It is International Women’s Day, Monday, March 8th. So I wanted to share with you an encouragement to women out there. So this message is really for ladies. And I want to encourage you that your worth is not in your work. Work is good, but don’t hang your worth on that work because then you’re going to feel very devalued when you don’t have work to do. You feel like maybe if you are a mom and you don’t have professional work outside the home, you feel like you’re not worth as much because you’re not “working”.
But I’ve been there. Being a mom, raising kids and that is work. Taking care of the household – that is work. Managing your household – that is work. So don’t let your work – whatever it is, working in the house, working professionally in a company, don’t let that work define your worth because your worth is not in your work. Your worth is in who you are and also in whose you are.
Who do you belong to? Knowing that we belong to God and God sees us as valued and precious in his sight. This is your Creator telling you that you are worthy and you are valued in his sight because he sees you as his masterpiece. There are a lot of people, a lot of women, who don’t know that. They don’t know who they are in Christ. They don’t know that potential to recognize that they’ve been created by a perfect God and this perfect God loves them and and wants to have a relationship with them.
And so I want to encourage that…If you know somebody who does not know their worth and they’re making decisions, bad decisions because they don’t know their worth and they’re making decisions thinking that, oh, I don’t deserve better. And that puts them on a path, a destructive path of really devaluing their whole potential, their whole worth as a person, as a woman, that everybody needs to hear this message, obviously, that we are all created and loved by God.
But today, I want to focus this message specifically on women, because in the world, there’s so many messages that may not seem directed at harming women, but these messages do have an underlying meaning that, you know, you’re not good enough if you don’t look a certain way. You aren’t beautiful, if you don’t have this particular type of look or, you know, we see a lot of that. I mean, it’s very obvious that the world has a very clear and unrealistic standard of what beauty is.
So as believers in Christ, we need to find our worth and recognize the definition of beauty in God’s eyes. What does that mean? And the good news is that God tells us for women in Proverbs 31 hear, from verses ten to thirty one, beauty in God’s eyes isn’t defined by what you look like, it’s defined by your character. So this is what God sees as a person of noble character. So let’s read Proverbs 31:10-31:
“A wife of noble character who can find? She is 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’s like the merchant ships bringing her food from afar. She gets up while it’s still dark and provides food for her family and portions for her servant girls. She considers a field and buys it. Out of her earnings, she plants a vineyard. She sets about her work vigorously.
Her arms are strong for her tasks. She sees her trading is profitable and her lamp does not go out at night. In her hands, she holds the distaff and grasp the spindle with her fingers. She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. 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’s clothed in fine linen and purple.
Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes a seat among the elders of the land. She makes linen garments and sells them and supplies the merchants and sashes. She’s clothed with strength and dignity. She can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom and faithful instruction is on her tongue. She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her blessed. Her husband also, and he praises her.
Many women are noble. But you surpassed 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 has earned over her works bring her praise at the city gate.”
So what are the principles from these passages? You know, when we read the Bible, we don’t necessarily need to take the specifics to apply to our lives today. For example, there are a lot of specifics here that will not apply to you.
It doesn’t apply to me. I don’t make clothes. I don’t, you know, make linen garments and sell them. But these are just principles. We’re supposed to take the meaning, take the principles and apply those principles to our lives. So sometimes don’t get stuck in the specifics, like I can’t sew, so I’m not a good Proverbs 31 woman? That’s a distraction. Learn from the principles as we’re reading from God’s word, especially in the Psalms and the poetic books.
These are really principles that will be applicable if you’re looking for how to apply to your life. So what are some of the principles from these verses? So, number one, a woman while she’s at home, she can still be productive, right. It’s actually encouraged for you to be productive and what are some means of production? She’s creating things. She’s making things and is actually making a profit from them. So she’s selling them. So it’s good for a woman to go into business.
So there are a lot of traditional ways of thinking that… It’s not even religious, it’s just probably cultural where, you know, women are supposed to stay home, raise the children, and that’s great. But sometimes they’re just confined and limited to just doing that and they’re not allowed to even do any kind of work. And it’s frowned upon. But the thing is that… If you really just hang your worth in your identity as a mom or as a wife that changes in your life?
You’re not always going to be a mom in terms of having kids at home, because kids do grow up and they leave the house. And then when the children go off to college and they have their own lives, you’re kind of stuck with an empty nest, hence the term empty nest. And it’s like there’s nobody for you to care for anymore. And that’s all you’ve been doing. You’ve been used to doing that. Now you have an identity crisis.
What am I? I’m no longer a mom of children in school. So then you come to a point where you’re possibly suffering from depression, kind of an identity crisis. So even when the children are at home, you have to have your own separate identity in Christ, not identity in your children, not in your identity as a mom or even as a wife. So here, if you have a you know, for me, I just want to encourage you that if you have a talent … foster and nurture that talent.
And in terms of timing, it doesn’t mean you have to launch a business right away. Kids are a priority as a mom because they are actually our first disciples. And that is a biblical principle as well, where we need to give high priority and high importance to our children and to our family because they are our first disciples and that’s our main role. In addition to that, we can also foster the skills and giftings that God has given us to be productive in different ways.
For example, for me, when I gave birth to my first child, a daughter, she slept so much, she slept to like noon. And I was used to working outside the house. And so I had always had a passion for the Internet and website, multimedia design, things like that. So I had a lot of time in the morning because she was just sleeping and, you know, she grew very well. It wasn’t like she wasn’t eating.
She would breastfeed and then go back to sleep, breastfeed, go back to sleep until she was really active, it was like afternoon. So I had a lot of time to myself. And so I actually learned how to do website design, continued practicing multimedia design, things like that. And I started a freelance business on the side for a while until I got a team. And then it became a full fledged business, registered company. I was able to use the time I had doing something productive, and I wasn’t even a Christian back then.
But just looking back right now, that’s somehow that’s something that you can do as well if you have extra time to nurture your skills. And then when the timing is right, when you have more time and capacity, you can actually launch your business even when your children are small. And I also want to talk a little about mom guilt because you can feel a little guilty when you’re working and your children are so small. But if you’re able to balance your time, you know, harmonize your energy with your time, your schedule, you can actually get a lot done if you have support.
And I’m really grateful that my husband was so supportive and he was able to support me in terms of taking care of the kids. And that way I can have time. To do my work, so that’s another story I would like to share, another time of how that business, which was a blessing, turned me into a workaholic, which I had to pull back on after I became a Christian. That’s really another story. Today, I just want to focus on encouraging ladies out there to hear that your worth should not be tied to your work.
And your work, the good for the good work that you do…should be an overflow of knowing how much you’re worth and how valued you are, knowing how precious you are and the work you do in the world, the good work you contribute to the world should overflow from that knowledge. Thanks for watching. Please comment below what you think, what your thoughts. Hit a like and subscribe so that you’ll know when I upload a new video.
