What Qualities to Look in a Woman?

As my previous post regarding how to choose a man that worth fighting for to my fellow female friends. Here's the post I dedicated for men who are longing to find the women they long for to spend the rest of their lives together... May you find her, brother....

And may a true man of God find me as I'm struggling each day to be more perfect and have these qualities, especially quality no. 6 as I'm get used to be a leader and initiator in my job and among my friends :)

Here they are the qualities:

1. Fears God and whose hope is in the Lord God. Her life is going to be a reflection of where her hope is. If a young lady's hope is in any place other than the Lord, the young who marries her is going to spend the rest of his life trying to help his wife catch a butterfly. It isn't going to happen.
2. Honors her parents. There is so much baggage today being brought into marriages based upon dysfunctional relationships with Mom and Dad. And even though this impacts both the husband and the wife, it's been my experience that women tend to be impacted more negatively by this than young men. Women tend to be more nurturing and they are impacted deeply by hurting relationships. If she has a hard time honoring her parents, she will have a hard time honoring you. Find someone who has or is working to have a healthy relationship with her parents.
3. Knows how to ask for forgiveness, admit she's wrong, grant forgiveness, and give grace when you fail her. This isn't just a one-way street. Both of you are going to need to do that.
4. Wants to be a wife and a mother. There are some young ladies who want to be married, but don't really want to be a wife and a mother. They want to be married, but they want their career to be their number-one pursuit. I believe the scriptures teach that a wife's number-one pursuit should be ministering to her husband and family. That means if you choose to have children, your priorities and values have already been determined.
5. Displays character in her modest dress. A young man's character is displayed in his choices around life—around the use of money and relationships. But a woman's character is displayed in how she handles the power of her femininity and sexuality. In other words—how modest is she? That's becoming a weird word in our culture, but I would challenge young men to keep their eyes out for young women whose character is displayed in not only on the inside, but the outside as well.
6. Knows how to follow a man. That doesn't mean perfection, but it does mean that she understands that she's the vice president, not the president. Women are joint heirs of the grace of God, but someone has to make the final decision when you both disagree. When one person votes one way, and the other person votes another, I believe it's the responsibility of the husband to listen carefully and wisely consider the counsel of his wife. It's upon him and to the Lordship of Jesus Christ as being led in the power of the Holy Spirit to make that decision, and then it's upon the wife to be able to follow under the same influence. That's not an easy thing in this culture.

As you see, it's not all about look and appearance, but more to qualities of her inner being. Know how to make-up and dress modestly are important, but after all those beauties fading... all you want is to have a person that accept you and together (yes, I mean TOGETHER) be with you through good times (either it hobbies/ministries/anything that you both can enjoy together); or  bad times (career changes, sickness, health failures, bankruptcy, etc).

I heard those from my male friends who almost got divorce or cheating on their wives by having affairs with other women who might not as pretty or gorgeous as their wives. Sometimes, their wives pretty faces and sexy bodies can't complete what they longing for, an union or togetherness that each individuals seek deeper in the souls...

But, if you're a man and woman of God, no matter happens in your life and how your current spouse react to you, you will stick to the marriage covenant and believe me, God's miracles work on the troubled marriages even only one person seek His face for help.

May God blesses every marriages out there....

Source : http://www.familylife.com/site/apps/nlnet/content.aspx?c=dnJHKLNnFoG&b=3593987&ct=4639461&notoc=1

What A Man Should Posses to be Worth Fighting For....

Recently, a friend spoke to me that she's already ready to get married with her boyfriend. A statement that I considered brave enough considering she's a lot younger than me, and nowadays there're lots of seem-compatible-enough couples who were madly in love in their weddings endedin divorces two or three years after...

Sadly but true, many women seek the wrong qualities in men and seem tolerate 'insignificant things' that turned out to be the most important in their future marriage life... According to a site that full of good advices from trustful women and men of God, here's the qualities that a woman should seek from a man :

1. Fears God. Some of the ways you can tell if a young man fears God is by his language and how he treats other people. Does he treat them with respect? If not, why not? We as human beings are made in the image of God, and respecting people ultimately shows a heart that reverences the One whom we reflect.
2. Is not afraid to love. That may sound like a no-brainer, but a lot of young men today are afraid of commitment, and the young lady ends up chasing the young man. What we need today are more young men who are not afraid of being real, authentic, and committed to a young lady in a relationship. We need men who are not afraid to love.
3. Can admit his faults, his mistakes, and when he's hurt you. Ruth Bell Graham made the statement, "A good marriage is the union of two forgivers." The reason is because you're going to hurt one another over and over again during your lifetime together. If you don't know how to ask for forgiveness and give forgiveness, you're never going to have a great marriage. The growth of your marriage will be stunted early on.
4. Can control his passions. We live in an age that has been invaded by pornography. The world sends a message that you can have it all and can satisfy yourself. I would want my daughters to date a young man who is fully in charge of his passion and can control his desire for the opposite sex.
5. Honors his parents. In the Ten Commandments, God tells us to honor our parents that our lives may be long and it may be well with us. Wouldn't you want to select a man whose life has a sense of well being in God's favor? I have heard it said that if you want to see how a young man will treat you, see how he treats his mother. I'd take that a step further—how does he honor both his mother and his father? Does he speak well of them or is he angry with them? Does he refuse to speak about them at all? What's going on between a young man and his parents is very important.
6. Is in the process of becoming a leader who knows how to serve. Being the head of a home and having so much authority and responsibility demands a servant spirit and self-denial. If a young man doesn't know how to deny himself on behalf of another person, giving up his personal rights, goals, and dreams, I would question whether he would know how to create a family over a lifetime. 

Do you find these qualities in a man? If yes, don't let him go girls! ;-) 

For the men, you might want to read what qualities to seek in a woman. Read my post after this...

source : http://www.familylife.com/site/apps/nlnet/content.aspx?c=dnJHKLNnFoG&b=3593987&ct=4639461&notoc=1
 

Wiser, Kinder, Lover

These few months had made me thinking of who am I going to be in the next phase of my life. During the last few months especially, many things happened. Things that somehow tested my personality and faith beyond the limits, things that made me thinking about God and His people in different ways.
I used to be a person with a strong purpose/will, there're many things being decided by logic and experiences. And when things happened outside my expectation, I analysed things carefully and quickly thought of things that made this unsuccessful, correcting people and situation with my utmost ability. But I'm not perfectionist, so when there are things and condition that I can't avoid or fix, I usually draw back like a phlegmatic person will do. And at that time, although my heart hurt, I will wrap it carefully and make sure that I'll survive by myself by tolerating the pain, thus increasing my endurance to feel any pain. Even now, the funny thing about being tough is, whenever I feel the pain due to any wound/scars either by accident (fell of motorbike, bicycle or, just simply cut myself when handling knife); I felt it minutes later after I felt there's a warm liquid flow from the wound/cuts. And sometimes it doesn't hurt so bad, while people probably will wails due to the wound...Odd huh?

Being hurt and dissapointed by people many times, I grew my independence of sometimes not too hope much on people. While I can do it myself, I'll do it, rather than asking people to do it for me. And examining people deeply made me became wiser on analyzing the situation and conflicts. Wisdom sometimes misunderstood by people as being too judging or slow to react. While for me, wisdom is based on thorough and careful thinking and lots of facts analyses and asking for God's guidance at most. Though I'm not perfect in making decisions sometimes, but when I rely on God's guidance, sometimes even the craziest thing to do will become the most wise thing I made.


Also, some people criticize me about being 'too blatantly' speaking my ideas or critics, especially regarding my ideas on job matters. They ask me to be nicer/kinder in speaking to people. While I thought that these people must be never speak professionally in front of public who criticize their works before. I've learnt that sometimes it's better to ignore them since they don't know what I'm doing.
Being nicer or kinder isn't always good, you tend to compromised for things that you should've change for better instead became a people-pleaser. I agree on being polite in sounding your ideas, but if the person or organization that always do the same mistakes again and again, I would say they need something to rebuke them from the wrongdoings. And not many people want to be everyone's enemy or the left wing party due to the truth, they prefer sit back and just enjoy the show while there are flaws and mistakes that actually can be prevented or eliminated.

I'm surely hate to be left behind or to be considered as the 'rebel', but if that's for the better sake of the purpose I'm working for people I serve, I'd rather be a guerrilla rather than be a nice smiling religious lady who don't do anything when she saw the injustice lay in front of her. But I knew people make mistakes, they are not perfect, and sometimes it needs time for them too to gain bravery to rebuke things...So, all I can do is be kind and patient to them...like Jesus does.

But my journey to became wiser and kinder face another obstacles... it is love. Will I believe in love again after so many hurts? Will I began to believe that there's someone out there that still believe in love regarding the race, ethnicity, family background or social status or any thing that considered unimportant? Just unconditional love based on the same vision in life, the same passion that God had put in our hearts, and the willingness to sacrifice and accept others just the way we are without seeing the difference between us?

I'm ready now, ready to love...after became wiser and never lose hope, after series of waking up from the terrible sadness and dissapointments, after became braver to speak what is in my mind, and kind enough to understand people's flaws... It is love that I want to believe in...

I love this quote of Rumi about love:

“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.” - Rumi

A Tiring Journey that I'd like to Pause

These past few months really had made me feel tired about this life...

Being misunderstood as 'traveling staff' that always got lucky chance to travel here and there without knowing that I had to undergone some bad experiences working outside my usual JD. Not to mention prolonged stress that often occur due to limited number of off days when I attend those meetings or workshops and went to other projects to fix things up from zero to something that worth reported by mass media.

And I finally had bad experiences regarding my current education status which is only 'Bachelor Degree" while helping on a doomed project in Borneo, they underestimated me! Haha! So Indonesian stereotype...Judging people by their education background only, not by their experiences... But somehow, I manage my feeling and work my best to help them...although they didn't pay attention to me.

As things goes by, I just felt worn out by my duties...No more happiness to work since I always being misunderstood, ignored, left alone to face giant problems and unappreciated. Feels like I just survive to get a-two-year-acknowledgement from this org, to pursue for higher dream...study again to be more capable and never being underestimate again...

Probably it'll just months when I will enter a new life in another country, if God allows me to get the chance. But the reasons why I want to pause this tiring journey for a while are not those obstacles of being misunderstood, underestimate and objection...but because I need to stop by and think about my purpose in this world, the higher vision that I long in my heart...

The vision that somehow so real and vivid, but sometimes too big to think about...too frightening to step on...thinking that I'll be alone doing that somehow...without a helper beside me.

I pray to God to make it clearer each day, to make me strong to face these mere obstacles I face everyday, to prepare me to meet him - the suitable partner - or not to meet him at all if God allows me to be alone to travel this life journey. But sometimes the vision seems too overwhelming...too big to handle alone, too lonely to travel on...

Somehow, I just need a pat in my shoulder, a nod of understanding or a letter /note of encouragement these days...or as simple as I'm-thinking-about-u SMS in my inbox. Things that impossible to me to get now... :-/