Today’s guest post comes from Lore Ferguson. Lore’s name is pronounced Lor-ee, but you can call her Lo. She grew up on the east coast, but transplanted to Dallas a few years ago—she’s not from Texas, but Texas wants her anyway (as the song goes). It was the Church that drove her away from Jesus and it was the Church that brought her back in, and there’s nothing she loves more on earth. She writes regularly for The Gospel Coalition, Project TGM,Deeper Church, and most regularly at her blog, Sayable. Lore is a covenant member at The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas. You can follow her on twitter here:@loreferguson
Paul spoke some words to Timothy running rampant through my mind these days:
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak [or silly] women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. (II Timothy 3:1-9)
Oh. That's rough. Friends, hear me, that is rough.
I'm not harkening the last days or making an assessment on end times. But a lover of self? I am. Proud? I am. Ungrateful? Yes.
Unappeasable? Oh, my. Yes.
Having the appearance of godliness? If only you knew.
But this is the part that guts me inside out: these are the sort of people who creep into households and capture weak women, women who are burdened with sins and led astray by a myriad of passions, women who are hungry for knowledge and never satisfied by truth.
I pause and look around my home. My roommates have just gone to get dinner, leaving me at home for a few minutes of quiet. We are simple folk, with good solid books, a television that rarely gets turned on, no magazine subscriptions, and an old ipod speaker contraption. Our influences are few.
But what captures us the whole world over is an insatiable hunger, an unappeasable thirst, a voracious gnawing for knowledge. This was the lure of the fruit in Genesis 3: "You will be like God, knowing good and evil," and this is the lure still today, "Do this and you will know or be known. Believe this and you will know. Speak this and you will be known as one who knows."
And in the end it's just silliness. Or, as Solomon said, vanity of vanities. A breath, a vapor.
It might surprise you when I say this is not about how women are poor leaders and so I'll follow men instead. I'm not going to say it because I think some women make great leaders and some men make poor leaders.
But I will follow one man in full acknowledgement that I am prone to silly things. I am weak. I am inclined to thirst for an endless pursuit of knowledge than simple answers. I am unappeasable instead of satisfied. I am tempted by offers of fruits and godlikeness. Not because I am a woman, but because the strongest of women knows her deepest of weaknesses.
This isn't about following men because I am weak and need a man. I truly need one man and His name is Jesus Christ, and He was good and gracious enough to surround me with good leaders who are far stronger, far wiser, and far less distracted by silly things than I am. But still, He is my God and my sufficiency, my ever present help in time of need, my cupbearer and my King. He has taken the cup of wrath on my behalf and He has still reserved for me the choicest wine, the sweetest feast.
He alone satisfies my search for substance in a world captured by silly things.
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