Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Proverbs chapter 31. I want to read this passage of scripture right through so that we get an overall look at it, but we're going to start at verse 10 where this poem, which is an acrostic, an ABC of wisdom basically—Proverbs is all about wisdom or the lack of it. And we have here the wife of noble character, a wife of wisdom. And it's a poem, it's an acrostic, and each of the letters ABCDE of the Hebrew alphabet deals with one virtue, a virtue of the perfect, if you like, awesome woman.

A wife of noble character who can find? She's worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life. She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands. She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar. She gets up while it is still dark, provides food for her family, portions for her servant girls. Considers a field, buys it. Out of her earnings, she plants a vineyard. She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks. And she sees her trading is profitable, and her lamp doesn't go out at night. In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle with her fingers. She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. And when it snows, she has no fear for her household, for all of them are clothed in scarlet. She makes coverings for her bed; she is clothed in fine linen and purple. Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land. She makes linen garments and sells them and supplies the merchants with sashes. She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom, faithful instruction is on her tongue.

And doesn't eat the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her. Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all. Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her the reward she's earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

Now, here indeed talking about awesome women is the bionic Christian woman. Fortunately, she never existed, save in the imagination or the mind of a woman, certainly, a queen who was giving her son Lemuel some advice. Among the advice she gave, she talked about the sort of woman to look for when he chose a bride. And so she uses this poem, this acrostic, and she, as it were, spells out all the virtues of a virtuous woman.

Now, if a man can find a woman with half those virtues, he's going to find a priceless treasure. But what a wonderful thing it is to look at a model or look at the virtues that go into making a scriptural bionic lady, a queen of God's heart, and see what that consists of.

Years and years ago, I wrote a book called Queen of Hearts and the material that I'm going to share with you, as well as new material, is out of that book. This is what I wrote at the beginning of it: How can I do it all? Be the woman God wants me to be, my husband adores, my children demand, my boss requires, my friends depend on. The Proverbs 31 woman has long stood as the Statue of Liberty at the harbor of the city of womanhood, welcoming all who flee from being anything less than perfect.

But what if I have runs in my stockings? I'm sure they were all right when I left home. Consistently lose one of my husband's socks in the washing machine and regularly misplace my car in the supermarket parking lot. It's blue, sir, I know it's blue. Is there any hope for me if I dream of writing a book about my small children called From Here to Insanity? Or if I'm shaped like a pillow instead of a post? Do I have to perform to please, compete to catch a man and keep him, or can I stay single and dare to like it?

God's Queen of Hearts will help me find out how to be the best that I can be. Not a woman who is perfectly becoming, but a woman who is becoming perfect little by little, day by day. Now, I'm sure all of us would like to be a queen of hearts, queen of our husband's heart, our children's hearts, our servants' hearts, our merchant's hearts. And we would like to be queen of God's heart.

I don't think there's any of us doesn't want to please God and have the sense that He is affirming and appreciative of us. For what woman does not need affirmation and appreciation? It's when we try to get that affirmation and appreciation from any one other than God that we get into trouble. Not that we cannot affirm and encourage and build each other up, in fact, the Bible tells us we must do that. And yet it's when God says thank you, when He says from heaven, "You are my queen of hearts," that we become happy with ourselves and we can become queen of our own heart.

Now, the Bible says in this passage, "Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies." Now, her husband values her, but so does God. She was of infinite worth because an infinite God had given His infinite Son to win us or her infinite life. And feeling good about yourself becomes a reality when you realize that God feels good about you. And He feels good about you when you love His Son. That's where it all starts.

When God looks down from heaven and sees you kneeling by your bed saying, "Lord Jesus, I love You," He says thank you. And His heart smiles. You are queen of His heart. I remember taking a trip with my husband, a missions trip, and David was going up to Bethel College at the time. He was the first one out of the nest up to college, and I wasn't there to take him, and I wasn't there to do it, and it was very difficult.

I took Pete to England and left him with my family on the way. Judy was out in California with some friends, and then she came back early and took Dave up. She played the little mother—she was only 15—but she took him up there and ironed his shirts. I'm sure it was the last time they got ironed. And got him into college. And they were met by a friend. She was a casual friend of mine from Minneapolis. She became sort of surrogate mother and opened her home to David and some of his friends while they were at college in Minneapolis.

When I came back from that trip a short time into the semester, I got on a plane as soon as I could and I went up to see Dave. And I was met by the same lady that had been helpful. And as I said, didn't know her very well. Her name was Barbara. And I got in the car and we were doing polite little things back and forth, and suddenly she said, "Jill, I love your son." And I decided I would make her my very best friend.

Something happened inside my heart when she said that. And I think you understand what that's like if you have children. And you know God has a heart. And when He sees us saying in genuine love and praise, "I love Your Son," the same thing happens to His heart and He's pleased, and He affirms us. Do we want to be queen of the Lord's heart? Well, of course, it starts when we have this relationship with Him.

And I don't suppose there's anyone here today that hasn't started on that relationship. In case there is, let me tell you, it is a must if you're ever going to feel good about yourself. You'll never ever know what a good self-image is until you realize you were made in the image of God, after His image, and try and figure out what He has in mind for you. And that's when you come into your own in such a degree that you can forget yourself and pour your life into other people.

Now, many of us have things in our background that might go against having a good self-image, being queen of our own heart. I know when I was a little girl, I had a mistaken idea that my parents loved my sister more than they loved me. I figured they'd had three years' start and they shared all sorts of memories that I didn't know anything about. And anyway, she was very pretty, prettier than me, and she was popular and everything that I didn't feel I was, my sister was.

It wasn't that I was jealous, it wasn't that I competed—I didn't dare to do that, it was useless. I didn't even try to copy. In fact, I reveled in the afterglow of who Shirley was and how she looked and what she did and all the rest of it. And I was very, very proud of her. But it gave me an inferiority complex. My mother used to say, "You're just as pretty as your sister." And I used to say, "Well, you're my mother."

I was reminded of that when my daughter was going through that awful stage where she felt she was so ugly. In fact, she felt she was so ugly she wouldn't go to school for two weeks. She had a terrible inferiority complex. And I looked at this beautiful little girl and I kept saying, "Judy, you're beautiful." "Well, you're my mother." It was almost the exact same thing all over again.

And so it wasn't until I realized I mattered to God that I mattered to myself. And I realized that He had made me as He wished me to be and He was delighted with the result, even though I wasn't. It's been a thing that I've fought for a long time, a sense that how could I be God's queen of hearts? He couldn't think anything of me. I don't think anything of myself, so how is anybody else, and certainly not God, going to think anything of me?

And yet, as I have grown in my relationship with Him, I've realized that He has said thank you many times to me. And I've tried to gather some of those instances and share them. I remember coming to America and being asked to speak to what I call in one of my books the Ultra Suede ladies. And I was absolutely petrified of them. American women really intimidated me. They seemed so sure, so together, so just put together, I suppose, and they made the best of themselves and they had poise and they just could do it.

But I suppose it was the way they dressed and the way they made up and all of that that I, coming from England where Christians didn't even wear makeup, was something that was way out of my orbit and again, I felt very intimidated, especially when I was up there on a platform asked to address them. And I wasn't doing a very good job doing that because I was so self-conscious of my clothes or whatever it was that I was wearing or not wearing.

And I remember it came to a climax in the number one club or Club One or something like that on a golf course in Palm Beach where a friend of mine, who was probably the wealthiest young woman in Palm Beach, married to the biggest estate guy in town, had been running a Bible study. She was a Christian. And she filled the country club, this Club One on the golf course, with all her friends. And she asked me to go speak to them.

And I went in sheer obedience because it was one of those things that I was not certainly looking forward to. And as I sat there, I got more and more miserable. Every single woman that came through that door looked as though she'd stepped off Harper's Bazaar. I mean, I am not kidding. And I began to shrink down in my seat, and I was sharing this table with these gorgeous, glamorous, beautiful, Hollywood-type women.

And I began to talk to the Lord, and I said, "Lord, if only I looked like them, then they'd listen to me. If only I dressed like them, then they'd heed what I have to say. I know when I stand up, they're going to be looking at my clothes and I just feel so Sears." And as I began to complain and whine—I don't know if you ever do that internally—into the room came this beautiful Harper's Bazaar creature, and she poised in the door, and everyone in that room turned and looked, which is what she was looking for, I suppose.

And the women round my table stiffened. And the Lord said to me, "What's happening?" And I said, "Competition." He said, "Yeah." And then that still small voice said to me, "Jill, you'll never be competition." And it freed me. Because my concern was if I didn't look like them, if I didn't dress like them, if I didn't measure up to the image they were expecting, then I wasn't worth anything.

You see, the image people expect is one thing, that self-image that is projected that they expect you to fit into and mold yourself to. Self-worth is what you think about that image that they're putting on you. And because that image was the image and the thing in that room and in that society, and I didn't measure up, my self-worth was like this. But as soon as God said to me, "You'll never be competition," it set me free because the heart of the matter was this: I wanted them to know the Lord and I wanted them to come to Him.

And if I had been as gorgeous as they were, then I would have been competition, and they would have stiffened when I started, not softened because I was just like their comfortable old ugly aunt. Well, you know, I'm exaggerating this a little bit just to show you where I'm at. But it just set me free, and I really think I had one of the best meetings of my life. I mean, I just went for it.

And there are still women—there was a Jewish woman found Christ that day—there's still ripples of that meeting that I meet when I go back to Palm Beach. It was a very, very big turning point in my life when I realized that God was saying, "You're my queen of hearts." I don't know if you noticed here that it doesn't say anything about her looks, did you notice that?

It doesn't mean she had a face like the back of a bus. We don't know what she looked like, but beauty is not mentioned. How she looked is not mentioned, how she lived is mentioned. And that was beautiful. The virtues, the values that we see here in this acrostic are beautiful as far as her king of hearts, her earthly king of hearts, was concerned.

Charm is deceitful, he says, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord, oh, she shall be praised. Doesn't mean she wasn't charming, it doesn't mean she wasn't beautiful, and God intends us to make the best of ourselves in every sense of the word, the best of what He's given us, no question about that. And He wants us to be charming and beautiful, but that is not the end.

And the problem is with our society, it's deceiving. Charm is deceitful. We've got this idea if you're popular and charm has the idea of personality, of just pizzazz, charisma. And when you turn on your television or you take your magazines, you meet that demand, that image demand. And if I'm not like that, then my self-worth goes down like this. Now, it's what God thinks of us that matters and that frees us up from that.

And we're deceived if we think the most important thing is to try and get some sense of worth from other people's opinions. It's vain to believe that beauty in the outward sense only is the most important thing. Outward sense only. Now, this woman, whoever she was or the composite of this perfect woman, God mattered most. She feared the Lord. Now, what does that phrase mean? It means a reverential trust with a hatred of evil. She trusted God.

She trusted God for all sorts of things as we shall see. God trusts us to trust Him. He has faith in us that we will say to Him, "I will accept how You made me, when You made me, and all the rest of it." When you made me, that's how old I am. Can we accept where we are? I remember coming up to my 50th birthday—it's a long time ago, but I do remember it. And I remember that was the hard one.

And my husband in his usual pragmatic, practical way was trying to help me one day and he said, "Jill, do you believe you were born at the right time?" And I said yes. He said, "Do you believe you've been living at the right speed?" I said yes. He said, "Do you believe you'll be dead on time?" Yes. "Doesn't that help?" No. So that was his advice.

And yet it's true. I was born at the right time, I believe it. I've been living at the right speed, I believe it. Therefore, I'm the right age and I will be dead on time. My times are in His hands. And the seasons of our life are something that we can come to accept when we are His queen of hearts. When we have this relationship going so that God can link into our fears and our worries and our phobias and our self-worth and lack of it and whatever else it is.

Now, there isn't a woman I know that doesn't need this acceptance and appreciation and affirmation, but you have to learn to get it from God. You have to learn to get it from God. Do you know how to do that? Do you know how to encourage yourself in the Lord? Perhaps if you work and your boss has been down on you and saying you're absolutely no good—do you know how to go to God and say, "Is this true?"

And to weed out the criticism and to own what you need to own and to try and put right what you need to put right, but not to own what you don't need to own because you go to God and say, "You tell me this." Wonderful passage in Corinthians: "It is a very small thing that I am judged of you or of any human court. Why, I don't even judge myself," says Paul, "it is the Lord that judges me." He's the one that knows the motives of my heart, He's the one I will ask about this. Marvelous passage of Scripture.

And if we are going to escape from trying to fit into people's expectations, which is a dead end and can lead to all sorts of problems, then we have to get this sorted out. What must I do to be praised, cries today's woman, instead of what must I do to praise Him and make sure others do the same? I think about my own children struggling with self-image as they grew up, and I didn't do an awful good job as a parent helping them.

I remember Dave, our eldest, who was a B student. Very seldom did he ever get an A, but he never got less than a B. And always on his reports: "This child could not try harder, this child could not do better." Because that's how God had made him. But for Dave, that was a B. And I was trying to get over to him, "No Dave, your B is an A because you cannot do better. That's how God has made you."

Well, he never saw it because his sister had A's. How can a B be an A in this system that we have? Here's my little girl, however, who gets A's and A+'s, and it's never enough because I'm not affirming her at all. Why do you need to affirm a good child, a child that gets an A? Mistake. So I'm affirming David all the time trying to work with his self-image, which was pretty low. And Judy is saying, "What do I have to do to get her attention? Isn't an A enough?"

And we get into all sorts of problems with the good child that doesn't think an A is enough. Whereas I've got Pete on the other end who—well, he doesn't know the shape of a B or an A. So all your attention goes into these two boys and here's this little girl who incidentally needed affirming more than the other two, but I missed it. I didn't realize that the child who is the overachiever, the child that always wants to please you, the people-pleaser, is the one that you have to watch.

Self-image, you see it in your children. How do you bolster it, how do you help them? I remember Pete, who should have had a bad self-image but didn't, growing up and growing up and growing up. He used to come down in the morning and we would measure him every day. And I remember he grew all that 6 foot 7 between 12 and 13, so you can imagine he was weaving his way towards the sky. And the children's eyes would be waiting round the corner of the kitchen for him to appear each morning. And I remember we measured him each morning, each morning. And Judy'd say, "Isn't enough?"