My Homer Simpson moment.

Substitute "bbq pit" for "Singapore noodles dish".

*Looking at picture in cookbook*
"That's one fine lookin' Singapore noodles dish..."

*Looking at congealed mess in pot on stove*
"Why doesn't mine look like that?!"

And now I must go clean up the mess. It's wicked depressing. On the plus side, I will soon be putting a blueberry danish in the oven (store bought), and that's gotta be almost impossible to screw up. But you never know.

Matchmaker or meddler?

I do like you Carolyn McCulley and I'm sure that 'Will and Anna' are very happy together but whenever my friends try to play crush catalyst, I seriously consider DE-FRIENDING them.

Are there any thoughts on whether or not we should make it our personal mission to go around encouraging married people to introduce their single friends to each other?

Come to think of it, Michelle's 22nd birthday invite claims that we should come along for the sake of finding a wife or husband. All in good fun.

As for me, I can't stop cringing. Desperate it all screams, desperate!

A helpful blog.

Who needs The Australian when you've got Besty blogging everything you need to know?

That's another thing I miss about not being on campus. My 75c newspaper.

Allow me to elaborate.

The last three sentences were provoked by this blog post.

Wendy warns against the trap of falling into complementarian idolatory. That is, the Christian woman's focus may no longer be a career or fashion, but simply shifting that focus to being a stellar cook and perfect housekeeper is really no better. If Jesus is not the grounds for your actions - you can be sure you've just moved from one idol to another. What's more, if you can't actually play the part of domestic goddess very well, then it can only end in self-condemnation.

But as Wendy reminds us:

Thankfully, God has worked long and hard to free me from finding my identity and self worth in either my job at the community college or my house keeping skills. He has been prying out of my grasp all those things I look to daily for self worth. Instead, He is replacing my quest for identity with the gift of Himself.

Once we understand that the spiritual blessings we have received in Christ are the fundamental basis for all that we are, that God's grace and the promise of eternal life are the reasons why we get up in the morning, then -

I can move from finding either self worth or self condemnation in my home keeping skills. Oddly enough, I usually feel much more equipped to do the things I need to do to keep my home functioning in God-honoring ways once I lose my grip on it in terms of self-identity. I have found that God is pretty jealous and quite willing to frustrate my attempts to find my worth in anything other than His finished work for me on the cross.

So although I'm putting in an unprecedented amount of effort in learning to cook (for reasons spurred on by wanting to be a decent wife and mother because I've accepted that women are to play that role as God intended blah blah), if I fail miserably, I won't mind so much because it doesn't mean that I've been unable to fulfill my ultimate purpose. My ultimate purpose is to glorify God. This is achievable regardless of culinary skills or rather, despite them.

Sometimes I wonder why I try so hard to figure out what it looks like to be a godly woman, whether in ministry or in the family context, etc. There's no formula or perfect model. Really, all I need is someone to shout at me: "Jesus! Follow Jesus! Listen to Jesus! He tells you how to live! Listen and you'll be ok!" I'm pretty sure that's all I need.

Sharp reminder.

My identity, my worth as a woman, the person I was born to be: it's all found in Christ.

Just because a woman can cook and is impeccably neat, does not make her more godly than I.

Thank goodness for that.

True freedom.

"Freedom does include doing what we want to do, but the mature and wise woman does not seek this freedom by bending reality to fit her desires. She seeks it by being transformed in the renewal of her desires to fit in with God's perfect will. The greatest freedom is found in being so changed by God's Spirit that you can do what you love to do and know that it conforms to the design of God and leads to life and glory."

- John Piper

Freedom in marriage?

In year 8 we had compulsory cooking classes. I didn't pay attention as we cooked potato au gratin or quiches - why should I? It's not like my place was in the kitchen or anything. I have actively avoided that area for most of my life and apparently now I am making up for lost time. As of today I am the proud owner of a beautiful red cookbook from The Australian Women's Weekly: How To Cook Absolutely Everything. I'm about to try my hand at chicken cacciatore, here's hoping it's not a disaster.

Anyway, as I thumbed through this cookbook I began to think about why it was suddenly so important to me that I learn how to prepare edible food. Probably when I started to realise that men and women did have different roles, as ordained by God and yes I accepted that women are helpers. We are complementary to men.

Then I struggled with this for a moment. Mulling over my future, for once, I thought about the reality of being married. Not just the oh-he's-the-kind-of-guy-and-that's-what-my-dress-would-look-like kind of fantasy but the fact that my plans, my hopes would all be tied to his. What if they weren't the same? What would I have to sacrifice? And once I was married and had children - is that it? Years at uni, the years I hope to spend at Moore College, what do they mean when you're a housewife? I noticed on Nicole's blog today that the years she worked are referred to as her 'previous life'.

And for a minute I considered being totally selfish. Suppose I stayed single for the sake of ministry? Or would it be for my own sake?

But as I considered the women around me, I realised that I was so wrong. I thought that I'd love to just chat to Nicole about a typical day in her life (although I suppose her blog is enough for that), and I'd just want to know how it is that she doesn't feel... restricted. Then I remembered that I have Isobel Lin to talk to who is just as awesome and despite the fact that she is married and has three children is actively involved in ministry and chairs EQUIP for goodness sake.

I just needed a reminder. Being married and having children won't be the end of my life. Well, it might be the end of one life, but it will be the beginning of another. And although I haven't got a hope of understanding it now, it will be a life that will bring more joy than I thought possible and which can never be compensated by the unlimited freedom I think is so attractive now.

Regardless, at only 20 years of age I think I'm at perfect liberty to guard my freedom jealously. I'm not ready yet, I don't apologise for this and I don't really think it's that big a deal. I won't be engaged at 21. So freaking what?

In the meantime, I'm preparing myself to be the best wife I can be and I think that future husband will appreciate that far more than my lamenting the fact that he hasn't turned up yet.

My backyard.

I live across the road from the Western Sydney Regional Park. It's a wonder I don't spend more time there. As a form of escape, a place for a quiet time - it's hard to beat.

Explanation.

I'd really like to explain properly my decision not to come back next semester. It seems that if I took my own advice, I'd be 'sucking it up' and 'thinking' with the rest of you. Truly I'm not doing this just because I want to have some money behind me, it's so much more than that. CBS is such a big part of me, campus ministry is a blessing and this year's mission looks incredible - this was not an easy decision. There are things that even I won't share on blogspot and they're the reasons why I need to do this.

It's just... what I said at MYC and what I'm actually doing seem to be inconsistent. I feel I need to justify my actions. Sometimes things are out of our hands and right now I'm walking by faith because it's all that I can do.

The way for me to glorify God this semester is to not be on campus. It sounds ridiculous but for me it holds true. And even if it was the wrong choice to make, I find comfort in the fact that God works through those mistakes too.

God knows what He's doing, even if I don't.

Random thought.

Election makes more sense. Of course God would have to first call you to live for Him. Who would simply choose the cross-shaped life?

Just a thought.

Two Things.

1. How much room do we give God to work? I've been thinking. What's new. Anyway, so it seems as though I'm destined to follow this path. It's all laid out before me: finish uni, work, bible college, then go into ministry, then be a missionary...
This is the cycle. Or chuck in a year or two of MTS as opposed to two years of secular work, whatever. It just strikes me... So many of the amazing people I've read about didn't follow this plan. As though this plan will produce the most qualified, most faithful ministers or something. I'm going to sound like a whiney teenager but why must I finish uni? Why must I do this and then that? Why do I have to follow this Sydney Anglican formula? It's as though I need to do everything that I can, I have to cultivate all these skills in a particular way - where is the room for God to shape me? My point is, if I pulled a Gladys Aylward on y'all and left independently for China tomorrow I'm pretty sure I'd be ex-communicated or something. Maybe I'm just having one of those moments but why is it that the path to teaching God's Word is so rigid? Well, ok, I already know the answer to that question. Next point.

2. The Bible is the ultimate authority. It's inspired by God, it's His Word, it's complete. Everyone agrees. Or do they? While trying to understand the hermeneutic behind women preachers I've read arguments saying something along the lines of: "well, ministry hadn't progressed that far so Paul couldn't have confirmed the roles of women teaching in his letters" which to me seems to be saying that God forgot to give us more information. Or this commentary on Romans that I've started reading by John Stott has Bible scholars claiming Paul didn't even know his own mind when it came to the law, things like that. So where do you draw the line? Is the Bible authoritative or not? Question it, totally. If there's a question to be asked, believe me I will be the first to ask it. But the way people interpret things sometimes, the way the Word of God is sometimes treated with such uncertainty, I wonder if people remember that God is actually responsible for it and I highly doubt He's now seriously concerned that He forgot to add Appendix A: What To Do In Event Of Robot Take-Over (added now because obviously Paul didn't have to deal with bioethics).

I think you've gathered this is another one of my confusing rants that I don't expect anyone to understand but this stuff honestly goes on in my head.

Er.

Some of my posts lately are just short and stupid because barely anybody reads my blogs so I don't really care. But that's not a very good attitude to have and everything I do should be to glorify God, even in blogland.

Perhaps I should actually start using my Twitter account for those times when I only have three sentences to share and I should only blog when I've actually thought something through?

Nah forget Twitter. But I should definitely only blog if I feel like I have something that's worth sharing, i.e. I've researched, thought about it, or I've honestly been challenged or encouraged.

Keep me accountable, oh-kay?

Reformed charismatics.

What's the deal, man?

Sound doctrine + arms waving in the air = reformed charismatic?

I dunno.

Can't help it.

So my new thing is theology and bioethics because Nick Ryan thinks (no wait, knows: "I'm not joking!"), that soon we will have to deal with technology so sophisticated that it will produce robots that actually believe they are Christian and will turn up at our churches and we'll have to either accept them or tell them actually, you're not real and God hasn't saved you.

I went to a website Nick suggested: ted.com, which features nothing but videos on the latest scientific and technological developments. But honestly, unless your name is John Piper, I am not going to listen to you for 20 minutes.

Anyway. "What will you do?", asks Nick. We'll be accountable to crazy robots and a society that has gone mad with progress. What will the Christian say?

The real question here, which is not a new one, is simply "what is a human being?". So I'm thinking I'll have to look into the Christian doctrine of humanity or something. But considering he almost had everyone convinced that a robot take-over was inevitable, I'm going to do some reading.

I haven't finished with women preachers yet but while I'm still unemployed, gotta do something productive. Trust me to start looking for work when the market is the harshest that it's been in something like 12 years.

"Got a job yet?"
"No. But I totally know how contemporary bio-technologies impact on our understanding and treatment of humans!"
*cough*

What really matters.

I'm posting this story here, because it is a good reminder of the one constant truth that binds all Christians. Sometimes I feel worn down by divisions over certain issues and the fact that I feel I need to come to a decision on certain things. Jesus' death and resurrection trumps it all. I love perspective.

From Tara's note:

Taken from "Views From A Bouncy Castle" by Adrian Plass. This short story makes me smile, and wish that like children, we could be as easy to teach, correct and rebuke.

"Much more than recently, in the year when Katy became three, I strolled into the garden one sparkling April morning, to find my diminutive daughter pushing one arm up as far as it would go towards the sky. In her outstretched hand was a single bluebell, newly picked from the border beside the lawn. As she offered her flower to the shining early sun, she identified it with loud ecstasy.

"DAFFODIL!!" she shouted, "DAFFODI-I-IL!!"

I am as tediously obsessed with accuracy as most parents. I corrected her gently.

"No darling," I said. "It's a bluebell."

Not one inch did she reduce the length of her stretching arm, not one decibel did she lower her volume: "BLUEBELL!" she shouted, "BLUEBE-E-ELL!"

Katy's joy was in being part of the morning and having a beautiful flower, not in anything so trivial as being right. She accepted my pedantic correction, but it didn't change anything important.

If only those of us who are Christians wer more like Katy in the garden, less concerned with how right we are in our individual emphases and dogmas than with the joy of being one with Jesus.

"YOU HAVE TO SPEAK IN TONGUES TO BE A CHRISTIAN!" one of us might shout ecstatically.

"No, you don't," God might correct us gently.

"YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEAK IN TONGUES TO BE A CHRISTIAN!" we would shout with undiminished joy."

I'm really boring.

Spent two hours this afternoon discussing the biblical hermeneutic behind women preachers and I'm about to go crash Youth Group just because I can.