A Virtuous Woman (Day 2)

"I would say my wife is very much a servant. I’m indebted to her for her loyalty.

You help balance me out. You help me see things that I wouldn’t notice on my own.

In fact, when we were engaged I thought, “This is the kind of woman I want to marry.”

She’s gone above and beyond to build into our relationship.

I love to hear her sing songs with our kids."

There’s a sense in which the woman we just read about is a composite portrait of ideal womanhood. And yet, there’s another sense in which I believe she can actually be a real woman. If this woman is a real woman, if King Lemuel’s mother was describing a woman she actually knew, you can be sure of several things about this woman. Now these aren’t things you read about in the text.

There are things she wishes were different about her husband. He has weaknesses, and she does too. She has struggles in her marriage. Sometimes she and her husband can’t communicate with each other. Sometimes he doesn’t communicate at all, and sometimes he has no idea what she is trying to communicate.

They obviously, if you read this passage, deal with the problem of busyness. When do they connect with each other? They have differences; they are incompatible. I can tell you something else about this woman for sure. Sometimes she feels unappreciated for all her efforts, and there are times when she is tempted to envy women who are in a different season of life.

This Proverbs 31 woman—I can tell you something else—she probably sometimes feels like a real failure. Others can see and appreciate things about her that she can’t see in herself. I can tell you that sometimes this woman feels like giving up. She’s not just this perfect thing that we construct that just comes off the pages of Scripture and has no reality to her. She deals with the same issues that we do.

She has spiritual dry times, times when it seems that God is very far away from her. She’s a woman who does have virtuous character, and she does have an intimate relationship with God and her husband. But I can tell you this—she didn’t get there overnight, and she hasn’t yet arrived.

She’s a woman in process. She’s a woman who’s growing. And she’s a woman who, like most of us, often finds herself taking three steps forward and two steps back. You see, spiritual maturity is not so much where you are as the direction in which you’re headed. And here’s a woman who’s in process; she’s in direction.

So being a virtuous woman doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have the same struggles and challenges that we all have as women.

Now, I want to make two statements that I’m going to repeat probably many times throughout this series because I want this to get into the fiber of your thinking. Here are the two statements. First of all, no woman can be like the woman that we read about in Proverbs 31. On your own, you cannot be; on my own, I cannot be like this woman.

Anything we do try to do on our own in our striving and efforts is not pleasing or acceptable to God. The only way we can ever please God is through the righteousness of Christ, through His excellency. He’s the only One who has ever measured up to God’s standard of holiness. So here’s the first statement: No woman can be like this woman on her own.

But here’s another statement that sounds like the opposite, and it’s just as true. Any woman who is a child of God can be like this woman. Any woman who is a child of God can be like this woman because Jesus lives in us, and He’s the One who fulfills the righteousness of God. So as we’re filled with the Holy Spirit, you and I can be a virtuous and excellent woman.

I’ll say it again. You cannot become that woman on your own. Apart from Christ, you can never be virtuous or excellent. But through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, the gospel of Christ, we are able to be transformed one day at a time, one experience at a time, one step at a time into the likeness of Christ.

And the day is coming when I’m going to be like this woman, and you are too. So be encouraged. Put the next foot down. Take the next step and let God make you, make us, into this kind of woman.

Jesus, You make things so simple. It's like You do all the work if we're willing to let You. You take the pressure off and don't yell at us for falling short. Jesus, please move with me and enable me to be the wife You've called me to be.