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Women: Position & Purpose

Scripture is full of women whose choices altered the course of history - not because they were given permission, but because they understood something about the power and position they already held. That power was never the question. What Scripture keeps asking is how it gets used.

The Same Power, Two Directions

Jezebel had position. When her husband Ahab sulked over a vineyard he couldn't buy, she didn't hesitate - she forged letters in his name, orchestrated a false accusation, and had an innocent man killed to get what he wanted. Her power was real. Her motives were rotten.

That same spirit still shows up today, just quieter. It rarely looks like murder. It looks like using affection to control an outcome, leveraging a relationship to get your way, or dressing up a selfish motive as a righteous one.

Then there's Abigail. When her husband's foolishness put their entire household in danger, she didn't wait for permission to act. She moved quickly, took responsibility that wasn't technically hers to take, and diffused a violent situation with humility instead of leverage. Same kind of power Jezebel had. Completely different heart behind it.

The question was never whether you have influence. It's what you're doing with it.

Fearing God More Than Pharaoh

Shiphrah and Puah didn't have position in any way the world would recognize - they were midwives under a king who'd just ordered them to kill Hebrew infants. And yet Scripture says simply: "the midwives feared God." That's the whole hinge of their story. Not that they were clever, though they were. Not that they were brave, though they were. They feared God more than they feared Pharaoh, and that fear is what gave them the courage to defy a direct order from the most powerful man in Egypt.

It's not fashionable to talk about fearing God. Most of us are more fluent in fearing what people think of us - a boss, a parent, a group chat. But Shiphrah and Puah are proof that the fear of God isn't the thing that shrinks you. It's the thing that makes you unshakeable when everyone else caves.

What God Does With What Was Taken From You

Tamar's story is uncomfortable to read. Twice widowed, promised to a third brother who was withheld from her, she found herself with no security and no future in a culture where that meant everything. What she did next is hard to defend on its own terms - but look at what happens after: when she's about to be condemned, she produces the evidence, and Judah says the words that flip the whole story: "She has been more righteous than I."

God didn't just spare Tamar. He wrote her into the lineage of Jesus. That's not a footnote - that's the pattern. God doesn't just rescue the parts of your story that look clean. He redeems the parts that don't.

Who Are We Rejecting?

Most of us are carrying some version of rejection - something that taught us early to protect ourselves, to stay small, to keep people at arm's length. It's easy to name the ways we've been rejected. It's harder to ask who we're doing that to now. The coworker whose voice grates on you. The relative who rubs you the wrong way. The person at church you avoid without quite admitting it. They can usually tell.

Loving people who are easy to love was never the assignment.

Scripture's harder command is to love the people who irritate us, who've hurt us, who we genuinely don't want to be around. Not by faking it. By letting the Holy Spirit into the clutched, guarded places we've built walls around - and letting Him soften what willpower alone never could.

Wherever You Go, You're Representing Someone

You don't just represent yourself at work, at home, online. People are watching for whether what you claim on Sunday shows up on Monday. Whether the worship songs match the way you talk about people who aren't in the room.

Underneath all of it is an invitation, not a demand: there's a dark, clutched place in each of us - hurt, fear, neglect, whatever shape it takes - and God isn't asking you to have it figured out before you bring it to Him. He's asking you to hand it over. Your influence, like Abigail's, can save something. Your story, like Tamar's, can be redeemed. Your courage, like Shiphrah and Puah's, can outlast whoever's trying to intimidate you into silence. The position was never in question. What you do with it is the whole story.