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Women, Desires and God’s Word

In August, some of our ladies started a Bible study called "Teach us to Want". Claire Low shares with us why the ladies embarked on the study and how we can guard our hearts and align our desires with the Lord’s. 

Search deep down in your heart and ask yourself a simple yet profound question: What do you WANT in life?

A group of ladies recently started meeting together to do this study called “Teach us to Want” that challenges us to wrestle with our hearts' desires and place our passions and ambitions under His Lordship so that He rules and directs them. Perhaps you want to excel in your profession, to be married or to have children, to have a comfortable life… and the list goes on. Are these desires good or bad? What if God, in His infinite wisdom, withholds what I really want from me? Can I still say “I delight to do your will Lord” even when this path is hard and not what we envisioned?  

As a mother, I should be bold to pray for my children to believe in Jesus; but I need to submit even that good desire to the Lord and joyfully obey Him even when my children rebel. As a single woman, I can desire marriage (which is a good gift); but I need to surrender that to the Lord and trust Him even when the Lord says no or not yet. As we wrestle with these desires, the Spirit is at work transforming our hearts and changing what we live for. 

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above everything else guard your heart, because from it flow the springs of life.” How can we guard our hearts and align our desires with the Lord’s?

  • We guard our hearts with the word of God. Women are prone to being so busy with other things that we neglect the single most important thing that feeds our souls. We must protect and prioritise time in the word. For those who have young children, teach them from a young age that mom needs quiet time in God’s word and model Bible reading to them. 
  • We guard our hearts with the gospel. The gospel reminds us that we are sinners in need of daily grace. When we want our careers, our comfort or our children’s success more than God Himself, that is sin and idolatry.  And we must see that idolatry and cry out to God for help to delight in His will, repent of sin and ask our faithful God to reorient our desires rightly. God’s grace changes our hearts and removes our idols over and over again.
  • We guard our hearts by allowing people to speak hard truths into it. We need a church community that is willing to have difficult conversations. If we have been in church long enough, we can quite easily say all the right things and hide our sin. But we need to allow a few people into the deepest darkest blind spots we most want to hide so that they can help us to see. Don't be defensive when dear brothers and sisters point out sin. The most transformational conversations in my own life have been difficult and awkward ones when dear sisters in Christ gently spoke the truth in love in my life.

 

The women's study on “Teach us to Want” meets on the last Sunday of the month at 11am after service and we welcome ALL women to join us!