Fierce Free and Full of Fire: 5-Day Devotional Sample

Can we discuss the word want briefly?  Women have been discouraged from hunger in general.  Having a big, healthy appetite for something doesn’t easily align with our historical role in the patriarchy.  We are not supposed to want this.  Approved wants: whatever your husband wants, the desires of your children, whatever the community needs, the sanctioned wants of your specific subculture.  Our wants have a complicated system of checks and balances: Does this seem too greedy?  Will this cost the people around me something?  Is this selfish?  Is this too ambitious?  How long can I chase this before I have to revert?

I am never entirely sure how unique the Christian community is inside the greater community of women, but it feels like women who want more endure outsized critique under the steeples.  Our lady roles are more heavily cemented inside the “God-sanctioned” patriarchy.  So our wants are limited by bad theology, gender complementarianism, and communal disapproval. 

In some cases, women are literally not allowed to preach or lead the church at large, so if their want is attached to spiritual authority, they are plumb out of luck.  But even south of pulpit dreams, women are expected to supply the grease for the engine, not the fuel.  We are meant to serve and submit, defer, and support.  Ambition is suspect—a sure sign of a prideful heart not rendered to the Lord.  “She is of the world,” Christian rhetoric sometimes concludes.

I present as evidence the prick of fear or judgment poking its head out of your worldview as we speak.  Having dreams does not cancel our service to our families, love for our neighbors, concern for the poor, or a heart for the world.  God would not craft our minds and hands to make beautiful things, then shame us for wanting to so.  Nor can I be convinced that passion is anything short of godly.