The Proverbs 31 Daughter

We are not yet wives. We are not yet mothers. We may not have homes of our own yet. But in this moment our Lord has called us to be daughters. Not just any daughters, but those who honor Him with their whole being.

Sometimes, it's hard being a daughter. We want to be free to rule our own lives; submission can seem like a cage. Sometimes, we may want to yell or talk back. Sometimes, it seems easier to leave your room a mess than to obey. Sometimes, we just want our own way. But that is not what God calls us to be.

Before we can become praiseworthy earthly daughters, we must learn to honor and obey our Heavenly Father. When we are good daughters in God's sight, we will become good daughters towards our parents as well.

Psalm 144:12 says "May...our daughters [become] like corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace..." The corner pillars are what holds the walls together - in this case our families. God says that being a daughter is an extremely important role; the family would fall apart without its Godly daughters. We need to understand how important we are to our families. If we aren't Godly, we negatively influence others as well.

In Proverbs 31:30, the Lord says: "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." The first step in becoming Godly daughters is to lay aside our earthly desires (our obsessions) and get into God's Word daily. Spending time with our Heavenly Father is the best way to learn who He wants us to become.

As we go about our day, let's listen to the still small voice and rest in the arms of our Heavenly Father. When we honor Him, we are the daughters He called us to be.

"The King's daughter is all glorious within..." Psalm 45:13

a biblical lady

lady - (n)

1. A well-mannered and considerate woman with high standards of proper behavior.

2. A woman regarded as proper and virtuous

There are all sorts of people in the world. There are loud people and quiet people, outgoing people and shy people, crafty people and wordy people, hands-on people and theoretical people. There are just as many divisions within the different genders as there are in the collective group. And that's where it gets a little hazy. The Bible is pretty clear on this point, in some cases--it's very plain that the "loose" woman and the "contentious, brawling" woman of Proverbs aren't women to be emulated. It's equally clear that women like Mary, the mother of Jesus, or Mary Magdalene, or Rachel, are most definitely pretty good role-models.

But what form does this take now, in the twenty-first century? After all, life is so much different now...right? 

Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.

It is very true that modern young women are in lack of a good assortment of role-models in the here and now. We can read about past women who reached the goal of being a 'virtuous woman'--what I think is probably the best Biblical term for the modern conception of 'lady'--but it's more difficult to find women that live up to that in the here and now. Yet they do exist. You can find them in the kind words they give, in the gentle spirit they possess, in the fact that they're the sort of people who you would give up, whose worth in wisdom and love and pure beauty of the soul is far above rubies.

She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms. 

These virtuous women--these ladies--are strong. Not just in the physical sense (because some of them aren't at all; one of the most beautiful ladies I ever met was old and frail), but in the sense that they have a strength that manifests itself as an ability to listen and never get tired, to be the gentle corrector, to offer advice when it seems something is hopeless, to be the one people go to when they don't know where to turn. That sort of strength, it seems to me, is so much more important than being physically strong, or even mentally strong. To be strong in the heart is a great talent indeed.

She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. 

These ladies are generous. They are generous with their strength--with the time they spend listening and helping and crying with and praying for--they are generous with their resources and their hearts and their homes and their minds. Not only that, but they are selfless. They think of others before themselves, of what they can do to help another. This part of being a virtuous woman is, to me, more about the spiritual than the physical. It definitely has a physical side--for instance, very often spiritual ministering includes physical ministering. But there is a need in the spirit, a poorness about some people's hearts that must be tended. A true virtuous woman, one of God's 'ladies', can sense that, and tries her hardest to do something about it.

She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. 

She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.

A lady is industrious. None of the modern-day virtuous women I've met are idle. They have their moments, of course (I mean, how many of us honestly have not had those days where we just want to curl up with a good book and spend hours immersed in a fantastical world, a very safe cup of hot chocolate nestled against one hand to keep it warm?), but they have a plan, a set idea of what they want and how to get there, and what to do while they're getting there. They work for their families, with their families, for other people, with other people. And that's kind of an amazing thing, when you think about it. Other people are one of the wonders of the world, and this lady is able to not only be with them, but do things for and with them, to create and sell and earn and buy.

 Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. 

A lady is courageous, and respected because of it--mostly because she respects others. This will lead to great rejoicing, for she who lives in peace with all will be loved by all. Something like that. (Try to figure that out if you can; I'm not quite sure what part of my brain produced that, but it sounds cool.)

 She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.

A lady is wise, and kind, and kind in her wisdom. Someone once told me that the most important thing to think about when interacting with other people is "will this help me love this person more?" That is both part of wisdom, and much of kindness. The wisdom to know what to say (and, more importantly, when to say it), and the kindness to temper those words born of wisdom when needed.

Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.

As always, in everything we do, there must be God in it. Every Godly lady I have ever met did not get there by her own effort. She is strong, but not without the Christ, which strengthens us. She is industrious, but not without the creativity given her by the One who created her hands. She is courageous, and gives respect to all, but not without the Holy Spirit to whisper to her words of truth about the people she meets. She is wise, and kind in her wisdom, but the beginning of all wisdom is God, and His word, and she would not know kindness but for the God who gave His all.

She fears the Lord, not in the sense that she trembles because of the punishment he could send, but that she adores and worships and is amazed by the awesome power that is His. She revels in the love and the beauty that is her God, she delights to learn more of him, to hear His words and see His work in her life. Everything she does is an outpouring, not of herself, but of the reflected light of Christ. She is a woman, not because of herself, but because of the One who holds her up with His mighty hand.

Be Perfect

Your culture (no matter what culture you live in) is constantly telling you that you must be perfect. Perfect hair, perfect weight, perfect popularity…. And as homeschoolers you’ve probably got another set of expectations from your parents or friends. Perfect test scores, perfect spelling bees, perfect college entrance exams…. Did you know that Jesus is telling us to be perfect too?

 “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

                                                                                   -Matthew 5:48

But this is a different kind of perfection: real perfection. The world will be happy if you only look perfect on the surface, and they don’t care what kind of hell you have to go through to get there. Jesus commands us to be perfect all the way through. As C.S. Lewis put it:

When He said , "Be perfect," He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder — in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I want to be "an ordinary, decent egg." There are some things I don't think Jesus can iron out of me — if I'm honest I'd say that there are things that I don't want Him to iron out — but that's not what He has offered me. As Olivia posted on Wednesday, "God created for us a new man in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:24). A new man. A new perfect man. Not kind-of-perfect, not almost-there.

So how is this supposed to work? We're humans, right? We're flawed, that's in our nature. We can follow a lot of rules and do a pretty good job if given enough time, but perfection is asking a lot. Not only do we not stand much of a chance of ever reaching perfection, but what about the past, what about those less-than-stellar things that we did last year, or last week? My perfectionist tendencies clench and snap under the strain of such high expectations.

But the whole point of what Jesus is saying is that we can't do it! He's not asking us to do the impossible, He's commanding us to be supernatural. It comes down to something that you probably heard in Sunday School, but may never have truly internalized and accepted as true: it’s about Jesus’ perfection, not ours. If we are relying on any part of ourselves to please the Lord, then we’re straying from the path of true righteousness and true beauty. You thought that pleasing your peers was hard? Try pleasing the God of the universe.

There is so much beauty in the way Jesus works on us! Lettie B. Cowman wrote, "We must not be fainthearted because we are consciously poor instruments. The main question is in the mastery of Him who uses the instruments." In 1 Corinthians Paul speaks of us having “treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." We are supposed to look like clay right now, but God is molding our jars.

If you’re trusting in your own goodness, your own humility, your own hard work, your own gentle spirit, your own generosity or anything else to make you pleasing to God or to iron out your inner ugliness, stop dead right now. We will never measure up by ourselves; dependence on our own goodness, rationality, etc. is like hanging onto a spider’s web to save ourselves from falling. There’s a perfectly sturdy rope within reach—it’s Jesus, and it costs nothing to grab on to it, nothing except laying yourself down as if in death.

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. 

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

Romans 8:28-31

We are all eggs, and God is going to teach us how to fly. Don't get frustrated with your egg-iness. Maybe you don't look like a bird to yourself or to others, but that's how God sees you. A dear friend of mine told me just yesterday, "Satan keeps track of our sins, God keeps track of our potential." How wonderful to know that we might look like eggs, but in Christ we're nightingales. We're perfect, and it's none of our doing.

How are you like an egg right now? How are you learning to fly on Jesus' wings?

Egg, a photo by MinimalistPhotography101.com on Flickr.
The Potter's Hands, a photo by bingbing on Flickr.

An Undying Beauty

When God forms a child in the womb, He lovingly and meticulously fashions each joint and sinew, each capillary and nerve ending, to perform its part in the whole—a little body which will grow to glorify Him, which indeed already does bring Him glory by its very existence and intricacy.

And if God creates something so temporal as the human body with such care, how much more beautiful has He made the spirit which exists for all of eternity?

When we repented of our former ways and enslaved ourselves to God, we were recreated. We are new creations; old things have passed away; behold, all things are new (2 Corinthians 5:17). We have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Galatians 5:24). God created for us a new man in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:24). The love of Christ compels us (2 Corinthians 5:14); He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him (2 Corinthians 5:15). We have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer we who live, but Christ lives in us (Galatians 2:20). He has granted us even the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).

The wages of sin is death, but thanks be to God that He crucified our old selves and raised us again to a new life, as described in Romans 6:

⁴ Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

⁵ For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, ⁶ knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.

How beautiful then has God made us on the inside as well! Such mercy is truly humbling.

Some seem to think it is spiritually vain to praise Him for what He has made us. But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world (Galatians 6:14). All things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18). Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God (2 Corinthians 3:5).

Praise the God who creates beauty inside and out.

⁶ In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, ⁷ that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ,

1 Peter 1:6-7

Image courtesy Glen's Pics on Flickr.

You're Beautiful

Upon reflection, one thing I have found to be true of late is that a woman will never find any satisfaction in trying to be someone who she is not.  

It will only breed discontentment because God made us to be who we are!  

I have often fallen into the trap the devil sets of:

"You aren't good enough...you will only be beautiful if you fill in the blank."  

That is when you have to guard your thoughts and counter those lies for the truth of God's Word.  

What does He tell us about true beauty?

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes.  Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.  1 Peter 3:3-4

This is the kind of beauty we should long for!  

It far surpasses any beauty that is of the world because it is 'unfading'...

it comes from within!

Here are some wonderful thoughts from Leslie Ludy on the topic of beauty....

"Any human beauty, any human value that we might find within ourselves is just a filthy rag compared to the limitless beauty and glory of Jesus Christ.  Christ's beauty is perfect.  And, in spite of what we deserve, He desires to adorn us with His spectacular glory.  He may choose to showcase His beauty through us in a unique way, through our own individual personality or the special gifts He has given us.  But it is not our unique beauty that must shine for this world to see.  It is not our own beauty that we must discover and embrace--it is His."  

We are all beautiful in His eyes because He is our Creator.  He made every individual unique and precious in their own way.  Instead of just focusing on outward beauty we should look at the state of our inward beauty too...Christ sees us from the inside out!  

So, I have some special words for all of you today...and they are:

You are already beautiful 

just the way you are in God's eyes.  

So just be you!

I invite you to close your eyes and listen to the song below that inspired today's title...

Blessings in Christ,

   

Beauty Within

It can be easy to look at the mirror and see our faults. In fact, that's sometimes all we see, regardless of how we dress or how much makeup we apply or...well, no matter what. Cultural perceptions reinforce this; we are told we have to be tall, skinny, busty, and blonde to be truly "beautiful".

And then there's the other side of it, the side propagated by ugly people...except not really. That side says that it doesn't matter what you look like, because true beauty is within.

For a long time, I struggled between those two, trying to find some sort of truth inside one or the other, and failed, time and time again. And then I realized: neither is true. Our exterior isn't everything that matters, because God doesn't look at the outward appearance, the Bible tells us that. But neither is the inside the only thing that matters, because humans are wired to care at least somewhat about the exterior, for whatever reason.

And so we must find a balance. We must learn to accept ourselves as we are, to look at our bodies and ourselves with the eyes of Christ and see the beauty He made. As Shannon posted below--"I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made!" But we also must realize that, yes, the inside will always be worth far more than the exterior. What we put into our minds and hearts will, as the Bible tells us, always come out eventually. We must take care to guard our inner beauty as well as our outer.

In the end, I struggle just as much as the next girl with accepting myself as I am and seeing the beauty that God sees. I get up in the morning with bedhead and too-big pants and a t-shirt that literally hangs off me, and I look in the mirror and think, "If I ever get married, it will be a miracle." But I like to think that I have come to simply accept myself as I am, to strive to be the best I can be and to cultivate my inner beauty--what little bit of it there is.

Always remember that you, too, are an amazing person created by God, a beautiful individual crafted for His purpose. It could just be that someday, that bedhead and those annoying, bookish manners will come in handy.

I apologize for my rather scattered thoughts. I've been trying to pull different ideas together all day, hence the lateness of my post, and...whatever this is.

True Beauty

 She looks into her mirror, a sad countenance on her face... why must she have so many freckles, blemishes, and faults? She tries to put up her hair like the "other girls" do, but her efforts fail her, and the ribbons and clips and fanciful additions all come to nothing.

She opens her closet, glancing from side to side, and wishing that she had more clothes that made her look like the others... wishing that she would be counted amongst the "pretty girls". Her vain pursuits have taken her no where...

Why don't others pay attention and pamper her desires like they do to the popular ones... the ones who always have it all. Why are there never people busy about her, flattering her, and giving her attention?

She wonders if she is not pretty enough, doesn't have a good outward appearance...

"Maybe if I start acting like, dressing like, talking like...."

She falls liable to that trap that so many young ladies fall into... the trap of discontentment and the wrong view of beauty.

This sad tale doesn't have to be... there is another way, another road. The Creator has made each and every one of us beautiful... and by rejecting ourselves and His design for us, we are saying that He, the Almighty King, made a mistake.

But, as it says in Psalm 19:14...

"I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well."

I am made in the image of God... the Creator of all.

He who loves me with an everlasting love, shaped me and formed me.

He gave me every single freckle...He made my eyes the perfect color...He gifted me with the hair that He desired for me to have.

Yet, our outward appearance means so little, if anything, in comparison to the place of true beauty, the beauty of one's heart. A truly beautiful person is one whose heart fears the Lord, who wears the adornments of love, kindness, compassion, and humility as graceful garlands...the beauty of a Godly heart is the most to be desired.

"Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised."

Proverbs 31:30

Many of us know this verse by heart, but how many of us are living it?

Do we value a pure and contrite heart, or are we so focused on being popular or pretty?

"Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God"

1 Peter 3:3-4

A truly beautiful young lady is one who wears the Godly virtues of gentleness and love...

Dear reader... the Lord has made YOU BEAUTIFUL just the way you are, for HE MADE YOU!

You have been created by the Lord, who has a beautiful plan for your life...

Contentment comes when we embrace His gift to us... when we bless Him for making us who we are, because He did it for His glory. Let us strive to continue to put on the beautiful virtues treasured by the Lord, and to fear Him with all of our heart, knowing that He has made us exactly the way He has planned, for our good and His glory. The one who does this is truly is a beautiful person...

Blessings,

Dresses, a photo by Nurse Kate on Flickr.
Poppies I, a photo by cwasteson on Flickr.