is He worthy?

My sister and I went to a Hebrew Bible conference last month, hosted by Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon. It was the first time in too many years that I got to be part of the kind of Biblical scholarship that I love—the deep treasure-mining with a community of people who care as much about it as I do—and I have a suspicion that I will look back one day and notice that it was a pivot point in my walk with God, though it’s too soon to tell.

I had just made public “What if you’re wrong?” two days before that event. It was a difficult article for me to write, and even more difficult to publish. Even though I love the question, it’s sometimes uncomfortable to share my answers when I know how different they may be from the conclusions of everyone else. (Yes, I am a chronic people-pleaser. Working on it.) It’s taken me years to even warm up to thinking about the possibility that complementarian theology is wrong, let alone to put that possibility in writing. I’m still not sure I’m brave enough to just state it straight out. I’ve been studying and reexamining and praying for so long, asking God to give me discernment so that I don’t just change my view because I like the alternative better; I’ve been asking Him to give me a clear calling or sense of direction if this is a battle I’m supposed to fight. In other words, I’ve spent much of the last ten years thinking and praying, but very little of them in action.

But then Saturday came, the day of the conference, and the second plenary talk of the day was given by Carmen Imes. It was titled, “Zipporah: Enigmatic Heroine of the Exodus.” And somehow, in 30 minutes devoted to one of the strangest passages in the Old Testament, Carmen brought the clarity I had been waiting for.

We think of Moses as the hero of Exodus. There are endless studies and sermons out there on who Moses was and how he led the people of Israel out of Egypt and the way he acts as a sort of model of the Messiah. And they’re warranted.

But the sermon I’ve never heard is the one about all the different women who saved, delivered, rescued Moses over the course of his life—from birth onward—without ever being formally commissioned to do so. Shiphrah, Puah, Jochebed, Miriam, Pharaoh’s daughter, and yes, even Zipporah: every single one of them acted boldly, intervened fearlessly, to do what they knew was right without being asked. Each of these women acted in defiance of Pharaoh, in defiance of evil. Without them, the revered hero of the Exodus would not have survived to obey his mission.

And I think this is a good example of where recent church history regarding gender roles falls tragically short: too many Christian women are waiting for a special calling or divine permission to do what needs to be done, because we have been taught for so long that the real danger is stepping on men’s toes. But we weren’t created to sit quietly until someone gives us the go-ahead to speak. We were created to be deliverers, rescuers, defenders, examples of fearless defiance against authorities that stand in opposition to our God. This is what it means to be an ezer kenegdo. This is what it means to be the “suitable helper” of the human race. It’s written right into God’s design for us in Genesis 2:18.

I have been unnecessarily waiting for a word from the Lord that He already gave. He’s already told me why I was created. He’s already made clear what obedience to that vision looks like. And it doesn’t look like waiting quietly for the men in power to give me permission to obey Him.

Shiphrah and Puah did not wait for Pharaoh’s edict to change to start saving baby Hebrew boys. Jochebed did not wait for Pharaoh’s edict to change to bear her second son and hide him from the Egyptians. Miriam did not wait for Pharaoh’s daughter to ask her for help before she spoke up on behalf of her brother; Pharaoh’s daughter did not even ask her father’s permission to rescue one of the death-sentenced Hebrew babies! And Zipporah didn’t wait for Moses to lead their family into the covenant of circumcision when she knew she could, and must, set their relationship right before Yahweh herself.

Women of Christ, we are not “extras” on a stage that spotlights male characters only. We are not the backup cast, to be called upon only if the A-team fails. We are the ezers—the ones specifically created to make good what was not good, to defend the defenseless, to rescue those who are discarded by the powerful, to lead our families and churches courageously into right relationship with Yahweh.

It is not good for man to be alone. Our voices are desperately needed in our marriages and our male-headed churches.

It’s going to be an uphill climb, and it’s likely to come at a cost. As a chronic people-pleaser, I quake just thinking about the implications of everything I’ve written here—and I don’t even have to fear being executed by Pharaoh! But the question I keep asking is, “Is He worthy?”

If I lose friends, is He worthy?

If I am shamed or rebuked by my church, is He worthy?

If people I care about no longer respect me or like me, is He worthy?

If I have to find an entirely new support system for obeying the call He carved into my bones, is He worthy?

He is.

learn from Me

I recently interacted with someone in a Facebook group who said she’d just started attending a Christian church and was loving it, but didn’t know how she felt about the idea that one’s eternal future is decided by whether or not one declares Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. In her words, “That’s not the god I want to believe in.”

I don’t think a Facebook group full of strangers is necessarily an effective place to get into theology and apologetics, but I did briefly point her to John 14:6 and what Jesus declared about Himself: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” I was immediately advised by a group moderator to “tread lightly.”

If you don’t tend to frequent the areas that Millennials and Gen-Zs congregate, I want to let you know that this is one of the major frontlines of spiritual warfare right now. In these trenches, truth is always expected to “tread lightly” while the emotions and ego are massaged by deception. It is an incredibly complex and dangerous situation, where the Enemy delights to turn truth into evil and lies into goodness.

I find in these trenches that the name of Jesus is very welcome, but the actions and words of Jesus as presented by Scripture are not. “Jesus” has come to mean anything that makes everyone feel good about their decisions and affirmed in their beliefs, even when those decisions are sins and those beliefs are lies.

The Jesus of Scripture, from all I can gather, was not known for treading lightly.

And yet I’m sympathetic to what brought us to battle here. A generation that has been battered by a hell-centric and fear-based theology will tend to swing hard to the other end of the pendulum, instead of seeking out a more whole and healing knowledge of who God is. When you’ve been taught that the goal is merely to avoid punishment, it’s difficult to take up the yoke of Christ and make relationship with Him the objective instead. It’s hard to fathom moving closer to a God you’ve been subconsciously conditioned to believe is angry and vindictive, even though it’s only in knowing who He really is, in all His glory—not the often-oversimplified and reactionary version of Him we’ve learned from others—that we find rest.

That brief interaction on Facebook left me with many questions. What would Jesus have said to her? Would He have tread lightly, knowing better than I how fragile her soul might be? Would He have been direct, knowing better than I how to wield the Sword of the Spirit in a spiritual war? Christ spoke of Himself as “gentle and lowly,” and yet He never diluted the truth. He was deeply compassionate toward the deceived, the broken, and the suffering but unapologetically harsh toward deceivers and perpetrators.

These questions brought me to Matthew 11:28-30:

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

It’s the phrase “learn from Me” that I keep coming back to. I want to learn from Him—how to be like Him in this world that consistently rejects Him. How to respond to questions like the one in that Facebook group. How to discern where gentleness is called for and where only the sharp truth will do.

And I want to point anyone who questions whether He is the God they want to believe in to these verses, too. I want to beg them—learn from Him! Let Him teach you who He is. Let Him show you. Don’t take any one pastor’s word for it, don’t go to Facebook or YouTube for the answers. Go to Him. He is gentle. He is humble. In Him, there is rest.

It doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean you will agree with His truth or find His character palatable. And as I’ve written before, you are free to choose not to follow—we all get to pick where our allegiance lies. We can create a god of our own choosing (which usually looks a whole lot like us), or we can follow the God whose name is “I AM THAT I AM,” or better translated, “I Will Be What I Will Be” (Exodus 3:14).

Even in Jesus’ inviting words from Matthew 11, He uses a quotation from another part of the Bible that gives us a subtle reminder that this “easy” yoke is not easy because it’s like one we would choose for ourselves. “You will find rest for your souls” is a reference to Jeremiah 6:16, which reads,

Thus says the Lord,
“Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths,
Where the good way is, and walk in it;
And you will find rest for your souls.
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’”

The yoke of Christ is the yoke of obedience. It is the yoke of submission, surrender to the Lordship of God. It’s easy and light because this “good way” is the only path toward true rest, not because it demands nothing from us.

And like the Israelites of old, we do have a choice. We can say, “We will not walk in it.” We are free to tell God, “You’re not the God I want to believe in.” It is our choice, and God is not codependent—He won’t force us into a relationship with Him or shift His own character to make us comfortable in it.

In some ways, I’m glad the culture has reached a point where so many people are honest enough to say out loud, “That’s not the God I want to believe in”—because this is far from the first generation that has sought after a god of its own choosing. This has been the story of humanity from the very beginning, only some us have hidden our idolatry better than others, coloring it over with Bible verses to make it pass for true faith—often deceiving even ourselves. When God is not quite showing up the way we’d prefer, we are all apt to throw our gold into the melting pot, pull out a golden calf, and say, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4b).

If we would be useful to the Father in this moment of the spiritual war, we must be certain that we are learning from Him—that we know Him for who He is. It will require incredible discernment, solid spiritual armor, and the highly skilled use of our Sword to do battle well. We must ensure that our highest pursuit is relationship with the One True God, because there are counterfeits being advertised everywhere.

And we must remember that our fight is not against flesh and blood. The Millennials, the Gen-Zs, the people who are honestly telling us “I don’t know if I can follow that God” are not the enemy. They are prisoners of the “spiritual forces of wickedness,” and they deserve our compassion, our love, our grace, and our commitment to the truth.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 6:12

Jesus invites us to learn from Him as He walks with the Father in “the good way.” He calls us, paradoxically, to do spiritual battle by seeking spiritual rest. Let’s go to Him, learn from Him, and come to know this One called “I Will Be What I Will Be.”

Whatever comes to pass on the frontlines of this battle, we know He wins the war.

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WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WHO GOD IS?

The best place to go is to the Word. The Bible is the story of who God is, and who God is changes everything for you and me.

To that end, I have a couple resources that may help you get started in your journey through the Bible:

• The Bible180 Challenge is an opportunity to read through the Bible in 180 days, according to a thorough chronological schedule. You get a day of rest each week as well as an email offering accountability, support, and the very best study resources I’ve found to help you understand what you read. You can also use the Bible180 Challenge Journal to help you focus, stay on track, and build good study habits!

• Bedrock: A Foundation for Independent Biblical Study is a comprehensive textbook/workbook that will teach you how to dig DEEP into each of the seven types of Biblical literature. It’s a great next step for anyone who feels ready to surpass the typical milk of sermons and Bible studies, and desires to learn how to serve themselves on the meat. Find it on Amazon.