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I may have discovered Satan’s biggest tactic.

Maybe not in your life, but definitely in mine. It’s only one line: “It’s okay.” Sounds harmless, right? Sounds like it could never hurt a fly. But that, my friend, is precisely why it works so well. 

You see, he never gets his demons and our sin nature  to ask us to do something we wouldn’t want to do.

He’d never ask me in the morning to kill somebody. He knows I’d say no.  And if everybody was saying no, his power would never grow. So, instead, he asks us to do something that doesn’t seem bad. Something that seems natural, normal even.   Something that when we make our decision, it’s pretty easy to find a reason to say yes.

I’ll give an example: lust. When I see an attractive man, instead of giving God the glory for the work of his hand, I’ll start crafting my own imaginary plan to make out with him.   And when that little voice in my head says hey, you know, your thoughts don’t seem very pure right now, another voice hushes it and says, “it’s just your hormones, girl!   you can’t help it any more than you can help being hungry.  calm down.  it’s okay.”

Or try this one on for size. another example: pride.  Somebody will give me a complement, or I’ll start thinking about my God-given intellect.   And stealthy-yet-suddenly,  my gifts will stop being about God and start being about me.   It’s crazy, the way the enemy  shuts down Christ’s call to humility  and says, “what are you talking about?  you’re brilliant. you’re hot.   and anything that you are not, you can get if you just work a little harder.  shh. it’s okay.”

and how about a sin of omission, too?  that stuff I should have done, but I ‘forgot’ to do? Or I ran out of time.  Who’s got time to pray, or memorize scripture, anyway?  And although in the back of my head,  I know that’s wrong, the longer I let that thought sit there, the more it feels like it belongs: “Don’t worry about God stuff.   You’re a busy person, time just got away.  You know what: it’s okay.”

And on and on it on it goes, and where it stops, only Satan knows.  Until he can successfully get us to say, you know what, I think God’s just getting in my way.  All this stuff that he says is not right, not holy, everybody knows it’s okay.  Sex is fine outside of marriage.  Drunkenness is normal. Which then could become the thought that weed is fine, and on that note, so is crack.  And maybe, ten years from now, the thought inside my head will be: if someone makes me mad enough, hurts me or those I love bad enough, and I can get away with it, hell yeah I’m going to kill them!

Hell yeah, it’s okay.

But I don’t want to say yes to hell.  I want to say no.  No, it’s not okay.  No, it’s not okay to live a life guided by my hormones, to live a life of pride, to pretend that I’m too busy to give the God of the universe the time of day.  I say no to sin, no to hell.  And yes to heaven.

What if we started saying that instead?  Heaven yeah!  Doesn’t quite have as nice of a ring; it’s a little harder to say.  And let me tell you, it’s a heaven of a lot harder to do.  It’s so much harder to say no, it’s not okay when everyone else is saying that it is.  It’s so much harder to say I’m going to thank God for that fine brother, that creation of God instead of lusting, so much harder to be humbly thankful for gifts instead of being prideful, so much harder to dedicate my time rather than just spending it as I please. 

But do I want to be able to keep myself pure?  Do I want to be able to give God control?  Do I want to be able to love my enemies?  Do I want to have lasting peace, and joy, and truth, and love?

Heaven yeah.

And so the next time, I hear “it’s okay,”  I’m going to tell him, no, it’s not.

We all know this is about a “virtuous woman” right?

Well, did you know that the first 9 verses are actually directed to men?  Instructing them that they should “not spend their strength on women” and “not crave liquor” but should rather “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those who are perishing.”  They should “speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice.”  These commands are placed directly before the passage about the “virtuous woman”.  Maybe the author is implying to his male audience that they won’t have a proverbs 31 woman until they become a proverbs 31 man.

Because it’s going to take a pretty solid man to handle the kind of woman that’s described in this passage.  The word translated as virtuous or excellent is actually the word interpreted in other contexts as valiant.  This is no puny woman; this woman is valiant, like soldiers gearing up for war. 

This lady walks in authority: “she is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs with no fear of the future.”  And she is powerful.  She “girds her loins with strength, and strengthens her arms.”  If she’s tying her clothes up around her waist and doing pushups, you probably aren’t going to want to mess with her. 

Not to mention this lady’s got a ton of business savvy: “she goes out to inspect a field and buys it: with her earnings she plants a vineyard”, she has fashion sense: “she dresses like royalty in gowns of finest cloth”, she’s pretty energetic: “she makes sure her dealings are profitable; her lamp burns late into the night”, and she fights injustice: “she extends a helping hand to the poor and opens her arms to the needy.”  This lady knows what’s up, and will let you know, too (nicely, of course): “when she speaks, her words are wise, and kindness is the rule when she gives instructions.” 

Not exactly your retiring, servile housewife, is she?  But this is the kind of lady I want to be.  I know a lot of young Christian women that are stepping into this kind of a mentality of what it means to be a godly woman, which is so exciting to me.  Hopefully, more and more young Christian men will become true proverbs 31 men, so that they’ll be ready for this new wave of valiant proverbs 31 women.