(Author’s Note: Continuing now with our observations concerning the role of gender in public and private life, we explore the benefits of basing life on the Truth found in the Word of God. I will leave any political applications to the reader with this provision: The heart of the Gospel of Christ is the freedom of choice. Each person can choose to follow the Lord or to reject Him. It is not the role of any government to demand any belief system of its citizens. Dr. Stephen Phifer)
Part Two
People of Faith in God
In the Beginning
This ancient source of Truth which still rings amazingly true today begins this way:
Genesis 1:1-2 KJV
In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
This God we serve has no need of repeated attempts at something in order to succeed. He gets it right the first time. The same is true for His Word. While a productive and peaceful life can be spent studying and consuming His Word, there is no need for us to improve it. We are called to believe it and allow it to shape our minds and our lives, not to edit it.
In the beginning, God had this idea:
“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…
Then He made it happen…
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Period. End of sentence. What’s done is done. Finished. There is no need for correction. He got it right on the first attempt. It is the height of arrogance to think that we can do better! Confusion and chaos are the inevitable results when we attempt to correct the Lord. Peace and order are found in this amazing fact. “Male and Female” is the central organizational fact of human life.
- It is the peaceful order for society.
- It is the correct order for the home.
It is not a decision to made by children or by their misguided parents or teachers. It is a divine assignment given by God Himself in the womb. My wife and I have two daughters and now we have two grandsons. Watching my grandsons grow up bears no resemblance to my memories of observing our daughters’ progress. We had boxes full of dismembered Barbie dolls—it was easier to fix their hair if you removed the heads!—whereas it seems my grandsons came out of the delivery room looking for toy dinosaurs and trucks. “Male and female created He them!”
What observations serve my faith?
- Society. Driving anywhere when I see a work crew on the side of the road, who is the majority group among them? Who is most likely driving the heavy equipment and the 18 wheelers? In the doctor’s office who are helpers? Thankfully, the doctors can rightfully come from either of these genders. The male and female propensities are certainly not absolutes and legitimate variations occur, but there is an undeniable pattern to which we blindness is a deliberate choice.
- The Home. I have been privileged to closely observe several family units: the one in which I grew up and others of close relatives or close church folks. Strong fathers tend to produce godly sons. Integral, intelligent women will likely raise up incredible young women from the girls they bring into this world. Freeda and I have two daughters who now are women of immeasurable impact for good in this world. They learned how to be great women from their Mom. When homes are deficient in either the father or the mother, the Family of God is commanded to make up the difference. James calls this tender care, “pure religion and undefiled.”
James 1:27 NKJV
Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
An essential ministry of the church is to strengthen the homes represented, especially when key leaders are missing.
The Truth Is Still True
When society or the home decides to ignore or even to denigrate the truth, trouble and tragedy are the results.
- The lives of children are altered beyond repair.
- Appearance becomes more important than skill.
- Precious years are wasted in futile explorations of ideas without merit or promise.
- Joy, the biblical equivalent of strength, is lost as weakness drains the body and mind. Life yields to the power of despair.
On the other hand, when Truth is honored, happy children grow into productive adults.
Oh, there are failures, prodigals feeding in hog troughs and rebels leading losing insurrections. There are certainly parents who fail to present a transferable faith to their progeny. But for so many, many others, the treasures stored in the heart materialize every day in the deeds of fruitful minds and skillful hands. The decades of life become a treasure trove of worth and benefit to all. Daily, Christ-followers drink from the Waters of Life and feast at a plentiful table of the Word of God in the very presence of their enemies. We are so foolish to even consider that our insipid impulses should rule our choices and plans. To trade facts for feelings is folly.
Building Your Life on the Rock
At the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us a vivid analogy for assessing the faith we choose as the foundation of our lives: rock or sand?
Matthew 7:24-27 NIV
Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
Like a house built on a rock, the life carefully built upon the Living Word of God stands in the proven strength of the Christian faith. More than ideas, the strength is found in a real relationship with Jesus. In response to our faith, the centuries fall away in the miracle of His presence in the Secret Place of Prayer. Jesus said the Father is always faithful to hear our prayers and commune with us. As we pray, His strength flows into us. Each Lord’s day, we gather with the church, the “ecclesia”—the called out ones. Worship, fellowship, discipleship, and communion bind us together into a family of strength, stable through the storms. Oh, the storms still come, the pelting rains, the dangerous winds and waves of life on earth, but our house stands. The solid rock or the shifting sands? The choice is ours. Where is your hope? Your faith?
What God Has Joined Together…
Jesus quoted the verses from Genesis when asked about divorce. The truths he spoke range far beyond that context.
Matthew 19:3-6 NKJV
The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
As sad and tragic as the breakup of a marriage, the divorce of truth from life is sadder still. Modern thinking treats truth as a buffet of ideas—choose what you like! The result of such a meal is a delicious obesity, a debilitating shortness of the breath of life. With our mouths watering we fill our plates with the tasty morsels and huge helpings of momentary delights with no thought for the scales in the morning. Temporary tastes do not lead to eternal delights. We are unaware that we have broken one of the laws of life. We have carelessly separated, divorced if you will, our hopes and dreams from their source in the heart of God. The Truth helps us distinguish our hungers from our needs, our drives from our callings, and our fantasies from our God-ordained destiny. Thus, misled by our affections, we favor our feelings over our facts, and foolishly choose the sand instead of the Rock.
“Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
The Three Steps
There is a blessed process leading to a life based on the Truth, one impervious to rains and waves and winds, confidently built on the Rock, Christ Jesus. How can we get from here to there?
Matthew 16:24-25 NKJV
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
The steps, given first to those Pharisees and Sadducees, but still available to us are these:
- Deny Yourself—Choose God’s wisdom over your own passions or the confused clamor of the world.
- Take Up Your Cross—Find God’s plan for your life; He will reveal it through prayer, His Word, and the fellowship of His saints.
- Follow Me—Knowing God’s will is just the beginning. We must also know His ways.
For a more detailed essay go to: The Three Steps – Steve Phifer
Conclusion
Life is designed by a loving Creator to be an extended adventure, not an existential adversity. Each of us exists for a purpose. We are not simply clever accidents. Each of us has a destiny for we are part of a vast, eternally unfolding plan of redemption. Our lives are intended to be another chapter in the Jesus Story! The first hint of this important truth is knowing which side of the playground is for you. Your gender, assigned by the Lord in your mother’s womb, is your primary fact of life. It is a life sentence, not a death sentence.
- You can have strength—joy!—for this journey that will continually increase even when you take you our last earthly breath.
- You can have wisdom for each dilemma you will face when you open The Book each day and prayerfully listen for the voice of the Lord.
- You can fit into amazing teams and workforces and you might not ever have to watch your back.
- All your tomorrows are in the hands of the One who calls you to follow Him today.
Congratulations! Your life can be one of those wonderful things that “God has put together.”
Don’t let anyone separate you from it.
Semper Reformanda!
Stephen Phifer
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