Shaping the Future: What Kind of Woman is This?
Day 1 of Our Series: Empowering Women and Girls to Pursue Their Dreams
Good morning, Icons,
We are back with our 2024 Iconic newsletter, and I am your host, Nicole Pinkston.
For this year we are breaking down 2023 into 3-month blocks with topics to empower you.
Last year as an end of the year news update, our message was that we would have topics consistently, so you’d know what to expect throughout the year.
As we get ready for our next book, our outreach giveaway and making marriage success plain for you, we will stay on track as we have previously discussed.
Thank you for coming back to consume our content. Please like and share this work so our Iconic message spread around Substack and beyond.
Shaping the Future: What Kind of Woman is This?
One of my biggest pet peeves is when I hear people talk about the impossible and instill fear into a populace.
As you all know, my first book “Breaking Fear” is to encourage you to look beyond what scares you to achieve more.
In that same thought process, I constructed my 2024 content schedule to reflect topics we need to tackle right now to encourage you in, life, love, marriage and family.
For the months of January through March, we start our Female Empowerment Series. Our male Icons can still read these newsletters and listen into our premium content for the women in your lives. We appreciate each of you.
Ladies, I want to focus on us for a second.
Let me start by saying that I want to encourage each and every one for you. This is my Iconic message for women and girls.
You are wonderfully and woefully made. Born with intention and designed with a purpose. You have a God-given vision that only you can fulfill and that is why the enemy is out to destroy womanhood, redefine motherhood and make you feel less than you ought to feel.
We are up against a lot. But I am here to tell you today that you are wonderful, amazing and needed.
Thank you for reading this far and for being with us today.
Day 1 of our Women’s Empowerment Series
This is my letter to you ladies. You go through a lot, you sacrifice, and you go without.
You are taught from a young age that you are in relationship to others that you are someone’s sister, daughter, wife, mother, etc.
Let me send a message to you dear girl.
I am not a feminist, that is a secular term. I am a Christian and Christ loved women and girls. He didn’t not view us as less than or as an afterthought.
Christ’s standard and love, coupled with his modeling for us taught us how we ought to live. He has shown us that we are loved and how we ought to treat others.
That’s why I recognize His design for us as something more, something we should follow.
In the planning of the world, He created us uniquely including women.
This means that in the grand scheme of the creation of the universe, our God thought about women in his plan.
Where do we see this represented? Christ Jesus describes his church in the feminine or as His bride.
Wisdom, in the Bible, is often described with she/her pronouns.
Jesus walked and talked with women even when he we are doing correction and teaching. He respected those women He came across.
What Kind of Woman Is This?
36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to come to his home for lunch and Jesus accepted the invitation. As they sat down to eat, 37 a woman of the streets—a prostitute—heard he was there and brought an exquisite flask filled with expensive perfume. 38 Going in, she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping, with her tears falling down upon his feet; and she wiped them off with her hair and kissed them and poured the perfume on them.
39 When Jesus’ host, a Pharisee, saw what was happening and who the woman was, he said to himself, “This proves that Jesus is no prophet, for if God had really sent him, he would know what kind of woman this one is!”
40 Then Jesus spoke up and answered his thoughts. “Simon,” he said to the Pharisee, “I have something to say to you.”
“All right, Teacher,” Simon replied, “go ahead.”41 Then Jesus told him this story: “A man loaned money to two people—$5,000 to one and $500 to the other. 42 But neither of them could pay him back, so he kindly forgave them both, letting them keep the money! Which do you suppose loved him most after that?”
43 “I suppose the one who had owed him the most,” Simon answered.
“Correct,” Jesus agreed.
44 Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Look! See this woman kneeling here! When I entered your home, you didn’t bother to offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You refused me the customary kiss of greeting, but she has kissed my feet again and again from the time I first came in. 46 You neglected the usual courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has covered my feet with rare perfume. 47 Therefore her sins—and they are many—are forgiven, for she loved me much; but one who is forgiven little, shows little love.”
48 And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
49 Then the men at the table said to themselves, “Who does this man think he is, going around forgiving sins?”
50 And Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Luke 7:36-50 Living Bible
The Pharisee, a religious leader, knew that the woman was a prostitute and wanted to use that to trip the Lord up. They even thought He was ignorant of her status and what she did in front of him.
Have you been on social media lately and seen how women, especially sex workers, get talked about and treated? It has not been pretty.
People have been calling women whores, useless and other derogatory names. Even under the guise of Christ and his followers! They use the Christian faith to treat our women and girls poorly. How unbiblical!
All you had to do was crack open the word to see how we should act.
Women often get called everything but children of God especially those, like me who have pasts that are less than stellar. It is something about being the “least of these” that keeps folks talking.
But not God, sweet girl. He loves you, flaws and all.
Importantly, here in Luke of the Holy Bible, we have a lesson Christ was teaching us. The Lord of the universe did not disparage the woman.
He didn’t wash over her sins. As Christ was calling them many, He didn’t rest the point there.
He pointed out that that a larger debt needs a bigger payment and those who sin a lot tend to know more than anyone else. Her need for forgiveness, made her treat Him more the kindly, than Simon did. Remember she came of Her own accord to Christ falling at his feet asking nothing of him using expensive perfume.
What Kind of Woman This? A question you need to ask yourself about you.
Not what society thinks
Not what your family thinks.
But who YOU choose to be.
Then you can find your God-given vision and live your dreams as intended walking in the Will of God. How nice is that!
Shaping the Future
God in Flesh told the woman she was forgiven and to go.
He didn’t say her sins were okay, for those who love accountability, but He did it better. He forgave them so that she, in her new clean slate can be better and shape her own destiny without the guilt around her neck.
See, the Pharisee thought that because the woman had been a prostitute that she deserved less from Christ and that He would look down on her.
“People judge others based on outward appearance or reputation, but Jesus looks at the heart and offers boundless grace to all who turn to him in faith.” How Jesus loved the adulteress and the prostitute | ChristianToday Australia
Does society do that to you? Does the world make you feel less than because of your looks, your weight, your age, your pasts behaviors?
Do the people around YOU treat you differently because how they view you?
Where is the grace for these people? Do you feel like the people who are chastising you care about you at all?
Christ told them that the woman was forgiven because she and the Lord knew, by her actions, how great her sins were AND her need for salvation.
The point is clear, woman. That what people say about you does not matter to the Lord. Who you are is not based in what others say about you.
Yes, your sins need to be forgiven and it is up to you to seek the one who can forgive them. After this situation in Luke, the Lord was giving the Pharisee’s pause and the dared questioned how Jesus could forgive sins. They believed Christ was ignorant and still continued to plot against Him.
The Pharisee’s attention was on the random woman not on Jesus, the person invited to his home not the random woman who came along.
How many of us lose focus on Christ or on our calling because we are unfocused or looking at the wrong thing from the wrong angle?
We aren’t that different from people in the Bible.
His focus was eventually where it needed to be, once Jesus took over the conversation to teach us all a lesson!
Simon, the man of the house, didn’t even treat Jesus the same as this prostitute, the person we were to look down on because of her sins. How crazy is that.
The person who was the least showed Jesus the most respect and the most love.
Message of Hope and Empowerment
Dear women and girls, you are a part of God’s plan. We were thought of from the beginning. Whether that is to be a wife and build your social empire, to be a teacher at a school, to deliver food to the homeless, whatever your unique calling maybe.
Don’t let the message of the world, even disguised under the banner of Christianity, make you feel lesser than, so you stop pursing the dreams God have given you.
The world does not get to tell you who you are because the world did not create you.
Before you become a wife, before you become a mother, you are who you are. This means as we are on a journey of life, love, marriage and family, before we empower you on the path to marriage success, we empower you as the unique individual that you are.
Because without that, you will never have the kinds of Iconic family structure that last.
Today people are fearful, popping pills or stuck in addictions because of their mental downward spiral.
I offer you this hope. That is, you are intentional about who you are and what you choose to do with this one life. Then, you will achieve anything you can. Don’t let the world tell you who you are based on its ideals. You will never measure up.
Instead decided today who you will follow and what is your destiny.
Walk with your head held high ladies, you are forgiven.
Go after your dreams. You are the future.
And remember in everything you do, Be Iconic.
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