Practical Theology for Women E-Book

Wendy Horger Alsup

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008

Beschreibung

Have you ever wanted to understand the deep things of the Word but been put off by the intimidating vocabulary of theologians? Have you assumed that studying the attributes of God is for seminary students only? Or maybe "just for men"? Have heavy doctrinal themes felt beyond you and your everyday world? If so-if you've ever thought theology was too deep, too impractical, or too irrelevant for your life as a woman-this book is for you. As author Wendy Alsup explores fundamental theological issues you've always wondered about-minus the daunting vocabulary and complex sentence structure of academic tomes-she brings them into real life… into your world… and reveals the heart of true theology. It's really about "simple yet incredibly profound stuff that affects our daily lives," she says. Stuff like faith and gaining a right knowledge of God as the foundation for wise daily living. Alsup writes: "Truly, there is nothing like a good grasp of accurate knowledge about God to enable you to meet the practical demands of your life-the practical demands of being a daughter, mother, wife, sister, or friend." Let Practical Theology for Women show you the everyday difference that knowing God makes.

Leseprobe

Practical Theology for Women: How Knowing God Makes a Difference in Our Daily LivesCopyright © 2008 by Wendy Horger Alsup

Published by Crossway Books               a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers               1300 Crescent Street               Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Patrick Mahoney Cover illustration: Trish Mahoney

First printing 2008 Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked niv are from The Holy Bible: New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

   The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

Scripture quotations marked nasb are from The New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © The Lock-man Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked kjv are from the King James Version of the Bible.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-4335-0209-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-0448-8 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-0449-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Alsup, Wendy Horger, 1970—   Practical theology for women : how knowing God makes a difference in our daily lives / Wendy Horger Alsup.       p. cm.   Includes index.   ISBN 978-1-4335-0209-5 (tpb)   1. Christian women—Religious life. 2. Theology, Practical. I. Title.

   BV4527.A47 2008    248.8'43—dc22

2008005005

VP              16    15    14    13    12    11     10     09     08                   9      8      7      6      5      4       3       2        1

To my husband, Andy, God’s instrument of grace and sanctification in my life—your wisdom and discernment constantly amaze me. I love you!

Contents

   Preface: Who Am I?

Part 1: What Is Theology?

   1 Why Should I Care?

   2 What Is Faith?

   3 Faith Works!

   4 Appropriating What You Believe

   5 Practical Theology Indeed!

Part 2: Who Is Our God?

   6 God Is Our Father

   7 Our Father Is Sovereign, Compassionate, and Wise

   8 Our Father Disciplines Us

   9 God Is Our Savior, Example, and Bridegroom

   10 We Are Connected to Jesus and Find Our Identity in Him

   11 God Is Our Help

   12 The Spirit Sanctifies Us

Part 3: Communicating with Our God

   13 Prayer Is Our Means of Conversing with God

   14 What Is the Word?

   15 How Do We Interact with the Word?

      Conclusion

      Notes

Preface: Who Am I?

Before we begin our dh?y women need theology, I want to share with you a little about who I am and what theology has meant to me. My name is Wendy Alsup, and I am actively involved in women’s ministry in Seattle, Washington. I am from a relatively small town in the low country of South Carolina. My parents were saved shortly after I was born and were faithful to take us to church every Sunday. I came to understand my need for Jesus at an early age and began my walk with him. During hard times I found comfort, even as a teenager, reading Scripture. God always met me in my need through his Word. Eventually, I headed to Bible college and, afterward, on to graduate school, getting a master’s degree in math education.

During the years between college and graduate school, I spent time teaching in South Korea. While there, I developed type-1, insulin-dependent diabetes. It was months before I realized what was going on, and it took another year to figure out how to regulate this condition and regain my health. It was during this time that God convinced me of the unique power of Scripture to change lives. I was home from Korea, trying to regulate my blood sugars. On one particular day I exercised, meticulously measured what I ate, and took the appropriate amount of insulin—I did everything right. But when I checked my blood sugar that evening, it was very high. I was devastated. I had grown up thinking that sickness was God’s judgment on me, and now I thought back on all the ways I had failed God during that day. Based on my understanding of God, having uncontrollable diabetes seemed just retribution for all I had done wrong. I felt condemned.

I managed to crawl over to my one-year Bible (which actually took me three years to read) and found the reading for that day. I wasn’t searching for Scripture to make me feel better—I want to emphasize that this was the scheduled reading for that day. It was from John 9:

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:1–3)

Then Jesus healed the man, giving further evidence of his power as God. I wept as I read this. In that moment I realized his Word is supernatural and living, and it is his means of speaking personally to me as an individual. And from that day on, I never again saw my diabetes as judgment from God. Instead, it was an avenue to bring him glory. I didn’t know how he was going to do it, but I trusted from that day on that he was going to use my diabetes for good and not for punishment in my life. This was a radical change to my thinking.

In time, I met my husband, Andy, whom God would use to continue to change my life. I was the good girl who did as I was expected to do. Andy, on the other hand, was a cynic who sometimes got labeled as rebellious. He challenged a lot of the religious traditions I embraced, forcing me to think through why I did what I did. In our first year of marriage, we landed in a rural church pastored by a Reformed evangelical pastor. He preached through Galatians, Ephesians, and Jonah, and something clicked in both our heads. I had known every Bible story from childhood, but they sat in my brain like a filing cabinet full of separate folders. Under this pastor’s teaching, I started to see the connections between Jonah and the gospel, between Judges and Jesus Christ. The Scripture stopped being a series of disjointed moral lessons and started being the connected, coherent revelation of the person of Jesus Christ. It was a beautiful time for both Andy and me.

Journey of Faith

In the midst of this time of growth in understanding Scripture, the Lord started working in our hearts, as a couple, about helping a new church in Seattle. After the Lord convinced us that this was his will for us, Andy and I made plans to move from South Carolina to Seattle. This began a two-year journey of faith in which God taught us many things about himself. We made plans, because that’s what responsible people do. We counted the cost and had a good perspective on the way we should go. But God had a different path for us to travel, and we seemed thwarted at every turn in our attempts to make it happen.

In particular, despite all his best efforts, Andy couldn’t find a job. He went without full-time employment for nearly a year. As the time approached for us to move to Seattle with still no job on the horizon, I came into Sunday evening worship at our rural southern church ready to throw in the towel. Nothing was going right, Andy and I seemed attacked on many different sides, and, simply put, Andy needed a job. I had talked Andy into applying for a job in South Carolina, because I had given up hope of find ing a job in Seattle. Then, on that Sunday evening, I walked into church to seek counsel on giving up the whole idea of helping a church in Seattle. I ran into one of our elders before the service. I told him my frustration, and he reminded me that God is faithful, he keeps his promises, and he doesn’t lead us to places and then leave us alone to deal with the consequences. Then I ran into another elder and his wife. They told me emphatically not to give up and shared their testimony of how the Lord had used a tough financial time to mold them to his image. I told the wife that I just wanted to fast-forward to the time when this was all over. She told me, “No! The journey is as beautiful as the destination. The trials now, this entire pruning process, are a good thing.” Then she recounted the blessing the Lord had worked in their lives through his time of pruning them. Next, I ran into another friend. I told her that the Lord had paid a lot of bills with a little bit of money, but surely it had to run out at some point. Her response was simply, “No, it doesn’t.”

That little rebuke hit me in the gut. No, the money doesn’t have to run out. Yes, the widow’s oil lasted until she no longer needed it. The five loaves and two fish fed five thousand plus, and then they had twelve baskets left over. I knew all these Bible stories, so why did I have so little faith? Why couldn’t I believe for the long haul that God would meet every need? Why wouldn’t I admit confidently with David, “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread” (Psalm37:25)? I knew in theory that God does all these things, and yet my knowledge of God was still only just starting to meet me in the practical issues of life.

Eventually, the Lord did provide a great job for Andy in Seattle. But he did it in such a way that we would never forget that the job came from his hand. While we were still waiting to hear whether Andy would have a job in Seattle, we had to decide whether to go ahead with the move. We had felt strongly for several years that the Lord wanted us to be involved with church work in Seattle. We sold our house and furniture to get ready for that move and planned to go to Seattle as soon as I finished graduate school. Yet, even after years of responsible planning, when the day came to move we still had no jobs or vehicles or the means by which to get them. Despite our best-laid plans, we were broke, paying rent for a shack in Seattle, and needing to buy a vehicle (though neither of us had any income) in order to haul our things in a trailer across the country.

Since I was in education, we had a small window for moving between the end of graduate school and the beginning of any teaching assignments I might be able to get in Seattle. As the deadline approached for moving, friends and family came to help us load up the car and trailer, which was paid for on credit extended to us by the grace of God. As we drove out of our neighborhood, I felt like I was stepping off the side of a cliff, trusting that in the mist there was something under my feet on which to step. I prayed, as we pulled out of our neighborhood in South Carolina, that God would not allow us to leave the state if he didn’t want us in Seattle. We had completely exhausted our cash reserves. This truly was my crisis point. Driving out of South Carolina with all my belongings in an eight-by-ten trailer symbolized walking right off the edge of that cliff.

Two hours later, as we pulled into the Georgia State Welcome Center, Andy got a call from the company that would eventually become his employer in Seattle. They were definitely interested in hiring him and were checking his references. That may not sound like much to you now, but I can’t describe how that moment is etched in my memory. All of a sudden, I felt like God rolled back the clouds for a moment and gave me a glimpse of himself I had never seen before. Was that how Abraham felt when he found the ram in the bushes and became the first to call God Jehovah-jireh, God-provider? How did Elijah feel when God sent down the fire to burn up the altars after they had been doused with bucket after bucket of water? I sobbed the entire time we were at the welcome center, humbled not just by what God had done but also by how he had done it. We caught a glimpse of the splendor of God, his sovereign control over the details of life, and his intimate awareness of our lives. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God wanted us in Seattle and had a definite plan for us. My theology was becoming very practical.

Andy and I basked in the beauty of God’s provision of a job for a while. I started a new job as well, teaching math at the local community college. We enjoyed our first few weeks in Seattle, began attending our new church, and got settled into a community group. We had learned profound lessons and thought we had conquered the worst in life by surviving a year of unemployment. Then, six weeks after Andy began his job, we entered the next phase of testing and strengthening.

Tried and Tested

We found out that what we originally thought was asthma was actually a life-threatening heart condition that required immediate surgery for Andy. As Andy, pale-faced with wavering voice, informed me of the prognosis from his doctor’s visit, we were both confronted with our need to claim, in that pivotal moment, all we knew about the character of God. Andy was twenty-five years old. We had been married for just a few years. We weren’t supposed to be dealing with open-heart surgery at this stage of life.

The morning of Andy’s surgery, I had to say good-bye to him at 6:30 am. The nurses dropped me off in the surgery waiting area before they rolled him into surgery pre-op. I sat in the darkened waiting area completely by myself, stunned and numbed by the enormity of what we were facing. To my surprise, just fifteen minutes later, at 6:45 am, the first couple from our community group at church walked through the waiting room doors. Kevin was a medical student at the hospital and later had to leave to begin his rounds. His wife, Missy, brought muffins and stayed with me for several hours. More friends, all new acquaintances from community group, came in during the morning. Some had to leave, and new ones came to take their place. At any one time, we probably had at least four people from our church talking and laughing with Andy’s parents and me during the entire surgery. After the surgeon finally came out to give us a report, our friends thanked God with us, promised to be back the following day, and went home.

Before I could see Andy, he had to be moved to the cardiothoracic intensive care unit and stabilized. So I went outside the hospital to use my cell phone to call friends and family with the news that he had made it through surgery. As I walked back into the hospital lobby after making my calls, I heard two frantic announcements over the loud speaker for Andy’s surgeon to return to the intensive care unit STAT. I knew immediately that something was wrong. What I didn’t know was that Andy’s heart had stopped, and he had to be revived and taken back in for another open-heart surgery. I was alone in the hospital lobby when I heard the calls to Andy’s doctors to return to his side STAT. That was a freakish, surreal moment—I knew that something had gone very wrong by the sound of the announcements, but I went up the wrong elevator at the hospital, and it took a very long time to get to the right place to find out what was happening. The Lord and I had a frank encounter in that lobby as I tried to convince him I couldn’t live without Andy, while he reminded me that he is holy, and the outcome of this thing would be good and right for his name’s sake. Again, the practical nature of theology became extremely important to me.

By the time I finally found the intensive care unit, Kevin, the medical student from our church, was in the waiting area with Andy’s parents. He too had heard the announcement and was able to go behind the scenes and find out for us what was happening. He let us know the specifics of the problem but protected us from the knowledge of how close Andy was to dying. Later that evening, after Andy was stabilized, one of the pastors from church came by to see us. I had never met him before, but he lived close to the hospital and talked with me for a long time. He gave me his cell phone number and told me to use their home for showers or rest any time. I smiled politely, thanked him, but never considered taking him up on the offer. Honestly, I just didn’t know him or his wife well enough to impose on them.

Like a good wife, I planned to spend the nights with Andy. I made it through one night in the hospital, but around 10 pm on the second or third night, Andy’s heart got off rhythm. It wasn’t incredibly serious, but on top of my sleep deprivation, it sent me over the edge. I humbly fished out the cell phone number for the pastor who lived around the corner from the hospital, though I was formerly too proud to even contemplate inviting myself over. I was barely coherent as I sobbed my need for a place to sleep. He had me walk to their house. It was the night before Thanksgiving. He and his wife put a fire log in the fireplace and made up their sofa bed with lots of comfortable blankets. They made me a cup of tea, put their arms around me, prayed with me, and tucked me into bed.

Lessons Learned

That was an important week in my life theologically. Not only did our church in Seattle constantly meet our needs, but several elders from our church in South Carolina flew out to be with us as well. I finally began to understand the theological concept of the body of Christ. These Christians—the body of Christ in Seattle, Washington, that I barely knew, and the body of Christ in South Carolina that I knew well—were Christ’s hands and feet.