1. Read the sixteenth point of contrast between a Wild and a Wise Thing (Pages 207-215)
2. Download and complete the Chapter Questions for Personal Reflection
3. Post your comments on the Blog

• Describe a time when someone close to you broke a promise they made. How did you feel? How did it affect your thoughts and feelings towards that person?
• Why is it important that we are faithful in little things?
• Why is keeping our word particularly important in marriage?
• How can you be more faithful in the little things?

© Mary A. Kassian

Girl-Gone-Wild: Relationships Grow
Girl-Gone-Wise: Relationships Deteriorate

Girl-Gone-Wild: “For many a victim she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng.” Proverbs 7:26

Girl-Gone-Wise: “The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.” Proverbs 14:1

“For many a victim she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng” is military language. Several commentators think the Sage used this description to bring to his son’s mind the familiar image of the Phoenician goddess, Astarte. Astarte is queen of the Morning Star, goddess of war-a wild and furious warrior who sadistically “plunges knee-deep in knights’ blood; hip deep in the gore of heroes.” She is also Queen of the Evening Star, goddess of sensuality and passion. She is beautiful, desirable, sexual, savage, and deadly. She’s a ruthless conqueror who leaves the battlefield strewn with corpses. Solomon hoped the allusion would help his son grasp the danger of associating with such a woman.

The seductress causes the downfall and destruction of many men. From all outward appearances, she’s just a beautiful woman looking for a friend. But in actuality, she’s a “man-slayer.” She uses men. She hurts them. She’s not a builder, she’s a destroyer. She tears her “victim” down and “lays him low.” The fact that she uses him to meet her own selfish ends, disregards that it will affect him negatively, and discards him when he no longer serves her purposes demonstrates contempt and a severe lack of respect.

Have you noticed how prevalent disrespect toward men has become? In the sixties, women complained that men victimized and disrespected them. Now the tables have turned. Our sons, husbands, fathers, and men-friends are subjected to malicious jokes and attitudes that wouldn’t be tolerated toward any other group. Women portray them as selfish, lazy, inconsiderate, hormone-crazed buffoons. They gleefully slander and tear them down simply because they are male. Women today are like the Phoenician goddess. One moment, they entice men with their beauty and sexual prowess, and the next, they pull out their swords and slice them down.

Male-bashing, the stereotyping and portrayal of men as brutal, stupid, or otherwise objectionable, is commonplace. In Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture, professors Katherine Young and Paul Nathanson from McGill University warn that male-bashing is so pervasive in movies, television, comic strips, and even greeting cards, it could have “disastrous consequences” for the well-being of the next generation.

Christians are not innocent of this sin. I am astonished when I see the haughtiness and contempt with which Christian women treat men. I feel grieved when I hear them tell jokes, mock, deride, put down, and criticize their male colleagues, friends, boyfriends, and husbands. I wonder how they can have the audacity to disrespect and hurt those whom God has created. Sadly, the church is filled with man-slayers. Instead of building men up, we attack, destroy, and bring them down. We use the sword of our tongues to lay them low. Disrespect is one of the main reasons relationships break down. Can you imagine how much longer they’d last if we treated our husbands and friends with respect and didn’t lash out to wound them? If, instead of criticizing, complaining, whining, and demanding that they live up to their responsibilities, we took care to ensure that we lived up to ours?

The following list summarizes some of the Bible’s directives on how we ought to regard and respect others. They represent the nuts-and-bolts on what God requires of us in our relationships with one another:

• “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:3-5)
• “Love builds up.” (1 Corinthians 8:1)
• “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” (Romans 15:2)
• “Encourage one another and build one another up.” (1 Thessalonians 5:11)
• “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” (Ephesians 4:29)
• “See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another.” (1 Thessalonians 5:15)
• “Do not grumble against one another.” (James 5:9)
• “Bear one another’s burdens.” (Galatians 6:2)
• “With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.” (Ephesians 4:2)
• “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32)
• “Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” (Colossians 3:13)
• “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” (John 13:34)
• “Let all things be done for building up.” (1 Corinthians 14:26)

The thing about these commands is that they have no qualifiers. They’re not dependent on how our partner behaves. They don’t say, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth if no corrupting talk comes out of his.” Or “Build him up if he builds you up.” Or “Be kind and tenderhearted, forgiving him if he is kind and tenderhearted, forgiving you.” God doesn’t give us the option of respecting only those who are respectable. He commands: “Honor everyone!” (1 Peter 2:17). The reasons most relationships break down is that the parties spend more time pointing fingers at how the other person is failing to be honorable, rather than making sure that they themselves are.

It breaks my heart when I see wives “man-slaying” their husbands-cutting them down instead of building them up. Women, don’t ever forget that when you hurt your husband, you hurt yourself. “The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down” (Proverbs 14:1). A Girl-Gone-Wise does not tear down. She is a builder and not a destroyer. She demonstrates respect.

© Mary A. Kassian

This is a pre-publication excerpt from “Girls Gone Wise in a World gone Wild,” © Mary A. Kassian to be published by Moody Publishers in 2010. All rights reserved. You are welcome to link to this post, but please do not copy and/or reproduce this copyrighted material without express written permission of Moody Publishing.

But wouldn’t you know it. On my photo shoot day the temperature dropped to -2 Celsius (23 F). And the wind was freezing and blustery. Yikes! Not the best day for pictures, but my back was up against a deadline, so we had to go ahead.  Notice the snow…. yes, SNOW in the picture we took on the top of the parkade- the one with the skyscraper in the background. I had major chills by the time we were done. Anyhow, Julie did a great job, and we got some good shots. I thought you might like to take a peek…

Girl-Gone-Wild: Christ is peripheral
Girl-Gone-Wise: Christ is central

Girl-Gone-Wild: “Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol; she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.” Proverbs 5:5-6

Girl-Gone-Wise: Her heart has not turned back, nor have her steps departed from your way. Psalm 44:18*

The sage father tells his son that he’ll be able to spot a Girl-Gone-Wild by the way she walks. He advises him to check out a woman’s “feet,”  “steps,”  “path” and “ways.” You and I both know that he’s not being literal here. He’s not telling his son to look to see whether the woman sports a crisp French pedicure or calluses rough as concrete; whether she wears designer heels or hiking boots; whether she prefers swaggering through a barn or strutting down urban pavement; whether she sways her derrière or marches like a commando. Even though a biblical prophet later derides certain women for “mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet” (Isaiah 3:16), it’s obvious that the “walk” that he and the dad are talking about is primarily metaphorical.

Biblical writers used the word “walk” metaphorically to describe the way human life is lived in relation to God. A girl’s walk has to do with the over-riding inclination of her heart. Her walk demonstrates where her loyalty lies. It reveals whether her heart is inclined toward the Lord or toward other things – whether she’s moving toward Him or away from Him, whether she prefers the path of uprightness or the path of wickedness, God’s way or the world’s way – whether she favors being wise or wild. Her walk is her prevailing pattern of behavior. (And this is where mincing and tinkling feet do come into play.)  Her behavior is the key to determining which way she’s headed. According to the Bible, you can tell the difference between a Wild-Thing and a Wise-Thing by the way she thinks and talks, and all the small, daily decisions she makes. Her small, individual “steps” all add up to reveal the dominant direction of her heart.

If Christ is at the center – if He is the one who has forever swept her off her feet – she tries to make sure that her attitude and speech and conduct is pleasing to Him.  She seeks to walk in His way. Her eyes are ever toward the Lord. (Psalm 25:15) Her steps increasingly follow His path. She relies on Him to make each footstep secure. (Psalm 40:2) If, on the other hand, Christ is not at the center, then she will walk in her own way; in a way that is “right in her own eyes.” (Proverbs 12:15) She will follow her own desires, turn aside from the straight and narrow, go after things she has no right to, and mess around with sin. (Job 31:7) Her way will be “a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” (Proverbs 14:12)

What if you find the love in your heart growing cold? Jesus gave the believers in Ephesus some advice about what to do to revive their love for Him. Their affection for God had fizzled. They had “abandoned” the love they had at first. So He told them, “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.” There are three simple steps to His remedy. Simple as A-B-C.

• [A] Recognize:  The first step of the remedy is that you recognize your lack of love. “Remember from where you have fallen.” You need to evaluate and be brutally honest about the condition of your heart. Do you love the Lord less than 100%? Do you love anything or anyone more than you love the Lord? Is anything distracting you from your relationship with Him? If so, then your heart is not where it should be.

• [B] Repent: Confess your lack of love to the Lord. Repent of a lack of love and any other known sin. Is there someone you need to forgive? Is there a bad influence you need to forsake? Is there anything that you are doing that you know you shouldn’t be doing? To repent means to turn. It involves a change of intention, belief, plans and actions. If you can’t think of anything that God wants you to repent of, just ask. I’m sure He’ll be happy to tell you. He’s done that for me numerous times. “Dear Lord, please reveal sin” is a prayer I have often prayed for my household and me. He has never failed to answer.

• [C] Revive: “Do the works you did at first.” In order to revive your love, simply do the things you did when you were totally in love… or the things that someone who is smitten with the Lord would normally do.  And what things are those?  Read your Bible. Pray. Pray with others. Confess sin. Repent. Forgive. Worship. Go to church. Do a Bible Study. Memorize and meditate on His Word. Share the Gospel. Walk by the Spirit.  (Does any of this sound familiar?) In my experience, the problem isn’t that women don’t know what to do to revive their love, it’s that they don’t want to put the effort and self-discipline into actually doing so. Reviving love is essentially a Spirit-empowered exercise of the will.

As C.S. Lewis said, “The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you “love”… [just] act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”

© Mary A. Kassian

This is a pre-publication excerpt from “Girls Gone Wise in a World gone Wild,” © Mary A. Kassian to be published by Moody Publishers in 2010. All rights reserved. You are welcome to link to this post, but please do not copy and/or reproduce this copyrighted material without express written permission of Moody Publishing.

On October 9-11, 2008, over 6,300 women gathered in Chicago, Illinois, to answer the question, “What is a true woman?” They were encouraged to:

• Discover and embrace God’s created design and mission for their lives
• Reflect the beauty and heart of Christ to their world
• Intentionally pass on the baton of Truth to the next generation
• Pray earnestly for an outpouring of God’s Spirit in their families, churches, nation, and world

After much prayer, Revive Our Hearts is delighted to announce three more True Woman Conferences in 2010. We sure hope you can join us! Mark your calendar today, and prepare to be deeply transformed in:

• Chattanooga, TN on March 25-27
• Indianapolis, IN on Sept. 23-25
• Fort Worth, TX on Oct. 14-16

You’ll hear from Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Mary Kassian, and many others. The messages will be new, but all will pulsate with the same heart and passion you heard at True Woman ‘08. (And, yes, Keith and Kristyn Getty will be back to lead worship.) Registration will open August 1. Tell your friends. And don’t wait too long to register—we anticipate that these conferences will fill up fast. Stay tuned for even more details about this life-changing conference.