“She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.” (Prov.31:16)
The Proverbs 31 woman buying land? Well, this was unheard of; at least in the part of Africa where I hail from. For a long time, huge investments such as land were an almost no-go zone for women.
The Proverbs 31 woman not only considered a field, she went ahead and bought it, and that from her earnings.
Throughout this series, I keep reminding you and I that the Proverbs 31 woman is a prototype of the kind of woman I believe God wants us to be.
We however want to explore this scripture by giving it one more blog post, then we will go to the next one. In case you missed the blog post where I discussed principles from Proverbs 31:16, you can find it here.
If this woman is our God ordained model for womanhood, then we get to understand that it’s perfectly alright for a woman to invest in a huge investment such as land. We only need to view this in the light of two factors I’ll briefly raise below then we can get into our 4 ways to help us make decisions fast, as women.
One, in case you are a married woman, you are a woman under authority as I shared in the previous blog post.
Making a major decision concerning a huge investment without the input and permission of your husband would be tantamount to dishonoring God.
If a husband is secure, having full confidence in his wife, as we discussed before, then a wife has no need to fear. She can discuss her plans with her husband, getting his invaluable input before making any purchase.
God will use her husband to help her make a wise decision because she is honoring the God ordained authority structure for the home.
Secondly, especially if your children are young and still needs lots of nurturing, you want to ensure that your investment does not compromise your parenting and discipleship responsibility over your children.
Time flies by so fast. You don’t want to have regrets when you have flourishing entrepreneurial ventures but having missed it with your children.
Now, let’s get into the 4 ways to help us make wise decisions fast as believing Christian women.
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Growing in my daily walk with God gives me confidence in my decision making
The Bible is full of examples of men and women who made wise decisions because they walked with God.
I think of Solomon, faced with a difficult case of two women who were brought to him to determine which of them was the rightful mother of a baby they were contesting over.
In an age where DNA testing was inconceivable, only God could give Solomon the wisdom he needed to determine this case.
Jesus Christ has become for us wisdom from God. We who know him and are determinedly walking with him as women, have access to the unsearchable riches of God’s wisdom in Christ.
When we pray to him concerning a decision we’re making, God leads and guides us to make the right decision.
I must confess though that I have not yet got to a point in my life where I need to consider a field; literal land, and to buy. I have however had opportunity to make several decisions on what I’d call little investments.
I remember one season where we needed a large number of utensils necessary for hosting young people in the ministry. We didn’t want to go the loan way.
God gave me the thought and idea of working on beads, a skill I had just recently learnt at the time, making earrings and necklaces and selling to close friends and a number of relatives. God used that to help us raise the finances we needed.
Now living in the country side, we don’t have to borrow or hire dishes for hospitality ministry to larger groups. I’m thankful for the leading from God.
As you walk with God, he will lead you very personally and uniquely to make wise investment decisions.
(By the way, in case you’d like more insight into the Proverbs 31 chapter, you can buy our book based on this passage right here on Amazon.)
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Investing in personal growth and development within the confines of God’s will
Just the fact that you and I have gone to school may facilitate faster decision making about certain investment decisions as opposed to if you never went to school to get a formal education.
Getting an education keeps you from being localized, narrow-minded, and ignorant; opens your eyes and helps you make decisions that your counterpart who’s not been exposed to formal education may struggle to make.
Personal growth and development come with exposure, helping you to see how others might have made certain decisions and what they are doing. This motivates you to make decisions with confidence.
Formal education also comes with the ability to read. Personal reading, study and research is one other way that helps you strengthen and expand your mental capacity.
Expanding your mental capacity may also involve taking relevant courses too in an area of interest.
For instance, taking a course that is investment-related could help you understand land acquisition and other related issues.
I have found that your knowledge about life and how to navigate it gets sharpened just because you’re expanding your knowledge in that given area.
Investing in personal growth and development helps you make wiser decisions faster than if you had no knowledge and information acquired as a result of expanding your mental capacity.
I have personally learnt new ways of making money as a stay-at-home mom, simply because I read, studied and did some personal research. This is money that can form the base for earnings that would eventually result in a huge investment such as land.
I had my book self-published, for instance. Research helped me learn that I didn’t need to wait to gather lots of funds to get it published the traditional way.
I think of women who are using the online space to make a living right from their homes. I have since learnt that most of them are succeeding as a result of what we are talking about; building their mental capacity in that given area of interest.
Keep learning, keep growing, keep expanding your knowledge in relevant fields. Your decision making will be greatly enhanced as a woman.
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Looking to God to deal with Indecisiveness that could have arisen due to certain contextual realities
I have discussed contextual realities at length here. You might find this insightful and helpful as you read the rest of this post.
For some of us, because of our cultural context, or how we were brought up, we have found it quite difficult to make certain decisions.
I may have been brought up in an environment where even the smallest of decisions such as what to wear were determined by my parent.
I might have been brought up to never make major decisions. Major decision making was the reserve of men; not women. Given an opportunity to make a major decision, you may find yourself unsure as to how to go about this.
Dealing with a given contextual reality that might have affected you such as cultural factors helps you to have the courage to make a decision.
Feminism on the other hand might have influenced you in terms of your motive; for instance, making a major decision to prove a point, that society would see that you are making it as a woman entrepreneur.
You want, as a woman, to ensure that you are not influenced by contextual realities that would hinder sober, wise, godly decision making on one hand, or that would cause you to be indecisive on the other.
I recently found myself having to make major purchasing decisions around gadgets I needed to improve delivery of the ministry I do among women.
Having had the blessing of my husband, I was able to purchase a number of items.
This would have been quite a task in the past because of where I was coming from. My shy disposition and fear of people and the unknown, are areas God has dealt with over the past few years; areas I realized were hindering me from being all that God intended me to be. These are just some of the issues underlying certain contextual realities I needed to deal with.
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Having an accountability structure around you
An accountability structure ensures that you have people that you can talk to and that you choose to be liable to, to help you in the journey of life, and especially in decision making.
These are the older women as Titus 2:4 advises, and mentors, who you can talk to about a major investment decision you’re making. They can help you make the right decision. They know you enough to even know, or at least discern whether the decision you’re making is right for you or not.
The next level of accountability after these one is that with your peers. Peers can help you by being very open, and challenging you towards making a decision you’re struggling to make out of fear.
This structure will help you not to walk alone in decision making.
Keep in mind though that the accountability structure is not there to make decisions for you. This structure is there to facilitate your decision making, leading you towards greater fruitfulness.
God has especially used this kind of a structure to help me deal with fear. I tend to be a little too slow in making decisions; sometimes feigning the fact that I’m waiting to ‘hear’ from God.
I often just need to be kicked into action by this structure. God has often used my husband to help me get out of that “self-made” valley of indecision.
These 4 ways work together to help you be more decisive. When we know the right decision to make, like the proverbs 31 woman, having considered an investment, following the godly way as we’ve discussed in this blog post and the 2 previous ones, we will find our decision-making process happening much faster than we would have otherwise thought.