who calls you worthless and tutors you how to be so?  For a few moments the world will stand with you as you stand with them, but it is a vapor.  And so you will face the One before whose face all of heaven and earth flees away on your own.  And He will open the Lamb’s Book of Life, to see if your name is in it.

All the universities in the world, temples of idolatry, and drunken stupors of men will never change the eternal truth:  There’s a book.  He died to put your name in it.  You matter.  Will you believe, confess, and repent?  He will pay all debts, allowing you to die and be reborn.  To be a new creation, to have new life, eternal life in full fellowship with Him.  He will save you not only from the eternal penalty of sin, but from the life of slavery to sin you now live.  Sin will no longer be your master; if only you will submit to Him, the kindest and most preferred of all Masters, Lord of all!  Bowing to His Lordship will make you free!

When you do, friend and brother, finally the celebration of your worth is released in the heavenlies, all the angels rejoicing at the redemption of the Precious Prodigal.  What joy, on earth and in heaven, the Father’s will done.  Restored relationship with you.  You matter.

⁸ But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”^[a](that is, the word of faith which we preach): ⁹ that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰ For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.  Rom. 10:8-10

And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ ¹⁰In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”  Luke 15:9-10

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. ²¹God made him who had no sin to be sin^[a] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  2 Cor. 5:18-21

This is a very powerful sermon.  I know you would be blessed by this sermon if you have ever thought about being a pastor, missionary, Sunday school teacher, small group leader, home group leader, Christian counselor, or having any sort of impactful ministry.