A Godly Man’s Superpower

June 17, 2024 — Craig T. Owens

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible. 

On Mother’s Day, I mentioned that Proverbs 31 might be an intimidating description for Moms, but it doesn’t need to be that way. This chapter lists what is possible when a woman is fully committed to God, her husband, and her children.  

Her faithfulness is her superpower which unleashes so many good things for those around her. Or as we said it: Her nobility helps her be a king maker. 

I concluded by saying that men have an important role to play in order to honor the king-making power which the godly women in his life have unlocked. This is a man’s superpower! Together, God-fearing men and women can create a legacy of king makers. But separated or self-focused men and women can create a legacy of king breakers. 

(Check out all of the Scriptures I mention in this post here.) 

The Hebrew word for noble is used five times in Proverbs: three times for the godly superwoman (Proverbs 12:4, 31:10, 31:29), and twice for the godly superman (13:22, 31:3). 

Remember that this word is also translated in different versions of the Bible as excellent, virtuous, and strong in character. 

In Proverbs 31:3 the word vigor for men is attached to that same Hebrew word. In this context, the word can be defined as strength, efficiency, ability, or wealth. 

On Mother’s Day, we said that Eve is the “help meet” (as the old King James Version says), which means that she is the key that unlocks Adam’s potential. The teaching throughout Proverbs says that men can squander this unlocked potential by…

  • …forgetting God’s laws—Proverbs 31:4-5 
  • …not stewarding the unlocked leadership opportunities in our marriage, parenting, work, or community involvement (Proverbs 5:15-20; 2:1-5, 12-17; 22:29; 31:23). 

In essence, we cancel the definition of vigor that we saw above, changing strength to weakness, efficiency to inefficiency, ability to inability, and wealth to poverty. 

On Mother’s Day we looked at virtuous Ruth who used her godly superpower to unlock the potential for Boaz, the man who would become her husband. Let’s look at his example: 

  • he was called a man of standing because his righteousness was well known in Bethlehem—Ruth 2:1 
  • he was obedient to the smallest details of the law—Ruth 2:3; Leviticus 19:9-10  
  • he honored his father by following his example—Matthew 1:5; Joshua 2:1-24, 6:23 
  • he was an honored employer—Ruth 2:4 
  • he was also (just like Ruth) called a man of noble character—Ruth 3:7-11, 14 

A Dad’s superpower looks very similar to a Mom’s superpower. The godly woman unlocks the potential, and when the godly man carefully stewards that potential, he is also using his godly superpower (Luke 12:42-43, 48)! 

Guys, when we use our God-given superpower, we honor Him and the godly women in our lives who have made this possible for us. We do this by…

  • …faithfully loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength—Proverbs 31:4-5; Mark 12:28-31 
  • …caring for our bride like Jesus cares for His bride—Ephesians 5:25 
  • …honoring the legacy of our parents—Ephesians 6:2-3 
  • …passing on a godly heritage to our children—Ruth 4:21-22 

This is God’s design. And it is God’s delight when we live this way. So we must make the choice to either carry on the godly heritage that was handed down to us, or reverse the ungodly heritage that we may have inherited. 

Godly men and women unlock and perpetuate their God-given superpower by giving their heart, soul, mind, and strength to God. And then God will continue to empower us as the spouses, parents, and leaders in our community that He desires for us to be! 

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A Godly Woman’s Superpower

May 13, 2024 — Craig T. Owens

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.

Mother’s Day messages seem to set a lofty expectation for women. When a pastor flips to Proverbs 31 and begins to read the description of the noble wife, I’m afraid many women—both moms and not-yet-moms—wonder how they could measure up to this list! The proverb itself really starts out with a question, “Who could find such a woman?!” (Proverbs 31:10).  

The Hebrew word for noble is used five times in Proverbs. Three of those are for this kind of superwoman (Proverbs 12:4, 31:10, 31:29).

This same word is also used twice for men in Proverbs—A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children (13:22); do not spend your strength on women, your vigor on those who ruin kings (31:3). 

(You can read all of the verses I’ve mentioned in this post by clicking here.)

A woman’s nobility and virtue either unleashes strength OR her vices deplete strength and bring ruin. In the language of Proverbs 31:3, she is either a king-maker or a king-breaker. 

This picture of empowerment is seen in the very first couple (Genesis 2:18-24). In the King James Version language, the word for helper is help meet. This means that Eve is the key that unlocks Adam’s potential. The godly woman makes possible what the godly man cannot do on his own. 

For a negative example of this, look at how Delilah sapped Samson of his strength and potential (Judges 16:6, 16, 19). On the flip side, we see a positive example in Ruth who unleashed the king-making power of her husband Boaz (Ruth 3:11, 4:11). 

As a kid, I always suspected my Mom had superpowers. I remember digging through the hair on the back of her head to find “the eyes” she said she had in the back of her head! She could kiss my boo-boo and instantly I was better, and she could help me understand the things that perplexed me the most. 

As I got older, I realized that my Mom actually did have superpowers:

  • She faithfully loved her God—Proverbs 31:30  
  • She diligently served her husband—31:11-12, 23 
  • She consistently cared for her children—31:27-28 

Ladies, that is the superpower that you have—you complete us, you elevate us, you unlock our potential! This brings both elevation for your family and honor for yourself (see Proverbs 31:29-31, and notice the phrase “city gate” in vv. 23 & 31 which symbolizes a leadership position). 

Women who ignore their God-given superpower of nobility unleash the vicious cycle of king-breakers. 

Women who use their God-given superpower of nobility unlock a virtuous cycle of king-makers. 

Ladies, be encouraged today that all that is required for this Proverbs 31 list to be an accurate description of you is faithfully loving your God and faithfully serving your family in the consistent, little things day after day after day. God sees this, He is pleased by it, and He is rewarding it! 

Guys, you have a part to play in this too. What you do with the potential that your mother and your wife have unlocked for you also plays a vital role in your family and in your community. I talked about this on Father’s Day, which you can check out here.

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Poetry Saturday—Want Of Understanding

October 19, 2019 — Craig T. Owens
The wretch in me is not a scheming or
mendacious, violent spirit; nor is he
the sort to kill, or other treachery
indulge to gain a another’s vineyard for
himself. He does not with his neighbor’s wife
conspire for fleeting pleasure, or to buy
prestige or safeguard pride, some little lie
compose. He does not plot against the life
of those who scorn, spite, torment, or betray
him; and he holds no grudges, has no need
of vain revenge, avoids self-serving greed,
and keeps content within his given way.
   No, he is worse than all of the above,
   who honors not the wife he’s sworn to love. —T. M. Moore (1 Peter 3:7)
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10 Marriage Tips For Guys

August 15, 2018 — Craig T. Owens

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.

Guys, here’s how to add heat to your marriage (regardless of its current temperature)—

  1. Let the Holy Spirit continue to develop His fruit in you—this is the only way to become a truly exceptional lover.
  2. Pray for your wife, and pray with your wife.
  3. Say “I love you” every day. 
  4. Learn her love language and speak it regularly. 
  5. Hold her hand. 
  6. Compliment her privately—not just for how she looks or what she does, but for who she is. 
  7. Praise her publicly in front of her friends, family, and coworkers.
  8. Find ways to assure her that she is your #1 priority. Every single day.
  9. Take her out on a date that you have planned. 
  10. Repeat steps 1-9.

“The most joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, trustworthy lovers are Spirit-empowered lovers.” —Craig T. Owens

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The Mystery & Meaning Of Marriage

September 22, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

John Piper’s insight of both the Old Testament and New Testament meaning of marriage is profound!

Here are the links to the Scriptures he references:

Piper’s conclusions:

  1. God modeled marriage on the covenant love between Christ and the church.
  2. Therefore, marriage has always been a witness (or a drama or a parable) of covenant love between Christ and the church.
  3. Therefore, the roles of husband and wife derive from the roles God designed for Christ and the church.
  4. Therefore, confusing or minimizing these roles obscures the meaning of marriage as a drama of the covenant love between Christ and the church.
  5. Therefore, let every husband seek to love and lead and nourish and protect like Christ, and let every wife love her husband and honor his Christ-like role, joining hands in Christ-exalting mission as God meant for the church to do.
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11 More Quotes From “Cherish”

June 24, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

Gary Thomas calls on husbands to not just love their wives, but to cherish them. It’s an admirable goal for all married men! Please check out my review of Cherish by clicking here. Below are a few more quotes I especially liked.

“Never forget: You married a spouse with natural weaknesses. You married a spouse with a history of hurt. We can be agents of healing redemption and acceptance in our marriage, or we can do further harm, perhaps unintentionally.”

“Of course, there’s no promise that if you persevere, you’ll get just what you’re hoping for. But the one certainty is that if you give up, you definitely won’t get it.”

“Every conversation—every one!—takes you closer to or farther away from a cherishing marriage. The Bible declares this truth: ‘The tongue has the power of life and death’ (Proverbs 18:21).”

“If we want our spouses to feel cherished, we may have to work at a few things we’re not so good at by nature.”

“Pam Farrel writes in several of her books that a wife often feels most loved when her husband is simply more curious about her. … It’s not enough to simply listen. We have to take the next step, engage, and go even further to say, ‘I want more. Tell me more.’ We have to maintain our curiosity. … Husbands, cherishing often isn’t about what your wife is saying; it’s about who is saying it.”

“Silence is often unintentionally malicious, so try to verbalize every positive thing you can think of.”

“A joyful person walking in grace and hope can cherish much more than one who is tangled up in the guilt that Christ died to remove. Our guilt serves no one. In Christ, our self-condemnation offends God; it doesn’t please Him. To walk in condemnation is to call God a liar and Christ’s work insufficient. One of the worst sins you can commit as a Christian is to define yourself by your sin. In the same way, one of the worst sins you can commit against your spouse is to always define them by their sin. Biblical marriage is about defining each other as Christ defines us—saved.”

“Your spouse has a unique history, so cherish your spouse by treating them according to their reality: They are living a life that has never been lived before. They have a personality that has never existed before. They have a unique blend of strengths and weaknesses, temptations and gifts, as well as a once-in-the-universe calling. Your role is to help them complete their one-of-a-kind story.”

“Never, ever, get to the point that you expect your spouse to never stumble. Otherwise, you won’t cherish them; you’ll resent them.”

“Stop comparing your spiritual maturity with your spouse’s; instead, start comparing your spiritual maturity with Ephesians 4:1–3. If you do that, you will change the climate of your marriage.”

“When someone pledges to be your spouse, that commitment alone should earn him or her the benefit of the doubt. Even when things may not look the best, seek understanding before you even think about censure. Cherishing our spouses doesn’t mean living in Fantasyland, but it does mean giving our spouses the benefit of the doubt instead of jumping immediately to accusation.”

To read the first set of quotes I shared from Cherish, click here.

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Poetry Saturday—A Man

June 17, 2017 — Craig T. Owens
Edgar A. GuestA man doesn’t whine at his losses,
A man doesn’t whimper and fret,
Or rail at the weight of his crosses
And ask life to rear him a pet.
A man doesn’t grudgingly labor
Or look upon toil as a blight;
A man doesn’t sneer at his neighbor
Or sneak from a cause that is right.


A man doesn’t sulk when another

Succeeds where his efforts have failed;

Doesn’t keep all his praise for the brother

Whose glory is publicly hailed;

And pass by the weak and the humble

As though they were not of his clay;

A man doesn’t ceaselessly grumble

When things are not going his way.




A man looks on woman as tender

And gentle, and stands at her side

At all times to guard and defend her,

And never to scorn or deride.

A man looks on life as a mission.

To serve, just so far as he can;

A man holds his noblest ambition

On earth is to live as a man. —Edgar A. Guest






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True Beauty vs. Pornography

May 29, 2017 — Craig T. Owens 




God’s design for sex is truly the most beautiful thing that exists between two people. Its counterfeit is called pornography. Porn is simulated, imitated, and purchased; but no price tag can ever buy true beauty.


God demonstrates the purest love in Himself, when one part of the Godhead is the Lover and the other parts of the Godhead are the Beloved. The Lover is constantly discovering the beauty in the Beloved, and then praising that beauty. The Beloved then reciprocates back to the Lover. It’s a love dance! 


Humans are created in God’s image. We are first created to be God’s beloved. Then we are designed to be both lover and beloved in the bonds of marriage. True beauty—real, lasting beauty that pleases God—is discovered. It’s something that starts inside and radiates outside. A true lover takes the time to discover who the beloved truly is.


To see this in action, just look at some of the compliments between husband and wife in the Song of Songs—How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! … How handsome you are, my lover! Oh, how charming! … Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens. … My lover is mine and I am his. … All beautiful you are, my darling; there is no flaw in you.


True love that sees this kind of beauty cannot be imitated, purchased or simulated. If someone attempts to, it’s called pornography.


The dictionary gives this definition of pornography: sexually explicit materials whose purpose is to elicit sexual arousal. In other words, porn tries to imitate and simulate true beauty at a purchase price.


Jesus identified this sell-out of true love with the Greek word porneia (see Mark 7:14-23). This word means any sexual involvement outside the marriage between a husband and wife. Porneia comes from words that fill out its definition: things like prostitution, idolatry, and slavery.


Your body was not made for porneia but for God (1 Corinthians 6:13). You were made in His image: to be His Beloved, and He your Lover, and then to have a marriage relationship with another image-bearer of God, where you are both lover and beloved, and where you focus on true beauty.


Anything else is imitated, purchased, and simulated. It’s pornography. It’s idolatry.


Christians are told to fight many temptations, but there are only two that we are told not to fight, but to flee: pornography (1 Corinthians 6:18) and idolatry (1 Corinthians 10:14). So our prayer for the purity and enjoyment of God’s true beauty should be: Turn my eyes away from worthless things (Psalm 119:37).


Don’t sell out to the fake beauty in pornography. Discover true beauty exclusively in your spouse!




We’ll be looking at more relationship builders and killers, and I’d love to have you along for this journey of discovery.






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Good Religion Must Be Practical

May 22, 2017 — Craig T. Owens 




“Religion which has no practical impact on our daily lives quickly becomes a vague, abstract notion that amounts to nothing. Yet many have nothing more than an empty profession to prove they are Christians. …


“A good Christian but a nagging wife, a godly man but a negligent father—these are contradictions that cannot be reconciled. The man who does not walk uprightly in his own house is nothing more than a hypocrite at church. If you are not a Christian in your shop, you are not a Christian in your closet—even though you may pray there.” —William Gurnall, in The Christian In Complete Armor


More quotes from this book can be found here and here.






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10 Quotes From “Cherish”

March 22, 2017 — Craig T. Owens 




As I said in my book review of Gary Thomas’s Cherish, this is a must-read for married couples, those about to be married, and those who counsel married couples. Please check out my review, and then enjoy a few quotes from this book.


“Learning to truly cherish each other turns marriage from an obligation into a delight. It lifts marriage above a commitment to a precious priority.”


“In one sense, love is the nurturing aspect of marriage, while cherish is the ‘tasting’ aspect of marriage. Love meets the need; cherish tickles the tongue.”


“If you want to be fully satisfied in your marriage, if you want your wife to feel cherished, then mentally treat your wife like Eve. Let her be, in your mind, in that way, the only woman in the world. Say with King Solomon, ‘My dove, my perfect one, is the only one’ (Song of Songs 6:9 ESV).” 


“You’ve already made your choice. In your ideal world, you have no intention of ever starting over with someone else, so why not put your energy into and your focus on guarding that choice, building on the strengths of that choice, and making yourself ever more grateful that you made that choice?”


“At some point, if you want marital happiness, if you want to learn how to cherish a real man instead of longing for an imaginary composite, some ‘Frankenstein’ husband who somehow has it all, then you have to own your choice and even learn to cherish your choice. ‘My vineyard, my very own, is for myself’ (Song of Songs 8:12 NRSV).”


“The call to cherish isn’t to appreciate being pleasured by your spouse but to take pleasure in the pleasure of your spouse.”


“If we want to cherish our spouses, we must learn to take an active interest in what interests them.”


“Cherishing is expressed, or it’s not. Intimacy is built, or it is assaulted, even in the most mundane marital conversations.”


“The act of consistently noticing and honoring our spouses cultivates and maintains a certain kind of relationship, and it shapes our hearts. Noticing and honoring sustain the force and power of cherishing. When we stop noticing and stop honoring our spouses in the little things, the relationship starves.”


“Active cherishing—noticing and then expressing the excellence you see—is a way to shape our attitudes and to generate feelings of closeness and well-being. When we do what the Bible tells us to do, we will be doubly blessed—our spouses will be happier, increasing the joy in our marriages, and we’ll become happier psychologically as well. Cherishing our spouses literally makes us feel better. So cherishing means waging war on contempt and going on the offense with gratitude.”


I will be sharing more quotes from Cherish soon. If you’d like to be notified when these quotes are posted, simply enter your email address in the field in the right column and click “Sign me up!” You may also want to follow me on Twitter and Tumblr for other quality quotes I post every day.






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