Week 3 Lesson (April 17th, 2015)

Good Morning! Kicking off a nice Prom weekend with some worship and studying of God's word! Thanks for keeping up and reading/praying with us this week. 

So let's think about this.... 

Who is your role model? Why? 

Ok, so now let's name a few people that we (average women) in the United States would consider 'role models.' How about Blake Lively? Ultimate beauty supermodel actress mom married to non other than the Ryan Reynolds (#relationshipgoals). Oprah? (Cough cough Lisa 😂) (#moneygoals) or what about the latest celebrity on the cover of The Cosmopolitan? (#bodygoals) 

Nothing against these people but can we be honest for a second and say sometimes we look up to the wrong people and set wrong ideals? Can we put it straight and say most of the time we have this image of #lifegoals to meet that are impossible and more than that; most likely out of the realm of who God says we should be. 

Let's take a look at some of our theme verses is Proverbs and see what God laid out for our #lifegoals. 

So Solomon is the son of David, King of Israel at the time, and he is writing all these helpful hints of wisdom and instruction, justice, knowledge, and direction to the young, etc and ends this book with the "Epilogue: The Wife of Nobel Character." 

Proverbs 31:10 

He begins this with a question I love because it challenges my spiritual walk,

"Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies." 

Ok so wow. Virtuous = having or showing high moral standard. Big slap in the face to all women of this time period. Can we conclude not many women were acting very classy? But what is even classy anymore? See the parallel to today's women here? We can see being virtuous was rare then and we can pretty much say it is rare now. 

 Women of every century know the struggle to have, hold, and maintain a high standard. Sounds a little cliche but seriously, the world is against you on this. So can we accept the challenge posed in this rhetorical question Solomon wrote? Where are the virtuous women? We studied in week 1 how we will fail and fail miserably because we are not perfect, but we also said despite our failure, we still need to strive toward our Godly goals; strive toward being the virtuous woman God wants us to be. 

Next Verse (11),

"Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value." NIV

"The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil." KJV

 

First characteristic, He TRUSTS her. He doesn't have to bribe her with things so she will love him. She loves him so he believes her. 

Next few talk about her work ethic, and effort (11-24). She goes 110%. She works hard (13-15), she's smart with money and investments (16), she continues to let her light shine (17-18), she produces quality (19), she gives to the needy (20), she's not scared because she is prepared (21), and she makes money (24).

Now my favorite verse (25),

"She is clothed in strength and dignity; she laughs at the days to come." NIV

"Strength and Honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come." KJV

(26-29) She speaks with wisdom watches over the affairs of her household. Her children respect her and her husband praises her. 

Last two verses (30-31)

"Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates." 

Proverbs is beautifully written and lays out such a good picture of a noble or virtuous woman. 

So can we step up and be those precious rubies? Can we accept Solomon's question as a challenge be different and hold up that moral standard? 

As for me, challenge accepted. Who's with me?

Goals: Accept the challenge to be a Proverbs 31 woman!

Be conscious of others and recognize needs of those around you.

Week 2 Lesson (March 29, 2015)

This week we met at Crystal and Courtney's house due to cold weather. We had a wonderful time discussing God's Word and learning about how to further pursue a relationship with God. 

The next study will be after spring break festivities are over. We are planning to meet at Grinds and Glazes on April 17th @ 7:00am! 

LESSON 2:

Sometimes we fail in life and this can get us down because we do not think we are worthy enough to keep going and doing things in God's name. Within scripture we find that this is a normal feeling but at the same time a false thinking. The cliche holds true that their is a light at the end of ALL tunnels. 

Just like after a hard Winter we always know their will be a beautiful Spring, this is also true to our lives. When we are going through something hard we know that God is going to make something beautiful out of it. We should be in constant prayer for the hard times that we are currently having as well as the upcoming hard times that we know we will have. 

Before Jesus was crucified He faced many challenges and temptations just like we face day to day. He overcame these hard times as well as ignored the temptations. This is a very important part of Jesus' life. We all know that it is easier to talk to someone who has been through something that we are experiencing. By knowing that Jesus has been through some of the things we have experienced then it is easier to come to him with our problems.

As we surrender out lives everyday to God, or die to self daily we can further pursue that intimate relationship with God. I have found that the more I draw closer to God He reveals His purpose for my life. For some of us young women now is the time to make important decisions about life and we stress about making the perfect decision. If we give it all to Him and trust Him then those decisions will become a little easier and a little clearer for us to see the right path to take. 

We stress about the perfect college or the perfect job to pursue. We are thinking about how will we be able to use our talents and gifts within our job to glorify God. Once we find that and realize that we can not do it all but every little piece is a contribution to the whole. We are the hands and feet of Christ. I may be the hand but my friend might be the foot. We are all helping the church as a whole function no matter what we are doing for God. 

Isaiah 6:5-8: 

5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

Even when we feel like we are not good enough we are "ruined", God has "taken our guilt away and our sins are atoned for". He has called us all and we all have a purpose. 

So, if we want to pursue a relationship with God or strengthen our relationship with God there are some things we can focus on. We need to understand that it is a growth process. It does not happen over night, and not everyone is at the same step that we are at. We can focus on reading God's Word and read about people who have talked about the how they pursued a relationship with God. Isn't that what the Bible is? We can live a life that reflects God daily through our choices, actions, and speech. Also we can die to self daily which is from Matthew 16:24-28. We want to be a Sunday through Sunday Christian not a Sunday and Wednesday Christian. 

Sarah's patience and faith. 

-Genesis 12-

We looked at her life and how she had patience. She had faith that God would stay true to His words about His plan for her life. We can relate this to our life and how God will continue His plan for our lives if we first seek Him and live each day wanting our lives to reflect Him. 

Our Goals for this week:

**Fervently seek God's plan for our lives 

**"Deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him" EVERYDAY 

Week 1 Lesson (March 21, 2015)

Welcome! So this week we really are kicking off a God vision into a reality! So excited and ready to start!

Our main goals are in the About Us tab. We went over those to get an idea of what we want out of studying.

Two theme versus for the next few weeks are...

Proverbs 31:10
"Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies"

Proverbs 31:25
"She is clothed in Strength and Dignity and rejoices without fear of the future"

So basically this quote has ran through my mind
"Those who aim at nothing, hit their target every time."
In saying that, each week after a lesson we have a poster that we are writing goals on (also under the goals tab).

I feel our generation can sometimes get lost in the 'worldly view' of a woman instead of the Godly view. By writing goals, we set challenges to meet in our daily walk!

So let's begin!

Read Luke 7:36-50

Awesome story right? So let's recap..
      Jesus is about to have a meal with one of the Pharisees, Simon. They've just sat down when a woman "from the city" brings a box of ointment to Jesus' feet and begins to wash them with her tears, annoint his feet, and worship Christ. Simon's sitting there thinking to himself how unworthy she is and questioning why God is letting a sinful woman touch him. God, in his awesome way, reads Simon's mind and tells the parable of the two debtors. The story goes... One man owes 500 pence (imagine $500) and the other man owes 50 pence ($50). When they both can't pay the master forgives them both.... So Jesus asks Simon, "which of them will love him the most?" And Simon says well "the one whom he forgave the most." Jesus then goes on to tell Simon how she (unnamed sinful woman) has many sins forgiven so she loves him much and Jesus forgives her of all of her sins because of her faith.

Let's  talk about it.

So in the beginning what attitude does Simon have toward this woman? He judges her really hard. We live in small town USA and we all are well aware there are no secrets in Blairsville. How quick are we to judge someone by their past mistakes and think they aren't worthy to  worship Christ? Jesus really nips that in the bud as soon as Simon even thinks that she shouldn't worship him because she is sinful.  I'll admit I've judged someone based on their past  and sometimes we can even feel that way about ourselves; that we aren't good enough to worship or that we are to sinful for Jesus to love us. Listen,  I think it's safe to say Jesus Christ knows we fail and will fail inevitably in our life but should this stop us from worshiping Christ?? Of course not. Jesus loves us despite our failures. If church, worship, and prayer were meant for the perfect sinless people, no one could attend church, no one could worship, and no one could pray.

So does this mean we can do whatever we want because Jesus forgives? Definitely not. But it does mean God wants our praise through the good, the bad, and the ugly. Despite the woman's sin, Jesus delighted in her worship.

No matter if you have sinned 500 or 50 times, God loves you. His mercy and his sacrifice took it all away.

Psalms 55:22 says "Cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved."

Sometimes our relationship with God is like getting our eye brows waxed. Wait what? Yes it can be like waxing your eye brows. Bear with me this made for good discussion believe me. Haha.

So God may tell us  our eye brows (or lives) are getting a little bushy or wild. So we decide it's time to get rid of the unruly part and shape up a little (see what I did there). Girls know, they put the wax on at first it seems kinda relaxing and easy. No big deal right? Then it gets a little uncomfortable then.... Whiicccck... the lady (God) takes it away. This may hurt, makes you tear up a little BUT sometimes we go through a little pain because we know God's got a plan to help us look (spiritually) even better. Are you still with me? And who knows it might not be that easy, sometimes it takes a while and we have to pluck each little thing (oh yes the analogy continues) but it's all good in the end long run to look beautiful (inside and out).

This week we set 2 goals in order to remember our lesson and strive to be more Christ like.
 1. Accept we will fail, but humbles ourselves to worship God anyway because he loves us despite our sins.
 2. Instead of judging like Simon, try to accept, forgive, and love like Jesus.

**Next week we will meet on Sunday 5:00pm at Meeks Park at the lower Pavilion!

Welcome!

I want to invite you all to join me in studying God's word and strive with me to be a Proverbs 31 lady. Without a doubt, I have tried and failed many times in my life trying to do the right thing. It is impossible to live a perfect life; however, it is a goal to strengthen my relationship with Christ, learn from my past mistakes, and continue to be more Christ-like in my daily walk.

I want to begin with studying women of the bible, their faith and walk with Christ and how we can apply that to our walk with Christ today, and study, of course, Proverbs 31. We can meet every other week or once a month depending on everyone's schedule.

So far, I have planned to meet on Saturdays  9:30am at G & G Cafe in town in their room off to the right. I would be honored for you to join me and study God's word. 

Lets plan the first meeting for Saturday, March 21st @ 9:30am. Come early to pick up coffee and donuts/pastries and if anything changes I'll be sure to let you know! What can be better than starting the weekend with coffee and Jesus? Spread the word!

Thanks, 

Crystal