The Friendships of Women

A lot of the blogs I read use Proverbs 31:10 - 31 or Titus 2: 3 -5 as their header or reference verses. These are such special passages to us as Christian women. We can study and experience all our lives through and still not plumb the depths of these passages, joined with many others which make special reference to christian woman hood.

If you google either of those references you come up with an endless supply of sites to examine. You can learn a lot from the wisdom recorded there in. But I have been thinking about the mentoring of women in the christian faith and the internet, lately.

I was blessed to be brought up by very traditional and conservative parents. I had the early influence of relatives and friends who were married for life, where dads were the head of the house and mums were joyful mothers of children, looking well to the ways of their households.

However, when I became a christian I was desperately looking for older women in the faith to be mentors to me. I began to read extensively and form many opinions about marriage, children, education and so on. I started to make friends, around my own age and also lacking in experience and wisdom and we talked extensively on these important matters. We subscribed to various magazines and exchanged the good, informative books we were reading. Eventually, a group of us got the idea to have regular meetings, I seem to recall it was Tuesday nights, once a fortnight. We did glean a lot from reading and discussing scripture and praying for one another's needs, but generally I look back and we were pretty much pooling our ignorance!

This little group didn't last long. Most of us remained friends, but we had so many children, husbands to attend to , busy households, home schooling that it was not very practical. We also found that though we were friends our differing doctrinal beliefs and the various wishes and opinions of our husbands, lead to a lot of difficulties.

This is going back 15 plus years ago. Since then, the Lord has brought many trials in my own life. Some of those same ladies are still my close friends. But during the hard years of pregnancies, babies, schooling, marriage, family and church hurdles I began to see that the Titus 2 women in our lives are those that God has placed in our own sphere as mothers/ mentors in faith and life. Loving our husbands and children is not something learned in a discussion group, or from an internet or magazine article, though these may help us. These, and other godly qualities are learned as we observe the godly older women in our circles and seek the Lord with our whole heart.

I was young, opinionated and clueless! (Now I am old but still probably much the same!)

I thought my ideas were so superior to the older women in my church circle who had not home schooled, or perhaps they worked, or......... any number of other things.
I was idealistic but I did not have the years of experience of walking with the Lord that some of these ladies did. As trials set in, my lack of experience began to show. I had made an idol of my family and suffered terribly because of it. It was then that these gracious older, and not so much older but much wiser, godly women, began to shine.

Were it not for the love, patience and kindness of these and the openness and willingness to learn of some of my other friends, I might well have travelled a much more rocky and painful path. They came along side. They listened and they loved. They led by example.

I remember once having a good whinge to a friend about something - someone. She listened, she nodded and hugged me. Then she looked at me ever so gently and said, "I know I would feel that way too, but what you have just said is sinful and you need to forgive and change your attitude."
Faithful are the wounds of a friend.

I think we need to read with a lot of wisdom and discretion when we use the net as our "Titus" teaching tool. We cannot observe the home lives, the marriages, the relationships of the people we read about. I know my own life is a far cry from the ideal example I might wish to be. There are many lovely families using the internet as their "ministries" but sadly, like some preachers, there are also those who have set themselves up as an authority and fallen very publicly. Falls are part of the Christian walk, but sometimes followers can be severely shaken in the fall out if their faith and trust is depending on a man/ woman rather than on the Lord.

Sometimes the financial side of the "business" eg with magazines and home based businesses, or the pressure to publish, become more pressing and important than the souls which are looking in hunger and thirst for biblical teaching. While relationships are formed through the internet, they do not have the same depth and day to day reality of real friendships. We can log in each day to a favourite blog site or teacher, but we would never visit our real friends every day nor hear one mans sermons every day. Some of our reliance on the Lord can be lost and the zeal to "search the scriptures to see whether these things be so", if all the research and hard work is done for us.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. 2 Timothy 3:16

Proverbs 31 and Titus 2 are very special portions of scripture for us women. At the time they were written there were no computers, blogs or emails. Women lived and worked closely together the older teaching the younger. Times have changed and we appreciate all the conveniences we have at our finger tips, but it seems the time honoured and biblical methods are still the best.

ooOOoo

Just some thoughts. I love some of the sites I visit regularly on the net and have made friends with a number of folk. Likewise I love my books and magazines that edify and encourage. But only God's Word is perfect and His Spirit our teacher and comforter. Only those God has placed in our real life community of believers can know us, love us, joy and grieve with us. May God bless you with many such Godly examples to help as we grow in grace.