She perceives that her merchandise is good, And her lamp does not go out by night. (Proverbs 31:18 NKJV) Does anyone else taste their food while theyre cooking it? Then, once again before it hits the plates or table? Well, I have good news for us today, apparently its biblical. The word perceives means to taste and in this verse we see our virtuous woman tasting her merchandise. Lets remember what shes been up to. She carefully thought out a plan to buy a field to plant a vineyard. She rolled up her sleeves and planted and now shes tasting her merchandise. What she carefully planned out is coming to fruition in this verse. It has yielded good fruit, and we all know what a sweet blessing and reward that is! I imagine the food network stars when they taste their final dish at the end of the show. You know how, they get that look on their face when they roll their eyes and kind of tilt their head back? Picture our virtuous woman doing that as she tastes her merchandise and thinks or maybe even says out loud, man, thats good!. Tonight is not a night to hit the sack early and turn in for the night - shes got work to do! Does this woman EVER sleep? We read in vs. 15 that she gets up while its still dark and now we read shes up late too! What I think we need to remember is that both vs 15 and 18 have a context. Her sleep patterns revealed in both passages dont stand alone, shes up for a reason. In vs, 15 its to prepare food for her household for the day. Some days, your family may have extra needs you have to prep for before the day gets going. In todays vs, shes burning the midnight oil because shes got her merchandise to prepare, produce doesnt last forever. There will be nights where a school project has to get done, so you get it done. The point here is there are times or seasons when its necessary to either rise early or turn in late, or both. For some of us those can even be LONG seasons! It takes a selfless, serving heart to do that, to rise early and turn in late for the sake of your family. It also takes trust in The Lord. We have to trust that when sleep is lost (not the indulgent kind) that He will sustain us until we can make up for it. In days that follow a late night or early morning, we see more clearly the need to be girded with HIS strength! A lot of what weve seen of our virtuous woman can describe a thankless job. Do you look at virtue after virtue and think its unfair? How can we be expected to do all this stuff? I want to ask you to consider if what youre seeing are works or fruit. Works are tiring, thankless, unfair and impossible. Fruit, comes through surrender to the working of ... The Holy Spirit in you. We talk about what virtue means in our first devo in proverbs 31; a synonym for virtuous is righteous. So if we want to be virtuous, or righteous, lets look again at Phil 3:14. and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. Dont be found in yourself, working toward your own righteousness following all these dos. Be found IN him, having righteousness that comes through faith- and produces fruit! Its not what you do its how you surrender and what HE can do through that. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. (John 15:4 NKJV)
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 14:51:54 +0000
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