Becoming a Woman of Wisdom and Grace

Last night I made a huge mess in my oven. Butter boiled over and missed my extra pan I placed under it to catch it. It was smokey, thick and black on the bottom. So this morning I took on the task of cleaning it. Now luckily, I have a very nice oven that has an easy clean feature. If not, I would probably still be scrubbing lol.

While cleaning, I thought about healing. The process is rough. You want to be healed and happy so that you can go and do. But in reality, you can’t fake it. We try so hard to not show what we are going through. Put on a brave face and not let anyone see past our shield if we don’t want to let them in.

The truth is that, our bodies can look great, our life can be going according to plan and we can be the life of the party when around others. But if we haven’t done the healing on the inside, that will all crumble at some point.

Its kind of like cleaning my oven this morning. I had my mess from last night. I chose to pull the racks out, spray the water in there to use the easy clean feature and then scrub it clean. I had to do this about 3 times to make sure I got all of the burnt stuff out. If I wouldn’t have done it, there would have been such a much bigger mess the next time I went to cook something. There would have been smoke seeping out, butter burnt more into the bottom and it would have been tougher to clean the next time or the next, depending how long I would have waited.

Our healing with faith is a lot like this. If we don’t do the work on the inside, it will make a bigger mess on the outside as we go along trying to pretend like life is better. Its what we call the domino effect. you can see the everything stacked perfectly and all in place but one wrong move and they all come tumbling down.

Psalms 51:10 says “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

David is asking God to create a PURE heart. One that isn’t looking back, that is moving forward. No hatred, no grief, just simply moving towards becoming who God wants him to be.

In renewing the spirit, he is seeking the mercy and grace we talked about. Helping him to move past and renew to basically start over. People always say they wish they could start over but with the knowledge they already have about things. This is exactly that! Renewing your spirit, freeing your mind from past chains and creating a pure heart with only the best of intentions.

Romasn 12:2 says “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

This is such a big task. We like to carry things with us as long as possible. Hurt people the way they hurt us, do the things that everyone else is doing and ultimately living by the worlds standards instead of the Bible. But looking deeper into it, you’re not the person that hurt you and you never will be so doing to them something because they did you wrong is going to equal wrong for everyone. Two wrongs never make a right and they hardly ever help you to feel better about yourself. In doing the things everyone else is doing, we are not always the same. We are looking to serve God and be deliberate in our understand of His word.

I’ve talked about this quote before but I’ll say it again. “don’t covet others because where the devil has them is not what God wants for you.” We are not other people. Its our job to follow Gods word and not let the devil get a hold of us. The devil will try to give you everything you want to make you happy in that instant but you will never be happy for a lifetime like you will studying and understanding Gods word.

So when you are sitting there seeing others succeed and you feel stuck, think about how this may be where God needs you to be at that moment. How you need to trust and look to Him for guidance.

Proverbs 18:14 states that “The human spirit can endure in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?’

Either we will trust God or turn towards the world. Our spirit and who we choose to give it to will decide. In the end, our spirit will help us through the hard times because we know there are greater times ahead.

So to close this out, you have to heal to work towards becoming a Proverbs 31 Woman and it needs to be done from the inside out. Also, clean your oven so you don’t have a bigger mess later.