Stewards of the Inheritance

At the kitchen table, my daughter’s tears silently rolling down her cheeks; I brushed the tangle I’d noticed that morning. However, the tightest portion remained tightly woven into my ten-year-old’s thick, wavy hair. Though lovely, her hair can be difficult to maintain. Even with daily brushing, it’s easy for us to miss small tangles gathering at the nape of her neck. By the time we notice them, they’re sometimes so large we both know there will be tears before we’re done.

I tugged at the knot, accidentally ripping a few strands of hair by the roots, and she cried out in pain. With a gentle voice, I leaned down and whispered, “I know it hurts, honey. It always hurts when we pull the roots.”

It does always hurt to pull the roots. Roots tie us to our past. They anchor us, giving us the ability to withstand the winds of life and the strength to refuse to bow to pressure. In the case of one Hebrew man, his roots gave him the strength to stand against a king, ultimately costing him his life.

In I Kings 21, King Ahab wanted the vineyard adjacent to his castle. Typically, whatever the king wanted, the king got. However, in this case, the word of the king conflicted with the word of the King of Kings (Read Leviticus 25:13-15), so Naboth, the field’s owner, denied the king, telling him “The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee” (I Kings 21:3).

Naboth recognized the roots of his vineyard were more than just the tangled masses of grape vine. The origins of his vineyard were planted in the words of God as Israel entered the Promised Land, each tribe receiving its allotment. Because Naboth understood and valued the legacy handed down to him, he refused to sell, though it cost him his life at the hands of Queen Jezebel. He knew the land was not his to sell. He was simply the steward of the inheritance.

We are a generation of women who understand the struggle against culture’s daily attempts to intimidate us into selling our inheritance. Rarely does a day pass without encountering pressure from the media or those we interact with to compromise precious things passed down from those who’ve come before us. I fear many of us don’t value the inheritance because we don’t understand it.

After my teenage conversion, I lived a life honoring the outward expressions of holiness—the Apostolic distinctives handed down to me by the church I attended. However, without fully understanding them, it wasn’t possible for me to love them. And, without loving the call of God to live a life of separation, my roots were not deep enough to hold when culture beckoned. Unlike Naboth, there was no way I was willing to die for those convictions. It’s one thing to live a belief. It’s another to die for it.

However, God wanted me to be Apostolic—not just look like it. In His mercy, God brought a teacher who explained the biblical stance on women’s adornment in a way I could understand and embrace.

I’d understood Deuteronomy 22:5 to be a discussion of women not wearing the garments of men of war—girded robes. These are often called “breeches.” Because I knew it was an abomination for a woman to wear such garments, and out of a heartfelt desire not to offend others (Read I Corinthians 8:13), I chose to submit to the teachings of the church I attended. Yet, deep down, I still struggled. I understood the concept of God’s desire for a distinction between the sexes. I lived it, but I certainly could not defend it, nor was I confident to teach it.

In a moment of vulnerability with my husband and a Bible college professor at my kitchen table, I confessed my struggle, even though I was a pastor’s wife, to feel like I could teach with integrity what I had been living for almost twenty years.

The teacher read I Timothy 2:9 aloud: “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array.” I’d heard this scripture used to teach the concept of modesty in general many times, but the teacher pointed to the word “apparel” specifically.

Let your women wear modest “apparel,” katastolē, which refers to dresses or garments let down. Katastolē is used only once in Scripture, and those are the only meanings for the word. Paul cautioned his son in the gospel to ensure Christian women adorn themselves in modest garments let down—in dresses.

In Old Testament times, men demonstrated they were “men of war” by girding up their loins. Today, godly women show they are “women of war” by letting their garments flow.

For almost twenty years, I honored outward expressions of holiness. However, from that day forward, I’ve loved what the word of God says about the ways He wants godly women adorned. Now I’m rooted; by the grace of God, I will refuse to sell the field. It would hurt too much to pull these roots up.

In the kitchen, brushing my precious daughter’s hair, I felt something hard within the tangle. I separated the strands of hair and grasped a small hairpin locked within. As I pulled the pin out, the remaining strands of hair loosened, and I was able to finish the job. Holding the bobby pin high, I announced, “Aha. Here’s the culprit.” Clara’s eyes shone mischievously. “There it is, Mom. I’ve been chasing that bobby pin for four days.” Once we got to the root of the problem, we could preserve the tender roots of my little girl’s hair.

Similarly, once we address the root issue—God’s call for us to stand against the system of lies the enemy daily foists upon us—we can begin to untangle the knot and preserve the precious inheritance passed down to us. This is the confidence we must have in our generation—a generation where simply walking into a room declares our belief in the Word of God. If we are rooted, we will refuse to sell the field.