Great Joy in Righteousness

Leslie Basham: Mary Kassian says it takes a lot of strength to make wise choices.

Mary Kassian: A wise woman is a woman of very, very strong convictions, and a woman who against all odds and even when it hurts and it’s hard, says, “I’m going to do what is right and trust Jesus." 

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Tuesday, July 16.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Over the years God has used Mary Kassian to help me get a better understanding of the history and the philosophy of feminism. Mary authored a book a number of years ago called, The Feminist Mistake. I first read that book back in the late nineties. It's part of what the Lord used in a great way in my life to help birth the vision and the burden for a new radio program that eventually became Revive Our Hearts. So I feel really indebted to Mary for helping me with my understanding.

Then when we launched the first True Woman conference in 2008, Mary was with us at that event. In one of the break-out sessions at that conference, Mary looked at the temptations that face women in our day and age. Mary described what has come to be known as “girls gone wild.” But not just as a phenomenon in today’s world, but as a problem that the Scripture talks about in Proverbs chapter 7.

In this talk Mary deals with some of these issues in a pretty straight forward and candid way as she describes some of the characteristics of a wild vs. a wise woman. So if you have younger children with you, you might want to get them occupied in another way as you listen to this message. 

We're about to hear a second part of a message from Mary Kassian that we started listening to yesterday. She’s showing us some characteristics of a wise woman that contrast a wild woman. Here’s Mary.

Number 7: propriety [of the points that distinguish a wild woman]. A wild woman puts herself in potentially compromising situations. We see in this passage that she comes out in the dark of night. “Honey, what are you doing out in the dark night? What are you inviting him into your home for?”

Now, when I minister to college women, they dress seductively; they initiate; they go after the guy; they have him come into their apartments, and then they cry, “Foul” when he can’t control himself. Don’t be stupid. Propriety—what is proper and good and right is important.

It’s a big fad right now that you can have a roommate of the opposite sex. Hello! It’s not proper. It’s not right. It’s not honorable.

The Bible says the wise woman stays away from potentially compromising situations; that she’s a woman of propriety; she understands that what is proper is good, and she even avoids the appearance of evil.

My mom would not let me go drive out to the lake with a guy. I thought she was just being, you know, momish. Some of you may think I’m being momish right now, but I don’t think so. I think I’m being scriptural.

A wise woman stays away from potentially compromising situations. She’s worthy of respect. I respect who I am, who God created me to be, enough that I’m not going to even go there. You may think I’m prudish, but I choose, because I’m not a wimp, I choose to stand against the world and do what’s right, and I will give the enemy no opportunity.

And girls, that’s what we’re doing when we put ourselves in potentially compromising situations. If we are at a business, we work at an office, and we go out alone for lunch with a guy, it’s not proper. If I go on a business trip and I go out with a male colleague, just him and me for coffee, that’s not proper. It’s not right. I dishonor the Lord; I dishonor my husband, but I’m giving the enemy an opportunity. It’s just erosion. It doesn’t come like a big fall. Usually, it’s just a little bit at a time the ground the enemy gains on us.

Number 8: Influence. A wild woman is manipulative and scheming. Verse 10 tells us she has a crafty heart, so she tries to figure out a plot. She tries to write the script and manipulate to get her way. This happens prior to marriage, and this happens also after marriage—this craftiness of heart, to manipulate our guys.

A wise woman, on the other hand, avoids trickery and craftiness and manipulation. We are told that wise women are not gossips and are not busybodies. Now women are pretty good with this, are they not? We can tap dance on a guy’s head, and he just doesn’t even know what’s hit him. But how do we honor God when we seek to manipulate? We do not honor Him. 

That leads to number 9 which is our speech habits. An unwise woman is a smooth talker, flattering, seducing, manipulating, or maybe crying, begging, whining, hissy-fitting. The passage says seductive words, persuasive words, saying things that ought not to be said; whereas, the Scripture tells us that a wise woman is judicious and wise with her words. She influences even without words, we’re told in the passage. She speaks with wisdom, and she’s not a malicious talker.

Our speech habits are important, and we can honor our design the way that God has created us when we honor Him with our mouths.

Number 10: Prominence. We’re told that the wild woman is self-absorbed, that she clamors for attention. She is loud—me, me, me, me, me, me, me—it’s about me; it’s about my needs, what I want. It’s about I’m not feeling fulfilled. It’s about I need the attention; I need this; I need that. She’s a clamoring woman; whereas, a wise woman is others-focused. She’s not self-focused, she’s focused on others, and she’s happy to serve.

The Bible says that a wise woman provides food for her family, portions for her servant girls; her husband takes his seat at the city gate, and she has a quiet spirit—she’s okay with that (see Proverbs 31). Whew! Ouch! We’re taught in our culture that, “Women, if you are equal with men, then it should be you taking your place at the city gates, and that’s what you should be fighting for, and he should be there helping you get there.”

That's the wisdom of the world. But the Bible says a wise woman doesn't clamor for prominence, for self.

You just have to think about Scripture and the Words that we are taught about Christ, “who did not consider His equality with God something to be grasped, but he emptied himself and took on the form of a servant and became obedient, even obedient unto death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted Him and gave him the name that is above all names” (Philippians 2:6-9). You see, Christ-likeness means that we do not seek our own prominence, that we have a quiet spirit, that we are okay when we are not front and center. That’s just perfectly okay.

David says, “I would rather be a gate keeper in the house of God than dwell in the tents of the wicked” (Ps.  84:10).

When we’re wise women, we take on the character of Christ, and we also take on a godly disposition.

Number 11: We’re told that a wild woman is demanding. She wants to control and insist on her own way. This is a take-off of the last point, that she's loud. On the other hand, the wise woman has that gentle disposition that defers to others. She has a gentle and quiet spirit. The passage says, "This is precious in God's sight."

We are taught in our culture that to have a quiet and gentle spirit is yucky. We are taught that that is the lowest thing on the totem pole, and we should not have a gentle and quiet spirit, but we should be aggressive; we should be loud; we should be demanding; we should be clamoring, and that we can have a disposition that says, “Notice me.”

A wise woman has a disposition that is a respectful disposition and honoring one.

Number 12: Honor. A wild woman is defiant, independent, rebellious. She resists following. I think that really is a sinful tendency that we all have as women, do we not? It started right at the very beginning, and it’s something that we fight. I fight it in my spirit. Sometimes I think that following is a very demeaning thing to do, but it is not. It is a very godly thing to do. It is a thing that women who are willfully choosing Christ do. That's what Scripture teaches. 

Priorities, number 13. Wrong priorities—a wayward woman, a woman who is wild and out of control has the wrong priorities, she despises her responsibilities. It says in verse 11 that she never stays at home. She has her priorities all backward. She maybe goes out and pursues a career above her family, or maybe the self-actualization, or girlfriends, or whatever it is, the priorities are somehow all mixed up.

Scripture tells us that a wise woman has godly priorities, and she joyfully fulfills her responsibilities. It talks about watching over the affairs of your household.

Ladies, you are the barometer of your household. In my household, I am the one who notices when things are out of kilter spiritually way before my husband does. He’s given me as a woman the discernment to know, “There’s something not quite right in this boy’s life,” or “We’re just not connecting right now in our marriage.” He gives me an eye, a watchful eye for my home, and for my household.

It says that women are given that responsibility. Men are given responsibility to lead and protect and provide, but women are the nurturers and the keepers of the home. The Lord doesn’t give us a list of do’s and don’ts. The Lord in Scripture, some may criticize me for this, but Scripture does not say, “Do not ever leave the house.”

The reality of this millennium is that women will work, perhaps, at some point, and yet always, first and foremost, with an understanding, making those decisions with your husband according to your priorities, and to have priorities that are godly priorities, and to maybe say “no” when your heart is driven to thinking, “Oh, I could just get more money or be more self-actualized or get that promotion.” It may be time to say, “no,” because your priorities demand that you are in your home more, and to be with your children.

How on earth did we fall for the lie that that is a dishonorable thing to do? That is the most important thing to do, to raise the next generation and to impart godly values. We have a whole generation of children that grew up without moms and without dads because we had wrong priorities.

Number 14: Contentment. The wild woman is discontented. She is always seeking a new thrill. It says that she has wandering feet, verse 11—wandering feet. Verse 18, she makes a proposition to the guy, “Let’s enjoy ourselves.” She’s always looking for something new to fill that space up, that longing. She just needs a new rush, a new thrill of some sort. She’s not contented with what she has.

The Bible says that contentment is a mark of godliness, that the woman who is wise is contented, and she’s confident in God’s plan and in His provision. It says wise women of the past who put their hope in God, these women, these godly women, they can laugh at the days to come because there’s a contentment. There’s not a striving and discontentment with life as it is.

Now there’s a holy discontentment that the Lord would have us have, one where we’re continually striving to know Him better, to know His ways better, and not to say, “Oh, we’re all okay.” But the contentment that causes us to rebel or to complain or to be bitter or to nag, or to overextend the credit on our credit cards, or to do all those things that women do to fill that emptiness—that’s the kind of discontentment that the Lord is talking about here.

Number 15: Desire. The wild woman, the wayward woman thinks that romance will satisfy her deepest heart longing. This is one of the biggest lies of all. This verse, “I looked for you,” this woman goes out, and she looks for love. She goes and makes a proposition to the guy, “Let’s drink deeply of love.” She just wants love; she wants to feel loved; she just wants to feel.

How many of us, married, single, it doesn't, across the board, young or old, it doesn't matter what is your life experieces. Women, there is a longing in our hearts. Sometimes we catch a glimpse of it, a whiff of it when we read a good novel, or we just catch a breath of a glimmer of that stirring in our hearts that, “Yes, I want to be loved.”

So many of us turn to romance, and if we’re married, sometimes we turn to those books where there’s romance depicted in those books, to try and feed our hunger, or the movies, or the . . . whatever it is we turn to. But the Lord says a wise woman knows and she understands that Christ is her first pledge, that Jesus Christ is the lover and redeemer of her soul. He is the one toward which all these desires, all of these churning longings are not met by any earthly thing or any earthly man. So her dedication is to Christ and to pursuing Him.

Ladies, we all have desire. We all have longings. The wild woman seeks to fulfill those with guys. The wise woman seeks to fulfill that with The Guy. The one for whom we were created.

Number 16: Morality. The wild woman compromises standards and justifies sin. So she goes, “Yes, my husband is away. He leaves me alone all the time. In fact, he’s not nice to me at all.” So she begins to build up this justification for sin. She says, “It’s my husband’s fault. He doesn’t give me what I need. I should never have married him, big mistake. My husband’s away.” So she compromises her standards, through erosion. She compromises it and justifies her sin.

A wise woman, on the other hand, keeps herself for marriage and keeps herself in marriage. She guards the purity and the sacredness of the marriage bed, and not just in her physical actions, but also in her thoughts and beliefs and what she does and what she watches and what she stuffs into her brain. There’s a purity, and there’s a faithfulness of keeping trust, keeping loyalty, keeping faith with her husband.

Ladies, your husbands do not need to be worthy in order for you to keep faith with them. When you’re keeping faith, you’re keeping faith with your covenant that you spoke before God. So many of us justify our sin by saying, “He’s not quite the package that I signed up for.”

A wise woman is a woman of very, very strong convictions, and a woman who, against all odds, and even when it hurts and is hard, says, “I’m going to do what is right and trust Jesus.”

Number 17: Sexuality. Wild women use sex as a weapon or for self-gratification. We’re told in this passage that she reduces the male to a loaf of bread. What do you do with a loaf of bread? You eat it—right? Just the desire to have this guy. So she seduces young men. This we see in the woman in this passage, she seduces a young man, but she’s also using this young man to punish her husband.

How many of us married women use sex as a weapon instead of understanding that it is a great and precious and holy, holy gift? A gift that represents the union of Christ with His Bride. Sex is a holy thing and not to be used as a weapon.

Nancy: We need to break in here. We’ve been listening to part 2 of a message by Mary Kassian called, Girls Gone Wild. We’ll pick up on the final part of the message tomorrow, here on Revive Our Hearts.

Mary’s been giving us a picture of the wild woman in Proverbs chapter 7. I think she’s done a terrific job showing us how the temptations faced by the woman in that passage are similar to the temptations that we as women face today.

Mary originally delivered that message at the True Woman ’08 conference. She’s further developed these ideas into a book called Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild. 

I recommend this book to every woman who is listening to this program. Regardless of your age or your season of life, it has practical application for women in every season of life. It will challenge you to make wise decisions in every part of life. For instance, she’ll challenge you in the way you relate to men, the way you dress, the media you consume, the way you think about our culture and many more topics as well.

We'd like to send you a copy of that book, Girls Gone Wise, as our way of saying "thank you" when you support this ministry with a gift of any amoun. Ask for the book from Mary when you call 1-800-569-5959, or you can make your donation at ReviveOurHearts.com. Just remember that when you support this ministry, you are enabling us to share this message with many more women of all ages and stages of life in the United States and around the world by means of the Internet.

And let me encourage you to mark your calendar. Mary Kassian will be joining me for True Woman '14. It’s coming to Indianapolis next year, October 9–11. To get details, and even to register now, visit ReviveOurHearts.com.

Do you ever feel that if you were to embrace what it would mean to be a wise woman and you were to live that way that you might get trampled on or taken advantage of? Mary Kassian addresses that question tomorrow. I hope you’ll be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.