Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

See below for the video used in this message.

Today we’re starting a two-part series called Mirrors. We’ll tackle part one today, and then wrap it up with part two on Father’s Day.

Today, in message #1, we’re talking about Mirrors: Reflections of Godly Women. For a lot of ladies, mirrors aren’t their favorite things in the world. A lot of women look in mirrors and they don’t like what they see. Our culture has a lot to do with that, as we’ll see in this video. We used this video at APEX a few months ago, but it really is worth sharing again.

No wonder so many women struggle with self-esteem issues. Our view of body image has become so distorted by the fake images we see on billboards and in magazines and on TV. Most women see these images so much that, when it comes time for them to look in a mirror themselves, they simply want to look away. They don’t look like the models on the billboards and in the magazines. But after seeing this video, we need to remember that the models themselves don’t even look like the final product on the billboard.

Ladies, today I want to help you take a good, hard look in the mirror. However, this mirror has nothing to do with body image. It has everything to do with the image of your heart, which is infinitely more important. Today we’re going to look into the mirror of God’s Word.

The Bible says, “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” (Proverbs 31:30, NIV)

Looks don’t last. Youthful beauty is a here today, gone tomorrow kind of thing. One more reason why so many ladies want to rip the mirror of their bathroom wall. But as we look into the mirror of God’s Word, we find radically different reflection. What we’re going to learn is that actual beauty comes from the inside out.

I’ve met lots of ladies with whom I had this reaction. “Wow. She’s very attractive.” But then I got to know them better, and I had this reaction. “Wow. She’s really ugly.” Because ultimately when it comes to beauty, character issues trump physical characteristics.

A lot of guys can attest to this. The longer they’re married, the more they are attracted to their wives because of character issues. After a couple has been married 10, 20, 30 years or more, neither husband nor the wife look like they did in their wedding pictures. It’s just like the Bible says: Beauty is fleeting. But just because their physical appearance has changed doesn’t mean that there isn’t still a passionate fire in their marriage. That doesn’t mean that the attraction still isn’t there. The longer you’re in that relationship, the more intimate the relationship becomes, the more character issues trump physical characteristics. And that’s really just a reflection from the mirror of God’s Word, because the Bible gives us the consistent message that it is a woman’s heart and character that make her attractive.

So today we’re going to look in five different mirrors from the book of Proverbs in the Bible. Proverbs is a wonderful book that is chocked full of wisdom. These five mirrors from Proverbs will give us some great insight into what a godly woman actually looks like. So let’s get going.

Mirror #1 – A godly woman is gentle. This doesn’t fit with what our culture teaches us about women. What we’re going to learn is that all five of these mirrors from Proverbs run counter to our culture. The reflections from these mirrors are not the reflections you’ll get if you look to our culture. But remember, we’re talking about reflections of a godly woman. A woman who doesn’t give rip one about what our culture has to say. A woman whose sole concern is pleasing her God. And in this first mirror from Proverbs, we learn that this kind of woman is gentle.

Proverbs 9:13 says, “The woman Folly is loud; she is undisciplined and without knowledge.” (NIV)

Talking about this verse, David Fairchild said, “Some women can’t win an argument based upon their biblical knowledge or the strength of their case, so they try to win by sheer volume.”

Think about this in a marriage context. A godly husband despises a screaming, yelling, fit-throwing woman. It puts the husband in a no win situation. If a wife is constantly yelling at her husband, he can’t win. If he yells back at her, he’s mean. If he cowers and does nothing, he’s weak. Either way, he is automatically placed in a losing position. He simply can’t win.

Ladies, let me give you a little secret. If you want to destroy your husband, if you want to absolutely emasculate him, yell at him. If you want to do it quickly, yell at him in front of his friends. That will destroy him because he just can’t win.

And ladies, make no mistake. When that happens, your husband isn’t the only one who loses. You lose, too. Because if he responds to your assault by assaulting you back, you don’t win. If he doesn’t fight back, you’ll see him as weak and you’ll grow tired of being married to a cream puff instead of a man. You lose, too.

A good rule for both husbands and wives to remember: never yell at each other unless the house is on fire. When you raise the volume, you damage the relationship. A godly woman knows this.

The New Testament book of 1 Peter says, “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.” (1 Peter 3:3-4, NIV)

Ladies, do you have a gentle and quiet spirit? Understand that this is ultimately where your beauty comes from. Remember earlier when I told you about how I’ve met a lot of physically attractive women who I eventually came to see as very ugly women? You know what happened? They opened their mouths. I heard the way they spoke to their boyfriends or their husbands, I saw the way the treated their children, I noticed the way they treated me. There was nothing gentle about them.

But then the flip-side is also true. I’ve met a lot of plain Janes who I think are absolutely knock-down gorgeous because they live out these verses from 1 Peter. Their inner selves are beautiful. They have this gentle and quiet spirit that just exudes from them. And it makes them beautiful, because their reflection comes the mirror of God’s Word.

Now, when it comes to this whole idea of gentleness, I don’t want you to misinterpret what the Bible says here. It’s not advocating weak women. When the Bible commands us to be gentle, don’t mistake that for a command to be weak.

Gentleness isn’t weakness. Gentleness is strength under restraint. My wife is one of the strongest women I know, yet she never yells at me. She’s never slapped me, never thrown anything at me, nothing like that. And yet she’s the strongest woman I know.

I’m very thankful to have a marriage where we don’t argue that much. But we are human and we do have our disagreements and arguments. And do you know how Nicki wins more than her fair share of arguments? I know that it’s not really about winning and losing. I know that. But you want to know how she can really sway me in a disagreement? By being gentle and speaking quietly. I hate that she’s here listening to this because now she knows. “Aha! Gentleness! That’s his kryptonite. I’ll remember that.” Now I’ll never win another argument again.

But seriously, it’s the truth. If Nicki were to yell at me, if that’s the way she handled it, I would get angry and retaliate. I wouldn’t budge on my position. I would grow as hard as clay. But when she’s gentle, I melt like a candle in the sun.

Ladies, you are strongest when you are gentle because it is a godly characteristic. When we are living by godly principles, we are not living our lives from a position of weakness. We are living our lives from a position of great strength. And it takes that godly strength to live out mirror #2.

Mirror #2 – A godly woman is modest.

I fully understand that our culture believes that modesty is a very old-fashioned, almost Puritanical idea. Modesty sounds like something your great-grandma would talk about. But again, a godly woman isn’t concerned with cultural teachings, but with biblical teachings. And modesty is a requirement of a godly woman.

Proverbs 7:10 says, “A woman came out to meet him. She was dressed like a prostitute and had a clever plan.” (NIRV)

This woman described in Proverbs is everywhere in our culture today. The “clever plan” hasn’t changed in thousands of years. The formula remains constant. More makeup + less clothes = more attention. You want guys to notice you, you’ve got to dress the part. That’s a lesson that didn’t start in our culture. It kind of seems that way with some of the current fashion trends, but this isn’t new to our culture. That lesson has been around throughout history. To be noticed, ladies, you’ve got to dress to impress. But godly women know that they are called to a different standard.

Ladies, you have to understand what it does to guys when you show no discretion in how you dress. Men are very visual creatures. It’s the way we’re wired. Lust is an incredibly hard battle for godly men to fight, and you make it infinitely harder when you walk around dressed like some hoochie mama instead of dressing with the modesty of a godly woman.

I remember one time standing up on stage preaching and there was a woman sitting near the front who was wearing a very low cut, tight fitting shirt. This woman was very well endowed and is sitting right in front of me…and I couldn’t look at her the whole time I was preaching. If I had looked at her, my mind would have left my message and gone to a very bad place. And you know what? I was mad, because that wasn’t fair. Her choice of clothes put me in a horrible position. That was disrespectful to me and every other guy that was there that day, all because this woman chose to dress with no discretion.

I hope this clues you in to something, ladies. Every guy struggles with this sin of lust. Godly men struggle with this. My question to you is, “Are you helping them in their struggle? Or are you making it more difficult?”

Proverbs 11:22 says, “A beautiful woman who lacks discretion is like gold ring in a pig’s snout.” (NLT)

Now how’s that for a descriptive, poetic verse? A woman who is beautiful but shows no discretion in how she dresses is like a gold ring in a pig’s nose. Sure, it’s a gold ring, but it’s got a lot of pig snot on it. That’s what this verse is saying. You’ve got to love how descriptive the Word of God is.

Ladies, let me ask you: Do you use godly discretion when you’re shopping for clothes? Does your relationship with your Heavenly Father affect the way you dress? Does God impact every area of your life, all the way down to the clothes you choose to put on in the morning? For the godly woman, the answer is emphatically “yes.”

Now, let’s move on to the third mirror from the book of Proverbs.

Mirror #3 – A godly woman is trustworthy. Look at what the Bible says in Proverbs 11.

“A gossip goes around telling secrets, but those who are trustworthy can keep a confidence.” (Proverbs 11:13, NLT)

One of the hallmarks of a godly woman is that she absolutely refuses to engage in gossip. She can be trusted that, if she says that she won’t tell anybody, then she won’t tell anybody. She won’t make exceptions for her best friend or anyone else. She won’t tell anybody.

She can be trusted that she will not join in with other people who are bashing something or someone at church. She can be trusted that she won’t take her argument with her husband to her group of friends so that they can all have a big husband-bashing session. She is trustworthy. She can be trusted.

I’ve told you this story before, but I vividly remember walking through the halls of our church in Indiana and hearing two ladies ripping on their husbands. These were core members of the church. The one lady’s husband was a deacon, the other was an elder. And these two ladies were laughing and enjoying just running their husbands into the ground. And my opinion of them was markedly changed after that day, because a godly woman doesn’t give that type of talk a second thought.

Think about how gossip damages your relationships, ladies. It destroys your husband. It humiliates your kids. It affects your friendships. If you’re a gossip, godly women will not want to be your friend because they don’t trust you.

On the other hand, if you are trustworthy, your husband will confide in you without reservation. You want your husband to really talk to you? He’s got to trust you. Intimacy goes up as trust goes up. If you’re trustworthy, your kids won’t worry about you embarrassing them by telling their mistakes to your friends. You will attract other godly women in relationships because you can be trusted.

Again, this requires of a woman of strength. It takes a far stronger person to show restraint than to just pop off at the mouth. It takes strength to withhold that juicy bit of news that is just so good.

A while back, I overheard two ladies here at church talking about a particular issue. They either didn’t realize that I could hear them or they didn’t realize that I already knew about this issue. But they were trying to speak in this secret code about it, and then one finally said to the other, “I’ll call you later.” And I can pretty much imagine how that conversation went.

I’m obviously not going to tell you the names of these ladies, partially because I’d probably get killed, and partially because I want you to wonder if it was you that I overheard engaging in gossip.

This, by and large, doesn’t seem to be a sin that the church takes very seriously. Church foyers are filled with gossip on a weekly basis. Small groups and Bible studies can quickly deteriorate into gossip sessions where people berate and bemoan everything that is wrong with their church. Passing along prayer requests can be a pious masquerade for passing along gossip.

We’ve got to constantly be on guard against gossip in our lives. The strong godly woman, and the godly man…I don’t want you to think that men can’t play the gossip game, too. We can play it quite well. The godly woman and the godly man are strong enough to rise above the temptation to gossip.

Now let’s move on to mirror #4. A godly woman is faithful.

Obviously a godly woman is faithful to the Lord. And obviously she shuns infidelity in her marriage. But this isn’t where her faithfulness ends.

Proverbs 25:19 says, “Like a bad tooth or a lame foot is reliance on the unfaithful in times of trouble.” (NIV)

Isn’t Proverbs just the most poetic, descriptive book in the world? This verse especially speaks to me because I have a mild case of dentophobia, which is fear of dentists. I’m not really phobic person, but I do have a couple of hang ups. I’m a little bit claustrophobic and a little bit dentophobic. So if you really want to freak me out, put me in a small, cramped dentist’s office.

I think my fear of dentists stems from my childhood, as most phobias do. My childhood dentist was not a very gentle guy. He always promised it wouldn’t hurt, and then he proceeded to hurt me. I guess I’ve never gotten over it because I have a dentist appointment at the end of this month and I’m already dreading it.

So this verse in Proverbs really speaks to me. Someone who is unfaithful in times of trouble is like a bad tooth. Depending on someone who is unfaithful is akin to having a root canal.

But a godly woman is faithful. Ladies, the quality of your relationships is based on your faithfulness.

When God created woman in Genesis 2, he said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:18, NIV)

Ladies, if you’ve ever looked at your husband and said, “Wow, that guy really needs help,” you’re right! It’s right here in the Bible! Your husband does need help…your help. A godly woman does not overlook or ignore her role as a helper.

If you’re married or you’ll one day be married, you need to understand this, ladies. Your husband doesn’t need you to kick him when he’s down. He needs you to build him up. You may not fully understand the pressure your man is under. The pressure to work hard, to provide for his family, to protect his family. The pressure on the shoulders of your man is immense. And he needs you to faithfully support him and build him up when he’s down, because let me tell you something: your husband doubts himself. He doubts his ability to provide for and to protect his family. This why one of your most important jobs as a wife and a mother is to be an encourager. If you are not your husband’s biggest cheerleader, then something is wrong. You are ignoring your God-given ministry to be a helper, to be faithful in times of trouble.

Finally, mirror #5. A godly woman is respectful. If the feminists and the politically correct crowd haven’t placed a bullseye on me yet, they will now. But I just believe that it is far more important to be biblically correct than to be politically correct.

Proverbs 31 says, “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies…Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.” (Proverbs 31:10, 23, NIV)

A wife of noble character, a godly woman, will have a husband who is respected by others. He is respected by others because he is strengthened by the respect that he first receives at home. The respect of his wife gives him the strength and the courage to take a stand, to work hard, to fight hard, to be the man that God has called him to be.

But a man who is disrespected at home is rarely respected anywhere else, because the disrespect from his woman absolutely deflates him. It emasculates him. One of the reasons we have so many mamby-pamby, pansy men is because they’re married to disrespectful women, and that just sucks the life out of them. A man who is married to a disrespectful woman, it’s like the testosterone is just drained out of them.

The Bible says in Ephesians 5, “Each of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” (Ephesians 5:33, NIV)

Notice the formula in this verse. It’s a formula that you’ll find throughout the Bible. Husbands, love your wives. Wives, respect your husbands.

Do you realize that there’s only a couple of instances in Scripture where God gives a direct command for women to love their husbands? But it says in a whole bunch of places that women are to respect their husbands.

And for husbands, it doesn’t ever tell you to respect your wife. Now, obviously the Bible doesn’t tell you to disrespect your wife. But it never says, “Husbands, respect your wives” because there is a far more important call on you. The Bible says, “Husband, love your wife.”

The reason these commands are so clear in Scripture is because they hit at the core of what we need as men and women. Guys, your wife wants your respect, but far more deeply, she needs to feel your love.

Ladies, your husband wants your love, but you need to understand how your man thinks. If you disrespect him but say that you love him, he’s going to have a hard time believing you.

Men want people to like us. We do. We want to be liked. But if you give me a choice between someone liking me and someone respecting me, I’ll choose respect every time.

Men need to be respected. We need it. We need it from our kids, and we need it from our women. Ladies, if you want your man to love you, love him by respecting him. Respect him for who he is. And if you’re thinking, “Well, my man is far from perfect,”

you’re right. So respect him, not only for who he is, but for who he will be, who he is trying to become. And then your kids will see that, and they will respect him as well. It’s what your man craves the most from his family: respect.

These five mirrors from the book of Proverbs tell us a lot about what it means to be a godly woman. Our culture will disagree, sometimes vehemently, with what we’ve talked about today. But look at the kind of women that our culture is producing. Women who are restless, perpetually dissatisfied. Women who are trying to be a man because no one ever taught them about biblical femininity, about being a woman by God’s design. The radical feminism of the ‘60s, all the gender bending that’s gone on in our culture hasn’t produced happier, more fulfilled women. It’s just made things infinitely more complicated.

And if you’re ready to leave all that behind, it’s going to require you to live the very politically incorrect lifestyle of a godly woman. But remember, when we’re living from a godly perspective, we’re living our lives from a position of strength. And if you’ll choose that strong position, ladies, your marriage will be stronger, your husband will be more the man you want him to be, your kids will be blessed, your church will flourish, and most of all, your God will be honored. And, to a godly woman, that’s what matters most of all.

Mike Edmisten

Tags: gentleness, gossip, marriage, modesty, Mother's Day, Proverbs, women