JAN 25 2026 | Proverbs: Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World S4E4 | The Woman Who Fears the Lord

Sea Change Church · JAN 25 2026 | Proverbs S4E4 - The Woman Who Fears the Lord
Proverbs 31:10-31
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

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. She makes bed coverings for herself. Her clothing is fine linen and purple. Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land. She makes linen garments and sells them.

She delivers sashes to the merchant. Strength and dignity are her clothing. And she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom. And the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed. Her husband also. And he praises her.

Many women have done excellently. But you surpassed them all. Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain. But a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands. And let her works praise her in the gates. This is the word of the Lord. Well, hey, good morning. Welcome to Sea Change Church on this gorgeous day here in La Jolla.

We are stoked, right? And blessed to have you. And first of all, to see that generation of kids. I stand back behind that wall. I'm always watching the service back there. Best seat in the house. You guys poured in to make that happen. You guys sent kids to camp. We got another camp coming this week. This generation is getting touched by God. And having people that have gone before them that are willing to invest into what they're doing matters.

It doesn't happen really without that. It makes it more difficult. So thank you, thank you, thank you for that. I had a hard time. I was a little per climp back there watching all that rad stuff happen. And great job, Pastor Vinny. Well done. Can we just give it up for Vinny and the team that went there, please? Thanks. Next week, starting a three-week series.

Just felt like the Lord told me to talk about healing. Healing and miracles. There's just a season right now. So I'm going to push back the Genesis series. Can't wait to get to that. Three weeks in Matthew 8. Jesus is just healing everyone, taking their infirmities. And there's a lot of people that need healing in our church right now for relationships, for physical health.

So dive into that. Matthew 8, go read Matthew 8. You know, just spend a little time seeking the Lord, circling the verbs, the adjectives. Know it before I get to it, right? The key is to have God speak to you before I speak. And then what you're getting is confirmation as opposed to like a shadow of my quiet time. And that's what we want to do. So Matthew 8, the next three weeks starting next week.

We're in Proverbs 31. There is no scripture in all of the Bible that I have read more than Proverbs 31. You're like, that's a scripture about how to be a good woman, Adam. Why are you doing that? About 15 years ago, I just, the Lord made it clear I need to pray for my wife. And so I began to pray Proverbs 31 for my wife. Every day. And there was probably a good, I don't want to use hyperbole, a probably good 10, 12, 13 years where it was almost every single day consistent.

It was just, I just knew that for our relationship to survive, for me to give the shelter and the covering for my wife that she needed, that I needed to be on this. I really needed to be praying these things. And so it's a really powerful scripture. First thing I want to say is it's not really a bar for women to jump over, okay? So let's just get that out of the way.

Like, okay, if you're not, you know, shearing the sheep with a distaff, I mean, come on, ladies, what are you doing? Don't care about your Instagram? Can you shear those sheep? But what it is, is it is a, it's an archetype, it's a metaphor that not only men can aspire to, but really sets a standard in the head of men for the values you're looking for.

So I would just say to that, because Bathsheba is writing to her husband, to her son in this. This is not a man's perspective on, you know, how to be a woman. I told Piper, I was doing worship today from Point Loma Nazarene, I said, I'm going to go out there and tell the ladies how to be from Proverbs 31. She goes, this is my time to exit the room.

And I said, okay, right, I'm not doing that. This is actually a teaching from Bathsheba. Bathsheba saw some things in her day, if you know the story of Bathsheba. Obviously taken from her husband by David, King David. She got pregnant, and that son was Solomon. And so she writes, she is a huge influence in the Proverbs. So we're going to look at what she has to say.

But for me, I've really seen this bear fruit. And so not only for a man to understand, especially you unmarried men, but you married men as well, especially if you have daughters, that this is the kind of woman you're praying for. You're praying into her life. This is what you're looking for. This is how you want your wife to be. But it's not a bar.

It is just a metaphor, but it's also an archetype of how God really aspires for women to be culture changers. And you see, this woman is a culture changer. She's not idle, not wasting her time. For women, it really is a call to action. It's a call to step out from maybe whatever the culture says women should be and look at what God's word says about how to be a woman of prayer who provides.

We're going to look into that. I don't want to over-preach it, pre-preach it at the moment. But let me begin by saying that I was blessed to be surrounded by incredibly power-filled women. I'm not saying powerful. Intentionally, they were power-filled women. They were women that were filled with the spirit of God. My dad was the oldest of nine children.

He had eight sisters. And I had eight aunts. One passed away in a driving accident when she was in her 20s. The rest all lived to be into their 90s. They were godly. They were some of the most godly people I knew. And when I spent time with them, whether it be Irene or Ruth or Rosemary, they were on point. Now, we grew up Catholic. They were a little bummed when I switched teams, okay?

I'm not going to lie. Mass every single day. Every morning, mass. Rosaries. And, you know, you can have your thoughts on the Protestant-Catholic divide. We've been doing that for, you know, hundreds of years. But the thing is, was the fruit of their life godly? And I would say that it is incredibly godly. Their care for the poor. And so I was filled with this.

And then I had a teacher who was a Christian. Mrs. Comber. Got her in first grade. And in kindergarten, my mom came by the playground one day. And I was outside in the playground riding the bike around. And my mom went in and says, why is my son outside riding around? Teacher said, I couldn't control him. I'm going through divorce, having a hard time.

So I just let him stay outside. My mom's like, oh, okay, great. That's who I was. And so no one wanted to take me. None of the teachers wanted me in first grade. Ms. Comber found out later on. I spoke to her. She's like 94 now, same age as my mom. Said, you know, I'll take Adam. And she took me one year. And she was God. I didn't know she was a believer.

We weren't believers at that time. We were nominal. My mom was nominal Catholic. And we kind of went to Catholic church. And when I was with my dad after the divorce, every Sunday we'd go and just sit there and put a dollar in the thing. But really no development of myself personally. But Ms. Comber poured in. And then in second grade, she says, I want Adam again.

I'm going to take him two years in a row. And as I was thinking about that today, I was like, wow. Like, she draft picked me. You know what I'm saying? And I wasn't the most improved player. You know what I'm saying? She's godly. My mom is strong. Powerful. My grandma. Powerful woman. I have two daughters that are incredibly powerful. They are power filled.

Let me use that word. Because I'm looking to be filled with God's power. And we tried to raise them that way. Somebody came to me last week. And they said, aren't you, are you a little bummed you didn't have a boy? I said, no. No, not at all. I'm a girl dad. I just want to tell you, I'm a girl dad. I always wanted to be a girl dad. And I want to raise up young women to be like pillars of God, as it says in the scripture.

So let me get into this right away. The big idea today, Proverbs 31 is not a checklist, but rather it's a portrait of wisdom lived out. It's about wisdom. Gentlemen, ladies, it's about wisdom. A life anchored in the fear of the Lord. There's three dynamic qualities. There's multiple here. It's a big list. But there's three we're going to look at that I think are key.

One is strength. You can say strength. Sometimes you hear that. Strength. You have faithfulness. There's a faithfulness. And then anchored in a fear of the Lord. And by fear of the Lord, not afraid of God, but our deep reverence of who God is. Let me go with some historical insights of this passage. One, Proverbs 31 is an acrostic poem. It is written in the Hebrew and it has 22 verses.

There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. And each letter starts. So the opening starts, verse 10 starts with alpha. 11 is bet. It goes all the way to Gimel in verse 12. It will go through the entire Hebrew alphabet. Now why is that? When the Hebrews would make a poem like this, it was meant to show that you were building step by step to a conclusion.

Each verse was foundational. Each lyric of the poem was foundational and built. And it builds to a crescendo. It builds to a climax at the end of the passage. Let's go to the end of the passage in verse 30. You're going to see the way of the world here, but what it builds to. We're going to have a little spoiler alert. Charm is deceitful. Beauty is vain.

But a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. You praise that woman. You give her praise. 31, give. That's give again. Give her the fruit of her hands and let her works be praised in the city gate. That's key. The city gate. We'll talk about that in just a second because that is the center of power in the ancient world. The absolute center of power.

It's mentioned a couple times. And so you see a woman transcending the home, rearing the children, doing all those things that get a pejorative view in our society today. You see that she does those things. And somehow because of a building, Alpha, Bet, all the way through, there's a building of the way she lives her life that takes her to have influence in the city gates.

She's working on all fields. She's not just working in one area. The way she works in one area, the small things that she is showing import in is building in her life. And so I would say to ladies and gentlemen, please hear the echo of this, is do you feel like in the small things you're being faithful? Because a lot of times in this world, especially women these days are being told a lot of lies to aspire to this but void out and don't consider this.

This is not important. This is go for the heights. Go for the next level. Be the girl boss. But you can forget about these things. Those are old. Those are antiquated. This is a woman who does it all. Right? Once again, this is not a bar to be jumped over. This is values to be lived. So it is an acrostic poem. Book of Proverbs closes with words taught to a king by his mother, traditionally understood to be Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon.

So it says, you know, listen, my son. Throughout the entire book of Proverbs, if you have read the Proverbs, it regularly says, as taught by his mother or to my son Lemuel. And there is this theme, as we'll see in just a moment, where the major voice of wisdom in the Proverbs is not seen as being a man. It's a woman. We'll see that Proverbs says, wisdom, she cries out.

Proverbs is a book in the feminine voice. The Hebrew word for the spirit of God, that it has a feminine word. Did you know that it's called ruach? And it is a feminine word that has to do with the spirit. And it really shows that women are at least the feminine side of God, because God is not male or female. They are both elements of his character.

But that element of his character that he created women in is meant to be shown in wisdom. And so there's a great high calling for women to be wise, to seek wisdom. And his mom is regularly speaking this. So it is interesting that you have this woman teaching a man, which is her son, the king, the most powerful king of all time, Samuel. And I had a woman, I was speaking one time, when I was speaking one time at a conference, and I was talking on this passage.

And the woman came up to me, and she goes, I hate when men teach on this. She goes, it's just telling us, you know, it's so overwhelming, and da, da, da. And she says, you know, the bar is so high, you know, and this whole thing. And I said, well, first of all, I'm just repeating what a woman is saying. This is a teaching of a woman. I'm just responding.

So I'm taking her teaching, and I'm just doing my best to exegete it. And second off, you think that's a high bar, wait till you get to the New Testament. Because there's this guy named Jesus, right? And we're called to be like him. And she's like, I guess maybe you're right. I see you. I see you. So this is not man defining womanhood from a distance.

This is a mother shaping a king's understanding of wisdom. This is so for you moms that are raising young boys, this is important. It's so important to instill into your young, you know, your children, you know, I believe this, that a woman can raise a boy and should raise a boy. But it takes a man to raise a man. And they have to work and partner together.

And God did that on a reason. It doesn't mean that if you have a broken marriage that your husband, that your children can't be men. Obviously, I came out of a divorce. My mom raised me as a single mom. And God filled that gap with some incredible men in my life. But it really took that co-laboring. It's everything my mom brought to the table. All these women around me brought to the table.

But at some point, I had a man. And there's a male voice that spoke to me differently than the female voice. Women's both were equally important to me and still are today. I am not in any way intimidated by women. I really appreciate it because of what I grew up with. I never grew up in a situation where I saw this, you know, harsh, whatever the word they use today, overlording of women.

But as opposed, they were given equality. My mom and my dad worked in equality and business together. And that's why you're going to see a lot of powerful women surrounding my ministry here. You're going to see people. And I don't want to name them all, so I don't name some. But you're going to see power-filled women at this church because I appreciate what they bring to the table and partnering and working together.

And hopefully, men feel that way and pray for the women in your lives. Wisdom in the Proverbs is pictured as a woman. If you look in your notes, you see that a woman is calling, a woman is building, a woman is inviting. You're going to, you can go. Now, check these out. I would encourage you, ladies, men as well. So there's always an echo to men in this passage as I'm teaching.

Proverbs 1, 20 through 33. You got Proverbs 3, therefore, the whole list. If you look at your notes, Proverbs 8. These are all where women are being seen in a positive way. Woman is the voice of wisdom calling out. That's a lot of scriptures. That's a lot of scriptures. And I will say that if you were going to make a counter-argument that women are not meant to teach men, I would say if you were going to make that counter-argument, what you could do is take people to the book of Proverbs, which is Old Testament, where you definitely have women as a wisdom.

I'm trying to, women as seeing as wisdom. I'm not trying to throw a grenade in the middle of our theology at the moment. I'm just saying you want to be taught both ways that people see the scriptures, and this is one way that they see them. So look at those verses and see what it says. I'm going to give you one of these verses. Proverbs 1.20.21.

Wisdom cries aloud in the streets and the market. She raises her voice. Verse 2. At the head of the noisy street, she cries out at the entrance of the city gates. She speaks. Wisdom is seen as this wise woman. But also in the scripture, wisdom is seen as a woman of folly. You choose what you want to be. It's true for men, too. You can be the leader God has called you to be, or you can be a fool and chase after your stomach.

That's true for men. But for women, it is showing that you can be the person who is in the city gates, the person who is in the market. As you read scripture, both the woman of folly and the woman of wisdom both set their voice, call out from the market, and they both call out from the high places. If you read the scriptures I gave you, you're going to see there's a parallelism, by the way, and the geography in which they do their business.

And wisdom calls out to some, and it says that those, especially as it speaks to men that follow them, said you will be made wise. But a woman, it says, a folly, if you follow her smooth voice and her sharp tongue, it will lead you to the gates of Hades. It will lead you to death. And so the question is, what do you want to be? I want to say that most of the world's picture of what they are painting for women to be right now looks to me to be the woman of folly.

What they're calling them to, what they're telling them to aspire to, what they're telling them to give up. It's completely antithetical. And it's this argument that if you go after the things that are traditional, that are in the word of God, that you are abandoning your true self and you really need to become, and what I hear oftentimes, you really need to become more like a man in order to be a woman.

And I would say I wouldn't agree with that. A woman on her own, there's enough in the text, there's enough that God has given a woman that she doesn't need to aspire to be like any man, to be incredible, as we see in this passage, and making a difference in the world. The woman of folly, you're going to see her in Proverbs 2, Proverbs 5, 6, 7, 9, all the way through.

You'll see those. You can download the notes online if you're watching online. I see you guys out there. But I'm going to read one of the verses about her now in Proverbs. Proverbs 7, 11 and 12. And behold, the woman meets him. She's dressed as a prostitute. She's wily of heart. She's loud and wayward. Her feet do not stay at home. Now she's in the street.

Now in the market. Remember who else is in the market? The woman of wisdom. And at every corner, she lies in wait. There's a lot of female podcasts out there that I think that could be the description of them. I see them. I'm in the podcast world. I watch what's happening. And there's some godly podcasts as well. Maybe you see both. Because it doesn't matter if you're a woman or a man.

Both of us can follow God and be wise. And both of us can be a fool. And go into folly, fool, and folly. Key point here is that in order to be wise, the woman of wisdom in Proverbs 31 is not really the bar. I said a moment ago that Jesus is the bar. You're going to see that in 1 Corinthians 1.24 that Jesus is seen as the ultimate wisdom. I'm going to read that to you.

It's in the ESV. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. What is wisdom? Wisdom is knowing what to do. Or perhaps how to do it. But it is knowing what to do. Wisdom is kind of the what. Knowledge is kind of the how. Then there's another one. It says we should pray for wisdom, knowledge, and what?

Anybody know what the other one is? Understanding. Understanding is key because it gets to the heart of the issue. I would say recently in my marriage I was asking, Lord, Lord, I need some understanding on that issue. I have knowledge of what to do. I have wisdom on how to do it. But I don't know why I'm doing it. I don't know why my wife needs me to do it that way.

And God began to open up some understanding in my own heart. And we pray for those things. Wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. James, and this is for men and women, James says that ask for wisdom. And we have a generous God that will give you wisdom. If right now you have a situation, and I would say all of us do, that you don't know what to do.

You have a situation you don't know what to do. The key is to go to this James passage and to ask the Lord, God, give me wisdom. I want to assure you. I would, I don't even know how to say it. Within 72 hours I usually get an answer. When I ask the Lord for wisdom on how to, with a business situation, a church situation, a relational situation, out of James I say, God, you promised me, and I have found that my turnaround time is about 72 hours on getting that wisdom.

And so we see that is called out. That is a key point that we see happening there. We're going to move quickly to three things that you see with women. One is the strength. There's components of a godly woman. Strength. Strength. Sorry, my bad. Two, faithfulness. They're faithful. And third, there is a fear of the Lord. Let's get right into the strength.

Verse 17. She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong. She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong. What we see in this passage is the woman of God is not fragile. She might be small. She might be dainty. But she's not fragile. When it says that she is strong, it doesn't mean that she's a CrossFit. I'm sure she is. She does all that farm work that it's talking about out there.

She's probably farm strong, right? But it's not talking about a CrossFit class. She is dressing herself. What does that mean? She is doing the things that make her strong in body, soul, mind. She is continuing to strengthen herself with the strength of the Lord. She is power filled. We see that her strength is not loud. It doesn't, and she works for gain.

And she's not trying to prove her worth. One of the things I have found about strong women is the strongest women I know don't try to prove that they're strong. You see this with men a lot, right? There's like this, I got to let you know how awesome I am. Like, I just want to, you know, if you have a motorcycle and you're a dude, right, it runs without revving it, surprisingly, right?

Like, I don't get it. Do you need to go have the idol fixed? Like, I don't understand. It runs without revving. They're made to run. Gosh, I hate that. I know, it's for your safety so we don't hit you. You're sitting at the light, bro. Pet peeve. Thank you. Thank you, Garrett. Appreciate you. I have found that there's women that do the same thing. They just overdo it.

Like, there's just, I have found the strongest, and the strength leads to a beauty that you really can't put on with makeup or hair or whatever. There's just, they're just not trying to prove anything. And what I hear the world saying to women on a regular basis, and ladies, you tell me after the service if I'm wrong, but it's like, you got to go out there and girl boss it.

You got to be strong. You got to show, you know, you got to like da-da-da. And this woman's just taking care of her business. And she's not trying to prove anything to anyone. That's been hard for me. I think probably 40 of my, 50 of my 56 years, let's keep going up, did a lot of proving. I don't need to prove anything. I have a God who loves me, and I just want to work in that.

So she has strength, she has strength, and she clothes herself in that. Verse 19, she puts her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle. We see that she works, she plans, she creates, she provides. She is a provider, right? She just, she is constantly working. And you'll see in a moment she's in partnership with her husband. I got to keep moving.

Number two, faithfulness. It builds trust. I'm going to read all the way through verse 11 here, and then we're going to switch over to verse 23. So we'll start at 11 and 12. The heart of her husband, this is faithfulness. The heart of her husband trusts in her, circle trust in her, and he will lack nothing of gain. She does him good and not harm all the days of her life.

I love that. We'll just stop right there before we get to verse 23. It says the heart, the seed of power in our hearts, we believe in our hearts. We are saved because of what we believe in our hearts. If you confess in your mouth and believe where? In your mind? No, you believe in your heart. Not only does he believe in his heart, he believes and he trusts his wife in his heart completely.

You see that there has been this incredible trust. She does him good and not harm all the days of her life. That's a good relationship. That where a husband is like, my woman has it on lockdown, right? I trust her and she just brings me good. Verse 23. Her husband is known in the gates. Now the city gate, I talked about that a moment ago, in the first, through most of antiquity, is a place where people would come in.

There was a seat of power. Business deals were done there. Her handshakes were made there. It was a place of community. It says her husband is known at the city gates. Now we talked about that a moment ago because the gates are mentioned again in a moment. Where he sits amongst the elders of the land. Her children, you're going to see this progressive strength now rising up in her from her home.

Her children rise up and they call her blessed. Her husband calls her blessed. And he praises her. Men, are you praising your wives? Give them praise. Give them praise. Speak to their beauty. Speak to their worth. Be enamored with them. Fall in love with them. If you've fallen out of love with them, fall back in love with them. Begin to pray for your wife over and over again.

There will be nothing that will make your wife more beautiful to you than praying for your wife. And asking for the eyes that the Lord has for her, that you will have those. And if you're dating, keep your hands off your ladies. Okay? It says in the scripture, treat her like a sister. Right? Be wise and honor her in that. Verse 29. It says, many women have done excellent, but you surpass them all.

So you see that there is this faithfulness and trust comes how? In the fruits of consistency. When does this woman get up? Now, I'm not saying, ladies, you've got to get up before the sun rises. Right? I'm not saying that. All right? This is telling a value story that there's a consistency in her life. And it's not just this. It's hard not to. Satan, ladies, Satan wants you doing this.

Nothing wrong with knocking out a puzzle for 15, 20 minutes. You know? You get home from work, have a puzzle. Six hours later, come on, let's stop puzzling. You know? Whatever it is. Same thing with us men. We want to have a consistency and an intentionality. You see that one of the key things about this woman in Proverbs 31, and I can't teach this whole passage.

It's too, it's like the cosmos trying to talk about one star at a time. But there is a consistency. A few things will change your life as a believer like small consistency. Putting your shoes on and going for your walk. Just slow consistency. Everyone wants to home run. We live in a home run society. Home run. They want about, you know, 1,000%. Every hit's a home run.

Consistency. That is the hardest thing. The breakthroughs come from consistency. Consistency in prayer. Consistency in everything that you do. And this is a woman. If there's a, I didn't give you a key word. I'm going to make it up right now because I didn't have one before I got here. But I got one now. If there is a word you can write, ladies, on this, it's consistency.

Be consistent. If you have a husband that doesn't follow God, pray for your husband to follow God. It says in the scripture that many husbands will be led to Christ by the way you lived your life. I'll give you a quick books. If you're married, even if you're not married, but there's two books we read. They're from the early 2000s written by a woman named Stormy Omardian.

One is called The Power of a Praying Husband. One is called The Power of a Praying Wife. If there were three things that saved our marriage in the early 2000s, we couldn't pray together anymore. I'd pray and she'd go, what's that supposed to mean? I'd go, I was just trying to pray. I'm just trying. I couldn't do anything right. We got those two books.

We began to pray for each other. It changed our world. I'm back. I actually opened it up at the first of the year and I'm praying through that now. The Power of a Praying Husband. The Power of a Praying Wife. Married couples, you get those two books. You start praying those two books together. If you can still find them, I think they're probably still in print.

They were huge bestsellers. Yeah, that's going to change your life. Final one here is Fear of the Lord. Fear of the Lord reorders everything. Verse 30. Charm is deceitful. Beauty is vain. But a woman, but. There's that conjunction. Have I taught you to love the conjunctions? But a woman who fears the Lord is to be what? Praised. Give her the fruit of her hands and let her works be praised in the city gates.

Don't tell me she's not making a difference. She's out there. She's shearing those sheep, doing her thing, raising her kids. Every so often she's like, hey, honey, I think we should buy this piece of land. He's like, let's go. They buy the land. So she's doing it. She's making purple. Purple is super expensive back then. It was coming all the way from the trade routes of India.

So if you had purple, it means you had money. She is getting her bag, as they say. She is like getting her money. That's a millennial term. I see you millennials. She is just, she's a mover and a shaker. And she's not worrying what people think. Our society says about where a woman should be. She's just doing her business. Consistency. Just doing her business.

She's on her game, doing her thing, not trying to prove anything. You see, the entirety of the proceedings, the entirety of these proceedings attributes of the godly woman all crescendo with the fact that she is a woman who what? Does all these things? No. Fears the Lord. Remember, this is an acrostic poem. It's leading to a crescendo at a high point.

It is a woman who fears the Lord. You do all these things, ladies, and you don't fear the Lord? You might be powerful, but you're not going to be power-filled. You want to be power-filled. Her life brings her praise at the center of commerce and of government, which is the city gate. All the men sit at the city gate back in antiquity. David would sit there.

Absalom sat there. This is the place. And it's men, all right? It's a long time ago. And what are the men talking about? It says, all of her ways are getting, many have done, you've surpassed them all, but she gets praised, according to verse 31, and let her fruit of her hand, give her the fruit of her hands, and let her works be praised at the city gate.

You've got a bunch of dudes. Her husband's sitting there, and they're like, dude, your wife, dude, she's crushing. Crushing it. Wow. Dude. Did you see that deal she made? I didn't want to give her the field for that price, but I did. I don't know how she did it, but I gave her the field for that price. She's working. She's grinding in more ways than one, making the food and all these other things.

It comes outward. The final thing I would say is her praise extends outward from her husband to her, so it starts with her husband, her husband's heart. Then her children rise up. Then the community rises up. And eventually, the seats of power rise up to give her praise. You see where it starts? It starts with the things that matter. Ladies, if you have a resentment against your husband, begin to pray over it.

Or someone else, you have transferred what someone else did to you onto your husband, or vice versa. Being able to break those ties and not transfer what happened to you with a boyfriend when you were 26 to your husband today. I know that's difficult, because those wounds are deep. But asking the Lord to break those other ties so that he can have a clean start.

And even if he has hurt you or broken you, that there could be some change there. I've got to finish up right now. Here's the practical takeaway. Let wisdom shepherd your life, not perform it. It's men, but women, you ain't got to prove nothing. You ain't got to prove nothing. You just, your life is the proof. You just be consistent. And it says that your husband, your children, if only my wife and my children gave me praise at the end of my life, I'm dying happy.

I'm just telling you. I used to need the praise at the city gates. Man, somebody said, would you rather be rich and famous or just rich? I said, just rich. I don't need famous, dude, especially in this world. I don't have made myself a target, you know. I'm up here enough. Just do those small things, and God will bring you to where he's meant to be.

He will open the doors that no one can close. Be faithful with little. He will give you much. Gladys Allward. You might not have heard of her. Incredible story. Here's a picture of her. 1930s British missionary, wanted to be a missionary, went to the Mission Society, said, Mission Society, I want to go to China. They said, okay. They did all the tests on her.

They said, oh, you know, you have no education. You're not academically smart enough. You don't have the talents that we need to be a missionary in China, and you don't have any money. You don't have any backing. I'm sorry. We can't send you to China. Gladys wouldn't take no for an answer. Gladys started raising some money. She raised some money, made her way on train through Russia, had to escape.

They tried to capture at one point. Made her way on her own to China, funding it herself. She gets there and goes to the Orphanage of the Eight Happinesses. Now, this is in China, and I don't think we call them in the Christian world that often, but nonetheless, the Orphanage of the Eight Happinesses. And she was a Christian there. It was all Chinese.

She was the only Christian there. The war came in the 1940s, and the Japanese invaded, and they were coming to where the orphanage was, and they were going to take the orphanage. Obviously, they would put her in prison or in a prison camp. And instead, she takes over 110 children, and she marches them out of town and over the mountains through the cold, almost dies herself, almost through malnutrition, and shepherds over 100 orphan children across the border of China into safe territory, and all of those children were freed and survived.

She ended up going back to England, then came back to China, when she ended up being buried with honors by the Chinese people in Taiwan. You're not smart enough. You don't have enough talent. You ain't got enough money. So what? You have a big God. Go do your thing. Do it consistently. One little thing at a time. And God will lead you to the place you're meant to be.

Amen? Let's stand, if you would. We'll have the band come forward. Amen. You and the will. You and the there. I have a way. I have a way. I have a way. I have a way. I have a way. �� a way. �� �끼 �끶 ��t, �끪e, ��jjL. Your name is the highest. Your name is the greatest. Your name stands above them all. All thrones, all thrones and dominions. All powers and positions.

Your name stands above them all. Your name, your name is the highest. Your name is the greatest. Your name stands above them all. All thrones, all thrones and dominions. All powers and positions. Your name stands above them all. And the angels cry, Holy, all creation cries. Holy, you are lifted high. Holy, holy forever. Hear your people sing. Hear your people sing.

Holy to the King of kings. Holy, you will always be. Holy, holy forever. You will always be. You will always be. Holy, holy forever. Amen. Lord bless you. Just a couple things God's had on my heart. One is I've just been really pouring into all these scriptures on how God uses eagles metaphorically in the scripture. And one is that those that wait upon the Lord will be raised up like on eagles' wings, that those that wait upon the Lord.

And so the first thing, if you've been waiting for something, I would encourage you to continue to wait faithfully for the Lord. He knows what he's doing and with that trust. Also, there's some brokenness here. Obviously, when you speak to a group this size, men and women, there's some incredible brokenness. And this could be a year of healing.

And hopefully, during this miracle series, you can be healed, whether it could be abuse or trauma. And we have ways to want to do that. We can start by praying for you today. And then finally, ladies, there's so many lies out there. There are so many lies. Like, it's so easy to see when you're in God's word. It's really hard to see when you're not.

And I just want to break the lies that you have to be prettier, stronger, act like a dude. Like, whatever those lies are, the Spirit of God will fill you and open those doors. And I want to release you here to just be you in this congregation. Everyone's trying to hold you down, and we want to open doors for you. And we just, in this place, we want it to be a place of freedom.

So I want to just ask that the men would just raise their hands up as a blessing. We're going to bless the women right now in this congregation, Lord Jesus. God, we want to bless, as men, we ask forgiveness, God, for any way that we have done anything. To diminish the calling upon women in your kingdom. And we bless the women of See Change Church and those that are online as well.

We bless them, and we break change. We stand in authority. We lock shields as a shelter, as a covering, Lord God. We lock shields as men of God to say, be gone, be broken in the name of Jesus. Any lie of the enemy that has been spoke, that, women, you would walk out free today or begin a journey of healing that will change. And so we bless you in Jesus' name.

Amen. We have a prayer team come forward. If you need prayer today, we love you guys. God bless you. Come get prayer for healing, whatever it is. God bless you.