The Resolution for Women

by Priscilla Shirer

  So, yes, I was supposed to act. In what way I wasn’t yet sure. But before I could know, and before I could go, I needed a broken heart.

  Have you ever asked Him for that? Have you ever considered that any disinterest you may feel in serving and caring and getting your hands dirty might really be because you’ve never set your heart before Him and asked Him to break it, to make it more sensitive to the ailments of others? Most often we’re asking Him to heal it, strengthen it, or restore it. But what kind of supernatural power are we choosing to avoid experiencing by not having a heart broken for the plights of those around us?

  Jesus had one. A broken heart.

  Throughout the Scriptures we see the portrait of a Man who didn’t walk blindly down the dusty, ancient roads of His day, bypassing human devastation and need without a second glance. Rather, He paid close attention. He was moved with compassion. He stopped to care for those who were disenfranchised and distressed.

  When He saw the hungry, His heart was broken (Matthew 15:32).

  When He saw the sick, His heart was broken (Matthew 14:14).

  When He saw the emotionally devastated, His heart was broken (Luke 7:13; John 6:35).

  When He saw the lonely and spiritually lost, His heart was broken (Matthew 9:36)

  And when He wasn’t extending compassion, He was talking about compassion—telling stories, giving reminders, pointing people in that direction. Showing mercy toward others was an important part of the gospel He came to offer. He didn’t turn a blind eye to people’s physical needs in order to get to the “more important” spiritual one.

  You and I are to be women resolved to do the same. We are part of the church—His church—God’s answer for the desperation of our time. If we only attend women’s conferences, read encouraging books, listen to sermons, sing worship songs, and yet do little if anything to help others in a tangible way, we relegate our demonstration of His gospel to an impotent, watered-down, self-absorbed exercise. And while I hope you do all these things and benefit greatly from them, I also pray that you sense a little dissatisfaction that causes you to seek something more—something with an outward focus. He saved you for many reasons, but one of them is so that others can sense His compassion manifested toward them through you. Not in words only. Definitely not in silence and blank stares. But in deed. In action.

  Jesus didn’t just preach a gospel; He lived one. And now you are His hands and feet—hands that are for more than writing personal checks, feet that are for more than walking to church or to the mailbox so that someone else can be resourced to go. Sending help is honorable. Do it. People need it. But hiding beneath the cloak of giving keeps you from experiencing the benefits of being the helper God is commissioning you to be.

  Right from your own home.

  With your own personal resources.

  Using the gifts of your own family.

  Organizing the unique qualities of your own friends.

  When Jesus felt empathy toward others, it wasn’t a clichéd emotion. It was a deep, gut-wrenching reaction that, according to many commentators, would affect Him physically—the equivalent of having an uneasy stomach. How did He choose to respond to that? He didn’t go home, hoping that a good nap would cause His sadness and irritation to wear off. He took His broken heart as a sign to do something, to act in accordance with the Father’s will. He went. He served. He listened. He healed.

  So . . .

  What tugs at your heart?

  What causes your stomach to feel uneasy?

  Again, it may be an issue affecting people on the other side of the globe. Or it may be a situation involving some neighbors across the street. It may require a long-term commitment or just a couple of hours on one solitary afternoon. It could be an older woman or a newborn baby. Opportunities to serve others come in all shapes and sizes—none more valuable than another. But when you see the one that’s yours to do something about, He will cause your heart to be stirred, drawn to an individual and her need, drawn to a family and their pain, drawn to a group of people and their challenges, drawn to a country and their crises.

  Take that as your cue to respond, like a woman resolved to compassion.

  You may be a person who’s not normally moved or emotionally stirred, who just doesn’t usually respond that way. And yet you can have the same thing Jesus had—a divine compassion for that which breaks the heart of God and tunes you into His purposes for you. When your heart melts to the touch of searing realities that others are facing, you’re experiencing something your sanctification is designed to achieve. You are being changed into Christ’s image. Breaking your heart. And in being broken, being called to respond.

  Yes, you can have it—a godly sympathy that leads to action. You must have it. Because your world is waiting to experience Christ through you. You are the solution the problem is waiting for. This is why your heart is hurting. This is why it’s so hard for you to look. This is the reason your tummy churns at the sight of it.

  This is compassion.

  So ask the Lord to break your heart, to reveal a need in all its horrible actuality until He gives you the courage to respond.

  What is causing your heart to break?

  This is your cue.

  Do something.

  • Perhaps you’ve been burned when trying to reach out too drastically. People have taken advantage of you or misunderstood your motives. But when you go to minister Christ’s love to another person, what is your real reason for going? What’s a better way to evaluate your success than with measurable, feel-good results alone?

  Mercy Me

  I’ve been on a search my entire life. After accepting Christ at an early age, and then growing in my understanding through the years of what it meant to be a Christian, I began to wonder what His will for me was. I knew He had a purpose, one that He hadn’t just concocted on the spur of the moment, one that He had carefully crafted beforehand (Ephesians 2:10), before I was even born. But I often felt like it eluded me, as though it was always just out of reach and out of sight. As a younger woman, when I was navigating which subjects to study, which opportunities to accept, and which direction to pursue, I regularly wished that God would be more clear, more forthright, more plainly obvious about what He wanted me to do at that particular point in life.

  Maybe you’re wondering the same thing. In one area or another, you feel like you’re just meandering, weaving aimlessly through your weeks and months, walking around with a continuous question mark floating above your head. You want to be in His will, but you just aren’t clear what His will is. And so you wait. And keep waiting. Waiting for Him to make His will known so you can get busy doing it.

  Admirable desire, my friend.

  But what if the disclosure of His continued purposes for your life is at least partly dependent on your obedience to what He’s already set before you? What if He wants to see your level of faithfulness in responding to what you do know before He fills you in on what you don’t? It’s like your child trying to get you to make plans for tomorrow when he hasn’t yet taken care of his responsibilities for today. “We’ll worry about later, young man, young lady, once you’ve taken care of right now.” Isn’t that the way it goes?

  Well, maybe the same idea applies in God’s revelation of His will to us. For, yes, while some of what He retains in store for you and me is not yet known to us, some of it He has clearly and explicitly expressed. Case in point:

  He has showed you, O man, what is good.

  And what does the LORD require of you?

  To act justly and to love mercy and

  to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8 NIV)

  Doesn’t get any clearer than that. “He has showed you.” Never again can you say that you don’t know what He “requires” of you, what His current will is for your life. Sure, there’s much more to unfold, an array of details left to discover. But this much you do know:

  Do justice.

  Love mercy.

  Walk humbly with your God
.

  So, sister, I ask you . . . are you doing that? Are you making the deliberate and conscious resolution to respond to what you absolutely know God has asked you to commit to? There’s no better time to make this resolution than right this minute—to walk away with enough insight about these three imperatives to be able to make some practical decisions on how you’re going to live them out.

  Justice. When I read this portion of the verse, I’m immediately struck by the verb that precedes it: “to act.” Some versions say, “to do.” We normally think of “justice” as some ethereal idea, an abstract thought. It’s not so much an “act” as just a thing. Justice. But in this case justice is an action, something to be manifested and demonstrated. Maybe a quick look back at what Micah had to say about Israel’s ill-natured activities will help:

  What sorrow awaits you who lie awake at night, thinking up evil plans. You rise at dawn and hurry to carry them out, simply because you have the power to do so. When you want a piece of land, you find a way to seize it. When you want someone’s house, you take it by fraud and violence. You cheat a man of his property, stealing his family’s inheritance. (Micah 2:1–2 NLT)

  A woman resolved to justice doesn’t take advantage of people, even if she has the means and opportunity to do so. She determines instead to act rightly—to pursue a just solution—to deliberately consider the best way people or circumstances could be served in a particular situation, even if (sometimes) at her own expense. I’m not saying she’s a pushover or easily fooled. She’s just not looking to get one over on people, working to swing things so that she comes out the big winner. Her primary interest is seeing justice done, seeking solutions that are fair, reasonable, objective, and—most importantly—expressive of the love of Christ.

  Does this describe you? Do you have a pattern of trying to take advantage of others, being more concerned about covering yourself than caring what happens to somebody else? Are you more committed to getting the best end of the deal than making sure others are well cared for? Do you fight for justice or just for yourself?

  Mercy. The original word used here can easily be translated “kindness.” To “love mercy” means to have a hearty interest in doing things that bless and impact others’ lives. It means considering their needs above your own, not because they necessarily deserve it but simply because you “love” doing it for them.

  This is what God’s mercy looks like toward you and me. Doesn’t it? He has chosen not to give us what we deserve. He has withheld rightful judgment and punishment, choosing instead graciously to shower us with affection, tenderness, and forgiveness. Like Christ, we should be willing to do gracious things for others even when their actions and past choices don’t necessarily warrant it. Just because.

  Mercy, we know, comes with dozens of applications for home, work, church—for every place your daily travels take you. But perhaps nowhere is mercy more clearly seen in your life than in the out-of-the-way places where life doesn’t take you unless you’re deliberately going there, places you have to be looking for to find. This was descriptive of the well-known Proverbs 31 woman. “Her hands reach out to the poor, and she extends her hands to the needy” (v. 20). Jesus later said it was indicative of any person whose relationship with Him is pure and genuine. The way we relate to the marginalized and helpless—the “least of these” (Matthew 25:31–46)—bears a direct correlation to our commitment toward Christ Himself.

  Using this kind of barometer, then, what would your mercy quotient reveal about your relationship with God? Are you always keeping records to determine what people deserve from you? Do you only give what you feel like they’ve earned the right to receive? Or are you instead willing to give to those who don’t ask, who aren’t exactly noticeable, or who could never pay you back?

  This is what a woman who extends mercy looks like. It’s what you can look like.

  Humility. Put the two together—justice and mercy—and what do you get? A woman walking “humbly” with her God. Putting the needs of others first. Correctly assessing her own value. Not seeing herself too highly, of course, but not too lowly either. Just pursuing the will of God by daily, faithfully trusting that what He’s said and commanded of her is worth her doing her very best. And whenever He’s ready to share more through the application of His Word and the voice of His Spirit, she’ll be right there ready to receive it. And respond to it.

  So with this much strength of character and fullness of life to experience, why have we so often chosen to discount or ignore these written instructions from God while still searching frantically for “His will for my life”?

  Could it be that it messes with our sheltered, self-absorbed, “American-dream” lifestyles? Are we concerned that taking this resolution to heart might lead to an uncomfortable change we aren’t willing to make? And yet this is at the heart of the gospel we claim to believe. It is what “the LORD requires” of us. How, then, can we say that we want to be in God’s will if we conveniently ignore this very clear part of it?

  One author wrote about a time when he was convicted by this. He was leisurely reading an essay in which the writer was explaining “the process by which words lose their meanings, and he casually offered that the best example of this phenomenon was Christians: ‘Christians, he observed, seem to have the amazing ability to say the most wonderful things without actually believing them.’

  “What became more disturbing,” the author continued, “was his list of things that Christians actually say—like, blessed are the poor and humble; it’s better to give than receive; judge not, lest you be judged; love your neighbor as yourself, etc.—and examining, one by one, how differently I would live my life if I actually believed such things. As [the writer] concluded, ‘The sayings of Christ coexist passively in their minds, producing hardly any effect beyond what is caused by mere listening to words so amiable and bland.’”3

  How challenging! And how true.

  If we really believe the gospel that Christ came to preach, then we will live like it—even if it means dealing with the discomforts His commands may cause.

  Maybe as you come upon the signing of this next resolution, you’re already aware of what the Spirit is compelling you to do. Your heart is burning. Compassion is rising up within you. You could put your finger on the person or people He is asking you to show kindness toward, to seek justice for.

  The woman who lives under the overpass you see every day on your way to work.

  The neighbor whose soldier-husband recently came home wounded from war. She’s now a caregiver not only for her three young daughters but also for her disabled companion.

  The teenager, pregnant for the second time, who’s been ostracized by her family and really needs a shoulder to lean on.

  Sure, it might require a significant investment of time, energy, and resources to do it—gifts and extras you don’t feel like you can give. But if God births in you the compassion to help, He will also multiply in you the means to handle it.

  This should be cause for great excitement because your commitment to obey God in this way could be the key that unlocks the door, inviting Him to reveal His plans for you in other areas and dimensions. This is your opportunity to know His will—imagine that: knowing God’s will—then doing it without reservation.

  That’s a woman walking justly, mercifully, humbly with her God.

  • I think we’ve said enough, don’t you? Now’s your chance to act on it. To put in writing what God has been writing on your heart. You may not know exactly who God will call you to serve or how He will supply the resources to meet their need, but you are resolving to be available. To keep your eyes and heart open—and full of justice, mercy, and compassion.

  MY HEART

  I will pursue justice, love mercy, and extend compassion toward others.

  __________

  PART III

  THIS IS WHAT MATTERS TO ME.

  FULFILLING MY HUSBAND

  A resolution to be the kind of woman who truly blesses
her man

  Marriage Proposal

  It was about five weeks before my wedding day, and I was on cloud nine. With more festivities to attend, gifts to unwrap, and a honeymoon to enjoy, my anticipation was building with each passing day. So when a friend called and asked if she could take me out for a prewedding lunch, I enthusiastically agreed. I dressed up in a cute little outfit and arrived with an empty stomach and a full heart. To celebrate.

  But when I got there, I could tell the mood wasn’t as festive as I’d been expecting. Sure, we had fun. But I knew that something else was on my friend’s mind. She hadn’t extended this invitation just so we could talk about flowers and bridesmaid dresses. She’d come with something far more serious to discuss.

  Fairly early in the meal, in fact, she looked up from her full plate and asked me this question that was pressing on her mind: “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

  Huh? I was startled.

  Now lest you get the wrong impression, let me assure you that this friend of mine loved my fiancé. They had become great friends in the short time they’d known each other, and she thought he’d be a wonderful husband for me. She was also thoroughly convinced that Jerry and I genuinely loved each other.

  It’s just that she . . . was married.

  And that can change the way “married” looks.

  No longer blinded by the butterflies and wistful illusions of romantic splendor, she had a much different take on the subject than someone in my position might have. She wasn’t miserable, just realistic. She was still enjoying a lot of the things single women look forward to in marriage and a husband. But there were also a lot of other things—things that can creep up and surprise a new bride quicker than she can dry-clean her wedding dress and hang it back up properly in the closet.