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Thursday, June 9, 2011

Understanding Our Roles In Church Community: Older Women

Older women have a great responsibility in the church community!  See what Paul writes to Titus below:

3 Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good.4 Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children,5 to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. -Titus 2:3-5 NIV
Photo by 23am.com


Older women have the honor to teach the word of God through serving.  This is not to be taken lightly.  Our savior, Jesus, came not be served but to serve.  Just like Him, all people are called to serve.  Older women, however, have a special calling to serve younger women by urging or teaching them to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands.

Being "subject" to a husband does not mean the wife becomes a slave to the husband, it simply means a wife honors her husband by serving when and where she can, and in the day of Titus it was at home!  In Titus' day,as well as today, women who stay home have a powerful impact on their children and on their spouse.  They are able to care for the home—the place of safety and provision for the family, instruct children in godly ways, and spend time with God and lead others to do the same.   Today, older women who work do so to honor their family and are busy, as Paul states, to help provide for the needs of their family.

Older women hold a powerful tool—their testimony.  Paul encourages them to use their testimony to teach the importance of purity and honor by not slandering other people.  Our world teaches women to slander one another and gossip about each other and certain situations in which others find themselves.  Paul encourages the older women to set the example and use their testimony to teach about the grace of God by abstaining from gossip and helping others through tough times.

When there are no godly, older women to teach the younger women, the family, and eventually society, crumbles.  Older women are so important to the family of the Church.  Older women serve by teaching and demonstrating how to love their families and those within the Church by teaching from their testimony and serving with the gifts God has given them.

Older women are the teachers of the testimony of the cross!

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