Susanna Raj deepened her faith at a Christian women’s conference, but when she tried to tap into the same message online all she found was posts about finding your worth and your beauty. Here she explains why women need so much more.
Growing up in church, I had attended my fair share of Christian weekends away, youth camps and conferences, sitting through an innumerable number of sermons. But it was only when I was 15 that I had my very first experience of a whole other world I was told went by the name ‘women’s conference’.
I was utterly captivated. Adding my voice to the worship of 10,000 other women from all over the world was truly a glimpse of Heaven I will never forget the sound of. Hearing well-known, powerful female speakers share their testimonies and encourage others to step into their God-given destinies stirred my heart for the women of my generation. It was truly a monumental moment in my faith journey where I began to realise the extent of Jesus’ heart for women to be heard and used by Him in the Kingdom.
Naturally, I hopped on to Instagram and began to follow Christian women influencers and speakers, women conferences, and encouraging pages for women. What I discovered was a far cry from my own experience. I began to scroll through endless posts about discovering our beauty and being ‘worth it’, (I found myself double checking if I was actually watching a L’Oréal advert on more than one occasion). I watched video after video where Christian women were encouraged to discover their worth and beauty in Jesus, and then sent away with some emotional music and a pat on the back.
I believe that in our attempt to be culturally relevant, we as the church and church leaders have done a disservice to God’s daughters.
Please don’t misunderstand me. In a world full of unattainable beauty standards and profit made on the insecurities of women, we need to know that we are created fearfully and wonderfully, that our maker is infinitely proud of us, that Jesus covered us in His worthiness and righteousness, yes, that we are beautiful. These are truths that women bombarded by lies over their worth absolutely need to know and hear.
But while these messages are vital, they seem to have singlehandedly replaced the other truths that women so desperately need to hear. I believe that in our attempt to be culturally relevant, we as the church and church leaders have done a disservice to God’s daughters and the truth of scripture by failing to teach them the whole truth of who they are.
Jesus believes that women are more than just a pretty face. It’s time the church did too.
God longs for His daughters to discover their beauty in Him. But He also longs for them to discover the spiritual warrior within them, to wage spiritual war through their prayer and worship, to learn to live lives full of radical generosity and obedience, to discover the authority in their voice among so much more.
Jesus believes that women are more than just a pretty face. It’s time the church did too.
As the world continues to wake up to the power and authority of women’s voices being heard, the church needs to be trailblazing in teaching women of their authority not just in their circles of influence, but in the spiritual realm too. What if the church began to raise up an army of women who use their voices to speak up for truth and justice, to intercede for their nations, to preach the Gospel unashamedly, to speak into the culture of ignorance and patronisation still lurking in our churches and societies?
It is time for Christian women to take their place as the warriors they are, to live out their faith as radical disciples of Jesus, to discover not just their beauty and worth in Him, but their voice and authority too. These are God’s daughters. Who are we to stop them?
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