Trinity Church Blog: Ladies of grace and truth

Many Christian women are familiar with what Titus 2:3-5 says about godly womanhood, "Older women are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women 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."

One interesting thing about this text is that it is not directed to a woman but to a man: to Titus, the shepherd overseer of the Christians on the island of Crete. In other words, the Christian discipleship of women starts with pastors who help seasoned women to grow in gospel maturity so they can pour themselves into women who are younger in their faith.

I take Paul's commission to disciple and resource Christian ladies seriously. That's why I'm always excited when I come across helpful books to place in the hands of our ladies at Trinity, hoping to set off a chain-reaction of greater feminine passion for Christ. Toward that end, we have recently stocked our church book-table (located in the library) with some of the best spiritual food for feminine hearts and minds. Let me focus on just two new books I commend to you:

Fierce Women by Kimberly Wagner is a unique book written to Christian woman who are naturally wired with strong, 'can-do' personalities but find themselves married to men who seem less active, less organized, less spiritual or less competent than they are. The results are sometimes ugly. Kim tells her own 'ugly marriage' story and how God redeemed it with the gospel and helped her begin down the road to becoming both a joy to her husband and a woman learning to channel her strength in positive ways to build up others and glorify God.

Choosing Gratitude by Nancy Leigh DeMoss is written to help you both locate and root out the tendrils of ungratefulness which often go unseen but end up poisoning your thoughts, words and relationships. Consider the following quote:

Try to sustain persevering faith without gratitude, and your faith will eventually forget the whole point of its faithfulness, hardening into a practice of religion that's hollow and ineffective. Try being a person who exudes and exhibits Christian love without gratitude, and over time your love will crash hard on the sharp rocks of disappointment and disillusionment. Try being a person who sacrificially gives of yourself without gratitude, and you'll find every ounce of joy drained dry by a martyr complex. As John Henry Jowett once said, 'Every virtue divorced from thankfulness is maimed and limps along the spiritual road.' (p. 23)

Perhaps you've listened to Nancy on her Revive Our Hearts radio broadcasts or downloaded her pod-casts. Her teaching is rich with biblical womanhood. Some of her other books we've stocked on our book-table include: