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Topics: Marriage, Motherhood, Womanhood, Women, Women in Ministry

What Women Need

September 20, 2013
By CBMW
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What Women Need

by Kimm Crandall

Women want a number of things in life. Some of it lies on the surface like the desire to lose a few pounds, have shinier hair or to make everything that we have pinned on our Pinterest board, but it’s our needs that run through us in a deeper vain. The trouble is that we often become confused, believing that our wants are actually our needs.

We run ourselves ragged with all of our “doing” and we believe that we need to do more so we won’t feel so out of control. It’s why we buy magazines called Real Simple and then work furiously to simplify our lives. It’s why we shut down at night and numb ourselves with a box of cookies while we watch America’s Next Top Model. We hide from the reality that we really aren’t good enough and never can be. We encourage ourselves by running to Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest in hopes of being “liked”, only to find that we aren’t living the same fabulous lives as our “friends.”

We desire something more, something deeper than what is fed to us on prime time television, but we don’t know where to find it. We long to be inspired, motivated and understood. We believe that if we just try harder and hopefully succeed that we will finally feel good about ourselves. We want to have control so we pick up the latest self-help book and believe that if it’s written by a Christian then it must be what we need to hear.

The problem is that we feed ourselves with what we want to hear instead of what we need to hear.

We don’t need another list to complete or another three-step program to a happier life. We don’t need new kids by Friday or new husbands by Wednesday.

What we need is to hear that Christ has set us free from relying on anything other than himself! He has set us free from the burdens we are carrying. He takes the load off and calls us to rest.

To hear that everything you have done over the entire day, whether good or bad, will not gain or lose you any favor with the Father is what rest is made of.

Rest is not found in doing. It’s not found in learning the secret to a better quiet time. Rest is found in knowing that when we’ve been a hormonal twit all day that we are still loved and accepted far more than we can possibly imagine. Rest is found in knowing that there is nothing left for us to prove because Christ proved it all on the cross.

We need to be reminded of the Savior who lived every single day of his life in perfect obedience because he knew that we would not. We need the gospel to breathe wind into our sails because most days we’re so tired that we just don’t know if we can pack any more lunches, set any more alarm clocks, listen to irrational fears, break up countless fights, receive concerning phone calls, critical emails or not cry when our child lashes out at us.

We need to hear that our joy comes from being overwhelmed by what God has done for us in sending his son to die for such a wicked sinner; one who thinks she can do it all, one who blows it every single day whether by a blatant outward sin or by an inward Pharisaical smugness.

We will never be motivated to love God by telling ourselves to try harder. Motivation comes from knowing how much we are loved and adored by the one who created the universe. The one who chose us even though in his omniscience knew every ugly thought and evil action that we would ever come up with.

Let’s stop believing the lie that we have to do it all and believe the truth that we don’t need to prove our worthiness because the cross has done that for us.

Dear friends, you are his beautiful daughter with whom he is well pleased, now, forever and always, even when you don’t feel like it, act like it or even want to be it. And that is all you need.

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Kimm Crandall is a mother of four kids (12, 10, 7 and 5) who is never short on examples of how God has flooded her with the excessive grace that the gospel brings. Her desire is to bring the much-​​needed freedom of the Gospel to other women who have been beaten down by the “try harder” and “do better” law through writing and speaking. Kimm is the author of Christ in the Chaos: How the Gospel Changes Motherhood and can be found blogging at christinthechaos.com.

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