Excerpt from Daughters of the Culture

INTRODUCTION

In recent months, we have spoken a great deal about relationship, and about being ‘sisters together’ in the family of God. However, we are still finding that there is a hindrance to our entering into full and complete relationship with one another.

Our question is, ‘How can we relate as true sisters together, in the family of God?’ The answer is a simple one. We will never be able to relate as true sisters together, in the one generation of the culture of godliness, unless we are first daughters of the culture in the family of God.

In the natural and in the spiritual

In the natural realm, we are born first into a family through the unique process of procreation, and then we grow up and mature in relationship, by proper parenting intervention, to be able to relate in our family with our brothers and sisters.

So too, in the spiritual sense, there is a maturing and a growing which we must experience, growing past being babes, into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, as it says in Ephesians, ‘till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the Head – Christ – from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.’

No matter what our age or stage in life, before we can enter into an understanding of what it means to be sisters or mothers in the body of God’s people, we must mature in our Christian stature and in our relational capacity to participate as daughters within the culture of godliness.

Growing and maturing

In this culture, God requires that we grow and mature as Christians. We know that Christianity is a life that grows, and is not a static set of religious ideals.

As we grow and mature beyond the phase of milk, our senses are then exercised to be able to discern both good and evil. We are then able to resist the cunning craftiness of the enemy, who seeks to carry us away, and toss us about with every wind of doctrine, concerning the nature of our work as women.

We are all daughters of someone. Whose daughter are you?

• Are you maturing in Christian grace, or are you maturing in the ways of the flesh?
• Are you a novice, led captive by Satan to do his will, or are you a true daughter of Abraham, a virtuous woman, able to overcome the wiles and works of Satan?
• Are you a true daughter of Sarah in godly submission and in doing good without fear or terror?