Kingdom Woman: Embracing Your Purpose, Power, and Possibilities (6 page)

I’ve started cleaning my closet more times than I can count. The back of the closet hasn’t been touched for the last three years.

I have a pile of items to sell on craigslist or eBay. The pile is growing faster than the items sell.

Books are a passion of mine. However, I buy them faster than I can read them. Being less than ten minutes from a Barnes and Noble doesn’t help my situation, and neither do my visits to the annual homeschool book fairs (yes, that’s plural). Add to that the reading that I need to do to keep up with my children’s learning.

I’ve started more Bible studies than I care to remember. The
Believing God
Bible study by Beth Moore is still on the bookshelf that it sat on when I started it two years ago. Both summers since, it’s been on my to-do list.

Although I enjoy my life and never quite get stuck in a rut or fall into boredom often, I can’t say that I finish as many things as I start.

And I have to admit that this ADD way of living isn’t simply a result of a complex adult life or the by-product of motherhood-induced amnesia! Since my teenage years, I’ve often found myself so hyper-focused on one area of struggle that I just give up and yield to the temptation of throwing in the towel. Probably the best illustration of this was during my high school athletics.

When I was in high school, I ran track. Although my true desire was to be a sprinter and join the elite on the 400-meter relay team, the reality was I just wasn’t fast enough. So I got put in longer distance races. Instead of being on the 400-meter relay team, I had to run the whole thing by myself. Needless to say, this was a struggle for me. The same folks who were running 100-meter dashes and could keep it up for a while were the same people who entered the 400-meter races. I ended up hopeless at many of the track meets as I settled into the idea of coming in toward the back of the pack.

So my coach suggested I try the 800-meter race instead. She obviously thought I was a glutton for punishment. Since I didn’t seem wired for speed, I guess my coach figured I might be wired for endurance.

I hated running this race. I think I might have preferred coming in last on a shorter race than placing higher running a race that required emotional and physical torture.

I hated feeling like my lungs were going to pop out of my chest cavity, and I hated the burning sensation of my soles over the spikes on the asphalt. My head hurt, my thighs ached, and my arms would be on fire. It was miserable. And that was when I was running the race at a track meet. Practices involved their own unique torture.

I had to run longer and faster in preparation for my performance at a meet. The 800-meter became two miles for practice in endurance, and 200-meter dashes expanded to eight 200-meter dashes in a row to develop speed. But I wanted to run. I struggled to do it well, but I wanted to do better, so I kept showing up even when I wanted to quit.

There is a story hidden in those years of running that illustrates a time when I wanted to quit like nothing else, but I didn’t. It is a time when I had lost all hope but found a way to keep going.

We tell the story over and over at our family dinner table.

My dad came to watch me run the 800-meter race. I started out and established a good pace. I remember rounding the first curve and thinking that I felt full of energy and that my breathing had a good rhythm.

Even after the curve where I had the advantage of being in the inside lane, I was still in the lead. Now I started to get a bit excited. I remember hearing the pace of the girls behind me and thinking that I actually had a chance of placing.

When I went around the second curve, my adrenaline started flowing, and my heart pounded a bit faster. Surprisingly, I was still in control of my body, driving it forward with each step and each swing of the arms. I felt powerful.

On the second straightaway, words cannot express the pride that welled up in me as I heard my dad’s voice in the stands, yelling, “Go, Chrystal, go, Chrystal! You can do it! Keep it up. Pace yourself . . . go . . . go . . . GO!”

Around the third curve, no one had passed me yet. There was a chance, a
real
chance, that I could take home a medal this time.

Yet before I knew it, that familiar feeling showed up. My lungs began to burn. My legs felt like lead. I willed my arms to pump faster, harder.

I was still in the lead.

But soon all of my power escaped through my nostrils; the capacity to control my breathing and my pace disappeared. My body and my flesh took over as I slowly realized that now even getting to the finish line might not happen.

In the distance, I could still hear my dad yelling “Chrystal, don’t give up! Keep going. Come on . . . Come on . . . Keep running . . . Don’t quit—you can do it!”

This time my appendages cared nothing for his words, and
they
were running the show.

I heard the steps of the girl closest to me increase a tad in speed. She saw the finish line approaching too, and she was definitely after me. Halfway up the straightaway, she passed me and took with her the last bit of resolve I owned. I had lost, and I heard the distant voice cry out in compassion for me.

“Awww, Chrystal!” my dad said. I knew what he meant by those words. I had given up.

A second set of feet closed in on me. When I say that I was barely walking at this point, that’s
exactly
what I mean. Not only was I losing, but I wondered if I would even finish.

I attempted to set my eyes on the finish line, but it seemed too far away. I let my eyes fall to my feet instead. My head drooped. My once upright frame started to bend over.

Completing the last thirty feet to the finish line seemed to take three hours. Everything moved in slow motion. The voices from the crowd had become unintelligible. Except for one. I heard him, as loud as ever. He knew I was discouraged. He knew I had felt I had first place in the bag. He could tell by my posture that I had lost hope of even finishing now. But I heard him yell, “Go, Chrystal! You’re almost there! Go! You can do it!”

When my right foot crossed the final white line, I came to a halt. I had finished! I hadn’t given up! And I had grabbed the third place medal.

I truly feel that on that day (and every day my whole family laughs as my dad tells the story again), I was ready to quit. I simply stopped giving it my all when the first girl passed me. My flesh was weak, my spirit was faint, and I did not dig deep within to continue. At least not on my own.

I learned in that experience, though, that just as much as we need focus, diligence, and self-control to finish a race, sometimes we need someone encouraging
us as well. Someone who believes that we can do it even when we have stopped believing in ourselves.

Our lives are not without mistakes. Every experience we have, God can use for His glory. He weaves our good and our not-so-good together to make a beautiful tapestry. But, oh, how I want to avoid unnecessary pitfalls by giving up way too soon.

I so yearn to be one of those people who goes the distance as a kingdom woman. I don’t want my life only to leave loose threads, rough edges, or unfinished tasks. I want to finish, and I want to finish well. It makes me sad to think of times in the past when I haven’t.

When I look around at all of the projects and tasks that I have yet to complete, it makes me sad to think that I will fall prey to every distracting activity that comes my way rather than keeping first things first.

What can I do? How can I change?

Hebrews 12:1 tells us, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us
run
with perseverance the
race
marked out for us.”

How do I know which race is mine? Only God can tell me. How can I get this information from God? I have to spend time with Him. I have to view Him as more than religion or a system of rights and wrongs. Jesus is real. The relationship that He longs to have with me is real. And only He can help me lift my head up when the tiredness from life causes me to cave in. Only His voice matters when I’m ready to give up.

My dad makes an interesting point when he teaches on Hebrews 12:1. The verse doesn’t tell us to throw off the sins (plural) that hinder us and entangle us. It says to throw off
the
sin
(singular). We aren’t to get weighed down trying to fix this, that, and the other. Because if we don’t get the main thing right, we’ll never get the rest to fall in line. The sin that this verse refers to is the sin of unbelief, a lack of faith. When Jesus told the woman who couldn’t straighten up that He wanted her
to come to Him, she could have said no. She could have said that she’d tried church already. She could have said that she was tired. She could have said that her back hurt. She could have said that she didn’t want to be disappointed again—so why try. Instead, she demonstrated faith despite a lifetime of hopelessness.

Life is hard. Life is tough. Life is
real
. But on the day when I ran that 800-meter race, others ran too. The race was difficult for everyone. My legs weren’t the only ones burning. My lungs weren’t the only ones heaving. My thighs weren’t the only ones that felt lifeless and heavy. But the good thing is that we all finished.

I don’t think I’m a quitter by nature. However, I do get easily distracted. Isn’t that just like Satan, though? If he can’t convince us to quit, he just keeps us distracted.

Sisters, we are each running a race, and Jesus is calling each of us to run with Him, to keep from being distracted, and to live with purpose. He doesn’t want us to run with our heads down any longer. He wants us to fix our eyes on Him, to straighten up and let His voice push us on. Can you hear Him? He’s calling your name. He’s cheering for you, telling you that you can make it and encouraging you as you run your race. You don’t need to give up. You don’t have to drop your gaze toward your feet.

We serve a God who knows that we get tired. He is the same God who spent time on this earth, clothed in flesh, running His own race, catching His breath, and enduring physical, emotional, and mental fatigue and pain. But be encouraged. Our God not only can identify with us as we run, but, if we will receive it, He also offers power and strength so that we can run our own race well.

Stand Tall

I’ll always remember that day cheering on Chrystal as she ran. Her story reminds us that even though life gets hard, we have Someone on our side. He is asking each of us to keep going and not quit. Jesus’ death on the cross won your victory in everything. He didn’t just die so that you would be able to manage your mess or misery. He died so that you might have life and have it abundantly.

One final thought from the story of the woman who couldn’t straighten up is found in Luke 13:16, where Jesus gives us a key insight into the rights of
a kingdom woman: “This woman,
a daughter of Abraham
. . .” Did you catch that? The woman Jesus healed was a daughter of Abraham. God had made a covenant with Abraham all the way back in time, as recorded in Genesis, that He would bless Abraham and his descendants. What God promised to give to Abraham held true for Abraham’s children as well.

This woman was connected to Abraham, so she was connected to his covenantal promises. She had a right to be blessed. The same is true for you. As a believer in Jesus Christ, you are a child of Abraham (Galatians 3:29) and, therefore, have rights given to you by the covenant. As a kingdom woman, you have a right to fully experience your destiny. You do not have to live doomed to disappointment or hopelessness.

You can stand tall and walk straight.

3

Most of us prefer excellence. We may not state it openly, but our actions reveal it. For example, we want excellence in the medical care that we receive. We don’t want to hear a doctor say he doesn’t really know what’s wrong with us but would like to operate on us to find out what’s wrong. When it comes to our physical well-being, we want a doctor who knows what he or she is doing. We want excellence.

When we go to a restaurant, we don’t want our food just thrown together. We want it prepared with excellence. We don’t want our server smacking on gum while tossing our food just anywhere on our table. We want excellence.

We certainly don’t want to fly on an airplane that hasn’t been excellently crafted. We don’t want the captain to come on the loudspeaker before takeoff talking about how they taped portions of the wing together. That would be unnerving, and most people, if not all, would quickly disembark. When we fly, we want excellence.

When we spend money to buy a car, we want excellent craftsmanship. We don’t want to be driving it into the repair shop week after week as piece after piece on our new vehicle breaks. We want excellence.

Even though we want excellence in the things that we receive, often we lack excellence in the things that we do. Yet a kingdom woman understands that her unique position calls her to a higher standard than what the culture has set. She knows that God has ordained her for a destiny of excellence.

Being a woman of excellence simply means living your finest, giving your best. When we stand before God at the judgment seat of Christ, He will specifically be looking for excellence. We read about this in Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth:

When one day you stand before God, He will not only ask how much you did for Him but will also judge how excellent it was. Did you merely give God your leftovers, or was quality attached to your life even in the mundane tasks that pile up in a woman’s life? Because your days are often filled with things that others may not see—things that have to get done that you may never hear gratitude for or that may not be on display. It is easy to pull back on the quality of what you do. Yet God wants you to rise to a higher standard. He desires excellence in all you do. And your excellence will not go unnoticed.

In the biblical story of Ruth, Ruth had what would be considered a mundane and overlooked job. She had traveled with her mother-in-law to a new land. Having been widowed, she did not have money or property. To simply get by in life, she had to carry out the task of gleaning. She had to gather the leftovers from the farmers in the field after they had reaped the harvest. Ruth probably never thought that anyone would ever judge how well she did that job, but she did it with excellence. And because she did—all of her life showed excellence—she was later rewarded as she became the wife of a man named Boaz and then the great-grandmother of King David of Israel, ultimately one of the direct ancestors of our eternal King Jesus Christ.

The following passage reveals Ruth’s character:

Ruth’s reputation spoke volumes about her character and destiny. She was a woman of excellence in her decisions and actions. As a result, God lifted her from a low position and situated her in a life of honor.

Excellence is a spiritual issue. It differs from success because success generally has to do with how much money you make, what job you have, or how much prestige you receive. Success has to do with reaching a level that the world recognizes as successful. While success belongs to a few, excellence is available to all.

Excellence is not concerned with how you compare to others. Excellence is concerned with how you are compared to the potential of how you are supposed to be. In other words, excellence has to do with God’s destiny for you. Are you progressively pressing forward and moving toward what He wants for you? Are you defining your decisions, thoughts, and actions by the highest quality and authenticity you have to offer? That is the measure of true excellence.

God has called you, like Ruth, to be a woman of excellence. You may not think that anyone is watching you or that what you are doing carries much significance based on the culture’s values. Yet in some obscure field while collecting remnants of other people’s meals, Ruth gained a reputation of excellence. God saw her, and He was pleased with what He saw. He granted her favor in the eyes of all who saw her as well.

Paul tells us that all of our lives should be marked with excellence:

Excellence should be your aim as a kingdom woman. Proverbs reminds us that the excellent woman, or excellent wife, is a rare treasure of the highest value: “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels” (31:10,
ESV
).

God’s excellence is to serve as your model—“Sing unto the
LORD
; for he hath done excellent things” (Isaiah 12:5,
KJV
). Excellence is the standard for which you ought to aim, since you are a child made in His image.

Keep in mind that
excellence
doesn’t mean
perfection
. It means doing all you can with all you have at that moment. I’ll never forget when Chrystal ran that 800-meter race. I couldn’t have been more proud of her. She had started out so quickly that I knew it was likely she would run out of momentum before reaching the finish line. But I admired her tenacity and her zeal, and she learned an important lesson about pacing herself as well as one on the value of finishing. The thing I was proud of the most was that when she saw the other two runners pass her by, and as her body screamed out to her to quit, she didn’t. She kept going. She didn’t let the reality of her past—the good (being so far in front at the beginning) or the bad (having two runners pass her)—affect her present. She focused on where she was at that very moment.

Paul penned one of the greatest passages in Scripture about pressing forward despite setbacks or discouragement. Paul, a leader in the Christian faith, spoke of his own faith journey when he wrote the following:

Here is the secret to your life as a kingdom woman of excellence: a short memory coupled with a clear direction. If you are going to live in excellence, you have to forget yesterday. Whether it was good, bad, or ugly, if it’s yesterday, you need to let it go. When you carry yesterday further than you ought to, you ruin today. If you ruin today, then you spoil tomorrow.

If anyone should have been held hostage by yesterday, it would have been Ruth. She knew what it was like to be young and married, with plenty of food, and to live in a culture that understood and accepted her. She also knew what it was like to lose her husband and leave her homeland with nothing to her name. But if Ruth had continually wallowed in both the good and the bad of her yesterday, she wouldn’t have had any mind left to be excellent in her today.

Ruth was a woman of excellence because she was not held hostage to yesterday. She knew how to press on.

You are to learn from yesterday, but don’t live in it. The way to get yesterday out of today is to do what Paul said—to have a tomorrow focus: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I
press on
. . .”

When you see something in your rearview mirror that catches your attention as you are driving, it slows you down. Your attention is now focused on what is behind you rather than on what is up ahead. As a result, you lift your foot off the accelerator and slow down. Yet when you set your focus on what is ahead of you, you are able to keep your foot steady on the accelerator and move forward. As you do, what is behind you gets smaller and smaller until it eventually fades away. You don’t get rid of yesterday by talking about it all of the time; you get rid of its effect on you by moving forward.

God told Israel that He had a future for them, and it was a good future flowing with milk and honey, meaning it was an abundant future. God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt. But Egypt never got delivered out of the Israelites. They kept looking back over their shoulders at what they used to have. They lived a yesterday life. In fact, they discussed yesterday so long and so often that God gave them another forty years in the wilderness so they could discuss it some more. The Israelites failed at a life of excellence because they were bound to a life of yesterday. A spirit of excellence is a spirit that presses on, grows, learns, repents, and makes the most of the day that it has been given.

An Example of an Excellent Woman

Another problem that often stands in the way of a life of excellence comes when we live for people more than for God. We make people our standard rather than God. We do our job for those around us, we work for our family’s praise, we make our actions and choices in light of how people are going to respond to us rather than whether God is going to say that we are excellent. It’s easy for us to look at only what we can see, but God sees all. He even sees the most mundane tasks that no one else might ever notice. Martin Luther supposedly said, “[Even] a dairy maid can milk cows to the glory of God.” Paul wrote, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Dwell on excellence. Don’t think of what you can do to get by. Don’t allow yourself to think sloppy thoughts. Think about whether God is applauding all that you do. Think of yourself the way He views you, as a woman destined for excellence.

Again, excellence is not perfection. Rather, it defines your movement. Are you moving forward? Are you progressing to be more and more like Jesus Christ? Are you investing in the moment rather than being bound by yesterday or worrying about tomorrow? Excellence means going to the next level. It shows up in little ways more than it does in big ways. It is a pattern, a lifestyle.

Paul gets a bad rap sometimes from women. He didn’t mince words, and he didn’t make a lot of friends with his writings about women. But one of the greatest honors he ever gave in his writings was given to a woman of excellence. In the last chapter of his hallmark work, the book of Romans, Paul wrapped up his thoughts. As he did, he sent his greetings and well-wishes for those whom he loved. He had just finished his concluding statement when he wrote, “The God of peace be with you all. Amen” (15:33).

His very next statement, as he began his farewell greetings, focused on a kingdom woman named Phoebe. There are only two verses on Phoebe in the Bible, but they speak volumes about her excellence. Phoebe isn’t hidden somewhere down in the midst of a litany of names. Paul began by expressly highlighting this woman:

Phoebe’s excellence, like Ruth’s excellence and like the excellence of the Proverbs 31 woman, is to be your excellence as well. It is your highest calling as a kingdom woman, because through a life of excellence, you bring glory to God. Excellent people who set their minds on God don’t have to be prodded to do well. They fulfill their responsibilities willingly because they do them unto the Lord.

Chrystal’s Chronicles

Not too long ago, it occurred to me as I got up to clean the kitchen for the umpteenth time, that I didn’t feel like it. What else I realized was how many times over the last weeks, months, and years I’ve felt the same way about quite a few of my responsibilities in motherhood.

The truth is, there is very little room for selfishness in this place of servanthood. If I took the route of bemoaning my fate, things would only get worse, and then I’d have a bigger hole of self-pity to dig myself out of. If I don’t do the dishes, they pile up. If I don’t do the laundry, we have no clean clothes. If I don’t pay the bills, we have no electricity.

I can’t even imagine what life would look like around here if I did only what I felt like doing. So I’ve discovered that this path of being a kingdom woman is not a path for sissies or for women who are not made of tough stuff.