What did God say to Peter to correct his prejudicial thinking? “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
What is the third dream most little girls have? “to be fruitful”
How does Luke 1:5-7 offer biblical proof (that barrenness does not imply sinfulness)?
“It states that Zachariah and Elizabeth were both upright in the sight of God, yet Elizabeth was barren.”
How could Psalm 37:4 support this statement?
“If we are delighting ourselves in the Lord, He will tune our hearts to desire what He wills for us.”
Have you ever received something you desperately wanted but still felt an unsatisfied longing you couldn’t identify? “Yes. Material acquisitions tend to bring about that feeling.”
Let’s meditate on this for a moment. Why do most women want to have children? List as many reasons as you can.
“For a purpose in life; for a legacy – a lasting mark on the world; because they love babies; because all the other families are doing it; someone will love them forever and unconditionally (delusionally forgetting the teen years)”
Read Isaiah 54:1-5. How in the world could a barren woman have more ‘children’ than a married woman who actually gave birth?
“She could devote herself to activities involving children, and being like another mother to all of them.”
Compare and contrast the following scriptures: Genesis 9:1 and Matthew 28:18-19
“Fill the Earth – with people – with believers”
Exodus 1:6-13 and Acts 8:1-8
“The more they were oppressed/persecuted the more they multiplied in number.”
What can older women do, according to Titus 2:3-5,11-15?
“They can train the younger women how to better love and serve their families and be self-controlled.”
If you are in your 20s or 30s, list a few people God has used to ‘rear’ you spiritually.
“Mary, Linda O., Lynn L.”
What about you? Are you discovering a few opportunities to rear spiritual children?
“No. Right now I am in a season of helping women slightly older than myself and fairly grounded in their faith. They just need a faithful friend to come alongside and help bear their burdens – not to usurp Christ’s role, but to be His hands and feet for them.”
Once we fall in love with Christ, we are so taken with His beauty, we want children who look just like Him. That’s spiritual motherhood in a nutshell: raising spiritual sons, and daughters who look just like their Father.
Dearest Rachel –
When it comes to the typical dreams of girlhood, I wonder which study sections were harder for you to answer; those that you had, and were therefore closer to your heart (which could result in arriving at certain painful conclusions if your dreams weren’t met to your satisfaction), or those that you hadn’t personally considered, and therefore couldn’t relate to when going through the day’s study?
This study involved one of those latter dreams. As far as I can tell, you may have assumed that this was an eventual fate you would have as part of growing up and becoming an adult – which, let’s be honest, you never really wanted to do. I think when I suggested trying to spend as long as we could without having children, you reacted with a mild level of surprise, as if you hadn’t considered that as a possibility. In your mind, children followed marriage as surely as one season followed another.
Which, as it turned out, proved to be quite true. Still, it had never been a real dream of yours, in much the same way that being a bride wasn’t (and again, for the same reason, that of one following the other; without dreams of being a bride, the idea of having children wouldn’t even so much as cross your mind).
But, of course, there is more to raising children than mere physical fertility; there’s also the effort and connections that go into raising them spiritually. For that, the children don’t need to be yours by blood – although perhaps a measure of sweat and tears go into raising them into becoming children of God. But it doesn’t seem that, at the time you were working on this study, you gave much thought to the idea that you were (or could be) doing much of that.
It’s interesting that, as part of the question about those who spiritually reared you, there was also an option to (if you were over forty – which you were at the time of this study) list those “in whom you’ve invested your life as a spiritual parent or mentor.” In keeping with your character of seeing yourself as younger than you truly were, you didn’t address those who you had befriended throughout your life. True, I suppose Sally and Dana were older than you (and I don’t remember about Susie), so perhaps you didn’t count them as mentees; your next answer does sort of touch on that.
In a certain way, as part of being what modern sociology nowadays describes as a ‘sandwich generation’ (having to deal with attending to the generations both above and below us simultaneously), you decided to focus on those above you, instead. It rather deflects from the question, but I think you saw them as overlooked in comparison to the up and coming generation, and in as much need of spiritual support as the children.
Letters to Rachel 