I have been doing Beth Moore's Esther Bible Study,
It's Tough Being A Woman, for about a month now...its a great study and I highly recommend it.
I thought I would give you some things that I have underlined and that have stuck out for me from weeks one & two...
- Esther isn't about the miracle but God working through the natural
- Seek Him and God's Will will find me!
- When we trust our lives to the unseen but ever present God, He will write our lives into His story and every last one of them will turn out to be a great read with a grand ending.
- We have a sovereign God who reigns over all and is threatened by none.
- It's tough being a woman in another woman's shadow!
- In God - your past and future share the same root - Jesus!
- Sometimes God reserves the right to tell us what happened without telling us how He reacted to it. God is so wholly secure in His own spotless integrity that He feels perfectly comfortable giving us an account of something without making Himself accountable to us.
- Those of us who know Jesus personally live under divine rule where all us girls get to be princesses anyways.
- Never underestimate the impact of God-driven, Scripture-quickened people skills even in the most uncomfortable human encounters. Despite the scowled-faced disapproval of the unbearably religious, we neither have to be carnal to be likable nor insincere to be endearing. We can love God and still be liked by people.
- One good thing about living in an increasingly crude world is that a woman with manners, even one who simply knows how to make introductions or host a gathering can stand out like a rare gem in a barrel of coal. God can grant her favor that a woman with a wall covered in credentials may never gain.
- We can become so steeped in our culture that we are almost indistinguishable from the world. We can lose our sense of identity and forget who we are. Indeed, the fact that we can hide our Christianity assumes a certain amount of assimilation. We need to recapture our identity and identification as His children-not so we can be obnoxious but so we can be influential.
- Praise God for a King who gives a woman dignity instead of taking it, a righteous King whose commands are always for our good and whose ways are always toward our wholeness.
- A woman who can win the man and her female peers is in a class almost by herself!
- Esther managed to walk the fine line of moderation without making others feel judged because they didn't.
- Our rebellious human nature makes us resistant enough to doing what we're told that over time the effort to go against the grain - to choose the excellence of Christ over the minimalism of man - will distinguish us from countless peers.
- Only a person strong in character and steadfast in spirit can follow someone else's instructions for long. Ironically her dependability earns her double the workplace significance of those who won't risk it. If long-term persistence doesn't win the favor of an earthly supervisor, trust the God who sees and who is by no means limited to one channel of favor toward you.
- Sometimes providence can be defined as times when God trumps your perfectly good plan with one of His own.
- It's tough being a woman in a world where beauty is a treatment!
