A New Statistic
God just keeps leading me to know more about character in Him and where my focus in knowledge should be. A couple of weeks ago several people on my Facebook shared this article called "5 Things Men Need To Learn About Women." After reading what it said, I felt like God was calling me to look into these characteristics and see what He had to say about them. There are two that He specifically laid on my heart to share.
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The first point in this article was that men need to understand it doesn't matter what they say, but it matters how the woman feels. To elaborate he explained that if you tell a woman she is beautiful, but she doesn't feel beautiful it won't matter, because what she feels is what she feels regardless of what she is told. As a woman, I can testify to the truth of this. How many times have I been getting ready for something with friends and I'll have an outfit on and for some reason I just don't feel pretty in it, but all of my friends keep telling me over and over that I look great. Most of the times that happens, I end up changing anyway regardless of their affirmation. He said something in that article about this point though that just didn't sit right with me. He said, that a woman's self-esteem is rooted where it should be, in herself. On both ends of the spectrum this is bad. Either your self-esteem is so rooted in yourself that you become prideful and conceited, or you just wallow in self-hate. Both are very flawed perceptions of who you really are. My self-esteem, my self-worth should be rooted in the only one who can measure it anyway, Christ. Christ has called me beautiful, and wonderfully made, but I should not allow pride to follow those affirmations. Christ has also called me human and sinful, but I should not chose to just live in pity and self-hate because of that. I can say with confidence that the times where I feel most beautiful and most loved are not when I have people tell me so, it was when I was at the foot of the cross bearing my heart to God and despite all of my junk He whispered that I was a beautiful, beloved daughter that He cared for. And, now that my affirmation is in God, I can accept others compliments and believe it, because what I feel isn't based on me, but on who God is.
The second point in the article and the last I want to talk about is emotions. It said that a man works on logic but a woman works on emotion. A woman's emotions will effect her actions and how she responds to things. I can testify that I am pretty emotional sometimes. But, I feel like this is an area where God is continuing to show me how to handle. I should never let my emotions influence my actions. Emotions can often give room for offense and offense is not of God.
[Proverbs 29:11]
"A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back."
I need to have control over my emotions. I don't want to be a fool, I want to be wise. I want to be led by the Spirit of God, not by Adele's emotions. If my emotions had any say, how many times would I have walked in disobedience to what God was telling me to do?
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More than anything, I want the men and women of God, myself included, to portray Christ in a Biblical way. Why do we always associate men as having no compassion and women as too emotional? Why can't we both just be what God has called us to be? And, why are we looking to step by step guides and lists of things to help us understand one another? I think it's time we change our focus to just knowing God. God is a relational God. He doesn't want us to read about Him and never actually spend time with Him. If we did that we wouldn't really be getting to know Him, just about Him. The same applies for any type of relationship. Reading a list of things will not help us to know that person or better understand them, only time with them can do that. I don't want it to be a statistic that all men lack compassion, or are led by their own logic. I don't want it to be a statistic that all women let their emotions rule their life and that they view their feelings as truth. I want us all to walk in the characteristics of God.
I dont want to accept what the world tells me I am. I am not a woman that lets her emotions influence her decisions. I am not a women whose self-esteem is rooted in my flesh. I am who God has told me I am, and I am pursuing what God has called me to be.
What if being Godly became the new statistic?