The Foolish Woman
Proverbs 14:1
The wise woman builds her house,
but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.
We’ve discussed building our home with God’s wisdom and I pray you have been able to give your list to God and have allowed him to begin lining up some of the projects you’d like done. January has been a full month for my family and I and I’ve even failed at my regular chores that I’ve been praying so diligently to have the energy for.
When you start moving toward God, the enemy sees you as a threat. It’s not a reason to give up, it’s a reason to pray harder. When God doesn’t remove a struggle, He fills you with His strength to endure it. If progress hasn’t been made and you feel hopeless, get that list back out and pray over it again. I don’t know about you, but it warms my heart to make the enemy mad. Satan desires for us to be foolish and tear down our homes. But that’s not what God has called us to do.
Being foolish is the opposite of being wise. Being wise is the ability to use the knowledge of God’s word and apply it to our lives, no matter the situation. It’s the ability to show gratitude amid an anxiety attack. It’s the ability to love people who harm you. It’s the ability to see past your trials and tribulations and allow God to transform you into the person of Jesus.
A foolish woman allows the anxiety to take over her life, her family, and her home. She spends what she has and what she doesn’t have on things she doesn’t need. She is ungrateful and blames everyone for her shortcomings. She is bitter toward the people she is jealous of. She gossips and spreads lies about people who try to help her. She is offended by literally everything. This is a woman who is tearing down her home. This is a woman who lives by her fleshly desires and can’t see the hope we have in the word of God. This is a woman who is ultimately allowing Satan to win. It’s very easy to allow our fleshly nature to shape us into this woman. This is the enemy at work.
The enemy wouldn’t attack us if we weren’t a threat! He sees us striving to do God’s will and throws stumbling blocks in our paths to discourage us in hope that we will throw in the towel. He sees our hearts longing to read and be transformed by God’s word so he busies us with unnecessary drama, worthless work, scrolling, binge watching, and illness. But there is hope. We are praying from a victory that has already been won. When Jesus said “It is finished,” the enemy was defeated. If the enemy knew of the manifestation of God’s Spirit that would reside in us through the death and resurrection of our Savior, He wouldn’t have worked so diligently to have Him murdered. “None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). We have been given all the power over the enemy (Luke 10:19).
The word build, as I discussed in week 2 is the same word “made” in Genesis that describes God making Eve from Adam’s rib. The actual word is fashioned. God fashioned Eve and wise women fashion their homes.
If we are caught up in the flesh and not fixated on Jesus, it’s impossible to do. If our minds are constantly driven by jealousy, anxiety, dissatisfaction, gossip, and evil intentions instead of faith, hope, and love, we can’t focus on all the good things that God has for us, nor can we receive it. God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us (Ephesians 3:20).” But we have to shed our foolishness to allow His Spirit to work in us.
Everything on your list, God wants to do immeasurably more. Fashioning our homes starts in our hearts. The point of a wise woman building is that her heart and her home are both a sanctuary for God. The month of February we will focus on a new verse that will transform our hearts to allow the love of God to flow from them. It is His presence that makes both beautiful.
Memory verse: Ephesians 3:16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.