This post is an excerpt from How to Be Free from Bitterness.
“And my God will meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19).
A woman was made by God to be loved, protected, provided for, and made secure. However, there are reasons a woman may not feel loved, protected, or secure. Security is often a combination of objective truth and subjective feeling. What I mean by that is that some women have lost their parents, their husbands, their children, their food, and their clothing. Objectively they have a reason to be insecure, but subjectively they might not feel insecure. At the same time, it is possible to feel insecure and imagine what is objectively necessary to fill this need.
Here is an example: Suppose a woman feels insecure. The feeling is so strong that she is convinced that it is also objective truth. A woman’s great need is to fill up that emptiness. She thinks that a man will fill it. That is partly true. However, the need is so great that the man she gets cannot fill it. He cannot because he is also empty and is looking for a woman to fill his emptiness. Two empty, insecure people marry each other to get their own needs met. It does not work.
Now the woman is even more insecure. She thinks that if she has a baby that will meet her need. Again, that is partly true. Women were made to have babies. However, babies are needy, demanding creatures. The insecure woman now has greater demands on her than she is able to cope with, especially if there are multiple children.
Now she is insecure and frazzled. She thinks she needs a nicer home with nicer furniture. That takes a lot of money. She has to work as well as her husband.
Now she is tired, insecure, and frazzled. She turns to clothes, music, parties, and maybe a different man. Her husband is not romantic. He copped out early in the marriage because his needs were not being met.
This is a description of many women I am acquainted with. Some of them have been married more than once, plus other men. Some of them are into possessions. They are finding out, rather late, that a man, children, house, possessions, and parties do not fill up their emptiness and give them the security they are looking for.
This need has to be met, but the selfishness that insists on it being met ensures that it will not be met even if she gets the man, the children, the house, and possessions. The selfishness has to go first. It has become a tight little fist in her soul. That selfish, tight fist wizens and destroys the person with it.
Before God, the selfishness has to be repented of, that is, confessed, forsaken, and renounced. Then she will have a wonderful joy, peace, and freedom which God will give to her. This will make her very secure in Christ.
As far as security in this world, the provision comes from a closeness to her father, mother, brothers, sisters, and extended family. Next, it comes from her brothers and sisters in Christ who are loving and giving. It comes from her being loving and giving to all kinds of people, even if they do not return the love. It could come from her husband, but not from a future husband. I say this because she should not get married in order to get secure. She should be secure before she gets married. Then she will not be disillusioned and hurt in her marriage.
How does a woman become secure?
She must confess her attitude, not just her action. She must decide, with the grace of God, to love her father, mother, brothers, and sisters. Her love towards any of them cannot be conditional. She should not say, “I will love him if…” No “ifs.” This love includes kind speech, hugs, giving, and helping actions. She should extend this love to more and more people. “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Cor. 5:14–15).
A woman’s long-term objective should be to be holy, loving, kind, joyful, etc. She should also want to have a loving family and loving children and grandchildren. She should want to have a “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord.”
This solution assumes that the woman is already a Christian, that she has by faith received Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as Lord and Savior. She has passed from death to life. That is the beginning of security for everyone, men and women.
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