Titus 2 Tips {on Thurdays}

"Older women likewise are to be reverent in behaviour, 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 2:3-5}

For years, even since I was a young woman blossoming where I had been planted,  I thought I knew what a mentor should be and I longed to have one. I saw myself as the younger woman and wondered why an older woman did not want to come along side me and mentor and encourage me in my life.

Finally, like many moons into my marriage,  I began to pray about it. Then I came to the realization that a mentor did not have to fit my mold and probably wouldn't. What I began to realize was I had women in my life that were mentoring me through books, snippets of conversation, Bible studies, friendships, faithful prayers, and even online.

What I also realized was that I may have to ask someone in my real life to come along side me and that she didn't have to have it  'all together' to be the 'one', she just had to have a heart that loved God and yearned to know Him more and become more like Him.

In thinking about asking such a woman, God placed one particular one on my heart. She had told me on a number of occasions that she prays for me every day.

Before I lost my nerve, I sent her an email and asked her if she would consider getting together over a hot beverage once in a while so we could develop more of a mentoring relationship. We met and she sipped on tea and I cupped my hand around a vanilla latte as we let words flow for hours. I look forward to sharing our hearts and hopes and dreams again. I see her almost every week as we attend the same little church and every time she sees me she is sure to give me a warm hug and reminds me she is praying.

What a gift.

This is a dream I have for this little house on the web: to have a hospitable home for more mentoring to take place so older women can encourage and teach younger women what is good that the word of God will not be dishonoured.

The Word, words and mentoring are a big part of my heart. You see how they all go together?

Through the Word of God older women are exhorted to mentor younger women with words and actions.

As I creep closer to the mid of life, I see myself as a younger woman and an older woman. The mentee and the mentor. But, really aren't we all?

Whether we feel qualified, we are urged to be teachers; to teach things that are noble, honourable, literally a teacher of winsome goodness.  We must depend on the Lord to give us wisdom to teach and receive the teaching the older women in our lives are offering. 

My hope is to have guests share words to offer practical tips to mentor and encourage women to love God and to love their husbands and children.

It will look different from week to week as I hope to have various women share from their lives, homes and hearts.

Some weeks may be tips from the kitchen or healthy recipes, tools they have used to grow spiritually, hints to help us build up and love our husbands, and lessons they have learned as they have walked along with their children to teach them to love God wholeheartedly, habits they have developed in keeping their home, ways they have worked on to keep their behaviour respectful, or rhythms that allow peace and rest in the home and hearts that dwell there within.

Would you pray that God would work in the hearts that mentor here and the hearts that are mentored in this humble home and as we take it out into the real world.