Woman, Look to God for Perfection (Prov. 31, 1 Kings 11, Ecclesiastes 7)

Maybe I’ve walked in your shoes, but more than likely not those exact shoes. Even though I am a woman, my struggles are my own, and my battles look different than yours. My successes differ as well and have not come by my own efforts, although they’ve sometimes been hard won. My circumstances, like yours, constantly seem to shift, and as I grow older, I am finding that the warp and woof of my life are creating a unique, changing texture, and in His way God has used and is using and will use those circumstances to mold me into conformity to His will, to grow me up into Him. 

Often, I find the women I speak with struggle in particular with the busyness of their lives and the seemingly-impossible task of finding quiet time to spend with God, to sit at His feet in worship, to learn who He is, His nature, His attributes. Because of this, women often feel defeated, and the hard things in life sap the little energy they do have, and the world becomes a welcome distraction in that tiredness and defeat. Then someone like me, who has been given the time and energy in her own season of life, comes along and unintentionally “piles on” the guilt, thinking she is encouraging and prodding others to find the same joy and be energized in the same way by spending time in the Word in the same way she does.

I have been the struggling, tired, defeated woman, too. Working full time, raising children that seemed to multiply in their teenage years, trying to keep a home running while going to grad school and loving my husband well and spending quality time with God. Who am I kidding? There was no quality, much less quantity, of time spent with God in those years. Often, there wasn’t even the want-to. As I shared with a group of women last night, there was only defeat and discouragement and a growing lack of desire as I tried and failed over and over again to have a consistent time to spend with God during those years. God brought about my love for spending time in His Word in spite of me.

Then there’s the Proverbs 31 woman. She’s in all of our heads, lurking in her perfectness, luring us to compare ourselves to her in a very surface-level way. She’s the seemingly impossible standard set by King Lemuel’s mother (associated with Solomon), and yet there she is larger than life in the Bible, preserved for us by God, part of the “everything we need for life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3) words, worthy of looking at and learning from and being blessed by instead of running from in intimidation. 

I came across something this week and last in reading through the wisdom writings in the Bible that Solomon authored. In 1 Kings 11:3, the reader is told that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, a staggering number of women gathered into a harem. Many proverbs show up about nagging, dripping wives and how miserable it is to live with them, the writer preferring poverty to wealth if it meant escaping their chain-like clutches. In Ecclesiastes 7, an older wisdom writer jaded and deluded by years of not following hard after God but instead exploring wisdom scientifically in his own strength seemingly writes of these women in his harem in light of his pursuit of the good woman of Proverbs 31:

All this I tested by wisdom, saying, “I resolve to be wise.” But it was beyond me. What exists is out of reach and very deep. Who can fathom it? I directed my mind to understand, to explore, to search out wisdom and explanations, and to understand the stupidity of wickedness and the folly of madness. And I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a net, and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is ensnared.

“Behold,” says the Teacher, “I have discovered this by adding one thing to another to find an explanation. While my soul was still searching but not finding, among a thousand I have found one upright man, but among all these I have not found one such woman. Only this have I found: I have discovered that God made men upright, but they have sought out many schemes.” (v23-29, NIV)

If Solomon, in his God-given wisdom (set aside here) cannot in his own strength find a Proverbs 31 woman with all the resources he had available, what makes us think we can become one of these godly women in our own strength? In 1 Kings 11, God reveals not only Solomon’s 1,000 wives but what collecting them and studying them scientifically and joining them in their pagan worship does to him:

Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done. On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods.

The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command. (v. 1-10, NIV)

Yes. I started this post about women struggling to carve out or steal enough time in their busy lives to spend with God. Ignoring what we need, ignoring the truth found in Scriptures that shows how desperately even Jesus Himself needed to spend time alone with God, is not healthy. Solomon, instead of desperately seeking time with the God who had revealed himself to him two times already, who had chosen him over his older brother(s) as king, who had expressed a love for him and a preference for him and had extended the honor of building a house where He would put His own name to dwell among men . . . Solomon chose to desperately seek wisdom for wisdom’s sake in his own power, thinking that was enough. Solomon, who had been given everything he needed for life and godliness (just as we have in our own time through the Word of God), threw it away to pursue worldly things, worldly answers to questions not asked instead of enjoying the time he had been gifted with in the presence of God Himself. 

It occurs to me that I often forget, as I think many women do, that God is the author and finisher, the perfecter of my faith (Hebrews 12:2). I am not. I must look to Him to “perfect” my faith, not to perfect me. There is a difference. If I pursue my own seeming “perfection” in my own feeble strength, I am doing something He has not asked me to do. He has asked me to look to Jesus as the author and finisher, the perfecter of my faith. He has also given me His witness that this can be accomplished in Him even in hard times. I am to pick up my cross and follow the One who carried mine for me and poured out His blood for me that I might be washed clean and enter the presence of God. 

No, my times are not your times. My way is not necessarily your way. My faith is not your faith in the sense that it is given in the same proportions on the same timetable as yours. My circumstances are not the same. My shoes might be too big and fall off your feet if you tried to walk in them or way too small and bind you in ways that hurt your walk. But God, who gave us everything we need for life and godliness knows that. He is the one who is working out His plans in your life (Eph. 2:10); He is still working in you if Christ is in you (Phil. 1:6). He is enough. Seek him diligently and desperately like the food you crave more than any other whenever and wherever you can. Soak Him up. Love Him. Fear Him. Worship Him reverently. Make your confessions and trust Him to do the finishing work while you rest under His wing.