Developing a Love for Birthing Pains

I love labour.

Some of you women right away will say "she's crazy!" I've heard it so many times. I've had looks of wonder and disbelief when I tell people I love labour days. For me it's a day of pampering from my family, awesome food and in the end I get to lounge in bed for at least a day. Doesn't every woman want to be pampered like she's the most important person in the world? Or eat whatever she wants? Or get to lie in bed for hours without interruption being served breakfast lunch and dinner in bed?

Those are all sweet things but they are not actually the true highlight of labour and delivery for me. What I love most about it all is the excruciating pain brought about  bringing new life into this world.

"okay now she really is crazy".....keep reading.

In the beginning God created everything and it was good. In summary. And then the people God made, who represent all of humanity, who act as every one of our representatives, broke a promise they made to their maker ("no we will not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil") and as any good father would do, he gave them the discipline they needed. He told man he would toil in his work and he told woman her pain in child bearing would increase greatly. So what? I love the curse? No. I love the promise. Mankind is cursed until the day when we are reunited with God in heaven. How is the curse broken? Through the sacrifice of Jesus. Who took our place on the cross, sent our sins to their father in Hell, was raised from the dead, perfect and blameless and stands before our father in heaven just for us so that we may stand before God in the same way. Perfect and blameless in his sight.

Romans 6:3-11 says that we died on the cross with Jesus:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

We toil through pregnancy and sometimes we get to the end and wish it to be over and done with; we are so tired of being tired. and then labour hits. It comes out of nowhere. We women know that we are pushed to the point where we don't know how we are going to make it through the next contraction. How could this pain get any worse. And then it does. And it gets even worse and still gets even worse before it's over. And then all at once, with one final push of exasperation your body is limp, you lie back, close your eyes and hear the cry of the new life you were waiting for. Nothing matters anymore. You have received the prize. 

Here is the beautiful parallel that I get teary eyed thinking about. I have been tired of sin. Have you? Thinking I'm so tired of making the same mistake over and over again? Just like our tiredness by the end of pregnancy. Then comes labour itself. The sacrifice. JESUS.  Without a sacrifice, we can not stand before God our Father. He can't dwell with sin. Labour is like what life would be like without God. Hopeless. Painful. Longing for it to be over but it still gets worse. No end in sight. Despair. Only it doesn't end. And finally after a life of struggling through sin and being separated from God we receive his salvation. Just like when our baby is finally here. Nothing else matters except the new life God has given us. 

It's a small picture. But I am grateful for the examples God gives us of his salvation through worldly experience. I can't wait to experience salvation to God's degree. What about you?

Gossip in God's Name

"Please pray for my husband...he is so insensitive and does not nurture the children the way he should. When they cry he just lets them be bla bla bla bla"

"Please pray for my husband....He is so stubborn. There are many things he just wont listen to me about. He doesn't agree with me about ____he doesn't think _____is right bla bla bla bla"

"Please pray for my husband....He doesn't care for the body God gave him and he's gaining weight, he's unhealthy, he eats junk food, he bla bla bla bla bla."

"Please pray for my husband....we had an argument. It was about _______[explains the argument in detail]"

"Please pray for my husband...he wants me to give up my Independence and stay home with the kids. He doesn't think I should be working and I believe God wants me to be _____"

"Please pray for my husband....He doesn't help me around the house with chores. I'm stuck doing everything and it seems like he has no care for me bla bla bla bla"

and this list goes on

and on

and

on

and

on

How many times have we been at a ladies bible study or group, time for prayer requests come along and we hear prayer requests for their husbands? Maybe we have even been the ones offering prayer requests for our own husbands. This isn't bad is it? Prayer for our husbands is absolutely always in order however discernment for the things we ask for in prayer with groups should be considered before we go sharing our deepest feelings about who is supposed to be our deepest love on earth.

I can't tell you what the line is between what to ask and what not to ask in prayer but I can tell you, considering a couple of things before you bring a request before others is probably a good idea. Over the course of womanhood, I have grown a tainted view toward certain men solely because of how a woman brought up a prayer request. It degrades their husbands to the point where they are thought of as rude, mean, selfish etc, all because a woman had a lack of respect OR that couple had an argument on that particular day and needed to vent. This is gossip. It is also using the Lords name in vain. When we spread around gossip in the name of prayer that is really in the name of God. It is sinful.

Consider these things before you share your most raw moments with others. First of all, spend some time with God and ask him these questions as well as yourself.
1. Is what you are saying going to tear your husband down?
2. Is what you are asking honouring to God and to your husband?
3. Is what your asking something that truly should be changed from your husbands end?
4. Consider how you can make a change that will help the situation
5. Is it really a request that everyone needs to hear about or do you just want the attention of people feeling sorry for your circumstance? (you may not be consciously seeking attention but God may reveal this to you if you ask.)

Using the examples from the beginning, here are some honouring ways of offering a prayer request that might be appropriate

"Please pray that my husband and I would nurture the children the way they need in life that they will not depart from the Lord like the Bible says in Proverbs."

"My husband and I have had a lot of disagreements lately. Whether I'm right or wrong, I just wand to know what God's perspective is and do what is right and honour my husband."

"I want to make sure my family is eating healthy. Please pray that I would be able to make good decisions when doing groceries and cooking."

Never tell a group about a specific argument in detail. It has no benefit.

"I'm struggling whether I should stay at home and not work. Please pray for my study in scripture about this and conversations that are to come with my husband."

"I'm feeling overworked and stressed with all the house work. Please pray that I can organize better and overlook things that seem to bother me when they done get done."

Often what happens when we make a change as women, is our husband see the change and they want to change for the better also. When we respect our husbands the way we are supposed to, they start loving on us the way they are supposed to. This is the biblical model God has set out for us. Eph 5 says it beautifully.

All women should have another older wiser woman that she can share her frustrations with. Someone who is not going to change their perspective on your husband no matter what they say. Someone that if you told "I'm so frustrated that my husband doesn't_______________" will respond with "Well, what can you do about this situation from your end?" rather than "Yeah well, your husband needs to learn to ______________".  Too often the second is the advice when we share these requests in pride. What does this do? Well, bitterness toward our husbands step in and begins to fester and the more we hear advice like this the more we dislike our husbands. I've been there. There was a time when I did not love my husband anymore and it was almost done...I did not surround myself with women who would still look well on my husband no matter what his shortcomings were.



One note of caution on the contrary: When we don't talk to anyone about our husbands shortcomings it can create a lonely place and lies become your reality. I've spent almost the last 2 years not telling anyone of my frustrations and hurts at home. It's just been me, trying to deal with pain and not allowing God to help me heal. I've been moving back and forth to and from Oregon trying to hold onto mentors in both places but because of all the moving there wasn't really a constant.  It wasn't until a couple of months ago that I gained enough trust in my mentor here in Canada that I was able to get some of these things off my chest. Did her perspective of my husband change? No. She still sees him as a strong man even though she knows of some of his short comings. So don't keep everything in ladies. It's important to talk about your struggles in an honouring way but it's not a group event.

Good Grief!

I remember hearing this saying often when I was a child. I'm not sure from where; maybe my mother, maybe t.v. I don't know but what truth is in this statement! Jesus tells us the truth in this statement in Matthew 5:4 Blessed are those who mourn.

Now if you've been reading my blog you'll notice I'm mentioned the sermon on the mount a couple of times now. I want you to know that I don't only read the sermon on the mount. I love it all. I like referring to the sermon because it is so incredibly black and white, clean cut, clear to read, strait to the point, and right from the mouth of our Saviour while he was here on earth. The whole bible is strait from his mouth mind you (John 1:1) but this part is spoken to us by God the son; man, human being; to us, people, human beings.

Back to my post; Blessed are those who mourn. What a contradictory statement. How can we be blessed in a time of mourning? How can we feel hope and freedom and grace and everything else that comes through the death of Christ when we lose someone we love? How do we loose a child or parent or sister or friend and say to ourselves "Well, God says I'm blessed so this is good." What a hard thing to even consider thinking about.

What if we lead lives that were great, all around. We had good jobs, we didn't loose anyone in our lives except perhaps through old age, you never experience tragedy, you've never been hurt to the inner most part of you, you have a great marriage because you and your spouse agree on everything, you have a nanny for your children so you don't even need to teach or train them and by the time you see them in the evenings they've been prepped to be obedient pleasant little children, you go on holidays, you have a disposable income for special times etc...Would you have lead the ideal life? Not really.

When our 3rd daughter, Ellie, died we were in total mourning. There were months of time off work, months of no cooking as our church, family and friends provided it to us, months of just stopped life. In the moment would I have traded that pain for anything? YES. Now would I? Absolutely not. If we hadn't gone through that raw state of grief we wouldn't know just how great great is. Everything would be on level ground. Happy would feel almost the same as sad. There was no concept of the plain of difference between the two. We would live in a state of grey instead of black and white.

In Romans 5:20 we read that the law in the old testament was put into place so that sin would increase. So that there was a line between black and white. So that when you did wrong you'd know damn well what you did was wrong. But the verse doesn't stop there. We know as Christians that we have died to sin. We have risen again through Christ. Sin's chains no longer hold us down no matter how much it feels that way sometimes. Christ came to break those chains apart. We don't live in the black anymore, we live in the white. The white is grace. Here's the second half of Romans 5:20: But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. Here's the white. We live in God's grace. The black is there so that the white will abound even more than we could have imagined if there had been no black at all. Verse 21 says: So that as sin reigned in death (BLACK) grace might also reign through righteousness leading to [WHITE:] ETERNAL LIFE :) :) :) through Jesus Christ our Lord. We know good more because of bad. We know happiness more because of sadness, we know joy more because of grief, we know perseverance more because of trials in our live.

Jesus says Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted because you will know a comfort and happiness far surpassing all understanding if you go through hard times such as loosing a loved one; hard times with your spouse; trying times with a rebellious child.

Blessed are you readers, who go through hard times. Persevere through them and come out with a greater understanding and capability of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against these things there is no black [law]. (Gal 5:22-23)

Home Sweet Home

Our family has just moved into an old home. And I mean an old home. The ceilings are slanted; there are cracks in the walls; every window lets in a cold draught; there are leaks in the rough coming in. All this said and I look at them all and smile. I love this home. It's an old farm house built in 1865 and it has wonderful character but along with that comes the joyful "burden" of repairs. I'm sitting here on an old and almost antique blue couch our pastor gave us, soaking in the natural warmth of the wood stoves, admiring the thick wooden beams in the ceiling and floor with the spiral staircase in front of me. I feel like a queen. But the only reason I can feel like this is because I have an amazing family to keep me company. Without them, this would just be an old house with foundation problems and a leaking rough. It would be a constant thing of worry and upkeep. Without them there is no way I could stare at water dripping in with a smile on my face knowing that everything will be okay.

I've been think about a series of verses lately. They are all different; some long, some short but they come back to the same thing over and over again in Deuteronomy. About following God's commands to love the Lord our God.

Deut 11:18-20

18 ²⁷"You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and ²⁸you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19 You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 20 ²⁹You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,

It's funny how we are not bound by the law any longer, yet here is a beautiful promise made for His people to follow His law and yet the thing that is being stressed is the very thing Christ tells us to continue doing; Love the Lord your God. This is the great commandment and God is saying here, in the old testament, that "if you do this, you will prosper. I will give you riches and land."

I am not preaching the prosperity gospel right now...this is the promise he made to his people at this point in scripture. I do believe God can provide the money for us to get our roof fixed, foundation looked at, windows replaced, etc but that is not what he is promising me. He is promising me that if I 1 teach them to my children, talk of it when we are sitting in our house, and when we walk by the way, and when we lie down, and when we rise. 20 ^29and write them on the doorposts of our house and on our gates, then he will fulfill our needs. For me, being fulfilled means to be able to look at a leak coming into the house and smile. People think I'm crazy. There are 1000 things that people tell us need to be taken care of immediately but my "immediately" consists of 3 little girls; VERY soon to be 4 and a wonderful husband whom I adore more and more each day. This is the promise God has made to us. When we love him with all our hearts, souls, minds, strengths, he will bless our pants off...because he said so. He's a great Father and with him, we're home sweet home.

Getting started in the morning

Proverbs 31:15 She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and portions for her maidens.

It has been a while since I've written. I've been in kind of a slump lately. 7 months pregnant sure doesn't inspire me to get up while "it is yet night"...neither do these dark winter mornings. This morning, though, I had the pleasure of waking up at 530am to see my husband off. He'd out of town for a few days and it just so happens that we awoke to the first snowfall of the year. I went back to bed!

So clearly I am not living out this part of the verse and so I want to dive into this and figure out what it means. I can tell you that I have gone back and forth through phases of waking up early and sleeping in and I KNOW that when I wake up early my day is ALWAYS better so why is it that I give in to the "sleep monster"? Isn't it funny? Paul says in Romans 7 I do not do what I want but I do the very thing that I hate. I don't think sleeping in is the thing that I hate (or sin) but I do think the outcome of it has proven to be. Maybe that's why I've been in a bit of a slump lately...because I have become lazing in getting the day started. I wake up at 630 with Pillar every morning but lay in bed, her crawling all over me, hauling teddies, stories and blankets into the cramped little space I have and all, but I don't usually force myself out of bed until 7 or 730. Does that extra 30 mins of non sleep really do anything benificial? I don't think so.

So, speaking from experience, when I have gotten up before the babies ever did to do devotions, pray, meditate etc, my attitude is so much more possitive than when I sleep in. So here are my options: Lay in bed for an extra 30 mins of completly disturbed sleep hoping I will have slept a total of 1 min more, or get out of bed, spend time with my Lord and soak in his word. Hmmmm sounds like a no brainer to me. Now like I said, I don't think the sleeping in part is the bad part (for me anyway) but my attitude becomes poor, my frustration level grows, and the day just doesn't start well. So here I am, just like Paul saying "I don't do the thing I want to do (have a good attitiude) and I do the thing that I hate" (have a bad attitude). So for me, turns out sleeping in isn't a good thing, And it took me this blog to realize it because without writing it down, I would have just slept in tomorrow morning :)

I do want to talk specifically about the food part (I think you know by now this is pretty much my favourite earthly thing). I know many people don't take this passage litterally and it is quite impossible to do these days anyway and the reader from the previous post commented that we can't live every detail of this passage litterally otherwise we will burn ourselves out, but finding out what it really means to you to wake up while it is still night and prepare food for your household is really important too. So does that mean sleeping in like me is good for you (it isn't for me) or taking the kids to McDonalds for breakfast every morning, if that's the way this verse is true for you, let it be so then, but I would like to share with you from my perspective; how I make (or try) to make it work. Our schedule has been a little off lately since I have had a job every morning that goes from 730-830 so our days have just started a little later so this part of the passage hasn't really worked out for me lately but I keep a great memory of my mom with me when I think about this part. We have been living with my parents for the last couple of months waiting to see if God would take us back to Oregon for missions work (where we left from last year) but he's told us to stay so in that waiting time we've been crashing my parent's. Now I can tell you from the time being here lately as well as when we were little, one of the best feelings is to wake up to freshly baked croissants or muffins. HOT muffins! What a treat. How special it feels to be a daughter who gets to wake up after doddling around getting ready, to a nice hot aroma that fills the house. Up the stairs I come and the smell just gets better and better and there's my mom, still in her pj's making the family breakfast. For no other reason except for the fact that she wants to serve us. Now this lady is a busy lady; it doesn't happen often that she bakes in the morning but when she does, man is it special! I am her daughter; I was part of her household and to some degree, am right now, which means in that moment, she is this woman, waking early to provide food for her family, and as her daughter I feel so special to be treated to such a lovely morning. You know, later on in the passage, it says "Her children rise up and call her blessed". In this moment of gratitude, I call my mother blessed! And I hope my children either see me that way now or will when they grow older. I want to be able to bless my children in that way to. The morning is not just a time for me to decide on my own attidude but for me to decide on my kids attitude as well. This is the question I must ask myself: Will I wake up and have a poor attitude and spread that to the family, or will I bite the bullet and wake up early, refreshed and ready to start my day and treat my family to something really special, whether that be breakfast or something else.

As the mom, I have the power to control everybody's attitude throughout the day; mine, my kids, and my husband. So what will be my choice, a poor attitude or a good one? The good one always comes from God. When I start my day with Him, he is there all day long supporting me and encouraging me but the second I put something before him and say "devotions can wait" or "I'll do it later" things go down hill.

I think I could go on and on but for now I will stop. I hope whoever is reading this has a wonderfully blessed week!

Happy mornings :)

Response to a Fellow Reader :)

Barbara,

Thank you so much for reading my blog. I have no idea how you came across it as only a handful of people read each time I post. I don't know if you have read any of my other posts but if you haven't, I started with the first or second post saying, this blog is entirely intended for my personal study and if others happen to stumble upon it, that's awesome but it is not in any way intended to preach, lecture, or say my opinion is the only way. It literally is a place for me to study and write. I would like to give you a bit of a background on many of the readers (that I know about :) Many of them are home school mom's who stay at home and may or may not have a business on the side. I can not speak to the working women of society of today because I am not one of them but what I can do is encourage the circle of people I know by writing about how God has worked in our lives.

So, to the other readers; I want you all to know that I wouldn't write about something that I am not passionate about. I absolutely love staying home all day long with my kids. I love spending time in my kitchen preparing delicious meals :) If you are not a stay at home mom and feel threatened by the content here, I would encourage you to find a woman in your life or a blog or something that you can pull encouragement from. This blog is only intended to uphold you as a woman and not tear you down. If you feel you are not encouraged by this blog, I really do want you to find something you will be encouraged by. Many of you have told me that you take encouragement from what I am writing about through my study in scripture and I thank God for that. I know God works in so many different ways so if I can touch only mom's who stay at home, great! and God has blessed someone else to reach out to those who are working mom's and wives and that's so great too. I love 1 Corinthians 12! It talks about different parts of the body but that we are all the same body. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

Thank you to the working mom who can minister to the working mom. Thank you to the ex drug addict that can minister to the drug addict, thank you to the women living in poverty that can encourage those also living in poverty. I hope you see what I mean. I don't have all the answers but God has revealed His living Word to me as a wife and mom at home.

The last thing I want to touch on briefly is I can't wait to get to the last verse in this passage. I'm sure it will take me forever to get there but this verse is what I strive for as a wife. It is always on my mind. "Her works are praised at the city gates." It's talking about how honored she is by her husband. He is so proud of her. He adores her. This isn't about being old fashioned and chauvinistic. It is all about how much my husband loves me and sharing what I know to make that happened. I want to show other women that this is possible. 1 year ago, I wrote my husband a letter saying "I want to be called your queen. I want you to be able to call me your queen. I want to be like Esther and you have so much confidence in the things I may say, that you can trust every word I say to you". That was not true then. It broke my heart that I was not his queen and for good reason too. I was not living as I should have been as a wife. More and more, each day, I become more his queen. I still and always will have work to do but my goal is to please and honor the Lord in my role as a wife and mother. And by doing so, I will be praised at the city gates :) I love my husband dearly. I can't imagine life without this man God has given me and I want to do everything I can to make him happy. He does the same for me. It is not a one way street.

Thanks for reading guys . I am so happy if you get something good out of this. Truly I am. I love sharing with you.

An excellent wife

Proverbs 31:10 An excellent wife, who can find? She is worth far more than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her and he will have no lack of gain.

I just want to take this little bit at a time. That way the words will really sink in. So when ever I read something from the bible during a study, I ask myself "What does this really mean." So what does it mean to be worth more than jewels? Well, clearly jewels are very valuable but lets see how valuable they are back then. The bible seems to mention the word Jewels 15 times. I looked at all these verses and these are the ideas that came from most of them:

-honor the lord with your wealth

-Jewels are compared with wisdom in the Proverbs a couple of times

-proverbs 3:13-18 is that mother talking again to her son, telling him about wisdom being "her" and jewels could never compare

-Song of Solomon talks about physical beauty of a woman in relation to jewels and at times about the passion he has for his wife; He speaks passionately about the jewels which adorn her (now, she is not actually wearing anything at all...he's talking about her pure beauty to him)

-Zachariah compares the Lords people to jewels.

-Then we come to the negative verses about jewels fading away, a symbol of sexual immorality in revelation, they will one day be worth nothing at all.

So there are two very different sides to the passages on Jewels. One is talking comparing us to jewels and the other talking about jewels will parish but we will not. So clearly, when comparing a wife to jewels, it's pretty big. She's pretty important and cherished. And because of this, her husband loves her so much. The heart of her husband trusts her.

I think of the story of Ester a lot when I think about the relationship between a husband and wife. Xerxes or King Ahasuerus made his first wife Vashti, leave because she made him look like a fool in front of pretty well the kingdom. So the King was in search for another queen. Esther happened to make the cut but not just because of her beauty; because she strove to please the king. It says, the women adorned themselves in all the kings jewels as they could keep what they took but Esther, she wore what Hegai, the eunuch in charge of the ladies, suggested what the king would like in Esther 2. Esther, not even his wife yet, submitted herself and adorned herself to what would please her future husband. So that's before she's married to him. Now to the good juicy part of the story:

So Haman convinces the King that the Jews need to be slaughtered all over the land and it is pretty much up to Esther to stop this massacre from happening. It is really a perfect example of submission. Submission isn't having a man rule over you as a wife. It doesn't mean you have no authority as a wife. It doesn't mean you have to be kept silent in your home because what ever the husband says goes. This is so often the misconception, that women become voiceless when people hear that word SUBMIT!!!! It's not that at all. Read Esther if you don't know the story. Does she keep silent? By no means! She actually bursts into the royal place where the King and other men of authority in the country were meeting. Her act of submission was that, she knew she had the heart of her King. She knew that "...and husbands love your wives like Christ loves the church" was true (even though they didn't have that particular scripture back then but what is true of God in the beginning is true now and will continue to be as well) She knew her husband loved her like crazy. She also knew that he would listen to what she had to say because why would a wife say something if she didn't really mean it?

I used to argue with Dan about everything. All the little details of the day; like many women, if things didn't go in the way I had expected them to, then I would say a little quip or make a fuss or change my attitude into something negative, setting the mood for the whole family. I decided one day after reading a chapter in "Created to be his help meet by Debi Pearl", to only say things that I really wanted to deal with. To this day the only time I will bring something "confrontational" up is when I really feel like it needs to be addressed. I'm not going to bring up petty things that won't bring glory to God or honor to my husband anymore because I know what it does. It creates unnecessary conflict for the sake of me being right. Now he know; Amy must mean what she's saying because she only says things that are truly important. So I think in some cases when it might sound petty, he asks himself "why is she saying that if she doesn't just always spew what's on her mind". I know I can trust my husband will listen to my requests because I'm not flippant with what I ask him. He loves me all the more because of it because there are no arguments any more.

This is what Esther was doing. He husband had so much confidence in her and trust in what she was saying that he could say to himself "she's not just bursting into this meeting for no good reason. There must be a good reason for this outburst and because she was bold enough to do that" he says "I will give you anything my queen, to you and half the kingdom."

She is more precious than jewels.

Wow, all that for 2 lines of scripture! What a rant. But it was great to write about.

Proverbs 31 study- Who is Lemuel?

Last night I watched the first half of the movie called Limitless. It was very interesting. I had to go to bed as I was waited from the busy day but I've been thinking about it tonight. Apparently we only use 20% of our brains as humans. In this movie, there is a pill, a very expensive pill which allows you to use all 100% of the brain. So this man starts taking these pills every day and pretty much becomes the smartest man in the world, investing money and quintupling it every day becoming more and more rich. He is able to learn and be fluent in new languages in days along with playing the most difficult sonatas on the piano. All of a sudden he sees the world in a different view because he knows it all. What if we did this with scripture? What if we knew it all? How do you think Christians would be and act like if we had the whole scripture memorized? I am not proposing that we memorize the whole bible together but over the last 2 weeks I have dedicated my free time to memorizing scripture. I have only 2 new verses memorized but do you want to know how many times I thought about them this week? Only all day every day, constantly meditating on the words He gives us. Do you want to know how many conversations they came into? All of them (not all of them were verbalized). This was a complete revelation to me. A few months ago I started memorizing James. I can't believe I still remember what I learned and how it is constantly applied in my life. The Bible tells us to live by the word and that's exactly what I plan to (try to) do. I am starting with my favorite. Proverbs 31. I want to encourage you to imagine what it would be like to know what the whole thing says, know where everything is, imagine what conversations would look like if you could encourage people with scripture instead of "I know it says somewhere in the bible...". Now don't just imagine it; fall in love with it and know it!

I have gone through Proverbs 31 many times over the last year, and when I feel myself lacking as a wife and mother, I go here to regain the strength I need to keep the day going smoothly (Along with many other places in scripture.) I am not going to start half way through as most studies do but I want to know the precursor to "the wife of noble character".

WHO IS KING LEMUEL? Verse 1 says this: The words of King Lemuel. An Oracle that his mother taught him:

I wanted to start this study with the background of this king. Now I don't know for certain but I have done a little research and I believe this is Solomon. First of all, King Solomon wrote the proverbs. Second of all, the ancient Rabbinical commentators identified Lemuel with Solomon. So from here on out, I will imagine this proverb to have been written by Solomon given to him by his Mother. Besides who this king is, this has been given to him by him mother. Doesn't that seem strange? Well, he doesn't have a wife yet, clearly since she's telling him how to know a good woman when he sees one. Now if this is Solomon, then this is Bathsheba; the woman bathing on the roof that David wants and takes. Now, Bathsheba sleeps with David while married to Uriah, making her an adulterer. Eventually David kills Uriah and at this point Bathsheba is his wife. Maybe she knows all these great things because she wasn't one. I don't know that though, so I will have to do a little more research. So for now, we'll call it a night. Interesting how things get connected when you go back to try to figure them out. I encourage you to do your own research. Any questions that might pop up, write them down and then answer them. Discover it for yourself.