What is Her Hands?

Her Hands was written with the help of many beautiful, married women that I am blessed to walk alongside. This is a study that is taught to single ladies at our church. We have "class" each week where we come together, cover a chapter, learn, fall apart, cry and laugh. We simply discuss what the Bible says about issues facing single women. We also pair our girls up in mentoring relationships during the course of this study. There's nothing more lovely and powerful than seeing single women sit down in coffee shops, on couches, on kitchen counters next to married women and ask an age-old question..."Will you tell me what this chapter looks like in real life? Will you show me how to live it?"

For the past 11 years, my husband, Aaron, and I have been blessed to serve at Living Hope in College Station, Texas where we are surrounded by students from the largest University in our nation. They eat our food. They sit on our couch. They play with our children. They come to us for advice. They teach us so much.

Her Hands contains everything I wish I would have known about the Lord, about marriage and relationships...and even myself, before I said, "I do."

This study is a magnificent display of mentoring as the older women in our church take time to teach and train the younger women walking behind us.

Today, hundreds of women have taken this class. We believe hundreds of homes, many precious children, and countless generations will love and fear the Lord simply because a group of women decided to obey God and mentor. We pray we are teaching younger women about the value of living a life to bring God glory through obedience to His Word. He really does have all the answers we need. Every single answer.

If you are single or engaged, this study is for you.

If you are married, but have never been taught what God's goals are for marriage, this study can be for you too. The class is for single women only, but you can read the material and participate online.

If you are not from our church, but have questions, we will do our best to answer them.

Let’s dig in and find out what God says about being a woman!

The chapters were meant to be read in order. So be sure to start at the beginning.

I pray that because of what happens here, older women will teach younger woman what is good. May we be more in love with Jesus, our husbands and children (or future husbands and children). May we pursue purity, gentleness, kindness, self-control and submission. Whether our homes contain a family or roommates, may those homes be places of healing, faith, comfort and peace.

Introduction

At first glance, the possibilities seem endless. That little girl, playing in her room dreams a million dreams.

"I want to be an astronaut. I want to be successful. I want to be an attorney. I want to be a mommy. I want to be a dancer. I want to be a teacher. I want boys to like me. I want to be a nurse. I want to be a doctor. I want to be attractive. I want to be loved. I want to be admired. I want to be respected. I want a boyfriend. I want a husband."

We women want a million different things, don’t we? We are unique in so many ways, yet have many of the same deep desires. Life for single women can seem terribly complicated and confusing. The path from here to there can seem overwhelming at times. Thankfully, the Bible makes our lives as women pretty simple. It says no matter what we are trying to do with our lives, we only have a few choices in reality.

Proverbs 14:1
The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.

We will be women who build, or we will be women who destroy.

We will be wise, or we will be foolish.

We will pass down a legacy of obedience and blessing or a lifestyle of sin and rebellion.

John 10:10

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

We're either going to be killed and destroyed, or we're going to find life...a full, rich, abundant life.

Those things are guaranteed for every woman.

Those are my only choices.

Those are your only choices.

I will have to decide. You will have to decide.

Which woman will I be?

It’s a tricky situation, since one other thing guaranteed from scripture is that our decision…it doesn’t just affect us. Which path we choose will affect the outcome of precious lives we are unable to see or adequately imagine while standing at the fork in the road. Unfortunately we aren’t the only people living in these houses we are either building or destroying. Other precious people reside there as well.

Because of the cross, and God's grace, we can be women who build...women who are given the opportunity to truly LIVE a life that honors the Lord.

“But I’m still in college! I’m not a wife, and I’m not a mother. Why does this matter now?” you might be asking. “I don’t even have a house. I live in a dorm. I sleep on a futon. I have Strawberry Shortcake sheets thumb tacked to my windows for curtains. How can I be destroying a home I do not own?”

My Story:

Six years ago I was unknowingly traveling the path that leads to destruction. I was foolishly destroying my home with my own hands. My husband, Aaron, and I got married in 1996. We were 19 years old. The older I get, the more insane that seems! We were both believers. We both said we loved the Lord. We both desired to grow spiritually. From the moment we got married, we were both heavily involved in ministry in the church. If you had asked us, we would have said that we were maturing.

However, our marriage was a wreck. I was a wreck. How could our marriage be an absolute disaster? We were both raised in church. We were working for a church God was blessing and growing at an incredible rate, yet I found myself threatening to leave Aaron all the time. If I wasn’t threatening to leave him physically, I was doing so mentally. I remember the day I decided that if we were going to have to stay married, we were going to do so by living two separate lives, under one roof. Aaron could have his life. I could have mine. He could be my roommate, but he was not going to be my husband. How could this have been happening to two believers? How could I hate my marriage so much? How could I despise the man I was so excited to marry?

The reason is simple. Although I was saturated in Christian culture, I did not know ANYTHING about what the Bible says about being a godly, wise woman. My problem wasn’t that I was married. My problem was I was foolish.

I didn’t know that God had a plan for my life that was so different from the plans I was busy making.

I didn't know that God created my marriage and joined Aaron and I together as man and wife for HIS glory alone. We were to be used by God to bear His image on earth. What a mess we were making of things!

I didn’t know that God had not only saved me, He wanted to change me.

I didn’t know that if I let His Word be the boss of my life, that my life could be a lot less confusing. I didn’t know His Word was sent to heal me.

I didn’t know what God says about sin, that there are consequences and that there is freedom available in Christ.

I didn’t know my sin would be passed on…that it would hurt not only me, but other people around me.

I didn’t know how to “do” relationships with other people the way God wanted them to be done.

I didn’t know how to biblically love.

I was rebellious. I hated authority.

My life revolved around me, around my dreams and around my desires.

I was selfish and undisciplined.

My feelings controlled my life.

I was foolish.

I also didn’t know anything biblical about how to do marriage. Don’t get me wrong…I knew a lot about marriage. We all know more about marriage than we think. Most of us have grown up surrounded by married people. Which means, we've all learned how to do marriage somewhere. Some people have had the great privilege of growing up watching healthy, God-centered marriages. Most women haven't. Instead, we may know about marriage because we watched many unhealthy marriages. We may have been trained to do marriage the wrong way.

Everything I knew about marriage had absolutely nothing to do with what the Bible says about this very important subject. I had no idea that the Word of God offered so much hope in my hopeless situation. I didn’t know that by simply doing what the Bible says, my life could completely change.

I also didn't know that everything that was harming my marriage existed BEFORE I ever got married. Those destructive behaviors were already a huge part of my life. By the Bible's definition, I was a fool prior to marriage, so all a wedding ring did for me was turn me into a married fool.

Whose fault was it that I could have been raised in church my entire life and not have known what a wise woman looked like?

Titus 2:3-5 says that older women who have learned how to obey God’s Word are supposed to see their command to train younger women to obey God’s word as a SACRED CALLING.

Bid the older women similarly to be reverent and devout in their deportment as becomes those engaged in sacred service, not slanderers or slaves to drink. They are to give good counsel and be teachers of what is right and noble, so that they will wisely train the young women to be sane and sober of mind (temperate, disciplined) and to love their husbands and their children, to be self-controlled, chaste, homemakers, good-natured (kindhearted), adapting and subordinating themselves to their husbands, that the word of God may not be exposed to reproach (blasphemed or discredited). - Titus 2:3-5 (AMP)

It was women’s fault. Women had failed to teach me to be wise. Do not get me wrong…I'm not trying to shift blame here. I believe that an enormous part of this study is learning to take credit for our own foolish choices and foolish behavior. I may not have known how to be wise, or how God intended marriage to work, but the reason why my marriage was a disaster was ultimately because I was a dipstick who did not care what God had to say my life.

However, I don't want to ignore that I honestly had no one lovingly teaching me either, despite the fact that the Bible clearly says there should have been older women training me to be wise. God had commanded the women in my life to train me how to be a wise woman who loves and obeys the Lord, who loves my husband and children, but where were they? Had they been there, I believe my marriage would have been healed a lot earlier and Aaron and I spared from lots of unnecessary pain. I know this because AS SOON AS I read Martha Peace's Excellent Wife book, within 5 months, my marriage was drastically different. It wasn’t that I did not have a teachable heart. My heart was teachable. There just weren't any women teaching it!

I remember sitting down to read Martha Peace’s book. I finally heard what the Bible desired for me as a married woman. However, the question that I asked over and over again was, “How could I not know ANY of this?” How? I was so angry! Yes, my marriage was awful. Yes, that was mostly my fault. Yes, I needed God to change everything about me. But what hurt the most was that I had been in church for 22 years, and what I was reading was brand new to me.

To make matters worse, I found out that very little of my problems had to do with my marriage. My problem was me. I just happened to be married at the time. Every single struggle I had was already in my life prior to becoming a bride. Nothing new popped up because I got married. Those problems were just more noticeable. Everything that was ruining my marriage could have been solved years before I was ever married, by simply learning what the Bible says about all my baggage I unloaded into our new home when we returned from our honeymoon.

I don’t want you to have to sit in a failing marriage simply because no one loved you enough to expose the areas in your life RIGHT NOW that you need to let the Lord remodel.

I don't want to fail women who are younger than myself. God commands me not to fail them! I want to teach the things that Titus 2 says to teach to the very best of my ability. This is hard to do! This means I have to be transparent with you, and let you have access to some of the most difficult times of my life. I have to let you see my frailty…how I've failed…how I am still failing. I want you to know everything I wish I had known BEFORE you take another step in the wrong direction.

One day, if God is calling you to marriage and to motherhood, there are things He needs to do in you to change you, to refine you and to train you TODAY! I want you to walk into marriage ready to be a radiant bride for your husband, because you were already living out those things as a radiant bride to your Lord. I want your future family to be free today, of the sin that you are wallowing around in right now.

Why?

1. Because sin separates you from a loving God who wants so much more for you.

2 Because the sin you are wearing around right now will one day be picked up and worn by your precious children.

3. Because when we live outside of our created purpose, we fail to do what we were created to do...bring God glory. God wants to use you! He wants to use you right now. And, one day, He wants to use your marriage and your family to paint a picture of His love, of unity, of peace, to a dying, lost world. In the broken state it was in, my marriage six years ago was worthless to the Lord. He couldn't use our family. That shouldn't have surprised me since God says very clearly that when we love our sin more than we love God, we too become worthless.

Jeremiah 2:5
This is what the LORD says: "What fault did your fathers find in me, that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves.

Exodus 20:1-6
God spoke all these words: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Anything we love more than God is an idol. Any sin we love more than obeying God is an idol. If we do not allow God to deal with us as women, right now, where we are, letting Him retrain us, we are guaranteed to pass our sin on to our children. By what is caught and what is taught, we are either going to train our children to sin, or we're going to train them to be righteous.

The only way you can raise a household of children who love the Lord one day is for you to say today “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord " (Joshua 24:15). Making that declaration for your life while you are the only person living in that house will save your marriage and your future children unnecessary pain.

Your future marriage is supposed to bring God glory. Your marriage will not be a picture of God's image 5 years from now, 2 years from now, 2 months from now if you are not letting God conform YOU to His image right now.

This study is set up to train single women to become wise, godly women whose hope is in the Lord, who have a heart to obey Him, and who know how to love and biblically relate to others. That way, if God does call you to marriage…you will already know and be practicing everything you need to know to be a Godly wife and mother. You will know how God wants to use you and your family to love and minister in your church, in your neighborhood, in your community.

Why is this study important now?

Because, did you know that the average woman will spend over 70% of her life as a wife and mother? During this season in your life when you are preparing to teach school, work for CNN, or chase tornadoes, wouldn't it be wise to figure out what God has to say about the roles you will play for such a lengthy time in your life? Did you know that everything you need to know about being a godly wife and mother can be practiced RIGHT NOW as a single person? There’s only one exception…physically or sexually relating to a male prior to marriage. But, I believe even the HEART behind that area of marriage can be groomed and cultivated right now.

For this class, you are single, by my definition, if you are not engaged. Engaged means, you have a ring on your finger. Even if you have a boyfriend who promises you that the two of you are getting married and you've already tattooed his name on your rear...YOU ARE SINGLE in this class. You may NOT insert your boyfriend's name into the husband equations in this book. Even though girls can go from single to married before a guy can say, "What's up?" that's NOT how the Lord works. To the Lord, a guy is NOT your husband until he has asked you to marry him.

I’M ENGAGED

If you are engaged, then I pray that during this study you will be open to hearing from the Lord about any red flags you are seeing in your promised mate. Believe it or not, this person may not be who God wants for you, or it may not be who God wants for you right now. Calm down! Don’t quit reading! I can just hear some of you saying, “Nu-uh, she did NOT just say that. I just got my man! Nothing is going to take him away from me now…not even God.”

Be careful! Be open to hear from the Lord about this. Maybe this is the person God has for you. However, I want you to know that if at any point during this study, you are doubtful, you need to voice your concerns. It’s never too late during an engagement to put on the running shoes and hit the road! Keep in mind that once you say, “I do”…those running shoes get thrown in the trash. Putting on the shoes is no longer an option.

God’s only desire for you in marriage is for you to do marriage HIS way. Any other way will result in the biggest mistake of your life!

I think engaged girls secretly think this to themselves:

“Once I get married, then I’ll want to obey the Lord. Once I get married, THEN my boyfriend will want to be the leader and lover God desires him to be.”

You don’t say it out loud because even you know that’s stupid. You don’t say it out loud because you know if you said it to me I would probably laugh so hard, my side would hurt. I would slap my right leg, and I would have to take a moment to catch my breath before I lovingly said…

“Girl…what are you thinking??”

Keep reading. You can be mad. Just keep reading.

THE BOY I SEE AT STARBUCKS ON THURSDAYS IS MY HUSBAND, HE JUST DOESN’T KNOW IT.

If you have an imaginary boyfriend, or a boyfriend who doesn’t know yet that he is your boyfriend…then you are single, by definition, in this class.

I DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ BOYFRIEND!

Are you someone who feels called to be single forever? Wondering if you should be taking this class since you are pretty sure God wants you all to Himself for the rest of your life?

As spiritually romantic as that sounds, let's get real here...

If you are not married right now, you have no idea what God has planned for you. Maybe you want to get married, but that's not what God has in store. No one cry. I mean it. Some of you just got sick to your stomach. Breathe.

Maybe you think right now that you are not ever getting married, because that's not what God wants for your life.

Planning to be single forever is still wrong if that's your plan, not God's plan.

If you are single today, then all you know is that you are not married right now. You have no idea what God's plan will be for you in the future. You don't even have the right to know.

But, let's say God does call you to be single forever...and you are someone who is fine with that. In fact, you don't even want to take this class because all these girly, gooey, thoughts about marriage stuff are so silly to you...you'd rather just sit and think about you and God...not marriage.

How very selfish of you.

Maybe God is calling you to be single forever...I don't know...and neither do you...but even if He is calling you to be single for the rest of your life, I can guarantee you He is NOT calling you to move to another planet. That would be cool, but He’s not calling you to do that. If you think He is…you may need to lay off the Nyquil.

For the rest of your life you will be surrounded by married people...probably married people who are hurting...people whose marriages are a disaster. This is why EVERY women needs to know what God has to say about marriage and about being a woman. We have to know how to love and help other women in our lives who are taking God's beautiful picture of marriage, a snapshot of His relationship to us, and misrepresenting our God through their failing marriage.

What We Will Learn

Whether married or not, as believers, we are called the Bride of Christ. This study is here to teach you what a radiant, spotless bride looks like. 1 Timothy 4:7 says to TRAIN yourself (with the help of the Holy Spirit coaching you) to be Godly.

Godliness is the cure for sin.

Being wise women who fear the Lord is the key to passing down blessings for generations to come.

Proverbs 24:3 Amplified Version
Through skillful and godly Wisdom is a house (a life, a home, a family) built, and by understanding it is established [on a sound and good foundation].

So, if a wise woman builds and a foolish woman destroys, we need to know the difference between being wise and being foolish! Good thing the Bible has a lot to say about this topic! According to scripture:

Wise Women Are Saved Women

Wise Women Love the Lord and His Word

Wise Women Live Purposefully

Wise Women Obey God

Wise Women Love Lost People

Wise Women Love the Family of God

Wise Women Love Their Husbands

Wise Women Love Their Children

Wise Women Listen To Wise Counsel

Wise Women Mentor