when you look at the description of the proverbs 31 woman you may not realize
that it's actually a composite of various ideas about what it means to be a virtuous
woman what it means to be an accomplished woman what it means to be a gifted woman
and so there's all these different aspects of womanhood represented in this passage
of scripture and if you're not careful you will begin to think that you don't measure
up and i think there's one very particular area of this passage of scripture that
gets a lot of conversation and i want to focus on it just for a moment as we talk about the context
of being a modern day woman and it's it's verse 16 and it says she considers a field and buys it
out of her earnings she plants a vineyard now i don't know if you've noticed but there has been
a boom in what i would call the side hustle industry i mean everybody has a side hustle
of some sort and you know i think part of the reason why so many people have these side hustles
is because there's this idea that you know a nine to five isn't enough or my volunteer service isn't
enough or being a stay-at-home mom isn't enough i have to do something else in order to measure up
economically and i can tell you from personal experience that this has been a struggle of
mine and it's funny because i've been in executive roles since i was 23 years old like i've i've been
in very high powered roles for a very long time and at the same time i've also felt the need
to have companies i felt the need to have organizations um over the last year as a matter
of fact since being home with the pandemic i had launched a podcast and i was doing
a talk show and i had all this stuff going on but when i took a moment to actually pause
and reflect on the fact that i was overwhelmed i was overstressed and i just didn't feel good
what i realized was i was trying to live up to something that just wasn't real and that is the
idea that you can be it all and you can have it all and you can do it all and you'll be happy
and you'll take perfect pictures with your family and everyone's going to be smiling and
because we have this kind of fictionalized idea of perfection that really is just the result of
filters and photo editing if we're honest i think many of us have felt that we
are not the so-called modern-day woman you know maybe the extent of our work outside of the home
is taking meals to sick and shut-in members of our church maybe the extent of our education
is that we got a ged we're not a college graduate we don't have advanced degrees and because of that
we feel like we again don't measure up and i think that this can be a very dangerous
mental model that can seep into our spirit and can again make us view god as someone who is punishing
us and who is looking down on us and we feel like we have to perform we have to buy more and wear
these expensive things in order to matter and so what i'm taking out of proverbs 31 in particular
verse 16 is that if that is you if you are the entrepreneur and the businesswoman that's amazing
and yet if that is not you that's still okay because the very next verse says she sets about
her work vigorously her arms are strong for her tasks the question i want to pose to this
group is first of all have you ever found yourself taking on tasks that you eventually realized
weren't yours because your arms weren't strong for them and how were you able to get back to a place
where you were authentically the woman that god created you to be
without looking to external sources of affirmation nah that's not me
oh goodness i've spent enough money to buy a fleet of porsches on christian counseling
because of this very issue because i i didn't fit in the box that i thought was god's box
you know i didn't marry in my 20s i didn't there were just so many things about my life
that i thought didn't fit either what the world said said was good or even what church said was
good i always felt like a bit of an outlier and it took a really really really long time to go
oh my goodness he set my boundary lines in pleasant places and he has already carved out the
path that he's called me to walk and but it took a really really long time because i was addicted
to the applause of others i needed people to say atta girl good job and yet it it did never stick
you know my heart was kind of a colander and all that would just leak through because like you said
earlier no no you said if we attach our security to other people's approval we're going to be
insecure because people's praise and approval ebb and flow goodness gracious just look at social
media you know somebody's being canceled today who was heralded yesterday we we live in a very
fickle world if you're if your identity is not attached to the unconditional love of jesus christ
we will all be spinning around like hamsters on a wheel trying to please somebody or match
some standard and so i mean i think we could ponder this question that's a profound question
it all comes back to the profound simplicity of the gospel he loves us he sees us he loves us
he's for us his love is unconditional it's not about our deservedness or lack thereof
and god's presence is immutable it doesn't wax and wane depending on our our character
our circumstances and i'm still learning that but um but that that's where my hope is
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