Month 8 was womanistry month. I lived in a teeny tiny house with ten girls in Swaziland for the month of February. One of my favorite things we did as a house was our “We are women of” wall. The wall in our Swazi home that displayed this master list of what a woman of God should be. Traits we want for ourself, and things God says we are. It was this beautiful picture to me of a community of women that were united in wanting the same things. A group of women with a strong desire to live out a life that is pleasing to God. Everyday I passed these words on the wall that were supposed to serve as an encouragement. And for a while they did, until the list got longer and longer and I started to feel overwhelmed by who I was supposed to be. I want to be this amazing woman of God, everything written out on that wall, generous, confident, bold, honest, courageous, hardworking, disciplined, loving, committed, devoted, elegant, selfless. So these things began to weigh heavy on my heart and instead of walking in these ways, I felt overtaken by what I was not. It seemed to me such a daunting task to strive for this “perfect Christian woman”.
It’s not society’s “perfection” that haunts me anymore, it’s the expectation of the righteous Biblical woman of God, the Proverbs 31 wife of Noble character that I am afraid I won’t ever live up to. The problem is not that I don’t know the kind of woman I am supposed to be. I have a million resources telling me how courageous, and faithful women in the Bible were. I have women I look up to and see as Godly women, wives, and mothers, great examples of what it is to be in love with Jesus and choose Him everyday. Living their lives as a complete reflection of their journey with him over the years.
So my question is this…
How can we stop seeing these things as perfections we will never reach and actually start living them out? How do I turn this into a reality, a way of life?
Because these things are all good things. All things The Lord calls us to be. All things we should desire as God’s daughters. How can we become the woman that responds with grace and forgiveness to someone who breaks her heart, or the mother that responds with courage and is faithful in prayer when her child steps away from The Lord?
How can I be this strong Christian woman but not lose myself at the same time, my feelings, my desires, my personality, the things that make me, me?
So this is what I’ve come up with… Not the what, but the how to become a woman of God.
1. Shake it off!
I’m talking about shame. Guilt and shame from past mistakes. Conviction is one thing but there is no room for condemnation in Christ.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians? ?5?:?17-19? ESV)
We have to give God permission to come in and strip away our old selves, to take us through that transformation that 2 corinthians 3:18 talks about. The Lord is faithful and he will gift and train us even in the midst of our weakness, so that His power is displayed. And often our deepest hurts that we are shaking off will be the things that we can use to help other people understand who Christ is. It is the second half of the gospel of salvation, the part we often forget. Yes, Jesus died to pardon our sin, but now we are a new creation in Him. In Philippians, it talks about forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. We are pressing on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
2. Pursue Righteousness and Don’t stop!
1 Timothy lays out exactly what someone needs to do to be a man or woman of God. And here I’ve been wondering all this time and it’s spelled out for me. It says “But you man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”
It’s a lot to take in. And these things don’t just happen overnight.
We get there through a sometimes painful process of discipline. But Hebrews tells us that this discipline produces a harvest of righteousness and peace. This is the part where we get to “do”. We get to actually exercise what we are fed in church. What we listen to on podcasts, and read in books. The chance to actually choose to put off our greed, our sexual immorality, our foolish talk, our bitterness and anger, to live as wise and not unwise. This is the part where we actually choose in that very moment to have grace and confidence, discipline, generosity, love, integrity, patience, self control, honesty, all out of the grace and strength we receive from The Lord.
“For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (?1 John? ?5?:?3-5? ESV)
And last but not least…
3. Community!
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one “John? ?17?:?20-22? ESV)
Jesus never wanted us to be alone. This was God’s design for his followers, to be in community and fellowship with one another. So we must ask the question, who are we discipling? And who is discipling us? Who are we intentionally encouraging and challenging to walk in the way The Lord tells us. Who are we allowing to speak into our lives? To hold us accountable? To try to do this on our own is setting ourselves up for failure and we would be missing out on what God wants for us.
“so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (?Ephesians? ?4?:?14-16? ESV)
During debrief last month my coach Cyd asked my team, what’s one thing we wished someone had told us about the race before we came. I’ve really been thinking about this question. I really wish someone had told me that the World Race was not a magical machine you hopped into and 11 months later you pop out with all the answers. It is a process, it’s a sharpening by The Lord, pruning away at things in my life, and highlighting areas I need to work on. It’s a choice on my part to choose to pursue righteousness, to fight for who I want to be in Christ, and daily fall into his gracious arms. Becoming a woman of God won’t happen just going to church on Sundays or reading your Bible alone, but when you understand who you are in Christ, when you minister and know the word, and you are connected to believers and then God produces it.
