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Friday, April 26, 2013

WOMEN - DO WE CARRY THE SPIRIT OF GOD OR HAVE WE EMBRACED THE SPIRIT OF JEZEBEL IN OUR LIVES

Today I am WRITING about WOMEN....  GODLY WOMEN - Women who have personally inspired me.  Also how we STRUGGLE as women from the fall of Eve in the beginning and we maintain that struggle of SIN of CONTROL.  

Since I am a woman - I can take a close look at who WOMEN are in general.  Not all women but many women, especially American Women.  


In my lifetime I have met only about a handful of women who I would truly say are Godly women.  They carry the aspects of a Godly woman throughout their entire life and it flows out from their hearts.  These women have been a great inspiration in my own life.  One of these women, her name is Karen, she was a Pastor's wife.  Another woman that I have been inspired through is Laura Bush (President George Bush's wife).  Also the story of RUTH written in God's Word when she married Boaz.

These women carry the qualities that I so much desire to be as a woman.  They are confident women but yet women of noble character.  A heart that is super supportive of their husband's and they carry a peaceful and quiet spirit within them.  They are a compliment to their husband's and do not bring disgrace.  


For me personally as a woman - I am far from that gracefulness as these two women carry within them.  But these women do inspire me as a woman that I would desire to be in my own heart.

The Word of God teaches us as women written in :

Titus 2:    Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine,but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, 
to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

Character Traits of a Beautiful Woman

Agreeable 


Proverbs 19:13 
A foolish son is ruin to his father, and a wife’s quarreling is a continual dripping of rain. 

Proverbs 21:9 
It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife. 

Proverbs 21:19 
It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman. 


Excellent
 


Proverbs 31:10 
An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. 


Faithful & Trustworthy
 


1 Timothy 3:11 
Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. 


Gracious & Honorable
 


Proverbs 11:16 
A gracious woman gets honor, and violent men get riches. 


Helpful
 


Genesis 2:18, 22-24 
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” … And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 


Kindhearted & Generous
 


Proverbs 31:20-21 
She opens her hand to the poor and reaches out her hands to the needy. She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet. 

Proverbs 31:26 
She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. 


Submissive & Respectful


1 Corinthians 11:3 
But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. 

Ephesians 5:22-23, 33 
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior… However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Colossians 3:18 
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 

Titus 2:2-5 
Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. 

1 Peter 3:1-2 
Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. 


Wise
 


Proverbs 14:1 
The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.


Beautiful Women in the Bible
 


Genesis 12:11, 14 
When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance … When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. 

Genesis 24:16 
The young woman was very attractive in appearance, a maiden whom no man had known. She went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up. 

Ruth 1:16-17
 But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” 

Esther 2:7 
He was bringing up Hadassah, that is Esther, the daughter of his uncle, for she had neither father nor mother. The young woman had a beautiful figure and was lovely to look at, and when her father and her mother died, Mordecai took her as his own daughter. 

Song of Solomon 4:1 
Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful! Your eyes are doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead.


Christian Quotes About Women


I cannot tell you how much I owe to the solemn word of my good mother.
  ~ Charles Spurgeon

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life
-
Abraham Lincoln

All places where women are excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order- Harriet Beecher Stowe

God is looking for imperfect men and women who have learned to walk in moment-by-moment dependence on the Holy Spirit. Christians who have come to terms with their inadequacies, fears, and failures. Believers who have become discontent with ‘surviving’ and have taken the time to investigate everything God has to offer in this life.Charles Stanley

What women rightly long for is spiritual and moral initiative from a man, not spiritual and moral domination
.
John Piper


ON THE OTHER SIDE OF WOMEN - is the FALLEN WOMAN - Such as through the seed of EVE from the beginning...,.

Think about the beginning after God created Adam (Man) and Eve (Woman)....  It was EVE who allowed her eyes to lust the tree that GOD forbid them to eat from - The tree of Good and Evil....   The Serpent came, spoke/whispered to Eve and Eve was convinced that it was OKAY to take of this forbidden fruit from a SNAKE's lies....   


Here is Eve, just newly created by the CREATOR of this Universe - even carrying the breath of life within her being from God's breath - and a SNAKE convinces her to take of this forbidden fruit that GOD had just shared with them - 'You can eat of anything in this garden except for one tree - The tree of Good and Evil'...  and what tree does EVE eat from - the one and only tree that GOD told her not to eat from....  

Now - please notice something - if a SNAKE came up and talked to me - do you not think that I would be scared of a TALKING SNAKE - let alone a SNAKE...  Come on - I would be running the other way.  So this tells me that their was NO FEAR in Adam and Eve in the beginning before the FALL....

The Fall


Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”  
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”  “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”   When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
    and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
    and you will eat dust
    all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring[j] and hers;
he will crush[k] your head,
    and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
    with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
    and he will rule over you.
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”
20 Adam[l] named his wife Eve,[m] because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[n] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

EVIL WOMEN IN GOD'S WORD

Since this original fall into SIN through EVE's actions...  Women can have a tendency in wanting to CONTROL and be in POWER over men....

The worst EMPLOYERS that I have ever worked under in my life has always been under WOMEN WHO ARE IN CONTROL.....  (Not all, but most)...
I have experienced and heard some of the worst horror stories of WOMEN WHO ARE BOSSES and are in FULL CONTROL...

I truly believe that an actual JEZEBEL SPIRIT comes over these women.

A SPIRIT OF JEZEBEL


Food for THOUGHT:

Think about one of the greatest leaders in God's Word and one of these men - his name was Elijah.

Elijah was a powerful man of GOD that listened directly to GOD's VOICE.

But yet, when Jezebel was in POWER AND CONTROL - she hated Elijah and it took a WOMAN of this kind of POWER AND CONTROL SPIRIT to bring fear into a powerful man of God as Elijah....
1 Kings 16 - 1 kings 22; 2 KingS 9 - 10; Rev 2:20,

Introduction

Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal, King of the Sidonians (1 Kings 16:31).
Her name originally meant 'The Prince Baal exists'. Baal was a weather god worshipped in the Syro-Palestinian world.1 In Biblical Hebrew Jezebel's name means 'there is no nobility'.

Jezebel is an evil woman in the Bible (Revelation 2:20).


Her Evil deeds


The main characters in the life of Jezebel were all affected in one way or another by her evil deeds. Ahab, the king and her husband was a weak willed man whom she dominated and led to do much evil (1 kings 21:25). She encouraged him to worship idols while she personally made sure all the prophets of God (who she could catch) were killed (1 Kings 18:4). She personally took care of the prophets of Baal giving them direct access to the throne (1 Kings 18:19).

Jezebel's domination of her husband was directly responsible for the whole of Israel falling into the sin of idolatry. The whole nation suffered a famine caused by the lack of rain. This was God's judgement on them 1 Kings 17. This was particularly humilating for Jezebel since Baal was supposed to be the god of weather.

When Elijah killed all the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel Jezebel soon got on his case. She threatened to take his life. Elijah knew this was no empty threat and ran for his life. The mighty prophet of God who had raised the dead and called down fire soon became afraid and even depressed because of Jezebel's action 1 Kings 18.
Jezebel not only worshipped idols but also practised witchcraft (2 Kings 9:22).

Abuse of Power


Naboth owned a vineyard. Ahab desired it but Naboth refused to sell the king the family property. Jezebel intervened and had Naboth killed simply to meet Ahab's selfish needs. At this point Jezebel herself was in charge of the nation of Israel. Ahab the king was simply her puppet 1 Kings 21.

God's Judgement

God eventually sent Elijah to declare judgement on Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab was to die and have dogs lick his blood and his descendants cut off (1 Kings 21:17-22, 1 Kings 22:29 - 40, 2 Kings 10).

As for Jezebel she was to be eaten by dogs (1 kings 21: 23-28, 2 kings 9: 30 - 37). Jezebel lived for quite a while before God's judgement caught up with her.
Apart from idol worship, witchcraft and sheer wickedness Jezebel also used the spirit of domination and seduction to get her ways (2 Kings 9:30).

There is no record of Jezebel repenting. She did much evil.

The main lesson from Jezebel's life is that the deeds of a few can adversely affect a whole nation. Evil people sometimes live long. Could God be giving them the chance to repent? Destruction waits for them if they do not.

Pray against the spirit of Jezebel.

Make sure you do not become one of them.
WOMEN - we must be very careful that we do not embrace this spirit of JEZEBEL and that we nag, break down, become critical, becoming in control, and tear down our husbands in life...

If we as women do this in our household, we are tearing down our own households and God's blessings can not come through...

God has called our HUSBANDS to be the PRIESTS of our homes...

And YES, the husband needs to STEP UP and take this position in his own home...

But WOMEN build your husband up, encourage him, don't tear him down....
It is within WOMEN, because of the fall of Eve, to want to take charge and be in control...  so it takes an effort to 'submit' and not to allow this attitude to arise....

We as women - need to learn to truly behave as GODLY WOMEN as according to GOD'S WORD....

This is a true testimony of great and noble character when a WOMAN knows GOD's WORD in being a woman a real true WOMAN OF GOD... after GOD'S HEART....

God will BLESS US greatly when we allow 'ORDER' of GOD'S PRINCIPLES to become establish in our households....

WOMEN - take steps to allow GOD to CHANGE US into what HE HAS CALLED US TO BE AS WOMEN... GODLY WOMEN WITH NOBLE CHARACTERS with a quiet and peaceful heart..... which is of great confidence...