You wrote:
I'm not sure that I am connecting that principle you are presenting in your article with these women and the way they are currently living their lives, running their ministries, and delivering their messages. Can you clarify?
Since I don't know them personally, I can observe from an objective standpoint. My husband can observe from an objective standpoint. And I wonder as a ministry wife and mother myself - should I leave my home on a consistent basis to minister to women? I mean, really? Should I teach men just because they want to come hear me? Should I teach like a man?
I didn't even cover the issues of women teaching men in my original article. I didn't even cover the helper role of a wife in the article and how so many women are the heads of their own ministries and who even knows where their husbands fit in.
God has clearly spelled out women's ministry and how He wants it to function in the pastoral epistles. He knows what women need - not necessarily what they want.
Although there are many women who do not like what I teach - I know God has called me to teach it. I also know that many women are absolutely starved for solid biblical teaching on women's roles in the home and church.
I looked for those kinds of women when I was a young mother - and my frustration led me to cry out to the Lord and ask Him to show me how to be a wife and mother His way - for my own family and for the generations of mothers who would come after me.
This is not to say I didn't have positive examples and good women in my life. I did. But they didn't necessarily have God's perspective on these issues. And the few who did didn't understand the doctrine behind it.
You wrote:
I agree with you that there is so little encouragement, teaching, and discipleship from older women to younger women but does that mean that every time an older woman encourages a younger woman by saying that the day is coming when there will be more to her life than diapers, is this wrong?
I think the better approach for the older woman would be to encourage the young woman that days of diapers are every bit as important as some imagined distant day in the future. What if that distant day never comes? We are not promised one more minute. I would rather tell a young mom that diaper days are critical, crucial and very important work.
It's interesting that your letter comes to me as I am keeping my grandson for a few days while my son and daughter-in-law are in Chicago for her brother's wedding. My life right now is diapers - yet so much more. The day has come for my life to be filled with diapers again. A young mother should be told that diapering is ministry - see, a woman's perspective needs to be adjusted rather than promising that some future day out there that supposedly is better. Even though older women don't mean to, they are sending the message that life with diapers is a nothing life. God knew what He was doing when Mary's older woman, Elizabeth, was diapering at the same time as she was. They were both doing kingdom work right then and there - not just preparing for the day when Jesus and John could be released and they could pursue other things. In fact we see Mary all throughout the life of Jesus - up to the cross and then in the Upper Room at Pentecost. Her mothering never ended. And since she had other children, it is safe to assume that she had plenty of grandchildren to diaper as she became the older woman of her generation.
Somehow we've got to get past the thinking that the only kingdom work is the big time or girlfriend time. While Mary mothered Jesus - it was quiet - but it was kingdom work. Only one young mother raised THE SAVIOR, but all the others are raising little "saviors" to be used of God in this wicked and perverse generation. None of us would have ever told Mary that "her day" was coming while she had the privilege of changing the diaper of Jesus.
And while we're speaking of diapers - what's wrong with that anyway? What's wrong with rocking and cuddling and answering 100+ questions, and wiping snotty noses, cleaning up throw-up, and playing blocks on the floor? This is kingdom work. And it's not just something to get through so you can get on to something bigger. This is big.
You wrote:
I am perusing your site and looking at the ministry you have to wives and mothers. The lady that you mentioned in your article that encouraged to hope for ministry...was she so terrible?
I knew her and her children. It is very sad what happened for the sake of "ministry." She was not terrible - but her perspective was.
You do have a wonderful ministry today.
My "ministry" today is just the broader scope of what I have always done. I learned to teach the Bible by teaching my own children, children in my neighborhood (CEF club), and children at church. The messages I teach today were first taught to children because I figured if God entrusted children to me (whether my own or the neighbor children who showed up at my door), He wanted me to take their little lives seriously. In fact, when the "ministry" to women in my church took shape, it was because younger women were asking me to teach mothering things. I sat down and asked the Lord to help me write what He had been teaching me so that I could invite them into my home and teach the Bible as it related to women. So, what you have been perusing on my site is the outgrowth of a 6-week Bible study in my home where my older children kept my younger ones upstairs.
When our church built our first building - the Bible study blossomed with my boys as the sound guys and as helpers in the children's ministry. Today my youngest son carries on the tradition - he's the only one of my children still at home. It truly was and is a family ministry. Every time I've been invited to teach at a woman's conference, or retreat, or banquet, my daughter has accompanied me - she was and is my very first "younger" woman. I remember once when I was driving up to speak on biblical modesty at a mother/daughter banquet, I saw the immodest women and panicked. How in the world were they going to tolerate what God wanted me to teach and what they had asked me to teach? I expressed that thought to my then high school daughter as I was trying to decide what other easier-to-hear message I could whip out. My own daughter challenged me, "Mom, these are the very women who NEED to hear this!"
Click HERE for Part IV
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