I’m so over being a Proverbs 31 woman

I wouldn’t say training with New Tribes is difficult per se, but I would say it’s heavy. Nate and I and our team will learn a language that no outsider in the history of ______ tribe has ever learned. We’ll use our training to match sounds with symbols, put down their language in written form, teach them how to read it and write it, teach them how to teach others. We’ll share the whole story of the Bible with them for the first time in the history of their heart language. They’ve heard bits and pieces of various religions in a common trade language, but never in their first language. We’ll translate the Bible for them. We’ll train pastors in the truth of the Word. We’ll teach them how to recognize and reject unsound doctrine that comes in the form of the Catholics and Charismatics and the Muslims who try to tickle their ears like Timothy talks about. And eventually, little by little, we’ll tip toe backwards until we’re gone and they’re self sufficient and they don’t need us. They’re developing and preaching sermons in Romans by themselves like total ballers. And they’re discipling others; they’re raising their children in the truth for every generation until Christ comes back!

*I’m saying “we” loosely. I don’t aspire to be a woman pastor over men.

But what if I teach them the wrong things? What if I was too interested in watching Netflix than in my preparation for this and so I’ve missed points in my theology or I’ve not given a sound defense against witchcraft and sorcery and the other things they’ve been involved in for so long? What if I don’t translate parts of Paul’s epistles accurately because I missed the nuances because I was lazy back in America? God will hold me accountable, not because I didn’t pick the best words for translating the crux of the passage and, dang it, Laura, you’re so dumb, but because way back when I consistently threw my time away. And at judgment day, we give account for our time.

There’s a misconception in Christianity that God just wants you to be willing, and that’s all he requires. Not hardly. If you’re going to go out there and represent Christ, you had better know what you’re talking about; otherwise you’ll make a mockery out of Christ because of your ignorance. And that’s happening all over the world right now. One of our teachers at school doesn’t miss an opportunity to remind us of this.

“How will you help them take every thought captive to obey Christ if you don’t truly understand and appreciate what is holding them captive in the first place?”  

“Your Sunday school answers won’t work out there. The fortresses Satan’s built around them over centuries aren’t made of sand. 

BUT the weapons of our warfare are divinely powerful for the destruction of forces.        2 Cor. 10:4

For some reason we love to sit around and ooh and aah at the Proverbs 31 woman, but what we need are more 2 Timothy 2:15 women – “Study to show yourself approved…rightly dividing the word of truth.”

So I guess it’s time to get started.