“O my son, O son of my womb, O son of my vows,” (Prov 31:2 NIV)
“What, my son? And what, the son of my womb? And what, the son of my vows?” (KJV)
We are still tracking the Proverbs 31 woman. Our great question is: What could God be saying to us in this opening verses? Are there little, or probably even big clues here that would point us to the secret treasure, which is the Proverbs 31 woman’s noble character?
I thought to capture the verse we are exploring today in two versions, to make it easier for us to grasp and understand it.
I’m not sure what scene comes to your mind as you read the verse above. I don’t know whether like me, you can sense that these words are coming from somewhere deep… the deep recesses of the heart, or the bosom maybe? …of the queen mother.
Her love and concern for her son and his welfare are evident. She knows the joy, the pain, the sacrifice, that probably, only a mother could identify with when it comes to her children; her son in this case.
Can you hear her soft heartrending cry, calling for her son’s attention? It kind of sounds like my mother’s African expression, lol, right?
You can actually replace that with “O my daughter…” and almost hear your mother’s voice sound in your ears…
That cry would usually jolt you back to reality; to seriously consider an action you were about to take that was taking you in the wrong direction.
The poignant cry of a mother would usually be impossible to ignore. It would sometimes be used by God to keep us out of trouble.
Just seeing my parents’ faces in my head at the consequences of an action I was about to engage in would be enough to keep me from engaging in it.
Why would the Proverbs 31 queen mother earnestly call her son to attention? I think of two reasons:
- Urgency of the message…when a message is about life and death and there is no time remaining to convey it in a diplomatic way, you skip all decorum and pass it anyway.
Let’s consider for a moment: If this son was Solomon, then the queen mother had more reason to be concerned.
Was she probably seeing telltale signs of a young king going astray?
You see, the Bible doesn’t hide the character of even some of the best of its characters. 1Kings 11:1 says that Solomon loved many foreign women. They actually led to his downfall; they turned his heart away from God.
Character, whether negative or positive, doesn’t grow overnight. It takes time.
Could this mother’s discerning heart and God-given mother-intuition, cause her to urgently reach out to her son?
Whether this king was Solomon or not, there comes a time that maturing sons and daughters need that kind of urgent call to jolt them back to reality.
God has not left himself without godly “queen mothers” in our generation. They cry out; they warn; they call us to attention, pointing us to the way of God.
For instance, I can now say with certainty that almost every born-again woman I know who knowingly got married to an unbeliever had been warned by a “queen mother” in the form of a Christian union patron, teacher, pastor, mentor, even friend.
The consequences of their actions have far reaching results, as was the case with king Solomon, not to mention the agony of sharing life with one who doesn’t know the Lord.
- Could it be that she had seen other young men flounder and had to cry out to draw attention lest her son hit his head on the same old rock?
Let me take a walk down memory lane, just to imagine how life was like when I was in my late teens; where this young king might just have been.
Like any other young person, I was excited about life, and the future. I had big dreams. I thought I could conquer the world…Nothing really wrong with this but like a youthful river needs harnessing to drive turbines to produce hydro-electric power, I needed advice and direction.
God convicted me unto salvation at the age of 17, coincidentally the same age which God started speaking to Joseph in dreams. In retrospect, I am eternally grateful to God for this.
Salvation, I know, kept these desires, ambitions and dreams I had within the confines of God’s will.
Sadly, not many of my associates at the time ended up as I did.
Case in point: I remember a tall beautiful young year mate in high school whose life took a spiral spin for the worst as a campus student. Drunkenness, immorality… name it all, became her way of life.
Sad to say, she had been an ardent believer in the Lord Jesus, sang in the choir, and was all I would have thought to be as a younger believer.
Having later floundered and left the Lord at that young age, she fell into the hands of the evil one, who literally stole, killed and eventually destroyed this young woman. This was a reality too hard to bear, yet it happened.
Sad to say but aren’t we seeing this happen again and again?
Right from Solomon, whose heart was slowly drawn away from the Lord as he grew old, we are decrying many young men and women who are losing it, as they give way to the allures in their generation.
Pornographic movies and sites, coupled with weird movies that were a big ‘no’ in earlier generations are available to our young people in the comfort of their bedrooms.
The dangers are no longer lurking ‘out there’; they are right in our houses.
These dangers are not sparing the older generation either.
At the writing of this post, the media space is quite abuzz with the story of a prominent man of God who died a few months ago.
His immoral lifestyle, done in secret, that no one knew about, (except his victims of course) just went viral as the victims finally spoke out.
As we battle with this and the unforgiving backlash from the world as a Christian community, it becomes even more urgent to respond to the warnings of the Holy Spirit in our consciences.
We want to be spiritually awake so we will not find ourselves where Solomon was as he grew old.
The rest of Proverbs 31 has invaluable insight to keep us from the wrong path. We will explore these as we go along.
Can you and I hear those God-breathed words of the queen mother, ringing in our ears through a godly mother, father, teacher, pastor or even leader?
Will we heed the voice of the Spirit of God and stay on the right path?
Will you and I, be used of God, to warn others to keep to that ancient path, that leads to life?
Ignore Proverbs 31 to your own peril, woman of God!
Take the Proverbs 31 queen mother’s call seriously; with urgency. It might just determine whether you will live your life to the full as a woman, or not.
Take heed!
“O Father, I know how feeble, faint and frail I am. Here…My hand I stretch to you. Help me heed your words of warning; your words of exhortation; your living words; directly from your Word, the Bible. Help my heart to listen to admonition from your servants O God, that I might continue to be formed into the woman you want me to be. In Jesus name I Pray. Amen.”