How Older Women Can Help Younger Ones
Once a month, I host a group of women in my home. The purpose of this gathering is to bring together moms who are in different stages of motherhood because while it’s always great to spend time with your peers, there is something really special that happens when you spend time with people in another season of life. As we’ve been going through the book ‘Mama Bear Apologetics’ and discussing the various challenges of raising children in today’s culture, a theme continues to emerge. The moms who are younger than me (which is almost all of them) lament the fact that they feel completely overwhelmed by how many ideas and ideologies are cropping up both inside and outside the Church. Between caring for their husbands, homes, and children, they simply don’t have the bandwidth to read all of the books and listen to all of the podcasts that would keep them up to speed on the latest trends in the world of Evangelicalism. They may have seen a thirty-second video on Instagram that makes a claim about Jesus or encourages them to “add” something new to their prayer life but finding the time to really dig into these things is not easy.
As we sit in my family room holding our mugs of coffee and sharing in the joys and struggles of motherhood, I often find myself thinking back to my days as a mom of young children. We put our kids in a small Christian school and while it did technically give me a bit more time during my day, I spent many hours volunteering in their classrooms, helping out in the lunchroom, coordinating the school auction and chaperoning field trips. We attended church on Sunday, led Bible studies and community groups, coached teams and life was very, very full. But, one morning as I popped into the school office, I was cheerfully greeted by the administrative assistant who was always ready with a warm smile. We chatted for a few minutes about nothing of great importance before she asked me an unexpected question. “What do you know about breath prayers?” I was a bit caught off guard but I knew where this question was coming from. She and her family attended the same church as we did at the time and ‘breath prayers’ had been introduced as a new practice. I told her that I wasn’t sure what I thought about them yet but that my inclination was to not incorporate that practice into my prayer life. She nodded and then said, “I encourage you and your husband to really look into it and see if it matches what we see in the Bible.” That’s it. That’s all she said. This woman who was ahead of me in life was concerned for us and gently, courageously raised a red flag. Regretfully, we didn’t do a lot of research into breath prayers at that time. We never felt comfortable participating in them when the congregation was led through the practice but we also thought that maybe it was just a one-off. It wasn’t.
Since that time, not only have more years been added to my life but many more practices are entering the Church that should raise red flags. And I now find myself in the position of the older woman who is spending a great deal of time sifting through them all so that I can offer guidance and wisdom to the women who are a stage or two behind me. In a recent article for the Center for Baptist Leadership, Michael Clary said that “errors often indicate trajectories.” In my experience, that trajectory is almost always downward. So if I have the opportunity to prevent someone from following a path that will lead them further away from the truth found in God’s Word then I’m going to take it.
A Clarion Call
As we enter a brand new year, I would like to put out a clarion call to all of the women who are in middle age and beyond. It’s past time we take the instructions in Titus 2 more seriously. “But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise 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” (Titus 2:1-5). We are no longer in the trenches of motherhood and the generations coming up behind us desperately need discipleship. Sometimes I’m envious of the younger women who have access now to resources I wish I would’ve had at their age. There are podcasts, books, YouTube channels and social media pages offering deep, theologically sound teaching. It’s never been more popular to be an apologist! But, with all of that comes the significant risk of veering off into the ditches which are filled with fads, fluffy soundbites and downright heresy.
There are two things that need to happen in order for us to answer this call.
1) We must be willing to do the work of sifting through the content being consumed by younger women and test it against the authoritative Word of God. This will require discernment and wisdom which are qualities that we should be cultivating throughout our lives. It will also take time. While we can enjoy the freedom that comes from no longer changing diapers or shuttling kids to their activities, we have to resist the temptation to fill up that time with new activities that are exclusively self-focused. Find out what the younger women in your church are reading and then read it yourself. Ask them the names of the most popular Christian leaders in their circles and then dig into those people to see if what they are promoting is Biblically sound. Make genuine attempts to understand the challenges younger wives and mothers face in today’s culture so that you can be someone they will trust for godly counsel. Most importantly, never stop being a student of God’s Word as it’s the only way we recognize what is counterfeit.
2) We must be willing to speak up if we discern that there is error. This will not win you any popularity contests. And, there is a strong possibility that you will be called a ‘heresy hunter’ which is the common accusation hurled at anyone who attempts to provide correction. It’s especially the case if you are bringing to light sincere concerns about the most popular pastors or practices that are being gobbled up by far too many Christians today. But I would rather risk being called a ‘heresy hunter’ than stay silent on false teachings being brought into the Church. “But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts” (1 Thess 2:4).
The older we get the easier it becomes to simply bury our heads in the sand and say things like, “Oh I’m just glad I don’t have to raise kids in this day and age.” Or, even worse, to constantly critique the generations behind us without ever offering help in the form of encouragement and discipleship. Let’s be the ones to change this. We have been entrusted with a great responsibility and it’s one that we are commanded by God to fulfill. Will you join me in answering the clarion call?