True Woman Tuesday - Week 9

Welcome to Week 9 of the True Woman Makeover hosted by my cousin Tammi at Valleygirl. Check out her blog for her thoughts, as well as those of others doing this study with us. I can't believe we only have one more week left - I've really enjoyed this study!

I found these lessons to be a bit of a repeat of some of our earlier Proverbs 31 lessons. But still good reminders.

Lesson 25 is titled Make Your Husband a Priority. The lesson reinforced the truth that men needs respect and affirmation from their wives - they need us to say it, and they need us to show it. Our husbands needs to be our priority. We need to love our husbands.

You can’t say you have sound doctrine if you despise or disregard your husband. Loving your husband flows out of the gospel, and this kind of love also flows out of a promise, a vow, a covenant.

Powerful statement, and totally true. I'm not sure I've ever thought of it exactly that way, but it is very accurate.

We need to be intentional above loving our husbands - like we were intentional about loving them when we were dating! Show genuine interest in our husbands, investing in them, investing in things that interest them. Have fun together. This is something Nathan and I definitely do - we try to go out regularly for date nights, and we try to get away for holidays by ourselves without the kids. This isn't always an option for people (either because they can't find sitters or because of finances), but there are always ways to get alone time if it's a priority and you use some imagination!

Lesson 26 is Letting God Shape Your Husband.

Nobody is perfect. If you look, you can find faults in anybody. But people can find faults in you too. We're all sinners in need of grace - from God and from each other. And there should be no one that you're more willing to extend grace to than your husband.

Don't expect perfection, and you won't be disappointed when you don't find it.

And regardless of his sin or imperfections, we are still responsible for how we react and deal with that, and how we treat our husbands.

It’s your job to love your husband. It’s God’s job to change him.

I love that quote. We are not to be the Holy Spirit to our husbands. We are to love them and pray for them.

And no matter the imperfections, everyone also has positive qualities. We need to focus on our husband's positive qualities - and verbally praise him for them.

This is true of all our relationships, and even life in general. Focusing on the negative always makes things worse. And focusing on the positive always makes things better. We can't control what other people do, we often can't control our circumstances. But we can control our reactions, and we can control our attitudes, and we can control our perspective.

Lesson 27 is called Delighting in Your Children. This was an excellent reminder that children are truly a blessing and keeping that perspective can help us get through those tough days. Every time the Bible speaks about children it is to call them a blessing, a heritage, a reward.

Jesus said, in effect, “This is the time for kids, because the kingdom of God is made up of people who have childlike faith and humility. Value the children. Don’t send them away. Let them come to Me.”

Jesus stops what He is doing—Jesus, the Son of God, who has got to accomplish the plan of redemption in three years. He stops. He takes the children in His lap. He blesses them.

Is Jesus can take the time for children, we certainly can and should!

We need to delight in our children and tell them so! Over and over - you can never say "I love you" too much. Never.

Make them a priority, second only to our husbands who are second only to God.

We need to keep our perspective and we need to keep our priorities in focus.

Don't forget to head over to Valleygirl and see what the others had to say about this past week's lessons.