by Bessie Wilson
Victorious
Christian living means walking in obedience to God in all areas of our life.
Obedience is something not many Christians are interested in. We dismiss the
commands of Scripture with spiritual words and nuanced arguments of why we
don’t need to obey a command that seems difficult, instead of simply asking,
“How do I do this?” If we want to live a victorious life, we must be committed
to obeying God with everything we are: physically, mentally, morally, socially,
and spiritually.
Physically.
Physical obedience means recognizing God’s ownership of your body. This relates
to your marriage as well. Are you withholding physically from your husband?
What
if it’s hard? You don’t love him anymore, or you’re tired, or you’re just not
in the mood. “I can’t; not tonight.” I come up with the same excuses, and the
Lord used a verse about the man with the withered hand to show me the way. One
Sabbath, Jesus went into the synagogue, and there was a man with a withered
hand there. Jesus told him, “Stretch forth your hand” (Mark 3:5).
What
could the man have said? “I can’t—it’s withered!” That’s what we women
sometimes say. “My emotions are withered—I can’t!” The Lord says, “Stretch
forth your hand.” What did that man do? “He stretched it out,
and his hand was completely restored” (v. 5). God’s commands are His
enablings. If He tells you to stretch out your hand in love to your
husband, He will enable you to do it.
Don’t
give in to your feelings when it comes to the spiritual life. We should say,
“God commands me to respect; I will respect. If He commands me to love
physically, I will love physically.”
Mentally.
Christians should be alert and thoughtful and should use their brains. Have you
ever been bored by a fellow Christian woman, so bored you felt like going to
sleep? Single women, don’t denigrate your brains. The right man will appreciate
them.
What
if people don’t have much mental equipment? God saves the entire body, and He
can make you think. Help me to think, Lord. You don’t need to be constantly
running to counselors if you just use your noggin. Let me encourage you to use
your brain and be creative, in your homes, at work, or at school, wherever God
has put you. Be creative. Before you go to bed tonight, ask the Lord to make
you creative in your mental processes. He can do it.
Morally.
If you are living with a non-Christian or a defeated Christian, your moral
standards have probably gone down. That’s just a fact. There’s
no such thing as a plateau in the Christian life. You are either going up, or
you are going down. So, be very scrupulous with your morality. Your husband
should be able to trust you. Proverbs 31 says, “The heart of her husband doth
safely trust in her” (v. 11 KJV). I’m amazed at the number of jealous Christian
husbands I’ve known. They couldn’t trust their wives out of sight! If you have
been living with a non-Christian man, you may have allowed things to be slipped
under the rug. Take a stand on moral issues. I don’t mean become a raving
moralist. But it is refreshing to meet someone who quietly speaks up for morality.
Let me encourage you to do this.
Men
want to marry Christian women. Even non-Christian men want to. When they
decide they’re ready to settle down, they want a clean, good woman. That’s why
it is so dangerous for girls to be impressed with a man because he is nice or
loves classical music and so on. He may be a non-Christian man looking for a
good woman.
Socially.
Are you a social creature, or are you naturally shy? When Jim was still in the
Navy, he told me one time that we had to go to the captain’s cocktail party,
oh! it was stressful for me. A former missionary, going to a cocktail party? I
was heavily pregnant with Doug, and you’re not at your best at classy social
occasions when you’re heavily pregnant. I had to look on it as a social
witnessing opportunity.
We
got to the marine club in San Diego and met the gorgeous captain’s wife, and
she was so gracious and sweet. Then I was introduced to some of the other
women. I stood beside one woman, and she immediately said, “I don’t really want
this drink; I just drink it for the olive in the bottom.” My fame had gone
before me—they knew I had been a missionary! I was an embarrassment to some of
them. Jim had said, “We don’t have to stay very long. After a while, they’ll be
so tubed out that you can’t say anything to them, anyway.” So it was. We left
early, and the next day the captain’s wife made her way to my place. She told
me how those fellows had gotten drunk and wrecked the club, and the captain had
to pay for all the damages.
Socially,
a Christian should walk into any situation with their head high, and say, “I’m
a child of God.” The best person who ever did this was Helen Palm. Her husband
was a colonel in the army in Washington, D.C., when Jim and I first came to the
States from Japan. What a couple! He conducted Bible studies in the chapel, and
Helen did her best evangelism at cocktail parties. She could point to woman
after woman that she had led to the Lord. “I just get them to the side, and I
take their wrist, and I talk to them.” One woman was so impressed with this
method that she gave Helen a thick silver bracelet, “Because you held me so
often by my wrist and talked to me of the Lord.” What a gracious,
socially-alert woman she was! She wasn’t embarrassed about being a Christian.
She went everywhere bubbling over with the joy of the Lord.
The
Palms would also give Bible story books to new parents they knew. The parents
would read to the children, the children would ask questions, and the parents
would go to Col. Palm’s Bible class to find the answers. Together they led
scores of people to the Lord.
I
met some of the ladies that Helen led to the Lord, and they were sophisticated
women. I had been timid about approaching high-society women when we were in
Japan. In chapel there one day, Jim had pointed out a woman sitting a couple
rows ahead of us. “That’s the couple that might come to our Bible study.” I
looked at her, just from the rear, and I thought, “Whoo! What a cool cookie!”
Everything about her was immaculate—every hair was in place, her earrings were
perfectly straight. I was intimidated.
Her
husband came to the first Bible study alone. He went home and said, “Arlene,
you have to come, too, because Mrs. Wilson was there.” She had said it was only
for men. So they came together the following week, and it was just the four of
us. Jim and I did what was very embarrassing to us, a Bible study back and
forth to each other, because those two didn’t say anything! We were on 1 John 1
that night, so Jim and I studied it together in their presence. I was so
embarrassed. Then they went home.
Later,
Arlene drove me along the bluff in Yokohama. She put her head down on the
steering wheel (when the car was stopped!), and she said, “Bessie, that night
after the Bible study, nine years of bitterness was poured out before the
Lord.”
She
was a backslidden Christian. Her first husband had died in the Air Force. They
hadn’t been married long enough for him to change his insurance over to her.
His mother got everything, and Arlene didn’t get anything. She had gone through
nine years of bitterness over it.
Then
she married Dick. He was not a Christian, but he was willing to be led in
spiritual things. She knew the truth, and she wanted him under the sound of the
gospel, but didn’t want him to take it seriously. Then after coming to our
Bible study she repented and poured her bitterness out to the Lord.
Dick
told us later, “If I ever invited anyone home for dinner, the banging that went
on in the kitchen!” She knocked pans around and put up a fuss. Arlene had to
have two weeks’ notice if anyone was coming over. Then everything changed.
“After that night when she confessed her bitterness to the Lord, I had a
different wife.” She became the woman would collect strays after church and
take them home. She might have a dozen or more people home to eat every Sunday.
She lost the cool, poised look and became a warm, friendly person. God
transformed her socially. But it was the confession of sin that started it.
Spiritually.
This is the last aspect of victorious Christian living. Of course, the aspects
are all connected. What you are doing physically is going to affect you
spiritually, and if your mind is all screwed up, you’re not going to be
spiritually alert, either. The main thing to keep yourself in good spiritual
shape is to keep close to the Lord. Be in the Word and in prayer every day.
I
would like to end this chapter with a prayer of Amy Carmichael’s. It is a
simple prayer. “All I need, all I want, is Your ungrieved presence with me,
Lord.” That is profound. All I need and all I want is Your
ungrieved presence with me, Lord. Can you pray that today?
At
the time of this writing, I have been a Christian for fifty-four years. It gets
sweeter all along the way. I identify with the Psalmist who said, “Whom have I
in heaven but Thee? There is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. My
flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my life and my portion
forever” (Psalm 73:25-26). All I need, all I want, is Your ungrieved presence.
If
you are not unequally yoked, but you know women who are, there is much you can
do to help them. But don’t get too sympathetic with them. If they have married
out of the will of God, say so. And say, “Confess this, be forgiven, and
let’s get on with the solutions.” Do not get sucked into a never-ending
“counseling” where you hear the same old story over and over again and never
get anywhere. Give them positive reinforcement for living an obedient life.
“You did a good job with that one! Now let’s go on to another one, and see how
you do on that.”
I pray that the single women reading this will be spared unwise marriages, unholy marriages, that you will become such women of God that you will recognize God’s will when it comes, and that you will be united with men of like mind. For those women who have disobeyed and are suffering for it, let me encourage you to walk closely with the Lord.
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