Sit Down and Shut Up


 This week, I received a request on what I should write about. However, me being who I am, I am morally obligated to put my own spin on it. So here goes…

A few years back, I remember stepping up to the altar for prayer. I went up because I felt like I was at a crossroad. Between work, friends, and life, I had some very urgent needs that I wanted to bring before God and see what He had to say. I knew my tribe would rally around me and speak whatever God laid on their heart. I still to this day take what others have to say into full consideration, being mindful to suppress my emotions first to never allow offense to take root in my heart.

However, this time was different. A man met me there. Not just any man, but a man I had the utmost respect for. He placed his hand on my shoulder and began to pray for me. Without hesitation, he very loudly said,

“Lord, I pray that you shut her mouth and teach her to speak like a woman should…..” And to make sure what he was praying was biblical, he quoted 1 Peter 3:4.

I literally stood frozen, eyes opened, staring at the ground. Did I just hear him correctly? Did he really just ask God to shut my mouth? Furthermore, did he really just use the bible as a weapon to prevent me from speaking? I wanted to address it. I wanted to ask him how he could pray such a condescending statement. Instead, I felt Holy Spirit place a hand over my mouth. Not because He was answering this man’s request, but because he wanted to teach me something…

I am a strong-willed individual. This comes with negative and positives attributes, that I will admit. Because of this characteristic, one thing I am unable to do is fake things. I can’t do fake conversations. I can’t do fake relationships. I can’t do fake identity. It’s just not in me and if I see it in others, those people typically aren’t welcome in my circle. No hard feelings, though. I speak my mind and I defend my values. This at times has caused me to be silent, and other times, it has caused me to speak up where others may be too afraid to speak. I believe in being REAL and while I know this has left a few people intimidated, I am okay with who I am. Yet simultaneously, I strive every day to surrender my heart to God.

In Matthew 23, Jesus exposes the spiritual leaders for their image-conscious attitudes. As leaders who cherry-picked scriptures, these individuals who Jesus exposed took a scripture from Deuteronomy 6:5-8 where it says:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.”

We can clearly see that this command is to love God and others and to allow that love to be the controlling factor upon what you do with your hands and what you think with your mind. However, these false spiritual leaders took this practice and made it an outward show. They literally put the commands of Deuteronomy into little boxes and tied them to their wrist and foreheads. Image became everything. What was meant for the heart was no longer true IN the heart and everything spilled into a religious display. As long as people would “think” they were utterly devoted to God, then that’s all that mattered. Jesus exposed these leaders for what they were on the inside. Sadly, 2000 years later, Jesus is still exposing hearts that are content with religious performance and outward displays of spirituality. For many, it is more important to look spiritual then to BE spiritual.

And I can’t even begin to tell you how much I don’t want to look like these people….

You see, spiritual leaders should be reminding people to get their sense of acceptance and value from God. False leaders use the spirituality of others as a source of their validation. For example: When I can “make” others around me appear spiritual, then this proves my worth and effectiveness as a leader in the Kingdom. When others around me have struggles or attributes that I deem as “unrighteous”, my motives then become to fix them by squeezing them from the outside in or encourage them to ignore their struggles by demanding an outward performance. All the while, REAL gets lost in the shuffle and Christians focus solely on maintaining a fake image and calling it an abundant life. This is what the man who prayed over me was trying to do. He thought by silencing me, my image would be converted into the woman HE thought I should be, instead of who God made me. Because to him, that’s what it’s all about. It’s more important to look happy than to experience happiness. It’s more important to fake spirituality than to experience the One who made the Spirit. It’s more important to maintain image, then to allow God to transform our image from the inside OUT.

So, allow me to say it again. I am a strong- willed individual. Without question, I am called to be a voice for those who are oppressed, rejected, hurting, and outcast. I am a testimony of God’s amazing grace and I will not keep one single area of my life hidden to appease man, including my voice. To the man who prayed over me many years ago, God has absolutely taught me how to speak like a woman should and your “prayer” gave me the empowerment to keep standing against false spiritual leaders and oppressive systems that seek to shut women like me up. Thank you for that. I see now what Jesus was doing that day when He placed His hand over my mouth and to quote 1 Peter 3:4 like you did, the word quiet in this scripture means undisturbed, at ease, or set on. I was obedient by not calling you out because if I stop to silence every dog that barks, I will never get to my destination. My eyes are set solely on this destination because others wait for me there. I have never felt more at ease with my identity and I’m charging full speed ahead, mess and all.  To say that I am undisturbed is an understatement.

So to all my women who feel like me, the truth is that gentle and quiet are a state of the spirit of a woman, not a list of behaviors. If anyone ever tries to tell you differently, just do what Jesus did. EXPOSE THEM. We were not made to sit down and shut up. Feel free to flip a table or two!

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