I have noticed that women within the Church are sometimes, many times even, deficient in living water because of a lack of Spiritually fulfilling resources. Especially single women, divorced women, and widowed women. As a teenager I experienced this firsthand, and then later as a divorced adult. Maybe that’s why I feel sensitive to it even now.
This deficiency in the living water, it’s not from a lack of interaction with God, or even a failure to be filled by God’s Holy Spirit. Not at all, not all of the time. In fact, it’s easier to spend time with God in those instances of a woman’s life, because her heart isn’t so divided, her attention isn’t so fractured and distracted, or demanded.
Then, what do I think it’s caused from, some may ask?
God created women with an ingrained designed need for fellowship, a meeting of the heart and mind, a desire to be heard and cherished. That need becomes deprived when women are separated from healthy interactions. That’s why the devil has worked overtime in the Middle Eastern and Asian cultures, because he has been at war with women through the men in their lives, creating an environment where they cannot thrive well, cannot grow to their full potential without the proper nurturing, cherishing ,valuing of them, or the allowance of them to reach their full potential as healthy individuals. The devil has waged a full on war against women, with very little opposition. Because those outside of that particular part of the war have been hesitant to “interfere” (really it’s hesitant to help, withholding the needed love and compassion from them to reach out and help them rise up above this twisted mindset, effectively putting Satan under their feet), it has been allowed to continue and just accepted as “That’s just the way it is over there”. The perception that America is “the great satan” is a lie that has effectively been intertwined into cultures where women have become undervalued, abused, neglected and not at all cherished as God has created them to be. Satan lives, thrives within that mindset, not within any specific nation.
In our Western Christian mindset, there are denominations who also do not value women or allow them to become all God intends for them to be. In the church mindset (and, not every church, not every church in any one denomination, and not any one denomination overall), women are limited in the roles they can serve in. Why is this? Different interpretations and applications of Scripture create specific “doctrines” that lock churches into mindsets that are not always accurately Scriptural-based. In Galatians 3:28 it specifically states “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
So, often, there is a distance already placed and understood between single, divorced and widowed women within the church. They aren’t often given the special considerations they need, that God desires for them to have. The fellowship that provides that refreshing living water is not always available for them. It forces a deeper reliance on God, but it also can place a wedge in their heart keeping them from effectively being ministered to. It creates a wall that blocks them from the resources that God desires for them to have.
The Church desperately needs to seek God to begin learning and teaching how to help women in various stages of life, to be helped and encouraged to grow to their full potential. There has to be a culture within the Church of both humble submission to Church leadership and then a healthy trust relationship and covering for women in all stages to reach the full potential that God has placed within their lives and hearts.
We have yet to see many women reach the full potential, but I believe that God wants to supersede that, and make some deep adjustments in mindsets and attitudes.
The well of living water within the Church should always be readily available through fellowship and healthy interactions with others. Then we will experience an even greater outpouring of the living water from Heaven that God will continually pour out upon us all.
If anything scares the devil, it’s the stronghold over women being broken.
When Jesus spoke to the Samaritan women at the well, He broke the strongholds over her life, her mindset, and the mindset of those in her city. He did that by speaking the truth to her, by knowing her, by interacting with her. We can do the same, just by getting to really know the women in our own lives, by listening to their stories, by helping to foster an environment that allows them to reach that full potential God has for them. ( http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+4&version=NASB )
Christians: we are the Church. It’s not a building that enforces doctrine and teachings, or creates environments. We can make all the difference that God wants us to.
Jemtree's Heart 