“Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” (Jas 4:17).
Every woman has the freedom to choose whether to live out God’s purpose and designed role for her respective life or decide to go the way of the world. There is reward and judgment for either way or path you chose to follow.
Decision determines the destiny of every man and woman, our choices set where we spend eternity.
Traditionally, women in general love to pursue the pleasure of life, the leisure of living, the passion of romance, the fad and trends of fashion, the pursuit of beauty and love, and the ecstasy of reveling, dancing, partying, and the joyful good life.
However, beyond these material drives and pursuits, it is expected of every woman that they embrace their God-given mission and calling to be wives and mothers with genuine salvation as children of God. This is lasting freedom.
”And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts.”
“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” (Psa 119:45; Joh 8:36).
Women who pursue femininity, woman freedom and gender equality with too much focus on their bodies and feminine vulgarity turn out to become slaves to these ends, while losing out on individual liberty, personal dignity, and moral values.
Jesus Christ has set mankind free from all his iniquities through His blood that was shed at Calvary for the redemption of all men. Only through Christ can men be perfectly liberated from all woes and challenges of life.
Therefore, stand firm in the love and assurances of God through Christ, and be not encumbered any more by any yoke of slavery defending one gender against another.
The freedom and liberty to be who you aspire to be,
to do what you intend to do, invent or create,
to go wherever you desire to go, and
to attain whatever level of achievement you hope to attain in life is a great privilege of the human being and an inalienable right of all citizens in a truly democratic society.
As articulated in his State of the Union speech before the United States Congress on January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enunciated what is commonly known as The Four Freedoms.
The Four Freedoms contains fundamental policy of the United States against raging threats from on-going world war across the continents in the eastern hemisphere to the United States and other democracies across the world.
Breaking free from America’s old tradition of non-interventionism, President Roosevelt extended helping hands to democratic nations allied to the United States that were caught up in the world war quagmire of the time.
In doing this, President Roosevelt proposed to the Congress the four fundamental freedoms that people “everywhere in the world” ought to enjoy. These are:
- Freedom of speech
- Freedom of worship
- Freedom from want
- Freedom from fear
While the Constitution of the United States of America and her Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of worship to the citizen, despite the fact that the nation has the obligation to defend herself against the fear of attack from enemies, and provide her people against want with adequate economic programs and packages, freedom from fear and liberation from want are largely dependent upon the decisions and choices made by the citizen.
Freedom and liberty to be what you can be, to do what you like to do, is a great privilege that also places the responsibility upon the individual to be cautious of his liberty so as not to flout God’s commandments and incur His wrought, or impinge on the rights and privileges of others with incalculable consequences.
Whether it was legislated, decreed, or not, it matters little fighting over religious freedom if one is in the right faith. The Almighty God ever remains the final arbiter in every affair, action and inaction of man.
“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Mic 6:8).
A personal encounter with the Lord God is possible for all humans, and is fundamental to the intimate relationship and appropriate religious experience for the Jew and the Gentile, for the Greek and the barbarian.
Joy is the scriptural lifestyle that leads to steady progress and fulfillment as a child of God. As a Christian, life trials and challenges should not blur your heavenly vision to live a fruitful and fulfilled Christian life.
Do not allow the reactions of people to control and cancel the vision you have. Rather, rejoice during persecution, maintain the heavenly vision and make progress in the service of God.
“Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me.
And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.
But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee;
Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee,
To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.” (Act 26:19, 13-18).
Conversion from sin is one of the greatest experiences you can ever have because the true convert can give a reason of his hope and a good account of the change manifest in him.
Habit, social expectations, upbringing, guilt, affliction, persecution, oppression and sheer need to seek a higher power than the limited human capabilities may lead different kinds of people into religion.
Sheer religion and mere worship without salvation can never suffice or lift any human into the true presence of God in worship and communion.
It is an encounter with Christ into proper faith that leads to the realization of one’s sinfulness, confessions of sins, repentance from those sins, renouncement of sinful lifestyle, and acceptance of Jesus Christ that makes you a Christian.
Saul of Tarsus, later known as Apostle Paul, was made a Christian by Divine power; by a revelation of Christ both to him and in him, when he was still in the full career of his sin.
While democratic values dictates our inalienable rights and freedom of worship, it is not enough for men and women to have their eyes opened to what is right and wrong, we must have our hearts renewed.
It is not enough to recognize evil deeds and immorality in society, people must willingly turn from satanic darkness to the marvelous light of God through Christ.
Though we live in a material age when society no longer exerts the pressure it once did to believe in God, when many people are more apt to claim ‘I’m not religious’, yet a world that lies in wickedness must be sanctified and reformed.
While, to a limit, one has the liberty to dress, to strip, to wear, and not to wear clothing in public and in private, according to law, a higher judgment and divine censorship is hanging upon whosoever allow his or her nakedness to tempt others to lust.
This is the oddity of nudity.
No life can be lived, even the lives of atheists and agnostics, outside the tenets and commandments of God, who created all things, and who gives life to all.
Therefore, whatsoever we do should be with submissive dependence on God.
“Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” (Mat 18:7).
Eternal judgment of God awaits believers as well as unbelievers whose commissions and omissions fall short of the good conscience God the Creator has placed in men and women as a good guide unto righteousness, even if their conscience has become seared with hot iron to tilt unto evil and iniquities.
“He that does not the good he knows should be done, as well as he who does the evil he knows should not be done, will be condemned.”
Without doubt, women have done a lot to shape the world we live in today. How on earth could our world be human and humane without women?
Quite unthinkable!
Nevertheless, there is the persistent campaign to improve the rights of women.
There are many women of grace and honor in the Bible. Their exemplary lifestyle shpuld be emulated by anyone who hope to impact the feminine gender.
Mary, the mother of our Lord, Mary Magdalene, Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, Deborah, the Judge, Ruth the Moabite, Queen Esther, were among the remarkable Bible women.
On the other side were devilish and wicked women such as Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab, a fatale feminine, a shameless idolater, Herodias, the ex-wife of Herod’s brother who betrayed her husband and eloped with Herod the governor.
There were others. There was Delilah, and Potiphera, the flirtatious wife of Egyptian leader Potiphar, and many others such as many foreign wives and concubines of King Solomon, who turned away his heart after other gods.
From Eve to Lot’s wife, between Nefertiti and Cleopatra, and from little Anne Frank to Sojourner Truth, women have always displayed qualities which equaled their male counterparts, and sometimes surpassed them.
Nevertheless, campaign to improve the rights of women remains a fodder for women activists, campaigners, and feminists.
With or without agitations and protests, the truth remains that God who created us made us male and female, with peculiar purpose and plan for each gender to excel within the roles and duties assigned to us as men or women.
Hillary Rodham Clinton as a woman of substance has done so much and achieved great mileage in life, career, politics, social services, and in public works and presence than many million men put together.
Yet, some women activists are still clamoring for her to shatter the glass ceiling.
Leadership is not until a woman of substance leads all men and women of her country. All women are the governesses of their homes, and the darling wives of their husbands.
Great women have been to space as astronauts, pilots, engineers, inventors, creative managers and executives, business moguls, while still taking very good care of husband, children, and family, yet equaling the very best of men.
Sadly, many women celebrities have no home to govern in the first instance, and brags about in nudity and naked dressing as female celebrities empowering other women.
Contemporary social menace against God’s plan for love, marriage, and general human relationship has led to broken homes, disintegrated families, and disorganized societies.
“Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.” (Ecc 7:29).
The rat race nowadays of some women celebrities, and a long retinue of other categories of women, and men, is to grab the honor they have lost at home from cheap followership and shifting and unsustainable followership in social media.
Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram can never give you what you fail to build in the home as a virtuous wife and mother. All women are made honorable homemakers, the bad ones turns out as home-wreckers.
Which one are you?
To patch up their images, to create awareness, and whip up whatever kind of positive or negative caricature of themselves, and stir up continuous mentioning in the media, these celebrities stir up the media by dressing half-naked, completely naked, or pushing their naked photographs for the world to see.
There is nowadays too much rude stuff and nakedness on social media, sexual vulgarity, cheap pornography in the open, presented by just anybody, but very surprisingly by those regarded as celebrities in the society.
Women Nudity, nakedness, stripping naked on stage, posing naked in magazines, and appearing nude in social media does not in any way add value to womanhood or femininity.
Rather it is an utter disgrace to the naked woman in particular, disrespect to womanhood in general, and great disservice to femininity.
You really do not need such lowly cleavages, vulgar body languages, bare bum and nakedness to entice a man to like you or sensible fans to follow you.
It is all shame, a sham, another odious ridiculous treatment of the human body.
Some women would dress almost naked, others half-naked, and some others stark naked with nothing to cover the human body, in the name of feminism, woman empowerment, sexual equality and human or women rights!
Who do some women think they are?
What are some women thinking about, that they appear to the whole world in utter nakedness?
It is so sad many ladies and girls would like to be the “darling girl” by climbing “the ladder of success wrong by wrong”, whereas, “the beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode but the true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul.”
The beauty of a woman is etched gracefully in “the caring that she lovingly gives, in the passion that she shows, and the good godly virtues she upholds”.
The exemplary woman is a woman of character, virtue, and substance.
Our contemporary world requires frontline feminists to be self-made women of ambition, discipline, dedication, focus and genuine fear of God .
“When virtue and modesty enlighten her charms, the lustre of a beautiful woman is brighter than the stars of heaven, and the influence of her power it is in vain to resist.”
There are characters and virtues which clearly indicate the fact that one is a woman, and polishing those virtues and characteristics enhances a woman’s positive image while increasing her femininity and womanly qualities.
The world has had the privilege of great women leaders such as Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto, Angela Merkel, Rosa Park, Madame Curie, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, Hillary Clinton, Florence Nightingale, and many more.
As parents, we pray for our children and family.
We pray for our daughters to grow up empowered in sound career and ethics, and never to be one of those women who define themselves by their looks and flirtatious stances.
We pray for our girls to bear true qualities, characters and virtues that make them intelligent, strong, focused, responsible, and godly christian women.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Nowadays you need to pray that your wife and daughter are not caught up in the craze and maniac fad to strip in public, to pose nude in the pages of magazines or on social media, while other ladies are doing better worthy things in life.
March 7, 1984, Jerry Levin, Beirut Bureau Chief of Cable News Network, CNN, was kidnapped by militia men in West Beirut, Lebanon.
Sis Levin, the darling loving dutiful wife of the kidnapped journalist, went through a lot of odds, challenges, difficulties to share the struggle for faith with Jerry, while he was kept away in the uncertain world of the terrorists.
From this crisis, Sis Levin learned the lessons of hope, and did the best she could, shuttling and shunting in prayers and meditations between the United States of America and the Middle East, to bring freedom to her kidnaped husband.
Despite being a resolutely strong woman who went all lengths to ensure that her beloved husband was rescued, Sis Levin did much more than a thousand men of might and valor in accepting the challenges with love, until her husband was triumphantly rescued alive.
“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.” “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;” (Eph 5:22,25).
The homemaking quality of a woman does not make her inferior to the husband who often goes out to seek support and income for his household. Rather, it is the woman’s homemaking prowess that brings warmth and love to the entire family in times of difficulty or challenge, disaster or happiness.
Through her feminine endowment of hospitality, the woman garners acceptance, goodness and recognition for her family by their neighbors and the larger society.
“The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.
She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.” (Pro 31:11,12).
It was January 1987, four American lecturers of the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon, were kidnapped from campus at gunpoint.
As the Graduate Assistant to Professor Robert Polhill, one of the kidnapped college professors, I raced to his apartment in the wee hours of the following day to commiserate with his wife, , Ferial Seikley.
In the midst of our meeting came the famous BBC Middle East correspondent, Jim Meier, in whose interview, Ferial Seikley, declared to the whole world that she would pray, fast, and work hard by the leading of God till her husband was rescued.
With her strong resolve and by standing in the gap for her husband in time of crisis, Ferial Seikley’s prayers and unflinching efforts were fruitful as her husband regained freedom in April 1990, after 39 months in captivity.
Historically, God created the woman as a helpmeet to the man, not just as wife for conjugal pleasure and satisfaction, for motherhood and domestic affairs only, but as a supporting shield and defending partner to watch his back, while he also watches her back in the battle of life.
God did not create the body of the female gender for protest or prostitution, but as a helpmeet to the male gender, for fruitfulness in marriage, for procreation, motherhood and support to her own husband within the context of the family.
Mata Hari tried to find happiness anyhow, and pleased herself when she brought carefree provocative style to her stage act. Initially, it garnered wide acclaim as nudity became the peak and most celebrated aspect of her shows.
She would progressively shed off her clothing on stage until she become completely nude, save only for just a jeweled brassiere and some ornaments.
She sought for joy, thought she got happiness and satisfaction, but later discovered that earthly gains and worldly allurements always end up in sorrow and sadness.
Women without a reverential fear of God, women who chose not to be chaste, virtuous and faithful to God, and women without regard to whatever the watching public may feel about their undue exposure and overexposure of intricate body parts and sections, became handy tools utilized to popularize and widespread the bikini into mainstream women wear as early as the 1960s.
Raquel Welch raised the level of the bikini to a high crescendo when she posed in a fur bikini in the movie ‘One Million Years B.C.’, and her only three lines performance in the movie became the most desired part of the whole film.
Popular women figures and leading feminist activists usually claim that the liberation of women from the tyranny of a male-dominated culture was responsible for making the bikini generally accepted amongst women, but this is not the whole truth.
The greatest dream for a woman is to have a lovely home, godly family, and be a mother, a blessed predestination.
Happiness is like jam, you can’t spread even a little without getting some on yourself. A woman always makes her home the very way it is.
What kind of a home is your home, Madame?
Women preaching nudity, naked dress sense, and sleazy wears in the name of women liberation are devoid of true happiness and life’s inner peace, though they are famous, sexy, and vocal, but very loud lewd women without the real virtues.
These are women who like to feel sexy and seek to project their sexuality to attract fame, position and power for their selfish personal purposes.
And, from such women, you should turn away!
The hope of any decent woman is God-ordained supportive roles for women in serving the Lord, His Church, and gaining their greatest joy and sense of accomplishment from being virtuous wives and dutiful mothers.
Only in Scripture can God’s intended design for women be found.
Unlike the Marilyn Monroe, the Brigitte Bardot, the Raquel Welch, or the Elizabeth Taylor of this world, the true woman is liberated to seek and find freedom in Christ Jesus.
The truly good woman lives a sanctified life, is a self-controlled godly wife, keeping the home, raising godly children, and zealously seeking to fulfill biblical motherhood role through Christ rather than by agitations and protest.
“If I could give you information of my life, it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do In His service what He has done in her.
And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing.”(Florence Nightingale).
Maikel Kaes -- Personal & Career Development 