2012 Emphasis #3: Gender-specific discipleship for Bridge women
not actual T2C logo
We’ve been taking time on the blog for the last week to roll out the major initiatives from our elders for the next year. We hit the first two major emphases HERE and HERE. The third major emphasis addresses something we’ve seen God building within our body for a LONG time now…
Gender-specific discipleship and training for Bridge women
One of the interesting things about The Bridge is the uncommonly high number of godly, courageous men that permeate our church and disciple and lead like men should. This is both Biblical and awesome as our culture increasingly sees boys try to stay boys forever and avoid manly responsibility at home, work, and church.
What we’ve seen in the last few years though is God providing a groundswell of godly, leadership-oriented women in our church body who are hungry to minister to other women. In addition to the virtual uprising of godly women passionate for ministry we’ve also seen God entrust The Bridge with HUNDREDS of young women, new moms, and new wives who need encouragement, discipleship, and training. This is good, as Titus 2 gives these instructions to women in a young pastor’s church…
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 younger 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.
Seeing both what God has been doing in the women of our church body and this command in Scripture, we’re working toward launching a “Titus 2 Collective” (T2C) later this year with the vision of raising up an army of grace-filled, counter-cultural, godly women in Spring Hill, Thompson Station, and Columbia. We’re still working on laying the foundation of everything this will be, but we know we want it to include…
- Leadership from godly women who are called to encourage and help shepherd other women
- Encouragement for tired, discouraged, and often guilt-laden singles, wives, and mothers
- Training in Biblical womanhood in the three roles mentioned in Titus 2 (Christian, wife, mother)
Will people just keep sinning if you preach too much grace?
After getting a few very similar messages, I wanted to follow up on yesterday’s sermon with a quick post today. In yesterday’s “Killing Guilt” sermon, we saw from Romans 3 that Jesus is our true “propitiation” that satisfies [all] of God’s punishment for our sin and our true “justification” that secures God’s moment-by-moment declaration of “not guilty” for us. Then I made this statement…
A lot of people ask the question, “Then how does God feel toward me when I sin?” The answer is, “Exactly how he felt toward Jesus when he did not sin.”
Then last night and this morning it seemed like a few people all had the same concern with this statement. All four people voiced it differently, but all of their concerns could be stated like this…
“OK, I get grace and I believe it. But won’t people just keep on sinning if you preach too much grace!?”
The assumption is that what a person who’s walking in sin needs is to be threatened with the law and made to feel guilty in order to get them to obey. First, I just want to say that all of these people – and you, if you have that same concern – have a good desire. They desire to see people glorify God and not harm others in how they live – a desire that The Bible is very much for! But Biblically, saying “If you give people too much grace, they’ll stop obeying!” is like saying, “If you give people too much oxygen, they’ll stop breathing!“. A few things from Scripture…
- Grace always comes before obedience in the Bible. The Bible is so rich and true that we learn not just from what it says, but from how it says what it says. Have you ever noticed that there is not a single command (imperative) about what we should do in the New Testament that isn’t preceded by a reminder about what God has already done (indicative)? Seriously. Not one. In every epistle in the New Testament, the readers are FIRST reminded that because of their union with Christ, God is going to accept them regardless of their track record. Only AFTER that are people instructed about how to honor God with their lives.
- Grace – not law – motivates a person to obey. This is particularly clear in Titus 2:11-12. Here’s what it says: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age”. So, what is it that motivates (trains) a person to avoid ungodliness and run toward godliness? We would expect it to be the law, fear of punishment, threats of wrath, etc. But it’s not. It’s THE GRACE OF GOD, according to Titus 2:11-12!
- Small thoughts of grace – not small thoughts of law – cause a person to disobey. Check out 2 Peter 1:5-9 HERE. It says that if godliness is absent from the life of a Christian, the reason ISN’T that they’re “not afraid of God enough” and it ISN’T that they don’t feel guilty enough. It says, “For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.” So why do Christians sin? They sin when the captivating reality of God’s radical acceptance of sinners grows small before their eyes!
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THE LAW AND GRACE: TRACKS AND A TRAIN
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