How do you see yourself or better yet how do you define yourself? Man or woman, young or old, conservative or liberal what is it that defines who you are?
I ask this because the bible informs us that how we think detriments our reality and we have created some realities that we may not like and in order to fix them we need a new way of looking at life, we need to renew our mind.
No, I am not going down some new age path here, but rather I think that is time for Christians to stop making excuses for what we believe and to stand up for a way of life that is superior to destructive lifestyles advanced by the godless who demand we do it their way, even though their way is stupid.
As I preached my Mother’s Day sermon yesterday it dawned on me that we are uncomfortable with the Proverbs 31 woman or the biblical standards of marriage and the roles of men and woman as defined by God but why?
When we declare what is right and good to be what we want to have, we define ourselves. The Proverbs 31 woman is an ideal that we should desire. The goal of the ideal is a woman of valor who fiercely fights for success in her household for her husband and her children who are honored and Godly and in turn they praise her because she held the standard and fought for them.
That sounds pretty awesome to me and maybe we should stop being ashamed of wanting the good life that comes from biblical standards. We often don’t include the nine verses that come before verse 10 where King Lemuel gets advise from his mom to not be a drunkard or give himself to women before telling him that he needs the kind of woman that will make him great.
As believers in Jesus Christ we should not hope to live like the world does but to become something better. Men and women who aim for an ideal in our relationship, our parenting, our everyday lives but we need to set the standard that we would like to attain and that comes from the Lord.
Let be honest here, I fail often to be the kind of person the Lord calls me to be but that does not mean I lower my standard or that I stop trying to be the man that He calls me to become. Maybe you are like me, you have failed at being a good husband or a good wife maybe your marriage failed altogether. Maybe you weren’t the best mom or the best dad, I’m sorry that you fell short.
But here’s the thing, you claim to be a believer in Jesus Christ, you told others and you now have the name and that means something, doesn’t it? Jesus was not ashamed to save you and adopt you into the family, right?
Now it is time to be defined by the name you have claimed, Christian. You now identify with Jesus as His follower and student and it is time to make that count for your family and your community. Start defining yourself by the word of God and be a man of God or a woman of God and live up to the standard.
You will still fall from time to time and you will still doubt that you measure up but that doesn’t mean quitting, it means trying again because that is what this family does we are not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus, we are forgiven and we live well for Him.
