Seven Essential Goals of a Godly Woman by Cheryl Dickow

Who isn’t amazed at the number of self-help books that fill the shelves of our bookstores and even the shelves of our very own home? It is a difficult task, indeed, when we make a concerted effort to improve ourselves and then must face the myriad titles calling to us, each seeming to address one specific aspect or another that we wish to work on and improve. Each offering a technique to "fix" things and yet the things remain "unfixed." Things that sound good at the get-go soon lose their appeal. Maybe they work for someone else but we find they aren’t quite working for us.

Where, we wonder, is that one book that will be the last self-help book we need to buy? Maybe, we think, it must just be us as we purchase book after book, searching for the one that has all the answers. If self-help books really work, we eventually realize, why do they keep becoming best-sellers? Aren’t we all already self-helped enough?

Women seem especially vulnerable to the hype that surrounds each new book that makes it way into the marketplace. Quasi-Christian literature that promotes prosperity and has ignored the lessons of the Beatitudes can only leave us unfulfilled.  If you are tired of it all and want some genuine answers, then get ready for some real, serious work. Get ready to find the Truth as revealed in Scripture. What women seek – joy, peace, wellness – is only found in Scripture. The single, most important thing a woman can do to become truly whole is to turn to God. To make a decision to become a Godly Woman is to change your life forever!

Don’t settle for less than this to soothe your soul and anoint your journey. You deserve all that God has in store for you, His daughter. In fact, as you’ve probably discovered, anything less has left you high and dry. There is a reason that self-help books are proliferating, it is because we each have our own personal aches and pains that we want healed and so we become easy prey for such fodder. Years ago, when I taught middle school religion classes, I would ask the students if they thought, had they been in Eve’s position, they’d make a different choice. Without exception, and to prove that hindsight certainly is 20/20, each student felt certain he or she would not have succumbed to the wiles of the devil.

But I disagreed with their high regard to withstand temptation. Just as I vehemently disagree with any new-age writing. In fact, I look at the new-age way of thinking as the temptation for our ailing generation that equals that apple. Instead of returning to Scripture, or more alarming, along with returning to Scripture, women are become addicted to the teachings of new-age writers and promoters. In our fallen state, haven bitten from the apple of secularism, we have found ourselves no less vulnerable to temptation than Eve.

And yet there is hope. For those of us who ache to fill the void in our souls and to grab the reins of life, if only to slow it down and get our bearings, there is hope. It is the hope that is found in Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior of the world.

And so let us begin our final journey in which our deepest desire is to become a Godly Woman; a Woman of God who lives with a new and renewed understanding of self. A woman who has left all the secular labels behind and is now ready to hear the Good News!

Godly Women are powerful women. They aren’t fed up with men and child-rearing. They haven’t lost track of their goals and dreams. They haven’t "sold out" nor have they mistakenly bought into anything other than the plan God has in store for them. Godly Women are mighty women who change the world by one purposeful day at a time. There are no molds for Godly Women other than the very fact that they are created in the image and likeness of God and possess an inherent dignity that comes from that creation. From there the mold was broken.

Godly Women are righteous and they are strong. They bear children but also bear burdens. Women of God cannot be stopped because God has given them the graces to be unstoppable. Godly Women experience times of peace and times of war. They harbor no ill will towards their enemy and will uplift people in need.

Women of God are different. They have to be because God has made a difference in their life. A Woman of God cannot remain the same once she accepts the mantle that began with Sarah, wife of Abraham. Sarah, and all the women that follow, show us that our earthly journeys are richly blessed when we aspire to live them for God. This doesn’t mean that they are without problems but, rather, from the problems virtues are developed. Thus, rather than running from what ails them, they run towards what ails them. Instead of asking "the universe" to rid their lives and minds of the difficult and trying circumstances, they ask Jesus to hold their hand through them. They no longer seek consolation in what they hope will be but they find consolation in what is – and in that way find peace. The real peace of Christ.

No longer driven by labels and secular worldviews, a Woman of God begins her journey anew; whether she is 15 or 55 or 95. There is a new perspective in her heart and on her mind which becomes a countenance that makes a difference to her and can change the world.

And so the journey begins…

Note: This excerpt is taken from Seven Essential Goals of a Godly Woman by Cheryl Dickow and is reprinted with permission.


Copyright 2010 Cheryl Dickow