Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Wisdom from Proverbs”
Our Bible verse for today: “Every wise woman builds her house, but a foolish one tears it down with her own hands. Whoever lives with integrity fears the Lord, but the one who is devious in his (her) ways despises Him.” Proverbs 14:1-2 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “A godly woman is a powerful influence for good.”
A greeting card company once ran an experiment in a prison. As Mother’s Day was approaching the company offered free greeting cards to the prisoners to send to their mothers. The response was so overwhelming that they ran out of cards and had to bring in more to meet the demand. They then did the same on Father’s Day, but this time they couldn’t give the cards away. Very few were taken. Obviously the prisoners held their mothers in high esteem, but most of those incarcerated men had badly broken relationships with their fathers – if they even knew them at all.
That experiment helps to illustrate the strong influence a mother has on her children. However there was also one other sad result revealed by that experiment. The prisoners who had bad mothers, mothers who had abandoned them or who had done drugs or who were prostitutes or who had in some way seriously failed to be the woman her children needed her to be – on Mother’s Day those men were deeply depressed, angry, and resentful – far more than those men who had bad fathers were on Father’s Day. Evidently being let down by your mother has a worse emotional impact on a person than does being let down by your father.
In Proverbs 14:1-2 we once again have a passage which contrasts the actions of a wise person and a fool. In this case we have a wise woman who takes right actions to build up her home in a positive way and who lives with integrity before the Lord; and then we have a foolish woman who hurts and even destroys those in her home and who is devious before the Lord.
I have had the privilege to know many women who were the model of Biblical wisdom and integrity. I have also known of some women who epitomized that foolish woman, consequently doing great harm to those in her home.
I have also known women who thought they could straddle the line between the two worlds. Sometimes a woman, along with her children, lives with a man she is not married to. She thinks such an arrangement isn’t sending a bad message to her children – but it is. There are single mothers who sometimes have boyfriends or other men spend the night with them, again thinking their children won’t notice or won’t be negatively impacted (they will notice and they will be negatively impacted). There are mothers who smoke in the presence of their children, or use profanity, or drink excessively, or engage in other behaviors that are clearly ungodly (and sometimes illegal), and they evidently think such conduct on their part won’t have a negative influence on their children. It will. It always does.
Women have a huge impact on those in their homes – be that impact positive or negative. God calls for you to be a woman of virtue and integrity, one who lives by Biblical values.
Straddling the line between the two worlds does not meet God’s standard and therefore I encourage you to stop doing it. Be the woman God wants you to be – the woman your children need you to be.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 