MEN & WOMEN ARE EQUAL.

Jesus came to reveal God and to inject into our lives, the values—the motives, the character, the ways and means—of Heaven. He came to turn on the Light in our darkness! And this included turning on the Light so we could get it right—from Heaven’s perspective—about women. When Jesus turned on the Light, it showed God‘s point of view: women are created, regarded, respected, and commissioned as equals with men. What a contrast with the terrible ideas that prevailed in the dark! In the church, for some strange reason, a very firm line based solely on gender has been drawn between the sexes. Men do this; women do not! Men rule; women serve. As a result, precious gifts—given by God for His glory, for His children’s personal fulfillment, and for the salvation of the nations and the healing of hurting people—lie unopened! A gift that God should have given to a man—it seems! He gave to a woman instead, and so it can never be used as He intended. Many of us have felt the sting of this, and Florence Nightingale said it well,I would have given her (the church) my head, my hand, my heart. She would not have them.‛ But our walk with Jesus is a walk with the lights turned on. We can see, open, and use the gifts He has deposited in our unique personalities, if we will. A few years ago, when I asked the Lord to help me in a difficult situation related to all of this, I heard these words in my heart: RECOGNIZE what I have given you; VALUE what I have given you; and GIVE what I have given you TO THOSE WHO RECOGNIZE what I have given you, and VALUE what I have given you, and RECEIVE what I have given you. The truth is that Our Creator has blessed each of us, irrespective of gender, with Himself (The Greatest Gift), and with precious gifts of His choosing. He wants to work through us, using these gifts, and He will do so if we will but open them and follow Him. As we walk in the Light, we can do this, even defying tradition—as we surely will! But He is glorified in this. God gives us gifts and personalities so that we can express Him to other people. Nothing indicates His sovereignty and His specific, personal will for us any more clearly than this. And this is what we bring to Him as we consecrate our lives to Him, that we might do our small part in His big plan. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … teaching them to observe ALL THAT I HAVE COMMANDED YOU…. Jesus (Mt. 28:19-20 NKJV) In relation to the Great Commission, allow me to share a personal experience I had in prayer during a doctoral seminar on missions strategy. While simply resting, with my head on my desk, while others worked at praying, I was caught by surprise when the Holy Spirit jarred me and I began interceding. It was Spirit-initiated, Spirit-filled, and Spirit-directed prayer! The words I heard in my heart as I prayed were these: The church has all the money, means, and methods to take the message to the whole world, but what I want to do is purge the message that it is taking so that it is My Message. As I yielded in prayer, it was clear to me that a big chunk that must be purged is the traditional message about women. If the church is to advance the Gospel, that part must go! God’s will is that we teach the Message of Jesus about women. That is God’s Word to us, and we are to apply the knowledge available to us to read the words and deeds of Jesus in the social settings of His day and derive the meaning He intended. When we understand the PREVAILING THINKING about women in Jesus’ day, we begin to understand how radical His teaching was. We begin to see what He was up against. The oral law of Jesus’ day said: Let the words of the Law be burned rather than committed to women. . . . If a man teaches his daughter the Law, it is as though he taught her lewdness (Sotah 3:4). A woman is inferior to her husband in all things. Let her, therefore, be obedient to him (Apion 2:25). Let a curse come upon the man who must needs have his wife or children say grace for him. Praise be to God that he has not created me a gentile; praised be God that He created me not a woman; praised be God that he has not created me an ignorant man. (This is a Jewish thanksgiving prayer of Jesus’ day. Menahot 43b.) It is well for those whose children are male, but ill for those whose children are female . . . At the birth of a boy all are joyful, but at the birth of a girl all are sad . . . When a boy comes into the world, peace comes into the world; when a girl comes, nothing comes . . . Even the most virtuous of women is a witch (Niddah 31b). When we become aware of SOCIAL PRACTICES regarding women in Jesus’ day, we gain further insight into the revolutionary nature of His teaching. In the Jerusalem temple, women were limited to one outer portion, the women’s court, which was five steps below the court for the men. A rabbi regarded it beneath his dignity to speak to a woman in public. Women were kept for childbearing and rearing, and they were always under the strict control of a man. These prevailing thoughts and social practices reflect the sinful nature of humanity resulting from the fall. They also reveal how the thinking of God’s Chosen People had been corrupted by syncretism with pagan cultures. When we read the Gospels with knowledge, we understand that the writers clearly show us that Jesus rejected the idea that women are evil, inferior, unclean, and unequal. Nowhere do the Gospel writers portray women as being of lesser value than men. Nowhere are women restricted to certain roles, and nowhere are women treated as the property of men or subjects under male authority. Instead Jesus, Our Lord, demonstrated most vigorously that women and men are equal.