Is Women's Ministry Failing Women?

Thoroughly Equipped

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Have you ever thought about the popular Christian women's ministry in America today? Have you read the books by the popular teachers, attended the quote -unquote

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Bible studies, and those sold -out conferences? Do you feel more mature in your

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Christian walk than you did 5, 10, or even 20 years ago? Do you ever wonder if they are producing the maturity that Christ calls

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His women to? Is there a problem? Is the popular Christian women's ministry of today failing

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Christian women? I think this is a topic we should start talking about, so let's dive in.

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Women's ministry is reaching and discipling women for Christ. Coming into alignment with the

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Lion of the tribe of Judah and saying, I'm His. I'm called. I'm an ambassador.

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I'm a part of a chosen people and a royal priesthood. I'm saved. I'm redeemed. Women's ministry is a fertile place for women to grow and learn together.

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I'm here to tell you right now, your gender is for your earthly assignment, and yes, that's important, but your gender has nothing to do with your eternal assignment.

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That same Holy Spirit that filled the men of God of old and filled the men of God today, they fill women of God too.

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Women's ministry to me is connecting women with Jesus and connecting women with others. To say there is one way, one that says you are a part of something bigger, called to belong to something greater.

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It is time now to move as one, speak as one, and act as one. We who are many are never more powerful than when we are one.

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Women's ministry is word -based and it should be multi -generational.

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Something is going to come out of you that you didn't even know that you had. Your great -great -great -grandchildren are going to kiss your picture and tell the stories about what happened to you because you dared to evolve into the power of what

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God was going to do in your life. Women's ministry to me is pointing others to the glory of God.

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Because she understands that she is too powerful to let a serpent have her destiny. Because she recognizes that the weapons only prosper if she lets them.

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But because the power of life and death is in her tongue, she will release her mouth and life will spring forth.

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I thank you that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is sitting on the tip of her lips.

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Women's ministry is everything I do for a woman to help reach her for Christ, help her grow in her faith, to help her evolve in ministry.

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That's what women's ministry is. I had spoken on biblical womanhood and a college woman afterwards asked me this question, how can

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I possibly think biblically about my womanhood when I'm constantly being told to seek my own self -fulfillment, to determine my own destiny and that independence is power?

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I understood what she was asking me and my answer to her was, get involved in the women's ministry in your church and go to godly women and ask them to speak the truth of womanhood into your life as a counterpoint to what you're hearing.

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But I trembled as I answered because I wondered, is the church that she is in equipping women for this calling?

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Welcome to the Thoroughly Equipped podcast, where we compare the teachings from popular women's ministry books, conferences,

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Bible studies, etc. to scripture. Our focus is 2 Timothy 3, 16 -17, that all scripture is

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God -breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so the man or woman of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

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I'm your host, Melba Toast. May this episode bless you and bring glory to God.

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Hey ladies, welcome to Thoroughly Equipped. If you are new to this channel, welcome. Before we get into this week's topic, thank you to all the new subscribers.

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I was pleasantly surprised to go in and into the channel and see that it went up.

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I'm now at, I think it's 145 subscribers, so thank you guys.

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I'm just, I'm shocked and I'm very thankful for you guys who have decided to subscribe.

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That tells me that you at least find some worth in the content and I hope that I can continue to provide you with,

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I don't know, resources, encouragement, scriptural truths, just whatever you guys need to help you become more godly women and minister to other women in the same way.

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All right, so to the topic at hand. The best way, I think, to go about this is, of course, to go back to scripture to see what scripture says about women's role in the ministry of the church and what

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God has called women to do. From there, we can look at popular women's ministry as a whole and ask if the tools, books, conferences, et cetera, that are provided are actually producing the same results, or the same standard that God has for women, or the same calling that God has for women.

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In this, there are certain questions that we ask to get and arrive at that. One would be, what does scripture say the goal of women's ministry is?

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Two, what is said or encouraged to women in American evangelical women's ministry today, specifically, as a

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Christian woman, what is the focus of their books and conferences and quote, unquote,

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Bible studies? We can then look at the purpose of these books and conferences to see why they are produced.

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This will tell us where they see a need. Therefore, this, looking at what they think the need is, it will show us their purpose for women's ministry as a whole.

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The third question would be, are the results produced by American popular evangelical women's ministry the same results than we see in scripture?

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The fourth question would be, if they are not, if the result of American popular evangelical women's ministry, the results of it, the outcomes of it looks different than what scripture calls women to do, then what is it that is lacking in women's ministry today that's not producing what scripture calls women to?

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By looking at a woman's role in scripture, we can see God's goal. First, I want to clarify a word

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I'm going to be using here, and that's the word church. I'm going to use it in two different ways. One as the institution, the building and the offices that are involved therein.

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So when I say a woman's role in the office of church, you all know I mean the building, the way a local church congregation and the local church ministry is set up, the offices therein.

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Then I will use the word church as the called out ones, and I'll use the word

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Catholic here to represent the whole, the universal church basically.

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And I want to look at both separately, the woman's role in the office of church or the ministry of the church and the woman's role in the church

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Catholic. So let's look at what scripture says the goal of a woman's life should be in the

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Catholic or the whole, the universal of the church. The scripture is inspired by God, as we know, to teach, rebuke, correct, and train us in righteousness so we are thoroughly equipped for every good work.

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His goal is that our love abound more and more in knowledge and discernment, Philippians 1, 9 to 10, pointing us to Christ so that by the

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Holy Spirit, we will accomplish the good works God prepared in advance for us to do, Ephesians 2, 10.

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In Genesis, we see that God made a woman for man to be his helper,

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Genesis 2, 18. In Proverbs, the wise woman of God works for her husband and her children.

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A godly wife is described in Proverbs 31. As with the rest of the church

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Catholic, she trusts God's word, the scriptures. She's a child of Sarah, trusting God's promises found in scripture and fearing nothing, calling her husband

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Lord, doing what is right and is not given to fear. That's 1 Peter 3, 16.

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In fact, this is not done on her own, but through the careful study of Christ and his work found in scripture.

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She holds to the more sure word, regardless of any experience she may have, that's 2 Peter 1, 19.

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Her goal is to love her children and her husband, be pure, kind, self -controlled, working from home and submissive to her husband, because she knows this is how

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God's word is honored and not reviled. Those were taken from Ephesians 5, 22 -24,

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Titus 2, 4 -5, Colossians 3, 18, 1 Timothy 2, 9 -10.

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The woman who continues in faith, love and holiness will be saved through the hardships and curse brought about from sin in childbearing.

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This means that through Christ and his work, she can be brought safely through all the hardships of the curse in childbearing.

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Motherhood will look more like God intended, the bringing up of children to know and love

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God. She desires to be a gentle and quiet spirit because it pleases

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God, 1 Peter 3, 3 -4, 1 Timothy 2, 9 -10, 3 -11,

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Proverbs 21, 9 -19. So as you can see, scripture has a lot to say about a godly woman in the church

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Catholic. Now we fail in this. You know, I fail to meet these standards.

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But this is an example or a calling of what women are to be like. There's many other verses that we could use here, but I think

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I gave you plenty right now to study. And you can go back to scripture and look up the verses that I provided.

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This is basically what the righteousness of a woman looks like. And at the very foundation of this righteousness, of course, is

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Christ. It's the gospel because a woman knows her righteousness is filthy.

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Her own righteousness is filthy, that her heart is deceitful and wicked. But it is

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Christ's righteousness that makes her perfect before the

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Lord. So the Holy Spirit works in her because of Christ and what he's done.

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So let's go to now Titus 2, 3 -5. Here we can see what a woman's role is, what she can do in the institution of the church.

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So the role of women in the church is displayed here. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young woman to love their husbands and children, to be self -controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

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So the role of a woman is to teach the younger woman what is good. The good works taught to all women in the church

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Catholic. Individual churches do not have separate visions for where they want to or how they want to instruct women.

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In all the churches together, we are all supposed to be under Christ's headship. And men are to submit to that headship.

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The pastors are to submit themselves to scripture and what

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Christ has already taught. And their goal is to shepherd the flock by teaching them all that Christ commanded.

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And that's found in scripture. And then women are to take that good theology and apply it to more gender -specific roles, which we find here.

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The teaching what is good, right, encourages young women to do something.

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And this is where you're going to see the purpose of women's ministry and popular evangelicalism versus women's ministry that holds to a biblical view of womanhood and women in ministry.

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The teaching what is good results in women who love children and husbands, who are pure, self -controlled, workers from home, kind and submissive to husbands, right?

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Because the word of God to live this way is to honor the word of God and not revile it.

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Not revile it. This is the result of teaching what is good.

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This is what God wants women in the institution of the church to train up other women into. So this is the biblical purpose of women's ministry, to encourage the young woman not to revile

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God's word, to be Titus to women. Proverbs 31 displays the wife, the godly wife and what she looks like and all that she accomplishes.

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So we get into the purpose and result of our popular women's ministry today. The question is, will it or does it match up?

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Are these female teachers teaching what is good, resulting in encouragement towards being a

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Titus to women? Back in my twenties, early on, me and my husband were members of a

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Baptist, seeker -sensitive, non -denominational kind of church steeped in purpose -driven theology.

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We were very heavily involved in ministry there. Every season, my goal was to attend women's small group study, attend the women's retreats, then the women's conferences.

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And I had a blast and I loved the women that I was with and I loved the connection and things like that.

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We both were just determined not to be a seat warmer. And that's what purpose -driven kind of theology does, urge you to get involved quite specifically with the church.

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It is how, and I think it's just the whole way the church polity is set up and the way it's run and it's meant for it to grow because you get volunteers and people who will, who instead of going back home to focus on the home and go back into wider society, most of the ministry work is actually done in the church building and you get more people involved in church structure and audio and setting up stage and lighting and dance.

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And I mean, you have all these separate fields that people get involved in and to bring in entertainment basically is what it's going to do.

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And so of course that brings people in for entertainment, but for me getting heavily involved in women's ministry, it became a fair circle for me to think that I was in the top 20 % of the church, actually following the push that told me to follow my purpose.

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I thought I was accomplishing it until I started really reading scripture and diving into scripture.

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Almost 17 years later, that's how kind of old I am, 17 years later and women's ministry,

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I mean, it has grown. It's become this national thing. Female leaders such as Beth Moore, Priscilla Schreier, Jenny Allen, Liza Turkers, Christine Kane, et cetera, et cetera, all have literally become brand names.

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They produce studies and books with their own names on it. Their names are what makes the book sell now instead of technically the content within it.

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And they're used all across the world. Now think about the money that goes into women's ministry, the whole caboose.

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The average individual books are about $20. The study guides can be maybe $8.

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DVDs for a group study can be about $30. Tickets to attend a conference can range from $60 to $120 to,

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I don't know, I've seen somewhere around $200 depending on where they, which women's conference it is.

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Now add your hotel and travel expenses, prices really add up as you get involved in the world of the evangelical women's ministry.

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So are women getting their money's worth? Well, a lot of women would say yes, right?

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Because they're not, think about where they're going and what they're going for. They are going for entertainment and encouragement and to feel empowered.

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So we need to be asking this question here. The question we need to be asking is, are

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Christian women being equipped in Jesus Christ at the whole women's ministry world, under the whole women's ministry world, or are they just being entertained?

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The constant teaching is a steady stream of learning to hear God's voice apart from scripture.

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So we can receive revelation from him about our calling in life. The individual books and conferences are given to provide how to's and overcoming obstacles that get in the of this calling.

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The calling is always the bigger purpose in your life. Something special God has given only to you.

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Look through a Christian bookstore catalog and you can fit most studies and books for women under these topics.

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Topic one, how to discern God's voice. Topic two, how to chase after that God -sized dream.

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And topic three, how to conquer any obstacles that may get in the way of this dream. This is the purpose.

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This is the need that popular evangelical women's ministry today is trying to provide resources for.

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Okay, don't get me wrong, ministry in the church institution is needed and good, but I see clearly from Titus 2, that is the older woman first off to teach what is good.

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There is an understanding that these women have or are married, had children, and now she can teach and encourage the younger to love her children and submit to husbands.

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Now I connect this with Paul's guidelines regarding the type of widows the church is to honor.

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These women are described as being married and having brought up children. I'm not stating that only widows can teach for women's ministry, but I'm trying to expose this golden thread that is related to women involved in church ministry.

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Marriage and family are somehow always brought up. Why is that? Because submitting to husbands and bringing up children are good works and are the universal calling that's embedded in our creation.

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This is so very, very different from what's being encouraged through these popular female teachers.

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So of course, the result is going to be very different. And because of this difference, it's lacking in producing women who actually love children, submit to husbands, are pure kind, and whose main focus is the home.

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And so when I say focus is the home, I don't mean you just are barefoot and cooking all day and raising up 10 kids and homeschooling and, you know, homesteading and all that.

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The Proverbs 31 wife describes her. It's basically she's just a servant, but her servant hood or her focus on service is directed first and foremost to the family and then broadens out to the community.

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And that can happen from the home and from, you know, from a very localized sphere.

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She has a priority to do what God has called her and instructed her to do to submit to her husband to be his helper and in performing dominion by assisting him in taking care of the home, making it hospitable and raising up children to know

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Christ and then reaching out to the community also in providing, you know, you could sell product or you can go into church ministry.

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These are good things. The issue is that she understands that these are good works and is a goal she should focus on instead of some far out there type of individual calling, meaning that there's some grand thing

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God has for you in bringing about salvation to people or bringing about the gospel to people.

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That's just, it neglects what God has called women to in marriage and motherhood and things like that, takes our eyes off of it.

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So, all that to say that this is very different from what's being encouraged through these popular female teachers.

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So, of course, the result is going to be different because of this. It is, I believe, that popular evangelical women's ministry is failing

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Christian sisters today. Now, I'm merely an observer, and you can go ahead and scrap my observations if you see fit, but through my observations,

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I believe there are six reasons, and there are more, but these are the main reasons that the popular evangelical women's ministry has been failing and not producing spiritually strong Christian women in the church, women who are without fear and are strong in the

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Titus 2 results that are brought about by teaching what is good. And I want to say a caveat here.

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I still have thinkings and philosophies and presuppositions that I hold to that have to be challenged for me all the time, but these are the presuppositions.

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Here are these six ones, these six teachings that I at once held to and completely changed, and because I completely changed and looked at scripture in light of what

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I had been taught in the popular evangelical, secret sensitive women's ministry, it has changed my life dramatically, and my trust in Christ has grown more, and I continually look to God's sovereignty in all of it.

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So anyway, back to these six points or reasons that I think the popular evangelical women's ministry is failing, and that first one is egalitarianism.

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This basically, if you don't know what it is, this is the belief that sex, gender, sex,

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I'm using these interchangeably, does not inform or give guidelines to roles.

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A woman can be a president, she can rule a nation as a queen, she can build a corporation, et cetera, and she can therefore also preach and shepherd over a flock.

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So man can also do all these things, and he can a stay -at -home dad. Roles have nothing to do with how you were created.

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Egalitarianism roots truth regarding our identity and roles in this world based off our feelings or desires, and how

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I would define it are basically our spiritual beings. It grasps at a form of narcissism that rejects the material and exalts the spiritual.

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In this case, our physical bodies, the way God created us, has nothing to do with who we really are and how we are to live faithfully and function in this world.

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When applied to the institution of the church, this opens the door to twisting scripture and allowing women to shepherd and preach over a congregation.

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I want to state very clearly, women as pastors and women as shepherds is not a secondary issue.

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It's not an essentially gospel issue, though it affects the gospel, which

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I hope to show in another episode, but it is not a secondary issue. It's not something we can just agree to disagree on.

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It's something we need to firmly stand on and argue against,

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I believe. Lord willing, I will go over this as we look at how we can discern if a woman is a false teacher.

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It will be a whole episode on female pastors because understanding why female pastors is not a secondary issue will help you understand why then she's a false teacher.

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The second reason why I think women's ministry is failing is that we have grown up under feminism.

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Feminism has definitely had a hand in all of our lives. We cannot avoid it.

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The feminist idea of women working outside of the home now has been redeemed by claiming that God has something better for them outside of the home.

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I call this Christian feminism. It's all okay because God told you, because God needs you to advance the kingdom by any means necessary as long as it's apart from marriage and the home.

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They'll give kudos to women who are homemakers, but they'll add onto it or being a corporate woman or running your own business or being a pastor like Joyce Meyer or things like that.

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Of course, we're all called to live on mission. Stay at home mom, homeschooling 10 kids, global Grammy award -winning singer, you know, massive media, media ministry, whatever we call dance, dance, dance.

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Being a wife and marriage and being a mother, it's just kind of like poo -pooed under the rug.

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That's because these things are more housework and homework and being a wife and a mother are more seen to be a burden and a hindrance really to real ministry.

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They are not the actual ministry in and of itself. The home is not a place of serving.

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It's not seen as a place of evangelism. Those things happen either in the church building or ministry within the institution of the church.

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Of course, how do I know this? Because I fell for it in the end. It pointed me to a higher calling again within the institution and away from calling of the home in the church

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Catholic. Number three, I believe this next failure is a result of Christian feminism that's hidden in plain sight in the teachings of most women's ministry and that is to urge women on to ministry apart from the home.

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Something apart from scripture must convince women to head in this direction and so it must be backed up by God to be redeemed, right?

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This is where the discerning God's voice doctrine comes in handy. It's easy to justify a

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God -sized dream for some supposed inner direction and heart nudges that come from God.

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But if scripture was our only guide for life, godliness, and good works, then it's not easy justified, is it?

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Instead, it points you away from yourself and your heart nudges and clearly defines how a woman should live in God's kingdom.

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The lack of the sufficiency of scripture is a driving force behind all the books and conferences themselves here.

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If scripture is enough and Christian women knew that and trusted that, these female writers and teachers really could not sell a thing because American evangelicalism today doesn't believe that scripture is enough to teach, rebuke, correct, and train us in righteousness so we can be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

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We then need their books and teachings and conferences to instruct us and encourage us on how to be good

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Christian women. So, number four, the failure within women's ministry, number four is to call out sin.

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Women are relational beings who pride themselves and judge themselves by our relationships.

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So, we tend to be cautious about what we say and how we say it and this affects the teachings we hear.

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We don't like when we are told that we are wrong. We don't like to tell other people that they are wrong either. We fight for peace and unity and yes, most of the time it's done at the expense of truth, unfortunately, and this is a big issue.

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Sin is not identified as sin and therefore it's merely written off as mistakes or mess -ups or hindrances to your purpose.

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Especially in Romans chapter 7, it's one of my favorite passages because he's just a little bit scatterbrained and I can relate to that. So, he's talking about like, hey, the things that I want to do,

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I don't do, things I know I should do, I do. It's kind of like, I know I should not have the donut, but then the donut has a whisper and it's like, yes, it won't be that bad.

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Remember, you ate a salad yesterday. That's what happens, right? And you're like, yeah, the salad is going to go in and with the donut, it's going to win and so we start telling ourselves stuff because there's an internal war being waged.

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Somehow, it negatively affects you and your growth, which is part, which is true, but the real problem with sin is as offense to God.

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Things, but that's, but that's not portrayed in the typical teachings within purpose -driven theology.

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Things like restlessness and discontentment, worry and anxiety are tossed around as obstacles to work through, but never looked at deeply enough to point out the sin that's at the foundation.

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Desires of restlessness and discontentment may come from a heart that converts something other than what

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God has given, like worry and anxiety may be a result of a lack of faith in God and his sovereignty.

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So, sin is not dived into, it is not held up and looked at scripturally and brought in, women are not brought in to be aware of their own sin within the purpose -driven and seeker -sensitive theology.

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So, number five, failure is a result from failure number four. The gospel is not the goal.

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If sin is not called out, then Christ is not proclaimed for these sins instead, because sins are now merely, you know, obstacles.

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These teachers can write books, hold conferences, giving you disciplines and rules on how to overcome them.

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These women have, you know, gone through just what you're going through and they've achieved success.

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Look how successful they are standing up on stage, traveling the world, giving presentations and teachings and the books that they've written.

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So, they know what they're talking about. So, believe them. They know the rules and the disciplines that got them there and now they're giving it to you.

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And guess what? These rules and disciplines can be found in scripture, right? Now, I'm being a bit sarcastic here, but you see where I'm going.

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They teach the law. These rules and regulations, these are laws, these disciplines, they are a law and way to get you to success.

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So, the law is very different. What basically the sins are in purpose -driven theology is anything that keeps you from accomplishing your purpose, right?

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And this makes the Ten Commandments, it presents them as what

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I would call law light, meaning you can totally accomplish it if you only surrender.

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You're going to see this, especially Elisa Turkers, a lot of talk about surrender.

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Same with Jenny Allen. Surrender, surrender, surrender. But if you don't get law and gospel right, surrendering is law.

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It becomes law. And what really scripture calls you is trust.

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And trust will lead to surrender. But that's not really, it's not theologically dived in as well as it really should be.

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It makes it more of a surrender to the inner voice of what God is calling you to do day by day.

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Take for example, Beth Moore, who wants to talk about how the

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Holy Spirit just exudes through her because she listens to that inner voice. It tells her to brush a man's hair out of the blue.

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It's such a statement in my own life and such a memory of God overtaking me and enabling me to do something

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I couldn't do. You have no idea how dangerous you would be if you would live filled to the measure with the fullness of Christ.

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And now I'm going to tell you as clear as I'm talking to you now, the Lord spoke to my heart. Been very few times

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I've ever heard God be this articulate with me. And I'm telling you word for word, these words came into my heart.

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I'm not asking you to witness to him. I'm asking you to brush his hair. Lord, that man needs witnessing too.

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Yeah, that's not, that's what they mean by surrender, but that is not what scripture means by surrender.

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And nor is it kind of, surrender is not really a teaching you see consistent through scripture.

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Trust, faith, belief, that's what we see. And then walking in that faith and walking in that trust, trusting in the gospel day by day.

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Again, all within this surrender teaching is, you know, don't worry too much about being perfect.

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You are enough, right? God doesn't expect perfection. He only wants you to surrender, you know, wink, wink.

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But like I said, it's not scripture. This is not scriptural. Scripture tells us that God too does want perfect obedience.

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The law was given to show us our sin and how we do not meet that perfection. Therefore causing us to cry out for a savior.

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Romans 7, 7 to 25, Galatians 3, 19. They search the scriptures thinking they can find life and right living,

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John 5, 39, and teach others to do the same. All the while they miss that the scriptures testify about Christ and what he has done.

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And because of that, they see no need to proclaim him. And you can understand this and grasp this if you've been sitting under a teacher for a certain amount of time and it's all about you and it's not about Christ.

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This is a call to wake up, a call to dream, a call to dare to believe that God has a purpose and a design for your life.

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Finally, number six is the failure to depend on the Holy Spirit to teach us through the scriptures, how to grow spiritually.

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There's a lot of talk about relying on the Holy Spirit, but it never gets pointed back to scripture.

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Never is a very solid term, but rarely for my, for correction sake, rarely does it go back to the

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Holy Spirit will guide you in scripture on how to go spiritually. Like the

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Holy Spirit is just this tool we use to guide us day by day instead of looking at scripture as the tool and the

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Holy Spirit as the enlightener of that tool. This is a pragmatic view of church growth.

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It's, and is very prevalent in American evangelicalism today. In the women's ministry, it's expressed in emotionalism.

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So emotionalism is how you stir women and encourage them to believe in themselves and their

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God -given purpose and pursue the dream or vision in the books that they sell you. So one of the ways they stoke emotionalism and your emotions and try to encourage you is by stories.

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So they'll tell when they write a book, it's less about exegeting the scriptures or trying to help you understand the scriptures better.

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It's more about understanding their lives, stories.

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I'm social, I love social media. There was part of my brain at seven years old.

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Recently, I was driving Missy to school. She goes to a Christian school. In the middle of fasting and praying, I found myself lost driving a rental car somewhere on a winding road in the state of Tennessee.

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My husband has a five foot sword underneath our bed. Their experiences, and they use them to bring laughter, tears, and sometimes inignation, all to get your heart moved to do, right?

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Move to be encouraged and stuff like that. So the books, even the books that you read by Beth Moore, Priscilla Schreier, Lisa Turkers, it's always some kind of story within the stories, always to give you a lesson instead of using scripture to give a lesson.

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And the books sell very, very well. And that's because we're relational beings and we like to relate to the woman who's teaching us when, and that's good.

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I'm not saying avoid that. I'm just saying when there's a difference between a woman who's teaching about themselves and a woman who's teaching about Christ, you're going to see it in a book.

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So the Holy Spirit, what we talked about and given to you to succeed in your

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God given purpose, but any talk of him pointing to scripture and what it says on how to grow the individual and the kingdom is missing.

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If they believed that the Holy Spirit worked through the written word, they would teach it.

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In fact, I think that they just mostly believe that the Holy Spirit works through you, through inner impressions and through heart nudges.

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So now you're trying to hear the voice of God and understand what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell you instead of looking clearly to his word, his already written word, and then letting the

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Holy Spirit grab and understand the written word and apply it to your life. They truly believe the

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Holy Spirit uses their encounters to help other women grow. But scripture tells us that no encounter, whether ours or someone else's will convince us of the kingdom of God, nor will it cause us to grow in Christ.

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And that's Luke 16, 19 to 31. The Holy Spirit uses scripture to make us more like Christ, whom they testify of.

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Stories can entertain and can also encourage, but they don't revive the soul, make wise the simple, rejoice the heart, enlighten the eyes, declare our hidden faults,

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Psalm 19. The scriptures keep us from shame and our ways pure. They are our counselors and so much more.

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That's Psalm 119. Read both of those Psalms in its entirety and it tells you about the law of God and the written word of God and its benefits in the life of the person who abides in it.

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So, all that. I'm sure many will say that I'm being very picky and picking apart women's ministry and claiming that it's failing

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Christian women, right? The argument would probably be it's done a lot of good for so many women.

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That is understandable, but I can't help but wonder, what do they mean by good?

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Do they mean their standard of good? If it encourages women to do good works for the church institution, bring them into service and a calling focused more out away from submission to husband and working at home and loving their children and training their children.

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Some people may say that is good because, you know, they claim that all of this, look at the sizes of the churches, look at how many women are attending the conferences.

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It's advancing the kingdom. Please know, I'm not saying this is all bad.

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I'm only pointing out that God has told us in his word what the good works of a godly wife and mother look like.

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They are focused on our children, our husbands, our purity, our self -control, and the home, and yes, the community.

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This is how God's word is not reviled. I truly, truly believe that these good works are the ways marriage and motherhood advance the kingdom.

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They not only advance it, but they reveal it and expose it and magnify

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God's kingdom in our homes. The home is a micro kingdom and that kingdom is either under the submission of Christ's rule or in rebellion against it.

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Even a woman married to an unbeliever has an evangelistic ministry to her family as a

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Titus 2 woman. Even God says that a woman married to an unbeliever sanctifies that home.

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Women's ministry, I think, my just complete opinion, is failing

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Christian women. If you came across this video and realized that your church's women's ministry is under these type of false teachings and beliefs, ask yourself, do

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I believe scripture is authoritative and sufficient to help me and my sisters in Christ? And if I do, will

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I submit to whatever it has to teach me? Did the Holy Spirit know that 2000 years ago from laying what he wanted to say on paper, it would still be true, right, and good to disciple us 21st century wives on how to be godly.

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I pray God grant you the eyes to see scripture as sufficient and then to see the shining light of Jesus Christ in them.

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Scripture magnifies the beauty of the role of a godly wife and mother as excellent and more precious than jewels.

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Why are we so quick to dismiss what God claims is excellent? If you are part of women's ministry in your church, let's start teaching our younger women that being a wife and mother are the great callings that God calls most of his women to.

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Let's call women's ministry back to that. That means not just teaching women about their callings as wife and mothers, but they need to be taught good doctrine and theology that is drawn out from scripture because it is scripture that sanctify

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God's women so that they will love husbands and children, be self -controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their husbands so that the word of God is not reviled.

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For we are sanctified in the truth. His word is truth. John 17 17.

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I pray you and the church's women's ministry are in his word.

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Ladies, thanks for listening or watching this episode of Thoroughly Equipped. If this episode blessed you, would you give it a rating or a thumbs up?

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If you are interested to know more about Thoroughly Equipped, check out the blog or just find some other great

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Christian resources, you can go to my website at ttew .org.

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You can connect with me on Facebook and Instagram, links in the description below, or email me at melbatost at ttew .org.

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Thoroughly Equipped is part of Striving for Eternity's Christian Podcast Community, a one -stop resource for solid podcasts that can assist you in your

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Christian walk. Check that out at christianpodcastcommunity .org. I pray the

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God of all grace grants you more and more knowledge and understanding of Jesus Christ as the

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Holy Spirit thoroughly equips you through his written word for every good work.