The Resolution for Women

by Priscilla Shirer

  I promise you, surrendering to submission is not akin to waving a hypothetical white flag, folding to some lesser way of living that demeans and devalues your talents and gifts. On the contrary, it provides a framework in which your potential can truly flourish. Like a fire that is best enjoyed within the confines of a fireplace, your strength can best be displayed, its benefits most fully experienced, when you choose the trusted, effective boundaries of God’s established order.

  This is the essence of submission.

  Submission.

  There it is. That word. The one that’s liable to send a chill down the spine of the strongest among us. In fact, the stronger, more ambitious, and more independently capable you are, the more inclined you may be to shudder at the thought.

  Submission. It’s simply defined as a decision to yield to people, precepts, and principles that have been placed in our lives as authorities.

  Some have abused it, yes. Some have misapplied the concept, allowing husbands to be domineering and their wives doormats. Our gut reaction and assumption, foisted on us by the steady impact of postfeminist thinking, is to assume that placing a woman under her husband’s authority is the same as relegating her to inferior status.

  Yet if this were God’s intention, why would He infuse such great worth into you (as we clarified in the last chapter), then demean you into subservience by His own design? And why would Jesus, one of the most highly respected and powerful men even in the eyes of unbelievers, choose to live a totally submitted lifestyle—one He described in this way: “I always do what pleases [the Father]” (John 8:29)?

  Obviously this divine arrangement of roles, boundaries, and responsibilities is intended to exude blessing in all directions. Just as employees, citizens, believers, and children receive the greatest benefit—and perform their most efficient work—by willfully, gratefully operating within their prescribed positions and under proper authority, women experience life to the fullest extent as they exert their influence through God-trusting submission.

  No, not all leaders live their responsibilities well. Perhaps, if you’re married, your husband doesn’t. And both you and your family reel from the difficulties that spring from that, to one degree or another. But your husband, like any leader in God’s created order, will be held accountable for how wisely, how carefully, how devotedly, how biblically he has handled his role.

  And, sister, so will you.

  You, too, are responsible for how you function within your submitted role, putting your trust in God’s faithful love and goodness by obeying Him against any urge to the contrary. This is certainly not to say that you must submit to anyone who leads you into sin or is abusive toward you. If you are in a marriage where your conscience and physical safety are under threat, the duty of submission does not call you to endure any demand without question. Hear me? Make no mistake about that. But be honest: how often is your resistance to another’s lead a mere matter of opinion and preference, a refusal to do anyone’s bidding just because they expect it of you?

  So consider your feelings regarding this part of your role as a woman. Are you offended at the thought of yielding to the authority of another? If you are married, is this something you rebel against? If you are single, do you take seriously the need to pursue a biblical heart for marriage, should you one day become a wife? Are you even now pursuing a spiritual covering by seeking accountability with those whose lives you respect, those whose godly maturity can provide you with strong, helpful counsel and direction as you navigate life?

  A place of freedom and peace awaits every woman who aligns herself with God’s design. It’s up to us to expose the lies of our age and to remind this generation of the true beauty and value of the submitted woman.

  This is our resolution.

  • In preparation for signing your second resolution, read this statement again: “A woman’s strength is best seen not in the demonstration of her power but in her ability to harness it under the authority of God-given leadership.” Consider it carefully and determine what it will look like when fleshed out in your own life. Make this resolution with confidence, knowing that you are choosing to align yourself under His all-wise plans. Enter with freedom and sign your name to signify your commitment.

  PURPOSEFULLY FEMININE

  I will champion God’s model for womanhood in the face of a postfeminist culture. I will teach it to my daughters and encourage its support by my sons.

  __________

  AUTHENTICALLY ME

  A resolution to value myself and celebrate others

  Intelligent Design

  Tuesday Morning.

  It’s more than just a day near the beginning of your week. It’s also the name of a neighborhood store that carries tons of home goods marked at discount prices (my kind of shopping). Everything from sturdy pieces of furniture to little decorating knickknacks are scattered throughout the aisles, each featuring a hanging tag boasting dollars-off savings. This was precisely the reason I was so excited when our architect and interior designer walked into our almost-ready offices carrying several Tuesday Morning bags, each stuffed to the brim with all sorts of things.

  We had been renovating a twenty-two hundred-square-foot barn and a small two-bedroom cottage into office space for our ministry and a place to write and study for me. It had taken the whole summer for Steve and Bridgette, our neighbors and friends, to design, plan, and manage the overhaul. They knew our tastes not only in structural details but also for extreme bargains. So when she’d run across some home décor items she couldn’t resist for both their beauty and price, she bought them.

  No sooner had Bridgette walked through the doors of our barn/office than we were tearing into the bags together—feeling textures, admiring colors, testing items in different places, holding them up for each other to see and evaluate. It was fun. Felt like my own private turn on HGTV. Every item was more beautiful than the last. Each of them fit perfectly into the spots Bridgette had in mind when she purchased them.

  Reaching into the final bag, she began showing me things she’d selected specifically for my writing cottage. We’d purposefully redone this tiny workspace in neutral colors—very plain, very natural—because I hadn’t yet decided what kind of style I wanted this place to assume. Wasn’t sure of the feel I wanted to create there. So I had them paint us a bare slate, just to be safe. The flooring, wall paint, and countertops were all a clean, clear, cream palate—a perfect backdrop for whatever furniture and décor might fill the space at a later date.

  That’s why when Bridgette opened up this last Tuesday Morning bag and held up a simple fabric tassel, designed to hang on a doorknob or drawer pull, I was uncertain. No doubt it was beautiful. Loose streamers of different textures and hues cascaded from an ornate bulb, each with a sheen that caught the natural sunlight filtering through the window. I had to admit, it certainly would be pretty in that space. Great price too, I discovered, flipping around its sale tag. $5.99. Yet another reason to call it gorgeous.

  But something was bothering me about it. I sat in the middle of the empty, hollow living room floor, twirling it around, thinking. Even as I tried to come up with the right place to hang it, something made me uncomfortable about keeping it.

  Was it the way the tassel looked? No, I thought it was beautiful.

  Was it how much the tassel cost? Hardly. I’d probably never find anything similar for that price.

  Well, if it wasn’t that, then what?

  This. It was the first piece of décor I’d gotten for my new workspace, and it carried a specific color palate. Pretty but also precise. If hung in the cottage, it would dictate the rest of the decorating decisions I’d need to make in regard to the whole room. I’d end up having to search high and low for things that matched it. So while I did think the tassel was gorgeous, I felt unsteady about basing everything else on something so small and insignificant. Seemed a little absurd to me. Unbalanced. Backwards. I couldn’t help thinking I needed to make some seminal, foundational
decisions first in the more overarching areas of my decorating scheme before settling in on this one little piece of trimming—things like color, seating, rugs, lighting, wall art. Bigger things. Things that really mattered. Things that deserved to be the centerpieces in the room.

  Not a tassel.

  So I returned it. As nice and cost-effective as it was, it just wasn’t important enough for me to base my whole motif around, to dictate every other decision I was going to make about this room.

  Too bad I haven’t always taken this same perspective with my own life. I’ve often based my self-worth on some second-rate, inconsequential detail or assumption—like the way I looked, or the clique I fit into, or the way I measured up to a culturally set standard—to determine the type of woman I should be, to dictate the kinds of things I spent most of my time thinking about and majoring on.

  Again and again, in more ways than I’d like to admit, I’ve bought the tassel—the menial, the inconsequential, the trivial, even the totally false and inappropriate—hung it in a focal point, and then based the whole room of my life around it.

  Surely it’s not just me. Maybe you’ve picked up bits and pieces of false, worldly ideology or philosophy, then have chosen to change your perspectives (and ultimately yourself) to match. Have you acquired some distorted cultural paradigms and suggestions along the way that you’ve felt pressure to embody instead of believing you’re enough just the way you are? Or maybe you’ve blown things out of proportion, like an isolated event or a momentary setback, then basically allowed it to identify you, forcing you to build the rest of your life around it. Before you knew it, you were being controlled by something that honestly didn’t have the clout to boss you around. Now you’re maneuvering your life to accommodate a circumstance or idea that you’d given far too much rope in the first place.

  It’s unbalanced. Backwards. Absurd. Out of order.

  We need to make the bigger, more sweeping decisions first. We need to figure out what to do with the house before figuring out where to hang the accessories.

  And that’s why this resolution is so important to me, to you—this commitment to assign genuine value to who we are, based on our God-given worth, talents, gifts, and abilities. Because once we’ve settled this issue—this main issue—everything else can begin falling appropriately into place. We’ll have the freedom to build our lives on what really matters, discarding all the things that don’t.

  I urge you, don’t let something as important as the value you place on your own life be based on some cheap, dollar-store idea you ran across at a philosophical flea market, or some throwaway opinion you found at a trendy, modern swap meet. The life you’re renovating has far too much God-given potential for you to plant its roots in something so menial. Dig deep and lean in to the truth—the truth of who you are and what He’s created you to offer to the world—and then orbit your life around that steadfast knowledge. This isn’t backwards, unbalanced, and absurd. It’s steady, sure, trustworthy, powerful.

  Absolutely resolute.

  • What are some minor incidentals you’ve allowed to shape your self-image or self-worth?

  • How has the decorating scheme of your life turned out differently than you would like as a result of that?

  • Read 1 Peter 2:9–10 and record the statements of value declared concerning you. Make a point of really studying and meditating on this Scripture, digging more deeply into the truths revealed.

  Supernatural Selection

  Last night on television, I heard a world-renowned celebrity being interviewed. She looked beautiful. Charming. Every bit the prominent, accomplished, acclaimed public figure we’ve all seen on the stage of her profession. And yet even this woman—admired by millions, rewarded with great wealth, status, and fame—said something I really didn’t expect. Responding to one of the interviewer’s questions, she answered, “I’ve never had a very healthy self-esteem. I don’t even know how a person gets that. I’m desperately trying to figure out where to find it.”

  Huh? Her? Not happy with who she is? I was shocked. A woman with so much talent and prestige, now in her mid-fifties, having known little other than position and prominence her whole adult life, revealing an inner struggle she’d battled for years and years—the longtime attempt to discover, enjoy, and celebrate herself.

  We know from revelations like this, just as we know from our own struggles with the same kinds of feelings, that our true, lasting value must be based on something besides the visible and exterior.

  Not just something else but someone else.

  Hear it explained in His own voice as He speaks to a young man who’d similarly lost touch with a healthy self-concept. Seeking to encourage the young prophet Jeremiah, God said to him . . .

  I chose you before I formed you in the womb; I set you apart before you were born. I appointed you a prophet to the nations. (Jeremiah 1:5)

  Read that verse again. Hear those three staggering declarations with the ears of a daughter listening attentively to the voice of her loving Father.

  “I chose you.”

  “I set you apart.”

  “I appointed you.”

  This is truly who you are. A woman chosen. A woman set apart. A woman appointed. You are not here by accident at this moment with this book in your hands, along with an accompanying desire to make some serious resolutions that will reshape your whole life. It is no mistake that you are living right now with your own set of circumstances, dealing with your specific set of issues, all while working within your personalized set of skills and abilities.

  God has made you you and has placed you here. On purpose.

  1. He chose you. You are involved in a divinely designed, carefully calculated, and eternally significant plan. For reasons you may not fully understand or even agree with, God selected you as His own. This was not a quick, halfhearted decision on His part. It was a deliberate, volitional act of God Himself, made with thoughtful consideration and wisdom.

  Choosing, as it is used in this verse, denotes a knowing. His choice of you was based on a deep, intimate knowledge of who you are. So even if you simply cannot fathom why God would choose a person like you to participate in a particular activity, He Himself is well aware of His reasons. He has selected you, and everything about you, to participate in the work He is doing at this point in history. Like a coach who methodically considers which runner to put on the track at particular stages of a relay race, God’s choice of you for this leg of the marathon was by design.

  That’s why you’re here. In this position.

  Facing that project.

  Married to that man.

  Involved in that friendship.

  Dealing with that issue.

  Living in that neighborhood.

  Spearheading that committee.

  Participating in that activity.

  Mothering those children.

  Living this life.

  Not because it has accidentally happened like this but because you have been known and chosen by the one Coach who sees you as uniquely suited, equipped, and capable of carrying out such amazing plans with such intricate precision.

  You are the one, my friend.

  You. Are. The. One.

  This overwhelming realization is what brought my friend Anna to her knees one day, releasing such a steady stream of warm, worshipful tears down her pretty face that they soon began dripping from her chin. She’d recently been rejected . . . again. This was her second broken engagement, the final straw that had broken whatever thin, tiny shreds of self-worth were still left in her heart. You can imagine. She felt (and believed she had every reason to feel) unloved, unappreciated, undervalued. In her estimation little of herself was redeemable or attractive enough to make her worth another’s attention. Not any more. Not after all of this. Who needs to be shown more than twice—in perhaps the most humiliating, most personal, most vulnerable way possible—that nobody wants you?

  But Jesus’ words to His disciples, to her, to us—jus
t like God’s words to Jeremiah—stunned her with their power and peace: “You did not choose Me, but I chose you” (John 15:16). She’d seen that phrase in Scripture before but never like this—not with the glowing highlighter of God’s Spirit hovering over it, punctuating each word with the pinpoint precision of divine clarity. I chose you. The words rested on Anna’s heart like a soothing balm, covering the gaping wounds, refreshing the dry landscape of her soul. With this phrase began a new journey of realization for her, the same revealed discovery that each of us must hear and receive and welcome inside if we’re ever to live out the plans He has for us. Your value, like mine, is ultimately found in the undeserved but wholly divine selection processes of God.

  2. He set you apart. You’re not like all the other relay runners. If you spend all your time looking at the runner behind you or focusing on the one ahead of you, wishing you had their skills and talents, your lane will go unattended. We don’t need the same runners. We need sanctified runners. Consecrated runners. Runners who have been set apart for their particular tasks, fulfilling their own unique roles, running their particular leg of the race in this time, in this place.

  Being “set apart” carries the idea of being dedicated for a specific use at a specific time, being reserved for those opportunities when (and how and where) you can best be used, when you can most be yourself. It’s like the special dishes you might keep in your china cabinet. Maybe you received them as a wedding gift. Most of the time they’re kept behind glass, looking out onto the kitchen table in the other room where the everyday plates and cups get to have all the fun. But when those key moments come around, the ones that call for a special touch, only the fine dishes will do.