Reconciliation, mothers and their daughters
You're the Word of God the Father [Across the lands] by Stuart Townend
CALL TO WORSHIP · JESUS
COLOSSIANS 1: 16-17 · EPHESIANS 4: 8 · HEBREWS 7: 25 · JOHN 1: 1 · LUKE 19: 10 · LUKE 8: 24 · LUKE 9: 16 · PSALM 96: 11 · REVELATIONS 7: 9
Lyrics
You’re the Word of God the Father,
From before the world began;
Every star and every planet
Has been fashioned by Your hand.
All creation holds together
By the power of Your voice:
Let the skies declare Your glory,
Let the land and seas rejoice!
You’re the Author of creation,
You’re the Lord of every man;
And Your cry of love rings out
Across the lands.
Yet You left the gaze of angels,
Came to seek and save the lost,
And exchanged the joy of heaven
For the anguish of a cross.
With a prayer You fed the hungry,
With a word You stilled the sea.
Yet how silently You suffered
That the guilty may go free.
With a shout You rose victorious,
Wresting victory from the grave,
And ascended into heaven
Leading captives in Your wake.
Now You stand before the Father
Interceding for Your own.
From each tribe and tongue and nation
You are leading sinners home.
Source:https://www.stuarttownend.co.uk/song/across-the-lands/
So the drawings throughout this essay are actually the fruit of reconciliation that God has worked out in me only for me to notice it in the last few days.
I did not want to draw European people for the longest time. In many ways I felt like Europe was swallowing me up. When my father was weakened by cancer I sat outside of my dormitory room in despair. An image came to me of a great white female beast. It swallowed me whole and I lay dissolving slowly in its stomach acid. Another time, maybe earlier, maybe later I dreamed a dream, where I was moving forward towards a platform or a pillar, with a female gargoyle on top. In the dream the frightening creature unveiled itself to me to my horror by opening its large wings that it used to cover itself with. Though in the dream I saw something resembling a young woman, naked, all marble and white, I woke up fearful with the thought "what great evil, that was my mother".
Earlier, much earlier my mother amusedly said to me after one of our many silent ceasefires, "mothers and their daughters". That sentence alone made me high because it was her way of acknowledging her love towards me. I have never heard her say the word love to me or to any other family member. The whole concept seemed to be awkward to her.
But I did not know that many daughters from the time they reach early womanhood are on a collision course against the womanhood presented to them by their mothers and grandmothers. In movies you see sons going on adventures to become men, but daughters often stay friends with and close to their mothers, so it can be difficult to detect the journey to womanhood in them. But one crucial aspect of that journey is the rejection of their mothers’ womanhood in order to establish and later accept their own. I noticed something in my friends and the daughters around me. No matter the generation, 15year old daughters, 23 year old daughters, 35 year old daughters, 50 year old daughters, the same scenario played out in their lives, they would confide in me and the world "I'm not like my mother, I am stronger, more ambitious, not oppressed, I'm freer, I'm going to go further, I will never settle like she did".
And by now I am starting to realize that those of us who reach a point of reconciliation with the womanhood of our mothers and have mercy on their limitations, their controlling behavior, their dominance, their weaknesses, are those of us who can show compassion at the many ways they failed us in the ways of womanhood.
Today, as the Holy Spirit speaks to me about it, He shows me that those daughters who seem so unsettled to me with their warring, contentions, silently despising the sacrifices or lack thereof of their mothers, are the women in my life whose fullness as individuals seem most stunted. They look to me like petulant women children who wobbly move along in life, never at ease with their areas of responsibility in the home, at their jobs, in their marriages because inside a battle is still going on, long after they have moved out of their parents’ houses.
Now I truly appreciate the freedom and peace God gives me and the insight and understanding. It did not occur to me, but it is true I think that some of the things I did as a way of preserving my own identity in order to establish a healthy understanding of me being a brown foreigner in a white Europe, looked to my mother as a rejection of her. I think that's what the Holy Spirit is communicating to me because thoughts upon thoughts in a manner I'm not used to think about keep coming to me. My mother, reconciliation and womanhood, some come more like inquiries, some more as explanations and some more as truth.
When I began drawing again, after giving my life to God, long after making a vow to Him while I was an unbeliever that I would dedicate my drawing and painting skills to Him if He restored them to me, I contended with God. At that point of that vow my dad's death was fresh in memory and I was debilitated by sickness. Later, much later I began drawing again, and looking back I know that I contended with God though I didn’t know it at that time. It was fall 2017, I had joined a life group in church, a year before joining that in November 2016 I had drawn and painted the watercolor of a mother holding a child at the prompting and guidance of the Holy Spirit. I also did not know that because nobody had told me that He was real, but I did notice that the concept of the drawing came to me in an unusual way. A strong urging and sort of a wind in my back made me do the references, draw, paint and finish the whole thing in a week. Normally a feat like that can take me up to a year. Even right now I’m working on things that are over a year old, and I’m only on the first layer of painting. So I knew that that was a supernatural sign from God, I just assumed it was a license to draw whatever I felt like drawing.
So there I was in 2017, explaining to my life group that God was working behind the scenes in my life on this talent, because I could tell He was deliberate in shutting it off when I did not heed His direction. These were the early days of faith, when every 3-4 months He had to correct me from this false teaching, or that inherent error in my understanding or use a sister to call me back to the assembling of the brethren. I did not use the exact words “shut off”, but we had watched some episode of Michael Todd’s sermon series on psalm 1 and the series about a seed buried under tons of heavy dirt. Our life group leader posed the question "what is God doing behind the scenes?".
I remember at my answer she looked at me with fear in her eyes, and up to a few days ago I never understood that fear. At that point in time I was weak, miserable, grieving a life turned upside down, recently saved and very very sensitive to being offended by other believers. But now I better understand what she saw that made her fear. The others in the life group saw and treated me more or less like I felt I appeared in the flesh, one of those sad, sad, defeated and aimless Christians. But a few days ago when God raised that question to me, — What did she and some of the people who in the early days had apprehension in their eyes see when they looked at you? Surely they did not see your flesh? You are a people pleaser and hyper alert to other people's perception of you and you used to shape yourself to be harmless, likable and bendable.
I thought about it for a while and couldn't answer, but did acknowledge to Him that at my recent jobs I did notice that people noticed and reacted to the light of Christ within me. It was as if they could sense God's presence and demons urged them to harass and persecute me, while at the same time they sought comfort and a listening ear from me. The whole ordeal puzzled me. Or other times they would have firm, firm preconceived notions about me that I ought to be a saint, a perfect woman without blemish or moral failures. They would then be extremely surprised and loudly express it when I admitted to and owned my moral failures and limitations as a woman. I mean I have eyes, my flesh is as their flesh, I lose my temper, and I get so, so fearful. I'm not always the brightest light bulb, and I have an easy time falling in line, adhering to rules and other people's leadership, because I like clear directives and orders if I put in a place to carry out other people’s desires.
But the Holy Spirit showed me, or rather gave me insight about what that life group leader saw. She saw the light of God's hands working in my life, and she could perceive from what she saw and heard from me that God was bringing about a new creation and though disobeying I was freely surrendering to His working in me. The sharp brightness about that process and my carnal contention and the consequences of God shutting off skills to teach me to lust after spiritual things, that frightened her. Right now I can only wonder if her fear was a reflection of her standing with God, because I think I explained to the women in that group how I felt this tremendous dread and fear unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life. I outright shook from fright when I took my pencil to paper, wanting to do my thing. while I had a weak feeling somewhere that someone told me "put that pencil down, until you agree to my terms of surrender".
Luke 14:28-33 comes to my mind:
For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’? Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.
I don't know who you are, who is reading this, but God led you here for a reason. Don't fool yourself to believe in coincidences in this life.
Please listen and consider your ways and and lay down your weapons of rebellion, you're no match for God and the devil lost at the cross. He is a defeated foe who has spent 2000+ years trying to deceive the world to deny Jesus Christ’s perfect, complete and eternal victory at the cross. Eternal condemnation is hard to imagine as a finite mortal being, but in the face of an eternal, just God what will your strife produce? It is not worth it, you are risking your eternity for temporary trinkets. Please lay down your weapons, Jesus Christ has given you the terms of conditions of peace, ask Him sincerely to confirm if His word is true and dare to believe that He will get back to you in a way you will understand.
Romans 10:8-13:
But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Matthew 4:17:
From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
John 3:14-21:
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
“He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”
Acts 3:19-21:
Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.
It is time for you to choose, this is the time of grace and you have been invited to enter the kingdom of God, and the way in, the door is His son Jesus Christ, Yeshua the Messiah. He is the only person who will die for you and take your punishment on Himself and in turn give you peace, reconciliation, eternal life and cover you in His righteousness so that you may come into the presence of God without fear of His just wrath and judgment against sin and iniquity. Choose life. Don't be like the hypocrites who hate God all their lives, blaspheme the name of Jesus Christ and laugh at the foolishness of the cross. At their death they want to get a burial in a church and have pastors and family members who are equally in rebellion to gather and proclaim "this person is in that nice place, in Gan Eden, Paradeiso, together with that God whom they despised during their lifetime, we believe so amen.” Hypocrites, why should that be so? If you hate someone with every fiber of your being, and Romans 8:7-8 says:
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
If you hate someone with every fiber of your being, despise Him, think He is too holy, or that He is a liar, if you hate His 10 moral laws that He has given you an inbuilt knowledge of together with every other human being on the earth, why would you want to go to be with Him in eternity? Because you can see that it is a miracle that every human no matter how big or small has a sense of justice that for some reason lines up with other humans no matter what? As humans we disagree about everything, but try justify lying, stealing or murder in any culture at any point in time and see the firm and quick retribution by flawed human judges. I mean it is a law in every group and every country that it is illegal for a private person to carry out judgment, but they have to drag you to court, because otherwise there would be dead bodies for all the lying and stealing that people think their neighbors and loved ones commit against them. How come we have not evolved out of lying and stealing if it is ok, I say that to counter that old appendage “everybody tells lies, everybody steals”. You who don't want to be with God, you who have made your choice clear to Him by how you live life, He accepts your choice. As a just judge He will allow you to go to that place where He is not so you can be free of Him for all eternity. He is peace, health, joy, righteousness, blessing, order, good, light, love. What is the place that is opposite of that?
Hell. The lake of fire.
A place of pain, His wrath, unbearable fire, unbearable thirst, torture and going by the words of Jesus, He made your spirit out of everlasting material. Hell was not made for humans but the devil and those angels who chose to rebel with him, and after the fall it also became the destination for every human who chose rebellion. It seems from scriptures that everybody who goes there will be very conscious about the state of their being, eternally.
Matthew 25:41:
“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels."
Mark 9:43-48:
If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched— where
‘Their worm does not die
And the fire is not quenched.’
And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame, rather than having two feet, to be cast into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched— where
‘Their worm does not die
And the fire is not quenched.’
And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire— where
‘Their worm does not die
And the fire is not quenched.’
Consider His offer, the Father's free gift of salvation to you in Christ Jesus His son, secured to you and the world by way of the cross. He did it out of love and out of love He calls you today. Now is your time of salvation. If a human judge must be just to those who break the laws of their respective society at that point in time, then how much more just must the judge of the whole earth be to those who break the eternal laws that He has given all of us knowledge of in our heart, our conscience bearing witness of the truth?
Come, repent and believe that God, on the cross provided a perfect salvation for you: atonement for past present and future sins eternally, redemption from the hand of the enemy and reconciliation to God the Father for you in His son Christ Jesus, who took on the punishment you fully deserve. Believe in your heart that the salvation on the cross is perfect, complete and that Jesus in righteousness was raised by God the Father by His Holy spirit on the third day, thereby giving you assurance that He will do the same for you as long as you receive His grace through faith in Christ Jesus. Enter into the kingdom of the Son whom the Father loves, and taste and see the goodness of God:
Romans 14:17-18:
For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men.
