We Girls So Rock!Women feel the most inadequate in our relationships with other women, I think. Mothers and daughters, daughters and mothers, sisters, girlfriends...we women feel and fear our own falling short, we sense that we are not adequate for one another.
I look across the landscape of the body of Christ, and the topography is littered with the baggage of female friendship gone horribly wrong, and with the broken pieces of the hearts of mothers and daughters. It is time that judgment begin in the house of God, and
that is not what you think.
Have you not heard? The house of God is the only safe place for judgment - because Christ carried our griefs and sorrows, He sits now on a throne of grace, beckoning to us to run to Him in our time of need. We can get our needs met by His satisfyingly durable lovingkindness, and then turn and freely give what we have freely received to our mothers, daughters, sisters and friends.
(...and FYI, when the Bible says, "And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" it is speaking of the afflictions and persecutions of this life, not of our position before God. Context, context! Salvation cannot be at the same time sure and unsure, secured by Christ, but subject to our inadequacy.)
Out there, in a world bereft of grace, you are written off for your inadequacy. At the throne of grace, you can find healing for every relationship. For what offense have you forsaken a friend? With what imperfection do you charge a mother? What daughter can bear up under the weight of propping up a mother's fragile sense of self? We must stop needing other daughters of Eve to be for us what only Christ can be.
Let us run to Him!
Every broken relationship, healed. Every loose thread, woven back into the tapestry. Every bond, strengthened. Every inadequacy, swallowed up in the vast overflowing overadequacy of the Finished Work of Christ.
Where you have fallen short in relationship, Christ can stand tall, as He stands strong to meet needs in others you cannot fill. Where others have fallen short towards you, Christ can stand tall, becoming your need-meeter. We can forgive others for their inadequacy, and we can forgive ourselves of the same.
Who can say she has been a perfectly adequate friend...sister...mother...daughter? That is much like saying, "Who can say she is without sin?"
Inadequacy is our lot in life until we are fully and finally changed to be just like Jesus. But the enemy of our soul has somehow made us fear facing up to the fact that we wound and are wounded. We hide in the bushes from each other because we are inadequate, fallen flesh, not yet glorified.
Come out, come out, wherever you are!
Come forgive, and be forgiven. Come begin again. Or again/again/again/again. If my mercies are new every morning, then yours are too. Who am I to withhold them from you?
When women naturally and freely nurture one another, releasing one another from our falling short, cheering one another on in this difficult journey of life, one in which even we the righteous are "scarcely saved" out of persecution and trouble...
...well, I think it will make an unbelieving, not-at-all saved watching world want to escape their judgment, and come be judged in The Father's House.
If God has declared me righteous, who can be against me? Certainly not you.
Face it...you just cannot be against me. I cannot be against you.
Looks like we are stuck with being for each other.
I'm so glad.
