In my Proverbs 31 devotional roundup post I mentioned that I was going to start working my way through each of the resources I listed and reviewing them for you. So the first Proverbs 31 book I decided to work through is The Proverbs 31 Homemaker by Jami Balmet over at Young Wife’s Guide. Read on for my review of this Christian women’s book.
About the Author of The Proverbs 31 Homemaker
Jami is a busy lady with her blog, podcast, yearly homemaking conference, Christian women’s books, and her online homemaking academy, My Homemaking Mentor. All of her offerings are to help Christian homemakers view their roles from a Biblical perspective and I’m definitely a fan of them!
About The Proverbs 31 Homemaker Book
In her book, The Proverbs 31 Homemaker, Jami examines the Proverbs 31 woman based on six characteristics that the virtuous woman has. HER…
- character as a wife
- devotion as a homemaker
- ministry
- influence as a teacher
- effectiveness as a mother
- excellence as a person
Before diving into the six characteristics, she devotes the first three chapters of the book to laying a foundation. She discusses the purpose of the book of Proverbs, the contrast between the picture of the foolish woman described earlier in Proverbs and the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31, and an overview of how we should approach studying the Proverbs 31 woman.
Within each of the remaining chapters she explores each of the six characteristics of the Proverbs 31 homemaker by jumping into scripture, quoting other voices in Christian literature, and breaking down how each of these characteristics look into smaller attributes.
My Thoughts
I like the six characteristics she extrapolates from the scripture and I believe that all six of them are certainly prominent attributes of The Proverbs 31 Woman. I think she fleshes out each characteristic pretty well and, for the most part, we are on the same page as far as interpreting Proverbs 31 (as you can read in my Proverbs 31 Woman study here). We have some differences in interpretation, but nothing major.
However, there are a couple things I think could’ve been executed a little better.
The first thing is that each chapter feels a little disjointed. She gets her point across for the most part and it’s Biblically-based, which is what really matters. But the execution doesn’t feel super organized. So each chapter kind of leaves me wondering what to do next with the information I just read.
However, going into this, I expected this to be more of a devotional than a thought-provoking book. So that did effect my expectations for the book. For a devotional I think of that more as being short, to the point mini-lessons on a small portion of scripture that you can read in a few minutes each day. So in my opinion, this is more of a Christian women’s book, but not a devotional.
I would’ve loved to have some actionable ideas at the end of each chapter.
But I believe that her goal with this book was probably more of changing your mindset of the Proverbs 31 woman. She challenges you to stop making to do lists from the Proverbs 31 Woman’s attributes. But rather look at her character as a whole. I actually love this mindset. Because the thing is, we can all read about the Proverbs 31 Woman and easily feel inferior and like a failure. But Jami challenges you to stop doing that and really look at what really matters about her character that we should learn from.
The other thing I like is that she encourages you to look to the rest of scripture to gather context about the Proverbs 31 woman. I’m a big believer in reading any scripture this way because not doing so can leave so much room for mis-interpretation.
Final Thoughts
This was a pretty good, quick read about the Proverbs 31 woman. It will get you thinking differently about her and how she applies to your life. If you’re a fan of reading about the Proverbs 31 Woman then I’d recommend reading it. You can click here to grab your copy.
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