Teach the Young Women to be Good

At first glance, this quality seems to be pretty obvious, but I do think there are some thoughts that bear reviewing even on this character.

We live in a world, where there are really a lot of “good people”. So there must be some things which distinguish this kind of “good” from that which we see in the world around us. In my understanding, I believe that a lot of those distinguishing qualities have to do with the motives which drive our desire to be “good”. As Christian ladies, our desire to be “good” should be motivated by our love for and our desire to please the Lord. And I believe that should in some way be clear to those who know us.

There are many areas of life in which we women should be “good” and I believe the first one is in the area of our homes. In Proverbs 31:12, we read, “She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.” This refers to the way she treats her husband. We have already discussed some of the ways we can love our husbands, so I won’t go into a whole new discussion of that. But we just need to remember that our husband is a gift from God and no matter how much good we receive from him or how deserving we think he is, we are to be good to our husband. This means that we will spend our life seeking to enhance the ministry God has given him and helping him to achieve his potential before God. Remember, God created the woman “for” the man (Genesis 2:18), so this is our primary responsibility in life! We also need to be good to our children. This doesn’t mean giving them everything they desire, but nourishing and cherishing them and teaching them the things of God.

Then there is the area of everyone else around us. We as ladies are to be seeking to help those in need. Again, in Proverbs 31, though it is obvious that her main ministry was to her family, in verse 20 we read that, “She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.” If this is to be different from every other charity group in the community we need to strive to have a different motive and a different message than the rest of them. Those to whom we minister need to know that our motivation is to please God and carry out the ministry that He has given us to do. In other words, with our giving of good things needs to be a message of hope and salvation that is different from the others,

And finally, I think that the meaning of “good” in this passage has to do with a general life style and pattern to promote goodness in every area of our lives. It should influence the way we talk to our children and our husband, the way we interact with everyone around us, the general atmosphere that is evident in our homes when strangers come by and just the wonderful way that others can see Jesus living in our lives and affecting even how we look!

I trust this will give you a little insight into what it means for a Christian lady to be “good” in the Biblical sense of that word.