Women of Reverence welcomes Abigail Mare as a guest blogger.
My name is Abigail Maré and I turned 20 this year. I am a pastor’s kid and so proud of it!
My passion, for discipling and equipping teenagers and young adults with things I learnt over the years, came from one simple revelation: We are chosen. We are the next Mary, David, Daniel, Esther and Samuel! We are the church; we are the ones going out and changing the world.
We have a mission and we need to know that we are not running this race alone.
I just came from doing a Christian gap year in Pietermaritzburg called: Destiny Leadership academy. Now, I am a Drama student at Stellenbosch University where I live in residence and attend Shofar church.
My dream is to go into full time ministry as a Drama Therapist. I want to go out and share what Jesus did for me, as well as watch young adults grow in their God-given identity. Other than blogging, I love anything to do with music: I dance, sing, play the violin, ukulele and keyboard. I am a mission addict and love people. I read, I write, I perform and I dance. (anything to explore my desire to be creative for Jesus)
My quote for life is from the book Voice in the wind, by Francine Rivers:
“I gave up what I can’t keep for something I can never lose.”
Ask any young Christian guy what he wants in his future wife and the answer will, most likely, be a Proverbs 31 woman. As a young, single Christian girl, this term went from being inspiring and encouraging to one that intimidates me and threatens to impose a sense of rejection over me in the space of a year.
I’ve reached the ‘age of anticipation’ where boys have become men and marriage has become more than just a little girl’s fairy tale. But leaving school, I have started experiencing and see other girls believe, the most destructive lie of never being good enough and never reaching that unrealistic mark of perfection needed for a ‘successful’, godly marriage.
My parents’ marriage is such an incredible example of how a marriage centred in Christ should look like and my mom is, for me, the best example of the wife God has called some of us to become. But its only recently that I have discovered what it took for them to become who they are now.
And this is what I am writing about: The Journey.
I created a list of what I wanted in my husband one day, but life taught me that I actually don’t know what I want and what I need. In response, I deleted the list and focused on what the Word says about me and my husband to be. What I found was a story: A story about love misdirected and love unseen; A story about women being handpicked, not for who they appeared to be but for who God has called them to become.
Leah was unseen but in the end Jacob chose to be buried next to her instead of Rachel whereas: Jacob loved Rachel from the moment he saw her but she ended up causing him so much grief in her deception and jealousy; Rebecca left all she knew to marry a man she had never met and who had never met her; Rahab was a prostitute but ended up in the lineage of Christ; Mary was pregnant before Joseph married her; Ruth lived on scraps and lay at Boaz’s feet in order to pursued him to marry her. God took all of them out of what they were to become TO what He wanted them to be: Great women still known after centuries for their walk with God and the fulfillment of His promise in His Son. It was a journey. Other examples would be Esther, who married under a different name and origin and Abigail, who was married to a fool that rejected David before she married David.
Social media, friends and most importantly WE give ourselves and men this ideal of what a woman should be before she qualifies for marriage but Proverbs 31 speaks of a woman who was already married and became who she was called to be. Therefore, I can answer my own question with confidence. Saying that: No matter where you are now and what you were before, God is calling you to become His version of the Proverbs 31 woman. He wants you to be and He wants you to embrace this journey.
“Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she will be praised.” -Proverbs 31: 30
Love
Abigail