Category: Article

Take Gospel Relationships & Titus 2 Woman

Posted on June 3, 2010

The 2nd quarter of City Seminary starts on Monday! It’s not too late to register for Gospel Relationships: a mess worth making or The Titus 2 Woman: Living a Godly Life. Register Here.

3 Reasons to take Gospel Relationships

  • If you ever struggle with Busyness, Conflict, Pleasing people, Marriage & Singleness or Parenting? Gospel Relationships will equip you to understand how to relate to others in the strength and grace of the gospel in these demanding and difficult areas of life! Most people have not been adequately trained in all of these areas. This course will train you how to think true thoughts and act in grace towards others. I wish I would have had it in my 20s!
  • If you want to better understand “the Gospel” and how it really affects everyday life. This course will show how the gospel of Christ is not a LCD, a lowest common denominator of the bare minimum facts necessary to get into heaven, but rather a TOE, a theory of everything that has explanatory and transformational power for everything from human motivation to work and culture.
  • If you are or aspire to leadership in Austin City Life this course is required. We believe so strongly in the value of this class that it is a requirement for City Group leaders and Staff.

2 Reasons to take The Titus 2 Woman

  • If you are a woman then you should take this class, seriously. The reason I have such a godly wife and a delightful marriage is because my wife took this class (an applied it) before we got married. Over and over again, she goes back to the wisdom and instruction of God’s beautiful design for women laid out in the Scriptures, which is a source of constant blessing to me.
  • If you want to make disciples of other women that help them be who God has created them to be. This teaching is basic Bible for godly womanhood and profound for making disciples in your life. Many women have a very distorted understanding of who they are in Christ. This study will help clarify your identity and role in Christ.

REGISTER HERE!

What is an Excellent Wife?

Posted on May 13, 2010

The biblical proverb reads: “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.” Indeed, the worth of an excellent wife is beyond price, but an excellent wife is not born on her wedding day. She becomes excellent step by step, year by year, by walking in the direction of excellence. This kind of worth does not simply fall upon you, it is cultivated over time.

Charm & Beauty

There are many obstacles to becoming an excellent wife. The Book of Proverbs is littered with them. Proverbs 31 closes with two obstacles–charm and beauty. Not what you would expect. Doesn’t the excellent wife dazzle her husband with her beauty and charm, her looks and her wit? Maybe, but that’s not what makes her excellent.

“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is fleeting but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Prov 31:30). A woman who fears the opinions of others runs to the refuge of “beauty” instead resting in the refuge of her God. Inadvertently, she makes a new god out of her looks. She obsesses with her face, her figure, and her fashion not with wisdom, faithfulness, and godliness.

Charm makes a bad god too. A woman who fears losing the limelight chooses charm over faithfulness. She attempts to lure the light—attention, approval, or applause—in discreet or overt ways. Her comments bend conversation in her direction. Her attire bends the eyes of men towards her body. Her preoccupation is not: “How may I bless others”, but “How may I capture their attention?”

The More Excellent Way

There is a way forward in becoming an excellent wife. It has to do with fear. The excellent wife, the woman who is worthy of praise (not who tries to get it) is a woman who fears the Lord. What does it mean to fear the Lord? Is it cowering in the corner in prudish silence? Or perhaps a general terror of the judgment of God? Neither. Then what?

There is a kind of fear that a daughter has of her father, a deep reverence and respect and admiration of his authority in her life. This fear isn’t sinful; it’s trusting, hopeful. It’s not the fear of a servant but the fear of a son. A woman who lives under God’s authority, who trusts in his providence, no matter how bitter it may be, is an excellent woman, a woman worthy of praise.

This kind of fear gets tested in marriage. My wife has had reasons not to trust me at times (seasons of confusion, anger, selfishness), but she knew that she had every reason to trust God, her heavenly Father. See, a woman who holds her highest respect for her Creator is freed under his protection and love to honor her husband. When her source of acceptance and love fits securely in the arms of an unfailing Father, she is freed to be an excellent wife. When her husband fails her, her world does not fall apart because she trusts in the God who put the world together. This kind of fear isn’t daunting; it’s delightful (Isa 11:3).

My Wife of 10 Years Today

Many women have done excellently, but you my dear, you surpass them all. You bear the beauty, the trustworthiness, the wisdom, the enterprise, the mercy, the kindness, the strength, and the faith of an excellent wife. Thank you for fearing and trusting God more than you fear and trust me. Thank you for not relying on charm and beauty but on grace of God. Thank you for laboring to bless others and placing me in the center of your blessings. They are innumerable. Indeed, an excellent wife is hard to find, and I have found one. These ten years have been a gift I do not deserve, your companionship beyond what any man could imagine. I love you. Here’s to many more decades!