The Road | Ezekiel 21:27: "I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him."
The truth is that, years ago, before this generation of mothers was even born, our society decided where children rank in the list of important things. When abortion was legalized, we wrote it into law.
Children rank way below college. Below world travel for sure. Below the ability to go out at night at your leisure. Below honing your body at the gym. Below any job you may have or hope to get. In fact, children rate below your desire to sit around and pick your toes, if that is what you want to do. Below everything. Children are the last thing you should ever spend your time on.
If you grew up in this culture, it is very hard to get a biblical perspective on motherhood, to think like a free Christian woman about your life, your children. How much have we listened to partial truths and half lies? Do we believe that we want children because there is some biological urge, or the phantom “baby itch”? Are we really in this because of cute little clothes and photo opportunities? Is motherhood a rock-bottom job for those who can’t do more, or those who are satisfied with drudgery? If so, what were we thinking?
Motherhood is not a hobby; it is a calling. You do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps. It is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in. It is what God gave you time for.
Christian mothers carry their children in hostile territory. When you are in public with them, you are standing with, and defending, the objects of cultural dislike. You are publicly testifying that you value what God values, and that you refuse to value what the world values. You stand with the defenseless and in front of the needy. You represent everything that our culture hates, because you represent laying down your life for another — and laying down your life for another represents the gospel.
Our culture is simply afraid of death. Laying down your own life, in any way, is terrifying. Strangely, it is that fear that drives the abortion industry: fear that your dreams will die, that your future will die, that your freedom will die — and trying to escape that death by running into the arms of death.
But a Christian should have a different paradigm. We should run to the cross. To death. So, lay down your hopes. Lay down your future. Lay down your petty annoyances. Lay down your desire to be recognized. Lay down your fussiness at your children. Lay down your perfectly clean house. Lay down your grievances about the life you are living. Lay down the imaginary life you could have had by yourself. Let it go.
The question here is not whether you are representing the gospel; it is howyou are representing it. Have you given your life to your children resentfully? Do you tally everything you do for them like a loan shark tallies debts? Or do you give them life the way God gave it to us: freely?
The good confession of which He witnessed was that He was the Son of God in the flesh. Ours is likewise to be that that same Life of the Son of God is being manifested in the life of our own flesh. Just as God and man were fully present in Christ before Pilate, so also our witness to Him shall be no witness at all until the substance of our real lives is being transfigured by the substance of God’s real Life working in us through the obedience of faith.
By this we know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ IScome in the flesh is from God. And every spirit which does not confess that Jesus Christ IS come in the flesh is not from God; this is the antichrist which you heard is coming, and now is already in the world.
During a conversation I had with my little brother some time ago, he pointed something out that I hadn’t thought of, at least not in the way he framed it. We were discussing the lack of discernment when it comes to spiritual gifting in the Western church, as well as the lack of knowledge and understanding regarding the manifest power of God.
To clarify, I have not been called to deliverance ministry, but I have prayed for people to be delivered. My grandfather [Dimitru Duduman] before me likewise had not been called to deliverance ministry, but the devil knew his name, and every time a minion of darkness crossed paths with him, he had enough authority in Christ Jesus to cast them out.
Think of prayer and fasting as chemo, and the evil spirit as cancer. With each prayer lifted up for the individual in question, with each day of fasting fasted on their behalf, it’s like the spirit gets hit with another round of radiation. Each round weakens it incrementally, until, in its weakened state, when commanded to leave it has no choice but to do so.
“The perfect are those who are full grown and matured in Christian experience. They need strong meat. For them there are blessed unveilings of the secret things of God, such as the profoundest thinkers of this world have never reached. The words in 1 Cor 2:9 must not be applied to heaven alone; in their first intention they belong to us in this mortal life. The human eye that has seen the fairest of earth’s things, and the ear that has heard the sweetest strains of human melody, have never experienced the depths of enjoyment of those who have found the love of God in Christ. They who know Christ should not be content with the mere rudiments of the gospel, but should follow on to know those deeper things which evade men who are merely clever, but are revealed to those who are really good.