Strongholds & Havens

I had the privilege of attending the annual Wisdom House Bible Conference again this year.  Two girlfriends and I boarded a plane and headed to Texas at the beginning of May.  This year's conference theme was "Strongholds and Havens."

Mrs. Barbara Mouser taught a group of about forty women on Friday evening and most of the day on Saturday.  Her Bible teaching is definitely for those who have an appetite for meat.  Believe me when I say, one doesn't leave one of her conferences hungry.  It takes a good long while to digest what one has eaten there.  I've been mulling over the things I learned at the conference for the past month and a half and I still have much more mulling to do.

Mrs. Mouser began the conference by defining "strongholds" and "havens."  Strongholds are ordained by God to be built by men.  A stronghold is "a protected, secure place suitable for defense--keeping people, possessions, or ideas safe--and offense, launching attack against enemies."  God "hardwired" men for "rule, work and war."  Men build strongholds in marriage, family,  the government and the Church.  They defend good and fight against evil.

Women create havens.  "A haven is a safe place which offers rest, nurture, and healing.  Restoring people and maintaining the institutions of civilizations (accomplished almost exclusively through the training of the young) requires havens, that is, protected environments." 

One of my big take-aways from the conference was the absolute necessity of havens.  Our stronghold men need a haven of rest in which to find refuge after long days of hard work and defending God's truth (which according to the Doctrine of Vocation, can and does occur, even in the most mundane of jobs).  Children need a place to be raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Without havens, society collapses.  One of the lies of the feminist movement is that anyone can do the cooking, the cleaning, the decorating, the child training and the husband tending.  The fact is that God created each woman, with her unique talents and abilities, to create a home, to help her own husband and love her own children (and also to "create community and civilization" outside the family, as well as to "adorn and confirm the Word of God" within the Church.)   Havens are hand made and tailored by haven women to suit each family the Lord has created.  Factory assembled parts and pieces (drive thru dinners, house cleaning services, day care and so on) do not create havens.  My work as a woman at home not only matters, but it is essential.

"The stronghold does not long exist without its sustaining haven.  The haven does not long exist without its depending stronghold.  Man and woman are interdependent from God, but not interchangeable (1 Cor. 11:8-12)."

For most of the day on Saturday of the conference, we studied the stronghold man, David.  In the end, God stripped David of all of the earthly havens on which he depended and taught him to rely on Himself alone.  God is the ultimate Haven.  When we die to ourselves and find refuge (haven) in Jesus, we are "renewed in strength and God makes us more fruitful," for His glory.

One interesting comment that Mrs. Mouser made was about Mary, the mother of Jesus.  Mary was the God-ordained haven for the ultimate Stronghold.  I used to think of myself as the mother of girls.  My first two children and my fourth are girls and it seemed as they grew older, their needs were in many ways at the forefront of my mind.  I've spent many years studying biblical womanhood and trying to teach my girls God's great plan for them as women.  Yet, I'm soon to be the mother of five boys, whom I'm praying, by the grace of God, will become stronghold men someday.  Men who will fight to defend God's truth.  Men who will be willing to die, if necessary, to defend their families and Jesus' Bride, the Church.  To be sure, it is a holy calling, one which only God and God alone can equip me to do.

In the coming months and years, I'll continue to meditate on the many scriptures and thoughts Mrs. Mouser presented to us at the conference.  One thing about God's Word is that one never reaches the end of it.

Incidentally, the very next day after arriving home from the conference, I spied my littles playing in the back yard.  The boys were wearing their coon skin caps and hiding behind the Arborvitae, their play guns up next to their faces as they squinted to get their "enemies" in their guns' sights.  Just then, my apron-clad Lydia emerged from the play house and yelled, "Dinner!"  I thought, "There it is."  It is truly "hardwired."  We are strongholds and havens, created to be so by an Almighty God.