THE OLDER WOMEN
Each morning and evening when we come together to read God’s Word and pray, we use our Prayer Boxes. I have nine different Prayer Boxes on different subjects to keep us reminded about the needs for prayer. We choose two of the boxes each time. The other morning, we chose our Above Rubies box and my card read: “Pray for the older women of the nation to take up their Titus 2 mandate to teach the young women.”
What has happened to the older women? It is rare to find them pouring out their lives to teach, train, and encourage the new generation of young mothers. Most have forgotten about motherhood and have moved further into their careers or begun a traveling life. How can they teach the young women if they are not showing by the example of their own lives?
This mandate is not optional. It is a command. Unless the older women show the new generation God’s way for them to live as wives and mothers they flounder. And this is what has happened. Most of this new generation know less about being a wife and mother than any generation in history. They are not only uninformed but brainwashed against their divine calling of motherhood and building a godly home—which means being in the home!
Most of this generation of young mothers are not in the home. Their mothers didn’t show them an example. The older women of the church didn’t teach them. Even many pastor’s wives are out at work showing an opposite picture than God gives us in His Word.
Some older women are teaching God’s Word, but not the specific subjects that God commanded them to teach. Titus 2:3-5 (HCS states: “Older women are to be reverent in behavior . . . to teach what is good, so they may encourage the young women to love their husbands and to love their children, to be self-controlled, pure, homemakers, kind and submissive to their husbands, so that God’s message will not be slandered.” The KJV says: “that the word of God be not blasphemed.”
Don’t you think we better return to God’s original plan? Jeremiah 6:16 says: “Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.”
I think we could truly say:
As go the older women, so go the younger women.
As go the younger women, so go the children.
As go the children, so goes the nation!
It’s time for the older women to show the next generation God’s truth and His ways for them in the home. It’s time for mothers to return to their homes, the glorious sphere that God provided for the raising of children and the influence of the nation. The home is a powerful place, not only affecting our children’s lives but the myriads of people we draw into our homes to love, encourage, and nurture along the way.
Malachi 4:5, 6 (ESV) are the last words of the Old Testament and a continual warning to us today: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children (and that includes the mothers) and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”
The spirit of Elijah came through John the Baptist to prepare the way for Jesus’ first coming. Luke1: 16, 17 tells us that he came “in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
But Jesus is coming a second time and once again we must be prepared for His coming. The way we do this is to turn back to our homes. Back to raising our children in the home. If we do not obey this word, instead of blessing, as the Scripture states, we will receive the curse.
Will we rebel or listen and obey?
NANCY CAMPBELL
Painting: A beautiful painting by Jayan Walter – “Mother”
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