By Goh Poh Gaik
Women to Women closes the year with a call to women of the Lord to shed timidity and trepidation and to walk into the new year with courage and confidence in the Lord. In this issue, Koh Soo Choon inspires with her steadfast faith and contagious joy in the Lord; Debbie Loh encourages as she steps out in faith. We conclude Chan Thean Yin’s article on Deborah – a woman upon whom God placed the mantle to lead.
There is a time to go and a time to stay. When the command of the Lord came for Barak to lead the way to Tabor, Barak looked to Deborah for company and strength: ‘If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.’
Deborah did go with him but the way he went about the matter did not please God. The Lord purposed that the honour of the victory would not go to him but to a woman. Barak almost did not go.
I get a jolt each time I read about the part played by Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite. Jael displayed a bold single-mindedness in tackling a difficult task. Many women would squirm and stall, but Jael went into swift, decisive action. She discerned the time – and it was not a time to be squeamish. She knew what had to be done and she was purposeful in deed. She went.
There is a time to go and a time to stay. When the command of the Lord comes to rise and do a new work, we dare not bargain, ‘If … ’
What new step of faith and obedience will God call you to in the new year? What will He call me to? Will we, like Jael, be courageous in His strength, and exult in victory even in our tents? Or will we draw back and be voiceless in triumphant song, not because we couldn’t do it but because we dared not? Victory did not depend on the strength or capability of Jael for the Lord had already purposed that He would hand Sisera over to a woman.
There is a time to go and a time to stay. Reuben did not go with Barak in the battle against Jabin the Canaanite king. He decided to stay among the campfires to hear the whistling for the flocks. The safe and the familiar can be a snare when it’s time to go.
He was not alone in staying behind. Gilead stayed. Dan lingered by the ships and Asher remained and stayed in his coves. All these chose to stay and missed out on the rapturous joy of the victory. They stayed when they should have gone.
There is a time to go and a time to stay. When the command of the Lord comes to go – to a new ministry, deeper waters, to take captives captive – may we be found in the company of those who came from Ephraim, Benjamin, Makir, Issachar. Together with the people of Zebulun who risked their very lives, as did Naphtali on the heights of the field they heeded the call. They went. |
