Women of Excellence

Now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you whatever you ask, for all my people in the city know that you are a woman of excellence. Ruth 3:11

I first studied the book of Ruth when I was in my early twenties. When I came across this verse I thought to myself, “yep, I want to be this woman”. Little did I know that this desire would require years, a life long journey actually, to becoming all that I hoped to aspire to.

 By what criteria do we judge excellence? The word “excellence” is defined as transcendence, merit, virtue, worth, going beyond the ordinary, surpassing, exceeding.

The world’s criteria: The world judges us in terms of our beauty, our brains, our body, or our bank balance. Our fame, our face, our fortune or our friends. Our race, our relationships.

Question: To what extent do you assess yourself by any of the above criteria? The above criteria might count with humans, but none of them count with God

God’s Word says: ‘Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised’ Proverbs 31:30

In our society we have a mindset that denies the existence of all absolutes. The values of our culture, are embraced on everyone doing what’s right in their own eyes. But in the Bible we find women who actually acknowledged and feared God.

One example is Ruth, she forsook her tribal gods and promised Naomi ‘Your God will be my God’ Ruth 1:16. Here we see a woman approved by God, and known in her generation as a woman of excellence.

The first step in Ruth becoming a woman of excellence was when she made the crucial choice to walk away from the concepts of ‘god’ she had inherited from her culture and embrace, the One who claims to be the one and only God.

 From the biblical perspective, a woman of excellence is, first of all, a woman of who fears the Lord.

We often tell ourselves that it would have been so much easier to live as godly women in bible times. Those women, or so we’d like to think, didn’t face the pressures of our modern world. Not so! The book of Ruth was written during the time of the Judges. If you’ve studied that book of the bible you soon realize that it was a culture of compromise, disobedience to God, sexual immorality and the worship of false gods. God’s people were in a constant cycle of sin and rebellion. God on the other hand, was merciful in delivering His people again and again.

Our desire to be women of excellence will always require choices, hard choices, intentional and daily, big and small. Our flesh might wish to be pampered but there was no such attitude with Ruth. She chose the path of sacrifice, service, selflessness and willed obedience to follow God and His will for her life.

“A Christian woman’s true freedom lies on the other side of a very small gate…humble obedience…but that gate leads out into a largeness of life undreamed of by the liberators of the world.” Elisabeth Elliot