“’Mature femininity’ refers not to what sin has made of womanhood or what popular opinion makes of it, but what God willed for it to be at its best.”
- John Piper and Wayne Grudem, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
I believe that these posts serve as a good arena for passing on advice without being flirtatious, so please let me go ahead and share some things that I have heard and read regarding godly womanhood. Several young men that I know are chomping at the bit to meet godly young women. Yet many of the young women that we meet, even inside churches, display little if any desire to be like Christ.
I praise God for the young women in my generation and in other generations who do know what it means to be a woman of worth and seek to put down the things of this world and pursue God. Let this be an encouragement to them and an exhortation to all women who may read this.
First, I would like to point you to the lyrics to “Work It Out”, by Shai Linne, available at his blog, Lyrical Theology.
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Eric Mason's two-part message from December 2007, The Wise Woman, is a goldmine for insight into Biblical womanhood. You can find the full sermons at Epiphany Fellowship's website. Since I have not seen them transcribed anywhere, here are some especially memorable quotes from the first message.
“Another thing that young women are learning today is ‘calling’ – small letter – at the expense of ‘Calling’ – big letter. … I believe that women are being taught about the call of God that comes subjectively through feelings, intuitions, and personal dreams – not fueled by big C [Calling]. Everybody’s saying, ‘I feel it in my spirit that the Lord wants me to…’, but never, ‘I’m looking at the Scriptures, and I’m feeling that what I’m feeling in my spirit [isn’t] what the Spirit is giving.
“God’s woman is a woman of rich depth. It says here, ‘An excellent wife, who can find?’ Adam didn’t have to ask that question. ... In Genesis, God brought an excellent woman [Rebekah] to him [Isaac]. She wasn’t a rarity, but because of the Fall, this question has to be asked now. … Sin has so pervaded our lives that there has to be an eternal search committee together to help a man to find a good woman. ….
“The first Eve wanted to create meaning for her life. So what happened was, … when the enemy came to her, and she began to lay out what God had instructed Adam, what Adam had passed on to her, the devil [said], ‘You know, He doesn’t want you to eat because He doesn’t want you to have the knowledge of good and evil. That’s how He’s saying things now? God’s a trip. … He’s a tyrant. I don’t like Him either. And [do] you know what He wants to do? He wants to hold you back. He wants to limit your freedoms. It’s a conspiracy, girl, because He wants to stop you from getting your potential, woman of God. … He’s trying to stop you from getting to the next level.’ … Eve said, ‘Amen, devil; Amen! Hallelujah!’ … The devil always wants you to focus on your restrictions: can women preach in the church? … ‘What about this? What about that?’ … So that when he has you focused on ‘whatever’, your eyes get taken off of Him. The woman of worth is a different type of woman. …
“It [the word for ‘excellent’] could be translated ‘a woman of wealth, who can find her?’. He’s not talking about pearls; He’s not talking about diamonds; He’s not talking about earrings. He’s not talking about being able to shop at Tiffany’s. He’s not talking about being able to shop at
“The woman of worth is so valuable – she’s so spiritually gorgeous – she’s so spiritually weighty that a man is hard pressed to find her. He says, ‘I’m not shallow, baby. I’m not talking about the ditzy girls. I’m not talking about a chick, baby.’ See, there’s a difference between a ‘chick’ and a woman. A ‘chick’ is just somebody in the crowd that flosses her physical physique. Fellas on the block say, ‘Aw man, look at that chick over there. I like that chick.’ But then there’s some women, that when you run across them, their essence demands an upgrade. … There is just something that oozes out of [their souls] that demands that they be approached differently. The question is today, women, is: what do you use as a barometer and as a measuring rod for whether or not you’re worth anything? …
“Because of the Lord, you can respond differently to life. See, the woman of worth is a new brand of a woman. … I hate when people say, ‘Man, that woman is a dying breed.’ That’s not good news. Ladies, the woman of worth can’t be a dying breed. There is a call on your life by God to be a woman of worth. There is a call on your life to be beefy in the faith. There is a call on your life to be a theologian – amen! There is a call on your life for your soul to be rich and dripping with what it means to be a Biblical woman, an excellent woman. Jesus has given us everything we need for righteousness and godliness, and that’s not just for men. …
“It is not because you are good in and of yourself, ladies. … It is because Jesus Christ is in your life. … What does the woman of worth value that makes her valuable? A woman of worth is valuable because she first values Jesus. And how do you know that she values Jesus? She values God’s ordained role for her. Eve in the garden didn’t know that the enemy was switching roles. … He wanted to reverse God’s order, and instead of it being God/man/woman/children/animals, he wanted to switch it for it to be devil, woman, and man. The woman of worth understands that submission does not mean a subtraction of worth, but an emphasis on worth. When you try to live outside of God’s ordained bounds or role, you’re living below your calling. Paul said in 2 Cor. 11:3, ‘For I betroth you to one husband, which is Christ. But I am afraid that, as the devil tempted Eve, you may be drawn away from the simplicity of devotion to Christ.’ … Not only that; she values the Word. …
“Not only does she value her God-ordained role, but she understands that her internal beauty increases her external beauty. There’s nothing worse than seeing a fly sister, and then she comes on the scene saying, ‘ ‘EY! ‘EY! COME HERE! … HA HA. YOU HEARD THAT!’ There’s nothing worse than [a] loud-talkin’, gum-poppin’, cigarette-smokin’, think-she’s-all-that chick. … A lot of guys like the girl that looks ‘a’ight’. She even looks ‘a’ight’, but … she’s the woman that probably nobody paid much attention to. But then in Bible study, she raises her hand and asks a question. And everybody kind of turns around and looks, … and then all the fellas are scheming about who’s going to holler at her first. … And not just that she quotes verses, even though we want verses, because sometimes some of us will throw verses out there as a fog, because some of us may like somebody and we know they like verses. But she memorizes the verses, contemplates them; and she repents of her sin. She weeps before the Lord when she has wronged somebody. She doesn’t wear her emotions on her forehead.
“Ladies, I pray today for you, that the best thing about you is your soul. I’m telling you, I don’t care how much perfume you put on. I don’t care how much lipstick. I don’t care if you use MAC makeup. You know what I’m saying? … We want you to look nice. We don’t want you going, ‘He said I could be like this. 1 Corinthians 5 says…!’ … That does have importance in Proverbs 31, but we wanted to make sure you understood the other stuff first.”
- Eric Mason, “The Wise Woman, Part 1”
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“She [your wife] must love God more than she loves you.”
- Kuya Ariel from my church.
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