This week on Uniquely Woman, Lisa and I are talking about how to deal with postpartum hormones in a godly way. We include some ideas for weathering the baby blues and dealing with hormonal changes as well as resources if you struggle with postpartum depression. Don’t walk this part of life alone!
A pang strikes my heart every time I write about the church. It’s the same discomfort I get when confronting a friend about a sin issue; a necessary pain. I wouldn’t want to take joy in correcting a flawed ideology, but neither should I ignore anything that hinders the gospel’s advance.
But in writing about the church – from women’s ministry to the millennial message – I have a weighty responsibility. The church is not a building, after all. The church is people. The church is me.
The world needs us, you and I.
It needed me when I left, and it needs you for staying. You wouldn’t know it from what the magazines say… the Instagram posts about wanderlust and adventure, about moving out and moving on. The world makes it seem like I’m bigger, bolder, for leaving.
And you – the girl who never left home? You’re the one who “settled”.
I remember sneakily flipping the pages of Cosmopolitan Magazine in a nail salon waiting room. I turned the cover toward the wall so no one would see what I was reading, then voraciously flipped through the pages to fill in the blanks of my sexual education. I’m not the only Christian girl who’s done this. Thousands of us have furtively glanced through those pages.
We hate Cosmo for how it objectifies women, yet Cosmo – and magazines like it – draw us in. Why would a Christian girl read something like this? Three reasons.
This week on Uniquely Woman, Lisa and I discuss how we chose our “words of the year” – because there’s nothing magical about January 1st. We also talk about how we arrived at our words and how we break down our goals into practical steps, and our motives behind those particular aims for 2017.
Christians possess all the power of God to pursue His holiness in their lives. On our own, we could never achieve virtue and honor. But by walking according to the Spirit of God in us, His character is manifested in ours. Courtship culture has ignored the role the Holy Spirit plays in relationships, and has taken up the mantle of the Spirit for itself. And like most pseudo-Holy Spirits, it doesn’t do a very good job.
We can set up physical standards, have chaperones, and be as “intentional” as we like, but if the Spirit of God is not alive and active in our hearts, we can find sin. Purity is not a list of outward actions. It is an inner change of desire and priority.
A change of emphasis has taken place. The words, the affirmations, the identities and monikers – many of them are biblical and true. The problem lies – once again – not in whether or not the message is true but whether our overt focus on it has handicapped our spiritual maturity.
I believe it has. It is the millennial gospel – good feelings, good music, real people, and “rawness”. The not-so-good news? It’s incomplete.
This week on the podcast we are answering a listener question from Sarah. She asks how we can let people into our lives when we have been hurt in the past – or know that we could be hurt in the future.
Most of us can relate to this question. How do you know when a relationship is a healthy risk – and all relationships require some kind of risk – and when it’s headed a toxic direction? Listen below or in iTunes or Stitcher, and don’t forget to subscribe!
There was a time when legalists were easy to identify.
They were the ones more interested in “Sunday best” than repentant hearts; more concerned about music and movies than an inner transformation. They judged by outward appearance and were, in turn, judged lacking in both truth and grace.
Gen-Xers and millennials know them well. We grew up hearing about them, and watched the church shift and buckle under the weight of change. It was a good change, for the most part. It exposed things. It revealed how church had become more about doing and being “good” than about God being good in us.
That morning in my quiet time, I prayed for humility. I asked God to saturate my life and ministry with it; to protect me from the dangers of pride. Six hours later more steam was coming out my ears than off the onions, and I was convinced it was all Josh’s fault.
We all know we need humility. Christ Himself exemplified it and provided a model for us to follow. So we pray for it periodically, asking God to “make us humble” without really grasping what it is we ask.