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Like me, are you getting older and wondering what God has in store for you in these later years?
Do you also seek continually to serve Him?
Are you excited, but just a little apprehensive, about how the changing playing field looks for an older Christian?
Let us turn to Titus chapter 2 and see how the older men and women are to serve.
I hope you read all of Titus chapter 2.
It begins with a list for older men telling them to have proper sound doctrine and to be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, love, and patience. We need such men. Our world needs men who follow the teachings of God and love Him, avoiding alcohol and anything that profanes our bodies which are the temples of God. Furthermore, men must stand strong in faith, love, and patience with others. Continue reading to the end of this chapter and you will also cover the good advice for younger men and women as well.
However, let’s look at our focus for today: the older Christian women.
Paul tells us:
the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior,
not slanderers,
not given to much wine,
teachers of good things—
Verse 3 tells older women to revere God.
Our speech, behavior, and choices should fully honor God and His commandments, statutes, and ways. Words were to be spoken to glorify God, help, and teach others, not to slander or gossip. I must consume only that which will glorify God and the body He has given me. I must teach others that which I believe is pleasing to my God.
4 that they admonish the young women to love their husbands,
Older women were to tell young women to love their husbands.
God put Christian husbands as the leaders of the homes.
They are to obey God and love God FIRST AND FOREMOST.
Bruce and I both had the requirement that we love God MORE than we love each other. We were second to Him. We KNEW that we couldn’t love each other if we didn’t love GOD with all of our hearts first. Such godly men were to love God, their wives, and their children, raising them to obey and follow God. They were to love in that order and with the intensity being greatest with God.
Older women were to teach the younger women to love their husbands in this way. We wives are to follow our husbands and live sacrificially for them, just as men are told to love their wives as Christ loved the church. (See Ephesians 5:25.)
to love their children,
Older women are to teach young women to love their children.
There seems to be an ever-increasing philosophy that we women find ourselves and make ourselves happy. Work to be successful and make money to get more material things.
I didn’t work outside the home, but raised and later homeschooled my 6. By then, I was doing it alone. My teen sons had afterschool jobs at nearby farms bringing in a few dollars to go with hunted venison and our garden vegetables.
I made my decision. This is not to argue with you and your lifestyle. I am relaying my choices and how I decided.
My sons became men by 12 or 13 and helped put food on the table while I homeschooled. When the youngest graduated, I returned to the work field. I loved my children more than there are words to express, but I was hard on them. God’s law was the final and only authority we followed.
I believe that each child is a gift from God.
They were each prayed for BEFORE they were conceived and throughout the pregnancies. They were then prayed for through their birth and each day of their lives since. I was confined to bed for 5 of my 6 pregnancies and cared for the children from the couch with the help of the other children. God miraculously saved us all. I believe there are many things worth living for, and a few worth dying for. Having children was definitely in the
“worth dying for” category.
Older women are to teach the joy and blessing of each child to younger women. (See Psalm 127:3-5.)
5 to be discreet,
Our list continues with older women teaching younger women to be discreet…(careful in our speech)…
chaste, (being completely morally pure,)
homemakers,
good,
obedient to their own husbands,
that the word of God may not be blasphemed Titus 2:3-5 NKJV
—
We live in a culture where being a stay-at-home mother, a homemaker, and one who follows the leading of a godly husband is looked down upon.
Our speech is very often not something carefully guarded. We should pray for God to help us guard what we think and say. The world is listening.
There is so much joy in the “job” of homemaking and motherhood, when following God’s instructions. He tells us to honor and obey our husbands.
How important then to choose a man that we are proud to follow and look up to as he looks up to and follows God.
—
A Long Ago Memory
I remember running into a classmate a few years after graduation. I was married with a young baby and joyfully told him that, following his question of what I had been up to these days. He barely acknowledged that statement, and immediately asked me what else I was doing.
I was reminded of that kind of dismissal of motherhood when my daughter Kate, at age 10, was asked what she wanted to be when she was grown. She told the adult that she wanted to be a mother. She was then told that she could be anything she wanted to be as if being a mother wasn’t of much value. I told the woman she had misunderstood my daughter. Young Kate didn’t want to be a mother; she wanted to be a MOTHER.
The emphasis being upon all that God had for her ahead by embracing her future role of motherhood FULLY.
I loved carrying and having my six biological children.
I loved having them naturally, breastfeeding them, and homeschooling them. Most of all I loved teaching them about God and the plan of salvation through Jesus and watching them give their lives to Him and obtain salvation through Christ.
A Wonderful Plan
The older women in Titus chapter 2 are to teach the younger women to embrace fully all that God has for them in this glorious role of womanhood and motherhood. It is a wonderful plan toward a wonderful end for both the younger and the older women.
God’s plans for us always are.