Venting

This was an interesting week. I really wanted to vent to someone, but I had to be careful who I vented to in order to protect myself from gossiping. This makes life rough, so I had to vent to God, which is amazing. The more I would talk out my frustrations in my head to God, the calmer I seemed to get, until I got to the point where my thoughts were put down on paper without any bad words or with me quitting. I feel that in the past when I come across a person I disagree with, I may try to say my concerns once to them and if they treat me like an irrational woman, then I tend not to deal with them anymore and remove myself from the situation. One thing people should understand about me, is that I rarely share my concerns with a person without first seeking council from my husband. He usually has a good idea what my concern is, he sees that it actually has merit and helps me decide what words I might want to use. So, when someone treats me like an irrational woman, it kind of makes me laugh, because I know they would not treat my husband that way and he is behind what I say. Anyways, even he was busy this week, although he did help me some with what I said, but he was working through his own concerns on the matter with God, so I took his lead and did the same.

I have also come to the understanding that in removing myself from the situations doesn't always help, because God may have placed me there to continue to get a differing point across. I think I have always taken the easier path of just quitting, but I am tired of doing that and I want to be the person God wants me to be. I believe I am seeing some future struggles coming up and I am praying for strength as they approach. One struggle I see is how we as women have tried so hard to be on the same level as men in the church. I think we need to realize we were never meant to be elders in the church, we can do ministry and we can serve on ministries in the church, but we should not be in a place of high authority in the church. I think that because women have been fighting to be placed on the same level as men in the secular world, we have allowed that into our church as well. In that process, men have stepped aside and allowed women into authority roles, and that is one of the reasons our churches are struggling in the world. Just as important as it is for my husband to be the head of our house, the men should be the heads of our church. This is not a popular idea and I am sure that I will get some arguments from women. It does remind me of the story of Jonah, the people of Nineveh did not know what they were doing was wrong until Jonah came and told them. Once they heard God's message, they changed and repented, was this easy? I doubt it. They would have had to make some huge changes that could not have been comfortable, but God blessed them after they made the changes (mostly by not destroying them). I think we in the church have gotten off track, thinking sometimes that the Bible is old fashioned and did not really mean in our more modern world that men would be the only elders, that is just crazy talk. But is it really? I have been amazed at how the Bible can speak to me in what I am dealing with right now even as old as it is. God is everywhere and I believe His order of authority in the Bible was meant to span over all generations, it may just be a test for us to see if we are willing to obey.

Ok...that may have been a little bit of venting from me.