Titus 2 Men And Women

Women Need Other Women
by Denise Lower

The subject of marriage and infidelity is a difficult subject to deal with, especially within the "church". I would like to share what I have learned over the years through God’s Word and as an "aged woman".

 A close friend of mine related this story to me. Several weeks ago, on a popular evening newsmagazine show, they produced a segment on adulterous affairs. This show had three women as guests in one segment. One was a very beautiful professional model, one a professional business woman, and the last a "stay at home" wife and mother. A question was posed to the "interactive" audience; which of these women do you think would be most likely to have an extra marital affair? There was also a panel of "experts", psychologists, social workers, counselors, etc., who were also asked this same question. The answer was given and was a shock not only to the person moderating this segment, but to the "experts", the audience and my friend who was watching that night. The woman most likely to have an adulterous affair was the "stay at home" wife and mother. 

WOW. I would like for you to consider WHY the stay at home wife and mother was the answer while you read this article. Was she bored? Did she have too much contact with the "outside" world? Was she mad, lonely, depressed, vengeful, stupid or just plain immoral??? I would like to share some thoughts I had written MONTHS ago.....long before this show ran, or was probably ever concieved.

We women know we have more emotions than men and are sometimes controlled by these emotions. It seems in the "courting" years of our lives, we are very emotional creatures. We have all been told that "opposites attract". That saying has been borne out in my own marriage. I am a very dramatic, spontaneous, loud person. I have prayed for God to give me that "meek and gentle spirit"....unfortunately, I think he gave it to me on the inside, not the outside. My husband is a very quiet, introspective, not given to ANY display of emotions, analytical man.  I KNOW without a doubt that God put us together, although there have been times I was SURE God made a mistake. I DID pray about Scott before I married him, even before I dated him. My life had already been a shambles due to hasty decisions made without seeking God’s will for my life, and I was determined, with God’s help, to NOT make some of the same mistakes over again.    Even just before the ceremony, I pleaded with God to give me a sign whether I should go through with this or not, and guess what happened? The sun began shining after an entire night of rain.   

My husband and I have been through MUCH trial these first ten years, and I am sure there will be more trials during the next ten years. One of the things I get SO frustrated with is his inability to share something with me on any emotional level. I think this is where Satan can come in and allow OTHER men, other THINGS, even in the name of the Lord, to come in and take away our devotion to our husbands.

One of the verses that I am struck with concerning this issue is Gen. 3:16. When speaking to Adam and Eve after they ate of the forbidden fruit, God says to the woman, "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; AND THY DESIRE SHALL BE TO THY HUSBAND, AND HE SHALL RULE OVER THEE." One very important thing I was taught concerning how to read the Bible is that whenever you see the word SHALL, that it is a command.......not a suggestion, not an idea, but a command, a directive, so to speak. I was also taught that SHALL always means just that....SHALL, not maybe , not might, not if, but SHALL.   

One of these commands and promises that comes to mind containing the word shall is in Joshua 1:8, "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein, for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success." What this means to me is that if we read God’s word and do what it says, we WILL have good success, of course, this would not be the same success the world affords to people, but GOD’S success and blessings. It is not a suggestion, it does not say, "If you read the Bible and follow it’s suggestions, you MIGHT have success, it says, "THOU SHALT HAVE GOOD SUCCESS".

Am I , as a Christian woman, living in an age that is so far removed from the cross, that I forget that these commands in the Bible are STILL for me today? Am I so rebellious, that I will pick and choose WHICH of the commandments of God I will obey? Can I ignore direct commands of God? Can I arbitrarily decide which of these commandments to follow in my daily life? Should I only choose to follow the great commission in Matt. 1:28, "GO, ye into all the world....", and leave out Gen.3:16b "Thy desire SHALL be to thy husband"? or respect what the Bible says in Ex 20:3, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me?" yet disrespect Eph.5:22, "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord"?

There ARE men that are emotional. I am using emotional here in the sense of tender-hearted, spontaneous, excitable, even exciting, and although I hesitate to use this terminology, men that seem to have "female type" qualities.   

I, however, need a woman to bond with.    Some of us do not have that one woman we can confide in or share things with. My premise for this entire theory is that we as women do not gather in groups or with other women in today’s society This void leaves us longing, yearning and looking for someone with the same type of emotions we have to share things with. Enter another man with these tendencies and you have trouble. Especially if you husband at home is just being a man...someone with different emotions than we have, and since they are different emotions, we think he does not care when he does not respond to us in an emotional way. His response is generally logical and annoying to us emotional females.

Example: My child falls, breaks his leg, I am home alone with the car, I take him to the hospital and get everything fixed. Daddy comes home and I relate the story to him with all the accompanying angst and drama and his response is: "He looks ok to me now, what’s for dinner?"

You want to strangle him. In days gone by, at the next quilting bee, you would share this same story in the same way and every woman there would hug you, pat your hand and her comment would be: "Oh, my goodness, how bad was the break? Was the traffic bad on the way there? Did he cry long? How long does he have to wear the cast? Let me come over Wednesday and help you get some things done, I know you’ll be busy with your little patient".....

See the difference? You are comforted by the other women’s response and aggravated by your husband’s, and your husband’s response was not WRONG, just DIFFERENT. Who do you get your comfort from if you don’t have other women to be with on a regular basis?

Of course, our ultimate comfort should come from the Lord, but when you need comfort with skin on, sometimes a compassionate co-worker, ministry leader or pastor can stand in the gap, leaving your hubby looking like yesterday’s trash.

 MANY preachers who are zealous and passionate, and with seemingly feminine qualities come to my mind. They are NOT prissy or effeminate in any way, but they are very excitable, passionate in what they believe in and how they get that message across. With some, this is just the way they preach, it is their "public personna". I have heard some men thunder from the pulpit with such force and zeal, that I was thankful I was not HIS wife, but have discovered upon meeting this man afterwards, that he is so shy in his "real life", that he can’t even initiate a conversation.   

However, there is the occasional man who is that way in and OUT of the pulpit. Some women are exceedingly drawn to this type of preacher, or person in general. He can give their life the excitement it does not have at home. I myself have been found willing to give up many hours of drudgery at home, by serving in a ministry that is led by a man like this. I believe we need to be VERY careful. Many women can give away their heart and the best part of themselves while leaving thier husband’s and children at home with the leftovers. After the excitement and thrill of working in an enviornment with this type of man, many women will want to go home and throw rocks at their relationship’s with their husbands. The sad part of all of this is they will do this all in the name of Christ and His work.

In Titus 2, one of the admonitions from Paul to the aged women was to teach the younger women ".....to love their husbands, to love their children...". The word love here is used in the agape sense of the word, to have that deep abiding love for our families. The other familiar term we use as "love" is to treat affectionately, to welcome, to befriend. It is the second definition of this word I believe many people use today, when referring to the feelings they have for their pastor.

Having lived in different areas of this country over the years, I have heard this word love used in many different ways. Women and men alike, remark that they "love" their pastor, especially if they work with him on any type of a basis outside of just hearing him preach, or even sometimes when that is the only relationship they have with him.    Maybe he has helped them through his preaching to such an extent that he has straightened out an area in their lives that was quite a struggle.....or perhaps through counsel in his study he has helped this person and their spouse to a better place in their marriage. There are also cultural differences that exist within this country, where people use the word love more freely than others. Sort of like the way you say, "Oh, I just LOVE peach pie", or "I just LOVE that dress you’re wearing". I doubt very seriously any of you mean you have a deep abiding love such as Christ has for His church, for that dress or that piece of pie.

I do not think Paul would have instructed the older women to teach the younger women to love their hubands if there had not been a problem even in that day and age. The Bible is still God’s word for today, is it not? Then it follows that the principals within it still stand, and are there for our edification and example.   

Many of the New Testament men left the home for years at a time to fight in wars, leaving the women at home to "hold down the fort". What did these women do while the men were away at battle? I believe we see in Bible stories and even in world history that these women had social gatherings of some type on a nearly daily basis. As I stated in the introduction to this site, they were seen gathering at rivers to wash, or collect water. They were together at the market place to buy their daily supplies. They met often in each others homes for what we would call Bible Studies. The book of Acts alone shows us how the early church went about it’s daily business and much of that business was conducted in each others homes, or together at a service for the local church. 

God made men and women different. Women are referred to as "the weaker vessel" (I Peter 3:7), and I have been taught that means not only in physical strength, but in emotional strength as well. Men are strong and manly and if they are anything like my husband, SEEMINGLY void of emotion or feeling. Yet we as women are highly emotional creatures and need to share those emotions with others. I think men POSESS these feelings, they are just not as willing or able to express their feelings, due to the way God made them. Can an unemotional man understand what an emotional woman is trying to get him to understand?

Let me use this as an example from my own life. MANY years ago, I had this discussion with my husband. "Honey, I think my hair is really starting to show the gray, do you think I should color it?" His response, after staring at me in unbelief, was, "I don’t care." Now, we women know that hair color and getting older is a very emotional topic for us. And "I don’t care" is NOT what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear, "Honey, I can’t see the gray in your hair, I think you are beautiful, why, you look even younger than the day we married, but if you feel like you need to color your hair, go ahead, I think it would look nice." Well, after the cold water response I got from my husband, I mentioned the same subject to a close friend of mine a few days later, a woman close to my same age. Her response was, "Oh honey, don’t you know I have worried about the same thing for a long time now....I thought it was just me, that I was aging quicker than anyone else.....hey, why don’t we go down to the drugstore and buy some hair color, and I’ll do yours, you do mine and if we don’t like it, we can color it back, okay?"

Now which was the emotional response? Of course my female friend, who wanted to empathize and go through this aging process of life together. Did my husband’s response mean he didn’t care, he didn’t love me any more, or he was going to trade me in for a younger model???? NO! But when he FIRST gave me his response, I was hurt. When I spoke to my friend, I was comforted.   

This is the same situation we see time and time throughout the Bible. I think specifically of the story of Dorcas in Acts 9:39-43. It is the widows (women) we see running up to Peter with the beautiful coats that Docas had made, lamenting that she was now gone and how much they would miss her. This was a purely emotional reaction to the loss of a good friend. Peter on the other hand did the very practical, logical and unemotional man thing, reached down and raised her from the dead, and in my minds eye I see him doing this so these crying emotional women would just cease their weeping. Nowhere in this account do I see any emotion on the part of Peter.    He simply did what he needed to do, no emotion added. Even in the movie "My Fair Lady", Dr. Henry Higgins laments in song about the fair Eliza...."why can’t a woman be more like a man?" Truly this is a dilemma that crosses all social, economic and cultural borders.

Women throughout history gathered together OFTEN. This is where this sharing of how to love your husbands, how to love your children, how to be sober, how to be obedient , and how to be keepers at home occurred. It was where women’s EMOTIONAL needs were met. Ladies, it is IMPOSSIBLE for our husbands to meet ALL of our emotional needs. If a husband is doing HIS duties the way he is supposed to biblically, then he is gone a good part of the day, providing for the family. This is God’s plan. A man is called to his work, and a woman is called to her man. Women gathered in groups for emotional support and to exchange information. 

Let me give you another example from my own life. I have learned many things about keeping the home from my mother. I have learned yet OTHER, different things from other women in my life about basic, simple domestic chores. One time I got a call from a young lady, a very close friend of mine. She had a question about how to tell if something she had been storing in her refrigerator had gone bad. This seemed like a very ridiculous question, but then I thought..."you know, her mother lives in a far away state, she has no family here, has lived here since right after she got married, and really was not involved in any ladies group in the church where she could ask that type of question and not be laughed at."......so I just told her what MY MOTHER HAD TAUGHT ME about that situation, and her response was, "Oh, that makes sense"....end of discussion. Can you imagine the response if she had asked her husband? Not that this was an emotional topic, but it certainly would be considered a topic involving only "the keepers of the home".

Today’s society has changed in how we get information and where we get our comfort. We no longer live on the same property as many of our extended relatives. We do not talk face to face with others on any type of a regular basis unless we work outside the home. We are constantly in touch with each other via email, fax, modem, cellphone, telephone, internet, pagers, instant messaging and the occasional letter delivered snail mail. I have never heard sympathy over my email, seen a tear drop fall from a fax, or feel the warm touch of someone's have via cellphone.

Don’t get me wrong, I have most of these fancy new high tech communication devices and I use them often. You are able to read this today due to the technological wonder of the World Wide Web. But nothing, I repeat NOTHING will ever replace women gathering together with other women for emotional support, to exchange information and to just commune together as only women can do.

I end this discussion with the answer I think the Bible would give about why the stay at home wife and mother was most likely to have the extra marital affair. I think she was lonely, isolated and craved the emotional exchange that only being with other women can answer. She loved her husband, she loved her children, she loved her home, yet something was missing. I contend that she needed to join a Bible study, go to a Tupperware party, join a ladies bowling league, host a ladies tea, do SOMETHING with other women on a regular basis. These things would have completed her life and fulfilled the emotional needs her husband could not meet. She would not have the need to spend too many hours working in a ministry trying to fill that void that could have been filled by fellowship with other women, with the same emotional needs as she had.

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