A Weekly Challenge

So near the end of last week in my Women & Ministry class my Professor Glenda Malmin began to talk about the controversial verses in the Bible that regard women functioning in ministry. There’s two specific verses she pointed out the first one being found in 1 Timothy 2:12 it says, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” The second verse is found in 1 Corinthians 14:34 it says, “the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says.”

Now before I lose all the women here she took this verse & put it into context. The women of the age worshiped the Goddesses’ Artimas & Diana. They believed that Eve was the Mother of all things & that Adam was actually Eve’s son. So basically in that day & age it was a very feminist society, where women ruled & had no respect for men. At that time there were women coming into churches who had no respect for the male leadership or their husbands & would talk during the service or interrupt the preaching to ask questions. Paul was trying to teach the women to respect the men & also the Word of the Lord that was being spoken.

So many of you may be like what’s the point? The point is that during the lecture Glenda began to touch on how we need to respect the person speaking & try our best to be quiet & respectful. She talked about how texting is basically a way of talking & I was challenged by that because, I use my phone in Church for searching up verses. But it’s so easy to open up your phone & get distracted by all the notifications & the texts messages. Even going on Twitter to post something said in the service, it’s easy to start scrolling through & looking at other things. We most definitely wouldn’t do this during a movie. So this past weekend at Church, I purposefully put my phone away in my purse until after the service. I used my Bible & took notes in my notebook & I can honestly say I was less distracted & got SO much more out of the service. It’s a weekly challenge now for me to not use my phone during the service. It can definitely be a challenge when the people next to you, in front of you, & behind you are using their phones. But in all honesty it’s worth it.

My questions for you are, how distracted are you by your phone during the service? Could you be goofing off with a friend & distracting someone else? It’s important to know that the person speaking deserves your attention & respect & more importantly God deserves the same.

Respect everyone, and love your Christian brothers and sisters. Fear God, and respect the king. 1 Peter 2:17