Hello and welcome to this series on the Proverbs 31 Woman. 

 

I wrote that introduction to this series 10 years ago. I’m bringing it back now and featuring this iconic Biblical woman on the podcast in the coming weeks because her example is still inspiring and instructive for us today.

Years ago Emily P. Freeman, author and podcaster,  and her sister Myquillyn Smith, The Nester, used to run a Blog Challenge called  31 Days.  They opened it to anyone who wanted to take part, so I joined in and created 27 blog posts until I had a retina detach 🥴. So I literally blogged my eye out!!!🙃

Anyway, the whole point was to pick a topic or theme and blog for 31 days about that one thing.

 

I don’t know about you, but I return over and over in my life to the Proverbs 31 woman for inspiration and motivation for my life as a woman of God.  

I hope you enjoy this series. I hope you learn something new. I hope you’re reaquainted with something you admired about this woman. I discovered a lot about her in my ‘studies’ for this series and I believe her example is as relevant today as ever. As you’ve already discovered, all didn’t go as planned for me in this Blog Challenge. Here’s the original post.

 

The 31 Days Blog Challenge

If all goes as planned this will be the first of 31 consecutive posts focusing on this iconic Biblical example of a virtuous woman. 
I made a playlist for my Nordic Track workout and one song has a line that says, “Suddenly I see! This is what I want to be!” When I hear that line I often think of the Proverbs 31 woman. When I read about her, Suddenly I see! This is what I wanna be!

I’ve often wished that this remarkable woman would jump from the pages of my Bible and into the world as it is today.
The world you and I live in.
If I could just meet her ‘in real life’ and maybe go to Starbucks for coffee, because I know she loves coffee as much as I do, then I could get my questions answered and just possibly learn how to be more like her.

She’s a Classic
Google defines classic as ~ judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind.
Or ~ as a work of art of recognized and established value.

That describes her perfectly. She’s a Classic.

I think we want to be valued this way over the course of our lives. To be of the highest spiritual quality and outstanding examples of women who claim to know God and follow Jesus.
We want our lives to have significance.
We want them to matter.
And we desperately want to get it right. All of it. Our walk with God, our marriage, raising our children and finding and doing the things God has so carefully planned and curated for us as individuals.



Here’s the first thing we discover as we turn our focus to the Proverbs 31 woman, she’s a true gem and her value is enhanced by the rarity of women like her.

In fact, so rare that her personal value is nearly priceless.
She is the exception not the rule.
A rarity among her kind.
Unique and distinguished for her character and actions.
Virtue is her calling card.
It’s her trademark; the way grace is to a ballerina or compassion to a Mother Teresa.
Virtue is her constant motivation and her everyday endeavor.

I want to be like her.
And if you’ve read this far in this post I’m guessing you want to as well.

Here’s the good news.
God wants you to be like her too.
That’s why she’s in the Bible.

But God isn’t into duplicates. He’s into abundant variety and so He created each of us  as unique individuals.

This woman isn’t a mold or a cookie cutter intended to turn out identical copies.
But she is a kind of template and she embodies all that is noble in character, all that’s esteemed by God and man, and all that you and I aspire to be as wives, mothers, and women.

In the coming days we’re going to deconstruct the Proverbs 31 woman.
We’ll study what she did and ponder how she did it.
And most importantly, why.
The why is key.
Her motivations are central to her own aspirations and choices.

Using what we discover we’ll reflect on her and then on ourselves. 
We’ll talk about where we go wrong and how to get it right.
How to become classic women living in a modern world. We face our own cultural challenges in 2023, but the struggles against our own sinful inclinations and our own character flaws are probably much the same as hers. So how did she get so much so right? That’s where we’ll begin tomorrow. 

Wanna get every post? They’ll all be under the Faith category here on the blog.

I’d love to hear from you as we begin this series.
Your questions, struggles, and of course, your successes, are all warmly invited.

If you want to talk more but you prefer Instagram you’ll find me there @kellyjgrace.

Thanks for reading and feel free to share this post with a few friends.