This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back to our study through Proverbs and daily drive time devotions. We're
in the last chapter of the book of Proverbs today and so we're going to have a
short week this week. Today we're focusing on Proverbs chapter 31.

The verses I'd like to focus on are Proverbs 31 verses 30 and 31. I'm determined
to change your perspective on Proverbs chapter 31 today. Most women that I talk
to see this as one of the most discouraging chapters in the Bible.

Oh, they say it starts well in verse 10 by saying that a great wife is better
than precious jewels but then this pressure begins to build as a wife is
described. This excellent wife is described gets up before sunrise, works late
into the night, she brings in the food, she cares for her household, she sews
the garments, she even has time left over to work for the poor. I can understand
the pressure that many women feel when they're confronted with this superwoman
image presented in Proverbs 31 but that's not the intent of this chapter at all.

Let me give you two sentences to change your perspective on this proverb.
Sentence one, Proverbs chapter 31 is not about performance pressure. It's about
praise, deserved praise.

Sentence two, following up, Proverbs 31 is not written to tell women what to do.
It's written to tell men how to communicate. This chapter is a mother's words to
her son, teaching him how to give abundant praise for his wife.

That praise is to be expressive, it's to be exuberant, that's what praise should
be. And the chapter ends by telling husbands, "Now you do likewise. " Husbands,
your wife deserves to be praised in public for what she does.

I know, we talk about what happens in a household and sometimes we're supposed
to all share our work equally and everybody's working and everybody's sharing
part of the load and I applaud that goal but it doesn't take a genius to see
that the greater share of work that's done in most of our homes, keeping a
household running, is still done by wives. This proverb reminds us that when
that's the truth, when that's the fact, that work needs to be noted. Even if it
is equally shared, totally equally, that work also needs to be noted.

This idea of praise that's brought out in this chapter is not to put pressure on
a woman. It's not saying you have to fulfill this certain mold. It's not saying
you have to do what this woman did in ancient Israel.

It's saying, "Notice what God is doing in somebody's life. " The idea here is to
loudly and clearly say as a husband to a wife, "I notice what you're doing. I
see the incredible impact, the impact that you're making through your life in
what you do for our family.

" The message of Proverbs 31 for all of us is this, the work that's done in a
home is as important, it is more important, than the work that's done in the
business world. It says, "Let her works praise her in the city gates. " The city
gates in that day were where all the important decisions were made.

It's like the city hall of our day. It's like the halls of Congress in our day.
It's the place where the government decisions were made, where the business
decisions were made, where the real estate decisions were made.

This is saying, "At the most important point in society, at the place of power,
make sure that her works are praised. " Now, with a little bit of fear of being
too corny, I have written a Proverbs chapter 31 for the 21st century, an
excellent wife who can find. She is worth more than a gigabyte or a terabyte.

She's busier than an airport shuttle service, getting her kids to school, ball
games, and lessons on time. She maneuvers her cart through pavilions in Costco
with the skill of a fighter pilot. After returning home from a full day at the
office, she still finds the energy to really care about the little hurts and the
next big homework project.

Her ability to keep the activities of our busy household organized is above the
greatest of executive assistants. Without her heart, our house would not truly
be the home that it is. Supermodel beauty is fleeting, but a woman who has deep
respect for God is to be loudly praised.

And you may be married, you may not be married, but this verse tells us if you
are married, if you're a husband, you need to loudly praise your wife. And this
verse tells us that if you're not as yet married, when you do get married, you
get married with this intention, and in your way towards marriage, you give
honor to the women in your life with the kinds of praise that this verse talks
about. I'd like to give that kind of praise to God right now.

Lord, I begin by thanking you for my wife, for the difference she makes in my
life, for the daily difference that Shondell makes in our life as a family. I am
grateful. I am so grateful for her.

And Lord, we together thank you for the women in our lives, for the women in our
communities. We thank you for the incredible impact and difference they make in
a daily way. Some of the things that they do may seem small, may seem unnoticed.

God, we give loud praise right now for those unnoticed small things because we
know that that's what people are built on. That's what life is built on. That's
where joy is built.

That's where faith is built. And so we thank you in Jesus' name, amen.