iamenough

session 6.  here we go…

we looked at proverbs 31:10-31…for those of you who know the verse you may be sighing and wondering why i’d venture there.  for those of you who don’t know, this section has been labelled “the wife of noble character”, but i think we managed to look at this passage with fresh eyes and explore some of the characteristics that are mentioned and made them applicable to any woman, any person.

before we get into the meat of it, we had “coffee time with anne-marie“.  anne-marie mediwake is today’s superwoman.  she is a news anchor for global news.  she has triplets.  she makes both of those things look easy.  and she is a pretty cool person.

so, some questions for you to think about first:

1. how do we, as a society, define success? 

2. what is success to YOU?

3. what characteristics do you see as being “noble” or “virtuous”?

4. what do you believe are the gifts that God has given you?

we discussed these things together.  talking about how society measures success in “things”: wealth, possessions, status.  what we drive, what we wear, in what neighbourhood we live, and who we are “with” all matter in society.

how do we measure success in our community?  we talked about finding what you are passionate about and being successful in your passions.  if its working on compassion efforts, doing so with no stops and working hard at it.  feeling successful is finding contentment in what you are doing.  being successful is measured in how your relationship with God is effecting your life, other relationships and your passions.  

what did we think were noble or virtuous characteristics?  having a solid set of morals, enduring responsibilities, being understanding and compassionate, being just.  having a level head.  the list could go on.

now go ahead and read proverbs 31:10-31.  we read from a couple of different translations and that might be helpful for you too.

we then asked each other these questions:

a) what verse stands out to you the most in this passage?  why?

b) what attributes/characteristics can we pick out from this passage?

c) looking back to last week…in the book of ruth, boaz calls ruth a “woman of noble character” (3:11); what qualities or characteristics from this passage does ruth exemplify?

d) thinking about the different giftings or talents that you have been given, how are you using them?  are you confident in the gifts that God has given you?  why or why not?

e) what does it mean to “fear the Lord”?

we walked through this passage verse by verse and looked at all of the attributes described here: kindness, trustworthiness, compassion, hardworking, conscientiousness, wisdom, and on and on. we talked about how this list and these attributes don’t just have to be about a “wife” but are attributes that can be beneficial to all people to take note of. 

we discussed the fact that lessons learned from this passage can be integrated into our own lives: not being lazy, working hard and being eager to do so, watching what we say and speaking wise words instead of gossip or slander, using our time to its fullest, and being a positive influence on those around you.  

the second last verse in this passage says that “a woman who fearst he Lord is to be praised.”  we talked about what it meant to fear the Lord – that we can do this by honouring the giftings that God has given us and using those gifts in the ways in which He would have us do so.  in our interview with anne-marie, she said, “be yourself.  and be yourself BIG.”  so, in the same way, be yourself (rooted in Christ, complete with all of the giftings that God has given you). and be yourself BIG (honour God in what you are doing.  do it for His glory.  and do it BIG!).  that’s where you’ll find success.  living BIG for Christ. 

as you continue with your day.  your week.  whatever you’re up to, remember that in Christ, you can be confident, you are successful, and that in Christ, you are enough.

session five.  coles notes version.  i was on vacation in seattle, so i am attempting this one without having been in the study myself.  so this will be some personal reflection from me, and i hope in turn will spark some personal reflection from you.  here we go.

first take a look at ruth 1:1-18.  honestly, if you have the time, just read through ruth.  it is a cool book with some interesting things happening.

so first, all of the girls had ”coffee time with karmyn“.  and then asked each other these questions:

1. was there ever a time that you had to make a major decision that had no clear-cut YES or NO answer?  if so, what thought process did you go through?

2. has God ever given you clear direction in a situation?  if so, what did that look like?

3. have you ever had a mentor or older friend who has cared for you, encouraged you, or been a role model for you?

4. has anyone ever acted completely selflessly to help you out? 

now, let’s recap the first 18 verses of ruth.  there was this guy, elimelech who was married to naomi.  they had two sons, mahlon and kilion – (awesome names!) – they were ephrathites from bethlehem, judah.  there was famine in their country so they went to moab and lived there.

elimelech died and naomi’s sons married moabite women, orpah (note the rp, not pr), and ruth.  they lived there for about a decade and then both of the son’s died.  so not only was naomi a widow, now so were orpah and ruth. 

they heard that the Lord was providing some relief to His people, so they went to seek this aid.  on the road, naomi told the two girls to return to their mother’s home.  she also said, “may the Lord show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead and to me.  may the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”  [in other words, you have better luck getting a husband in your hometown than with me, so go and do that and live your life.]  but both of the girls cried and said, “we will go back with you and your people.”

but naomi said, “go home, my daughters.  why would you come with me?  am i going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands.  go home, my daughters; i am too old to have another husband.  even if i thought there was still hope fo me – even if i had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons – would you wait until they grew up?  [kind of rhetorical because they would be pretty old by then] would you remain unmarried for them?  no, my daughters.  it is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has gone out against me!” 

they all cried again.  then orpah kissed naomi goodbye, but ruth clung to naomi.  orpah left, and naomi told ruth to leave with orpah.

but ruth said, “don’t urge me to leave you or turn back from you.  where you go i will go, and where you stay i will stay.  your people will be my people and your God, my God.  where you die i will die and there i will be buried.  may the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”

when naomi realized that ruth was determined to come with her, she stopped trying to convince her otherwise.

so, that’s how naomi and ruth ended up together heading to bethlehem.  the rest of the story of naomi and ruth is really interesting and i would encourage you to read it and find out more of their history.  just to give you a glimps of what happens [spolier alert], ruth marries a guy named boaz and through ruth and boaz’s line comes david and through david’s line…come on sunday-schoolers…who came from david’s line?  …that’s right, Jesus!  do you think maybe ruth made the right choice?  was she following God’s leading?

it is pretty obvious that ruth loved her mother-in-law and felt close to her.  she wanted to stay with her as her family.  this leads me to think that naomi was an incredible role model for ruth and that ruth appreciated the solid character of naomi. 

after hearing a little about ruth and naomi, here are the questions that the group looked at:

a)      is there anything that stands out to you in this passage?

b)      if you were in naomi’s position, what would you have done?    

c)       imagine you are ruth.  young.  a widow.  you have moved away from all you have ever known.  there is famine in the country in which you live; we are talking a MAJOR shortage of food.  you are given the choice to return to your parents and friends, but doing so you would be leaving your mother-in-law all alone. 

now, your mother-in-law is somewhat old and, though she is your mother-in-law, she has been an incredible mentor to you. 

so you have two options:

option one:  you leave her and return to your family with hopes of remarrying and starting over.  you are guaranteed food, shelter, and people you know to be near you.

option two: you stay with your mother-in-law with no real prospects of a future, a husband, or any idea of where you are headed in life.

what do you do?  what did Ruth do and what was the result?  (read together ruth 4:13-22.) 

d)      ruth chose a selfless act to ensure her mother-in-law’s livelihood and did so out of love.  as her mother-in-law has shown ruth love, ruth in return shows love to naomi.  as we have the new testament to turn to, we would call this showing the love of Christ.  Christ has given us the ultimate sacrifice out of love.  we can be shaped by this love of Christ and taught the love of Christ through fellow believers. 

ruth has modeled what she has been taught.  do you have someone in your life who is investing into you?  is the person you are modeling yourself after founded firmly in Christ?  is it obvious to you in their daily life that they are, in fact, a Christ-follower?  how have you or have you not followed the example you have been given?

and so, i’m gonna leave it at that.  more for you to consider, to reflect on.  if you don’t presently have a mentor or a positive role model investing into your life, let me encourage you to seek out a person like that.  whether we like it or not, we do act out what is exemplified to us.  find a good example.  a Christ-like example.

remember that you are loved.  remember that Christ’s love is unconditional.  remember that, in Christ, you are enough. 

session four. and on we go.

in session four we looked at the story from John 8:3-11.  before we jumped head first into this passage, we had “coffee time with denita“. 

we then looked at the questions she was asked and gave our own thought to them:

1. why do you think girls judge each other so much?

2. can you remember a time when you were judged unfairly?  can you remember a time when you judged someone else unfairly?

3. how would you define grace?

4. can you think of a situation in which someone gave you grace when you definitely didn’t deserve it?

5. have you ever had a hard time forgiving yourself?

we talked about why girls judge and that it is often to reduce someone else to a position lower than themself.  we talked about the fact that there are so many pressures in jr high and high school that it is easier to move the attention off yourself and onto others. 

skipping the middle questions there, for you to think about on your own, we also talked about how hard it is to forgive ourselves.  we can forgive others.  God forgives us.  but when it comes to forgiving ourselves, we struggle.  (i shared the story called “preparing to stone myself” – posted earlier on this site)

we then looked at the story of the woman caught in adultery.  let’s recap it quickly:

teachers of the law and pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery before Jesus and the group he was with.  the gang that brought her in said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.  [eek!  how embarrasing would that be?!?] in the law, moses commanded us to stone such women. so what do you say?”  these guys were trying to trap Jesus with this question and have grounds on which they could accuse him.

but instead of answering them, Jesus bent down and wrote in the sand with his finger.  they kept questioning him, and so, he stood up straight and said, “if any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”  he then stooped down again and wrote in the sand.

when the crowd heard this, they began to leave one at a time with the older leaving first, until Jesus was the only one left, with the woman still standing there.  Jesus stood up straight again and asked her, “woman, where are they?  has no one condemned you?”

“no one, Sir.”

“then neither do I,” declared Jesus.  “go now and leave your life of sin.”

i love this story.  i find a few things in it pretty incredible, and as we unraveled the story as a group different people commented on different things.

so, first, i’ll insert the questions that we asked and then i’ll expound a little in what we talked about and how we answered some of the questions.  feel free to answer some of the questions yourself before seeing where our discussion went.

a) is there anything that stands out to you in this story?

b) if you were in the woman’s position, what would you be feeling standing in front of Jesus?

c) this woman just straight-up violated one of the 10 commandments -and although sin is sin, people would still have viewed this sin as one of the worst.  she slept with another woman’s husband! in our society, we have many different “labels” that people give to this type of woman (none of which i will name!).  but Jesus tells her that He is not going to condemn her, instead He says, “go and leave your life of sin.”  He is saying, have another chance.  here is grace, take it and use it well.  live free in me.  find your new identity in me.  in my eyes, you are enough.

we all find ourselves in different places in life when we are missing the mark.  is there a situation in your life right now that Christ is saying to you, “go and leave your life of sin”?  …turn around and get back on track? …what is something that is holding you back from a healthy and whole relationship with Christ?

d) maybe there isn’t one specific thing that is holding you back, maybe it is more that you are holding yourself back.  is there something that YOU need to forgive YOURSELF for?  Christ forgives us freely by his grace, but sometimes we are our biggest judges.  is there something that you need to let go of?  something you need to forgive yourself for?

with this in mind, read together colossians 2:13-15.

Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. It’s not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws. No, you’re already in—insiders—not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. If it’s an initiation ritual you’re after, you’ve already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross. He stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham authority at the Cross and marched them naked through the streets.  (The Message)

we’ve been forgiven.  we’ve been set free.  thank God!  our slate is wiped clean – let’s not try to hold on to the dirt that was once on it…we need to be able to let it go.  we are made anew in Christ.

as we looked at the main passage for today together, we talked about some things that stood out to each of us:

Jesus writing in the ground – there were a few different ideas on this.  some thought that he was writing the sins of the people in the crowd.  others thought that he was writing the ten commandments.  others still, that he was simply taking time to craft his response as an example to us that we need to not respond in haste when people pressure us to answer.  the fact that he wrote in the sand not once, but twice, would help to prove this later theory as well.  showing that Jesus was not being hasty, not making the decisions for each person, but allowing time for things to play out a little.  there are other schools of thought on this piece, but this is just a snippet of what was discussed here.

“they began to leave one at a time with the older leaving first” – we talked about the fact that it was some of the older people who left first after Jesus said, “you without sin throw the first stone.”  was it because the older were wiser?  was it that they realized that Jesus words were powerful?  that they could not argue with such a statement?  and that the younger were more hasty to accuse?  to hold onto their thirst for “justice”, for blood?

woman, where are they? – in a way, this was a rhetorical question.  Jesus knew that they were gone.  he knew that they couldn’t throw a stone with what he had said, but he still asked the question of the woman.  he wanted her to say that they were gone.  he wanted her to realize that she wasn’t the lone sinner in the crowd.  that she wasn’t the only one who had commited a sin.  he wanted her to realize.  and so, she responded.  and Jesus is so cool – he says that he doesn’t condemn her either (and he could of…he was sinless!), but instead that she should have a fresh start.  i love it!

this text is jammed-pack full of cool stuff.  if you have any other thoughts or questions or things that you come across, be sure to comment on this piece and share it with the rest of us.

after all of the chat, we prayed and asked that we could have God’s grace in our lives.  that we would know that we are forgiven even when it seems like we are unforgiveable.  and that we can forgive others and show grace to them.  we are forgiven.  we are His girls.  in Christ, we are enough.