proverbs31-woman.com

I hope you’ve seen my Proverbs 31 Woman presentation set to music?  I have it linked on the site here or you can see it at youtube.

I had an interesting comment placed at youtube which basically said the writer felt that the Proverbs 31 verses were not positive but saying that women were servants.

This morning I got up before my husband because I was going out on a photoshoot (my latest passion and favourite hobby) and I set about getting ready, switched on the urn for a cuppa and made myself breakfast. Once the urn heated I asked my husband would he like a coffee and then made it for him and took it into the bedroom for him.  For which he was extremely grateful and he told me so.

Doing things for my husband gives me a warm glow inside and a feeling of contentment, that all is right with the world.  It doesn’t matter what else is going on in our lives if I can do small things for him here and there and know he truly appreciates what I’ve done for him.

This is not a sign of being subservient but rather I am demonstrating love in action.

Verse 12 says: “She brings him good, not harm all the days of her life” and I like to feel that is exactly what I do for my beloved Graham.  It’s not about being a servant or being subservient ( implies the cringing manner of one very conscious of a subordinate position <domestic help was expected to be properly subservient>).

I choose to do things for my husband, loving him for who he is and it doesn’t matter if he shows his appreciation or not for the most part.    My actions are not dependent on his praise, acknowledgement, or reciprocal actions.  It’s about showing him the love I have for him, knowing that in some small way I am making his life better on a daily basis.

If anyone at all feels that a wife doing something for her husband (freely and willingly) is an act of being a servant then I would say that person has never ever experienced true love.

I’m not talking about being besotted with someone and getting in their way and hanging around them and constantly smothering them. That can get really tiresome for the person the attention is focussed on. But I am talking about really loving someone and getting real joy out of doing simple things for them.

My husband told me quite some time ago how much it means to him to come home at night and have an evening meal ready for him. He cycles to and fro work daily so by the time he gets home he is quite hungry and the text books tell him he should be fuelling up after a ride. After Graham told me that I began to take even more care with the type of meals I was preparing and deriving real joy from his genuine comments of appreciation and enjoyment of the meal I’d prepared for us both. Just that simple one statement he’d made about his appreciation for the evening meal meant so much to me and it’s something I’ll remember always. And because of his comment I get even more enjoyment out of preparing the meal for him.

What about you?  Do you know how much your husband enjoys something you do for him? Not all men express their feelings verbally but look for ways he might indicate to you of his pleasure at something you’ve done for him. And if you’re not sure – ask, or perhaps share with him something you really appreciate about him.  It may just open up conversations you haven’t had before.

This was shared on a forum I belong to and I asked permission to bring it here.

Today is my day for the devotional and I want to share something that Celiabeth said to me the other afternoon. Remember, she is our youngest grandchild and has just turned four years old. At the time of our conversation, it did not hit me as to the depth of what she said, but it has since.

I was sitting on the love seat and she squeezed between the seat and the end table. She reached out and patted me on the arm and said, “Nana, how is your kidney ‘fection?” All the time those huge brown eyes are seeking my face looking for the answer she wants to hear, which was, “Oh, Celiabeth, Nana is feeling much better and will be back to normal before too much longer.” As if we were conspiring, she leaned into to me and said, “Nana, I am going to tell you something that you probably don’t know.” She said, “I know you know who Jesus is, don’t you?” I said, “Yes, I certainly do.” She cuts her little eyes up at me and says, “Then you know He will heal you, don’t you?” I said, “Yes, I do know that.” Then, as if she were telling a universal top secret, she said, “Now, Nana, this is what I don’t think you know—–did you know that you don’t have to wait until it is dark to pray?”

They have family prayer and devotions every night before they all go to bed and that is where she got that. She laid her little hands with the chipped fingernail polish on them and prayed the sweetest prayer for me. Tears streamed down my face. She smiled and said, “See, I told you and it is not even dark!”

Now I told you this to say that, yes, those were words from a four year old, but how many times have we waited until it got ‘dark’ to pray? When things got so bad that we couldn’t fix them ourselves and we couldn’t do anything else but ask God to help us. Darkness surrounds us in many ways—family relationships, work problems, church problems, financial problems, marriage problems—–many, many ways of darkness and sometimes we wait until the darkness envelopes us and drags us down before we pray.

So, in the words of a very smart little girl….. “You may not know this, but you don’t have to wait until it gets dark to pray”.

Thank you for allowing me to share a ‘grandchild’ story.

Love, Rhonda

and faithful instruction is on her tongue Prov 31:26

It’s not always easy to know what the right thing to do or say is.

I manage a forum of over 1,000 people, mainly women, in the Virtual Assistant industry.  The forum is many years old but in recent years I’ve felt the need to bring on board some moderators for a number of reasons – some are on the other side of the world to me and they can moderate messages when I’m in bed asleep.

But there are times when we need to discuss a certain member for not behaving well on the forum or to another member who becomes demanding and insists we do things their way.

Over the past couple of years I’ve had a small number of newer members take exception to an older member and they feel I should be banning her from the list.  I’ve struggled with this particular problem and took it to my moderators for discussion – it wasn’t a decision I wanted to wrestle with on my own.

Thankfully my team of moderators are a group of wise women of varying ages and experiences and each were able to give me their perspective and thoughts on the women involved in this latest conflict. And they were able to help me see things in perspective.

When you’re in the middle of conflict and each side hold what seem to be convincing arguments it’s often hard to see the wood for the trees.  You need to be able to step back and look from both sides, and seek wise counsel.  We can’t always know the answers ourselves.

In the midst of this I had prayed to God for an answer and as if to help put the final part to the answer, this evening a lady I know from another state rang me out of the blue. She manages a network about 12 times the size of mine, but like me, it’s her business, and like me, she has problems with members from time to time. As she says ‘they are human and all have different personalities.  They need to learn to get over it or go without’.

I didn’t know Lyn was going to call me and I had not contacted her about my problem.  I had responded to a newsletter she’d sent out several days ago and it was tonight she chose to ring me and encourage me and just have a chat.  She’d been away interstate and hadn’t seen my email of encouragement to her until this evening.

Isn’t God good? He provided a woman with 12 times the ‘talent’ that I have (see Matthew 25:14-30) to call me on the very day I’d been struggling with a problem, providing just the answer by a woman who could speak wisdom and faithful instruction into my life. Thank you Father!

Proverbs 31:26, faithful instruction, speak with wisdom, Proverbs 31 Woman

Proverbs 31:20
She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy.

There’s a man I see shuffling along in the local shopping strip almost every day. He walks with head bowed and usually has a bunch of books and a bible under his arm.  He rarely looks up at anyone.

Many months ago I felt God leading me to pray for this man and so every time I drove past or walked past I did just that, asking God to bless him.

One day I saw him in a full suit on a very hot summer’s day, sitting on the pavement with his back to the fence of the house he was outside of, and he was reading. I got out of the car to see if he was ok and noticed for the first time his bible and struck up a conversation. I found out his name is Roger (I’d nicknamed him Mr Klump as that is how he walks) and that he went to a local church. He lived not far by but was happy where he was reading and writing and thanked me for my concern.

Over the months I’ve made sure I say hello to him and I see his face light up and he smiles, showing his blackened misshapen teeth.  I feel sorry for him as I’m sure he is lonely and I’ve never seen anyone else with him or talking to him.

Sometimes I just pass him by as he’s hard of hearing and if he doesn’t hear me the second or third time I call out I feel a bit silly as I know others are walking in the street also and can hear me clearly.

Today I walked past him as he sat on a park bench in the new plaza strip between the shops and asked God to bless him.  I continued to walk and began to feel convicted. I turned around but he’d not noticed me and so I continued to walk and pray for him.  Again I asked God to bless him and then I got the response ‘you bless him’.  I kept walking and began to feel guilty. I turned around and Roger still had his head down writing.

So I turned back and walked up to him as he got up to move away and felt I better hurry or I’ll miss my chance.  But he was only moving to a seat in the sun to get more warmth and then sat back down again. He looked up as he heard my voice (I made sure I spoke louder than normal) and he smiled when he saw me and settled back in his seat.

We had a short conversation and I asked how he was, and how were things at church. And then it occurred to me Christmas is not far away and I wonder if he’s going to be alone this year?

I’m not really in the mood for more company this Christmas – we usually invite loners to join us each year but this will be the first year without our beloved daughter Miriam and I don’t know how the family is going to be on that day.  Will I need to ask him to join us at a time when we will be in sorrow?

But I still asked him if he had someone to spend Christmas with and he didn’t hear properly so I asked again, louder this time, wondering what on earth I was doing.

He looked up at me and said he was planning to see his sisters.  I said ‘that’s good’.  Then he thanked me for asking and I told him he was welcome and said goodbye.

I walked away and then suddenly realised he’d thanked me for asking, for taking an interest.  How many do that? Thank you for taking an interest in their lives?  I couldn’t help wonder just how many people take an interest in Roger and continued to pray for him as I moved away towards my car again.

Do you have a Roger in your life and is he waiting for someone to take an interest?

Opening our arms and extending our hands to the needy should also mean turning our hearts and minds to these people, the lonely because they truly are needy – of company, of friendship and of love.  Make sure you extend yourself this Christmas.

Hi everyone, thank you for visiting this blog.  I’m so sorry I haven’t updated here for awhile. Some of you who read my other blogs will know what’s been happening in my life but for those of you don’t, we sadly lost a daughter at the end of September and life has been very hard.  I know that God is with us but it’s so hard to remain joyful and thankful when inside you are hurting and asking lots of questions as to why?  Maybe God will let us know that in the future but perhaps we’ll never know until we meet him face-to-face.

So family life has changed and we are still adjusting to those changes.

But with the other things in my life it’s almost like nothing has happened – how can the world continue on when we’ve had such a devastating event in our lives?  It’s a really strange paradigm to be in and those of you who have lost close family members will understand what I mean I’m sure.

I have been putting together another book this year called “It Happened By Design” and it’s a series of God-incidences from a number of contributing authors. Had I been the only author I would have held off till the new year to publish it but because I’d promised the other authors to get this out before Christmas I still went ahead with it, although it was delayed for a few weeks.  I know they all understood and were patient with me.

The new book is now available online to order in Australia or at Amazon.com and there is a book launch on Monday 1st December for the Amazon.com promotion.  Why not pop over to that site to check it out?