A Woman God Can Bless: Part 1

In this two-part series, Sharon Norris Elliott sat down with Rhonda Robinson to talk about her new book A Woman God Can Bless.

RR: What inspired you to write A Woman God Can Bless.

Sharon Norris Elliott: This book started a long time ago as, as you probably know, it takes a while to get a book published. And what inspired me to write this book, is, I minister to women with the goal of trying to always have us grow closer to Christ and to be more Christ-like. This book is based on a passage of scripture in Ephesians.

So Ephesians 4:17-32. It’s the passage that talks about putting on and putting off. Paul starts talking about what we ought to put off. Put off lying. Put off corrupt communication out of your mouth. He says all these things. But then he also says in its place, put on these other things.

I had written one of my other books, Power Suit: The Armor of God Fit for the Feminine Frame.

The metaphor of that book, is you going shopping. But you’re not ready to really shop for clothes that day. Maybe you’re just getting face cream or something, and it’s the half-yearly sale. And so you run in and you only have enough time to put the new clothes over the old clothes and see if they’re going to fit you.

You don’t know if they fit, you really look a mess, but you’re going to buy it anyway.

The idea that this old stuff is still poking through right, is the metaphor for our not wearing armor over junk. We haven’t taken off yet.

So that’s kind of back to this book.

As I started looking at this passage, the same thing applies. If, we want to start putting on. For example, thinking in more uplifting tones. That’s, just the common word for the Bible word, “edify,” a fancy word for build people up with your words. What Paul is telling us to put off, the corrupt communication. So often we still try to do all the right stuff that we’re supposed to do in being like Christ without taking off the wrong stuff.

This book is kind of an extension of that same metaphor in that if we are going to be women, God can bless. We are going to be the kind of woman that God is proud of, right? That He’s going to put on display in the kingdom. We need to be on stage and we’re going to be bright. And when I say onstage, what I mean, as we go through life. If we were going to be those women, there are things that we need to get rid of and things that we need to take on.

So that was the premise of this book. To kind of be a checklist for the common, everyday things that we may not think about, but we really need to spruce up, in certain areas.

RR: I like the point that you made about being onstage. Even though you may not be in the public eye, you really don’t know who’s watching you, do you? And who is looking for Christ in you.

Sharon Norris Elliott: Right. And especially as believers.

We’re kind of pretty good at telling people that were believers. And we’re supposed to be. But especially when things are going great, you know, Oh yes, praise God. God came through for us. And we were praying and God answered miraculously and marvelously. We’re great at that. But the people who we are talking to, especially those who don’t know the savior yet, they’re watching. And when things go awry, and they will, what kind of testimony do you have then?

What is your attitude?

What are your facial expressions?

How are you jumping at everybody, because you’re in anguish?

Oh, wait a minute. I thought you had a God who could XYZ.

Right?

And so we have to realize that everywhere we go, people are looking to see the Christ in us. And it doesn’t matter what’s going on in your personal life that day.

RR: So how do we identify those areas that we need to be in alignment with God?

Sharon Norris Elliott: Well, that’s, what’s so neat about the Bible.

I hear people all the time say I can’t understand the Bible. No. Yeah, you can. Yes. You can. If you can read. The Bible is translated into a crazy amount of languages in the world. But let’s just talk about English. In English, you can go all the way from the old King James version. All the way over to The Message. And from translations you know, to paraphrases. You can understand what God’s word says. And that’s not an indictment on anyone. That’s just information. Right?

That’s good news.

The good thing about this passage, the question that you are asking, how can we know which things to concentrate on this passage just gives us a few of them. You don’t have to worry about starting everywhere. Okay. Pick, pick a passage. Here’s one. And this particular passage talks specifically about our mouths. Oops.

So there’s one place. A lot of us can start. And get that together and figure out what we’re supposed to do. With our mouth. It talks about lying, anger, stealing wrath, and bitterness. So there are other areas of our lives that we can concentrate on. But in this particular book in A Woman, God Can Bless. I’m concentrating on just that passage that talks about just those few.

RR: If you get those in alignment, it could be life-changing.

Sharon Norris Elliott: Yes. Just those few. I haven’t gone over into the jealousy. Some of the other issues that we can have in our lives. But James who wrote the book of James in the Bible was Jesus’s brother, right? Jesus actually had brothers and sisters.  James was one of his actual brothers. So I could as, as a creative, of course, my mind just goes crazy. Putting myself in the shoes of the people in scripture and James is the one, the one who grew up now as Jesus, his little brother, he’s the one who writes the tongue is a deadly evil.

He’s the one who wrote a very, very, very practical book. And so as Paul tells us, do not let corrupt communication come out of our mouth, but instead, let words come out that edify. So what I do in the book is I actually separate that corrupt communication checkpoint into four different chapters so that we are not just saying, okay, I’m not gonna speak badly anymore.

I’m going to speak nicely.

No, here’s some ways to identify how you may have been speaking a corrupt communication or in a way that’s not building to your husband, to your children, with your parents, with your coworkers, even with your ex-husband—oops. In many cases, or some cases, right? To your siblings. So here are some ways to really identify that because there’s things that we might have just formed habits doing, and we don’t even realize.

Oh wow, I have I been doing that. And then the book also says, now that you’ve identified these areas, here are some ways to put on. Or substitute things that you should have been doing, some practical ways. Because another place in the Bible talks about a man who discovered that there were evil spirits living in him. He swept them all out. And then that’s all he did. Okay. Nice and clean. But then that spirit came back and said, Oh, the house is still empty. It hasn’t been resold. No one else is living in it. Hey, I’m going back. And I’m bringing some friends with me. So the man’s latter state was worse than the first.

So, we don’t just think about cleaning it up. We also think about refurnishing, right? As I get rid of these old ways, I’m not going to stop communicating with my husband and my kids and my parents, and my coworkers and my friends know I’m going to continue communicating.

But I had developed some habits that need to be retooled. I need new habits. And the book talks about how to put in those new things that we ought to be doing.

Read A Woman God Can Bless, Part 2

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