An Addendum to Godly Fellowship, Part 5: More Meditations on Biblical Womanhood.

“’Mature femininity’ refers not to what sin has made of womanhood or what popular opinion makes of it, but what God willed for it to be at its best.”

- John Piper and Wayne Grudem, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

I believe that these posts serve as a good arena for passing on advice without being flirtatious, so please let me go ahead and share some things that I have heard and read regarding godly womanhood. Several young men that I know are chomping at the bit to meet godly young women. Yet many of the young women that we meet, even inside churches, display little if any desire to be like Christ.

I praise God for the young women in my generation and in other generations who do know what it means to be a woman of worth and seek to put down the things of this world and pursue God. Let this be an encouragement to them and an exhortation to all women who may read this.

First, I would like to point you to the lyrics to “Work It Out”, by Shai Linne, available at his blog, Lyrical Theology.

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Eric Mason's two-part message from December 2007, The Wise Woman, is a goldmine for insight into Biblical womanhood. You can find the full sermons at Epiphany Fellowship's website. Since I have not seen them transcribed anywhere, here are some especially memorable quotes from the first message.

“Another thing that young women are learning today is ‘calling’ – small letter – at the expense of ‘Calling’ – big letter. … I believe that women are being taught about the call of God that comes subjectively through feelings, intuitions, and personal dreams – not fueled by big C [Calling]. Everybody’s saying, ‘I feel it in my spirit that the Lord wants me to…’, but never, ‘I’m looking at the Scriptures, and I’m feeling that what I’m feeling in my spirit [isn’t] what the Spirit is giving.

“God’s woman is a woman of rich depth. It says here, ‘An excellent wife, who can find?’ Adam didn’t have to ask that question. ... In Genesis, God brought an excellent woman [Rebekah] to him [Isaac]. She wasn’t a rarity, but because of the Fall, this question has to be asked now. … Sin has so pervaded our lives that there has to be an eternal search committee together to help a man to find a good woman. ….

“The first Eve wanted to create meaning for her life. So what happened was, … when the enemy came to her, and she began to lay out what God had instructed Adam, what Adam had passed on to her, the devil [said], ‘You know, He doesn’t want you to eat because He doesn’t want you to have the knowledge of good and evil. That’s how He’s saying things now? God’s a trip. … He’s a tyrant. I don’t like Him either. And [do] you know what He wants to do? He wants to hold you back. He wants to limit your freedoms. It’s a conspiracy, girl, because He wants to stop you from getting your potential, woman of God. … He’s trying to stop you from getting to the next level.’ … Eve said, ‘Amen, devil; Amen! Hallelujah!’ … The devil always wants you to focus on your restrictions: can women preach in the church? … ‘What about this? What about that?’ … So that when he has you focused on ‘whatever’, your eyes get taken off of Him. The woman of worth is a different type of woman. …

“It [the word for ‘excellent’] could be translated ‘a woman of wealth, who can find her?’. He’s not talking about pearls; He’s not talking about diamonds; He’s not talking about earrings. He’s not talking about being able to shop at Tiffany’s. He’s not talking about being able to shop at Saks Fifth Avenue, and not the outlet. He’s not talking about being able to shop at Neiman Marcus, and not the outlet. … He’s not talking about how many crunches you can do, or how you can get a six-pack like Janet Jackson’s. … He’s talking about a woman who is loaded with worth – internal worth. …

“The woman of worth is so valuable – she’s so spiritually gorgeous – she’s so spiritually weighty that a man is hard pressed to find her. He says, ‘I’m not shallow, baby. I’m not talking about the ditzy girls. I’m not talking about a chick, baby.’ See, there’s a difference between a ‘chick’ and a woman. A ‘chick’ is just somebody in the crowd that flosses her physical physique. Fellas on the block say, ‘Aw man, look at that chick over there. I like that chick.’ But then there’s some women, that when you run across them, their essence demands an upgrade. … There is just something that oozes out of [their souls] that demands that they be approached differently. The question is today, women, is: what do you use as a barometer and as a measuring rod for whether or not you’re worth anything? …

“Because of the Lord, you can respond differently to life. See, the woman of worth is a new brand of a woman. … I hate when people say, ‘Man, that woman is a dying breed.’ That’s not good news. Ladies, the woman of worth can’t be a dying breed. There is a call on your life by God to be a woman of worth. There is a call on your life to be beefy in the faith. There is a call on your life to be a theologian – amen! There is a call on your life for your soul to be rich and dripping with what it means to be a Biblical woman, an excellent woman. Jesus has given us everything we need for righteousness and godliness, and that’s not just for men. …

“It is not because you are good in and of yourself, ladies. … It is because Jesus Christ is in your life. … What does the woman of worth value that makes her valuable? A woman of worth is valuable because she first values Jesus. And how do you know that she values Jesus? She values God’s ordained role for her. Eve in the garden didn’t know that the enemy was switching roles. … He wanted to reverse God’s order, and instead of it being God/man/woman/children/animals, he wanted to switch it for it to be devil, woman, and man. The woman of worth understands that submission does not mean a subtraction of worth, but an emphasis on worth. When you try to live outside of God’s ordained bounds or role, you’re living below your calling. Paul said in 2 Cor. 11:3, ‘For I betroth you to one husband, which is Christ. But I am afraid that, as the devil tempted Eve, you may be drawn away from the simplicity of devotion to Christ.’ … Not only that; she values the Word. …

“Not only does she value her God-ordained role, but she understands that her internal beauty increases her external beauty. There’s nothing worse than seeing a fly sister, and then she comes on the scene saying, ‘ ‘EY! ‘EY! COME HERE! … HA HA. YOU HEARD THAT!’ There’s nothing worse than [a] loud-talkin’, gum-poppin’, cigarette-smokin’, think-she’s-all-that chick. … A lot of guys like the girl that looks ‘a’ight’. She even looks ‘a’ight’, but … she’s the woman that probably nobody paid much attention to. But then in Bible study, she raises her hand and asks a question. And everybody kind of turns around and looks, … and then all the fellas are scheming about who’s going to holler at her first. … And not just that she quotes verses, even though we want verses, because sometimes some of us will throw verses out there as a fog, because some of us may like somebody and we know they like verses. But she memorizes the verses, contemplates them; and she repents of her sin. She weeps before the Lord when she has wronged somebody. She doesn’t wear her emotions on her forehead.

“Ladies, I pray today for you, that the best thing about you is your soul. I’m telling you, I don’t care how much perfume you put on. I don’t care how much lipstick. I don’t care if you use MAC makeup. You know what I’m saying? … We want you to look nice. We don’t want you going, ‘He said I could be like this. 1 Corinthians 5 says…!’ … That does have importance in Proverbs 31, but we wanted to make sure you understood the other stuff first.”

- Eric Mason, “The Wise Woman, Part 1”

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“She [your wife] must love God more than she loves you.”

- Kuya Ariel from my church.

Godly Fellowship: Part Five: Kuyas and Ates, and the Trade of Becoming a Biblical Adult.

“ ^11: I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong— ^12: that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith.”

- Romans 1:11-12

Now what about the other men?

Older men and married men can pour a lot of knowledge into single men. And since single men have more time to spend reading the Bible and theology books, perhaps the edification can go both ways. (* That is if they are the Apostle Paul's kind of single. I know almost completely beyond a doubt that I do not have the gift of remaining single forever, and I am still somewhat perplexed that the Word of God calls it a "gift". But at the same time, the verse that said single people have more time to serve the Lord is not nonsense. I have said, "Yeah, right", to that passage for many years. But we should treat it as no less inerrant, no less divinely inspired, and no less true than anything else in Scripture. Let us not think for a second that the God who saved us and is perfect in every way would ever tell a lie.)

Voddie Baucham's book What He Must Be is an amazing explanation of biblical manhood and how to prepare ourselves as young men for leading a family Biblically when God, in His timing, entrusts us to fulfill that role in our households.

Pastor Baucham had this to say to fathers:

"Take an interest in young men in your church. Engage them in conversation. Find out who they are, what they like, how they think, and what their hopes and dreams are. I am convinced that there are more eligible young men out there than most of us think. Unfortunately, we are not simply turning over enough rocks to find what we're looking for. We are all searching for the young man who looks like a king while ignoring the shepherd boy who has exactly what God is looking for (1 Samuel 16:1-12)."

This is part of a very well-titled chapter: "Can't Find One?... Build One."

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We as young people would do well to live this out in the other way: by purposefully seeking to spend time with older believers (our Kuyas and Ates, for my readers from the Philippines :-) ). Not all of them are living out Biblical manhood and womanhood, but we can identify those who are and seek them out. Pastor Mason, in a four-part series of sermons called The Wise Man and The Wise Woman, brought up the point that we ought not to trust just anyone’s advice in regards to spiritual maturity or Biblical manhood and womanhood:

“[They are] very careful what women they listen to. They don’t let all women in the body speak into their life. … She’s willing to call into remembrance everything that’s in the Word of God and say, ‘That sounds good, but it’s not Bible.’ In other words, you’ve got to begin … to have a funnel for who you allow to speak into your life, because somebody could be trying to speak the order of God right out of your life – and then you’ll begin to subtract in value. You begin to subtract in value, because you’ve taken order into your own hands.”

- Eric Mason, “The Wise Woman, Part 1”

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“Just because someone is old does not make them wise. Never forget: the fables are the ones 'carried by elderly women'. There are a lot of old fools, who have no business giving counsel in the church because their counsel is based on their experience. I don't need your 'experience', unless it is only given as an illustration to what you're teaching me in the Word. Do not give your opinion; it's worth nothing. Be able to open up your mouth and give the Word. 'Well, I think...' - no, it doesn't matter. What does He say? …

"And just because someone is young does not make them foolish.... [Robert Murray McCheyne] is a boy when he is writing some of this stuff - a boy! And yet I can spend a thousand days in my study and not be able to come up with what he has written in a paragraph!

"Young people, listen to me: You have been taught the lie of adolescence, so that you believe that you're not supposed to become a man or a mature woman until you are in your thirties. There are 12-year-olds that God has used to change the world. Why don't you join the ranks? Lay aside the Xboxes and all the silly things on television; and discipline yourself to godliness, so that God can use you!"

- Paul Washer, “Things Applicable for God’s Servants”

Biblical manhood and womanhood is a trade that we younger Christians must learn – and take even more seriously than we do our own jobs. And not all other Christians that you meet will give you Biblically correct, sound advice. Some will give you false doctrine or thoughts based in psychology or other worldly wisdom. While we need to respect our elders (Leviticus 19:32 and others) and obey them when told as long as it does not force us to disobey God, we need to consider their advice to us in light of Scripture.

Most of the time, people are thought of as “open-minded” or “closed-minded”. “Open-minded” means that they will accept anything they are told; “closed-minded” means that they are set in their ways and beliefs and will not change for any reason. In one of my favorite parts of his book The Bravehearted Gospel, Eric Ludy says that as Christians we need to have what he calls the “canon-mind”, testing everything and holding onto the good (1 Thessalonians 5:21) and using Scripture as the measuring rod to determine what ideas and thoughts to accept or reject. (For an example of this, he tells how early church fathers would determine what books to include in the Bible. It is a fascinating read.)

Reading good Christian books and listening to sermons about this is great. Most of our peers are not doing that, but they should. But it is better to also see this truth lived out. This is one of the best practical benefits that we can gain from church: the community. This extends beyond your own age and your own hobbies. If a fellow Christian who seeks out sound doctrine can speak any of the same languages that you do, you can minister to them; and they, to you. Even if a language barrier does exist between you and them, you can still both learn from each other’s actions.

Whether they serve in full-time ministry or not, every young man in a church body ought to take some lessons from the life of Timothy. And the older men discipling them ought to model Paul by providing words and actions worth emulating. This is how the faith gets passed down: not by assuming that the generation after us knows the gospel and does not need to hear any more about it, but by constantly learning the truths of God and pouring them into future generations. Pray hard that you will leave this kind of legacy on earth after God takes you home:

"These are my last words. This is my last phrase.

These are my last thoughts. These are my last days.

My life's invested in you, just as Jesus did for me.

And through you I live on, so continue on with this legacy.

Your prayer for me - carry out the evidence of this love,

And let the truth you learned in youth that you're convinced of.

Yes, sir; God inspired these words to teach you

So you'll know the truth and it could reach you.

Then it reproves you and it beats you,

Corrects you and straightens you up just where it needs to.

Then it instructs you and disciplines and trains you

In righteousness, so you're equipped to be who God has made you.

And what I gave you is more than my words.

It's my life transferred, since the day we conferred.

So preach the Word, in and out of season. The reason

is Jesus. Believe that I've seen Him. They need Him.

"Now, I've been running this race for some time.

Now I hand it off to you 'cause it's the end of my life.

I'm praying that, oh, wherever you roam,

[you] know you'll never walk alone, oh no.

Keep your faith in the Word of the Lord.

Teaching men to worship Christ is what we live for.

Then give it back like I'm giving to you.

The time is yours. It's yours."

- 116 Clique, "It's Yours (2 Timothy)"

Godly Fellowship: Part Four: The Way of a Man with a Maiden.

[Note: This was one of the first notes I wrote in this series. The content of this post is mostly unedited from the original draft from fall 2009, since I still consider the points valid.]

¹⁸ "There are three things that are too amazing for me,
four that I do not understand:

¹⁹ the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a maiden.”

- Proverbs 30:18-19

“Love is not a slave lord that whips a man out of all other thinking or doing, leaving him only with the desire or power to love.”

- Jim Elliot, The Journals of Jim Elliot, “Ecuador, 1952-1955”

How Biblical is it to segment the church body into ages by year, genders, marital statuses, relationship statuses, and the like?

It's not.

And yet, why are most of my friends other single young men who are not in relationships?

Granted, I don't seek out the company of most women. I have some friends who are married women, some friends who are single women significantly older than I am, and some female friends that are just friends.

But most of the time, I seek out godly men for fellowship. This is because, if I seek to become too involved in talking to the ladies and fellowshipping with them face-to-face, it can become a great challenge (greater than it already is) to guard my heart - and to do my part in guarding theirs. I heard something in a sermon by Eric Mason that really validated that. He mentioned how shortly after he got married, an older man in his church took him aside and told him that the way he went about edifying other women in his church was wrong:

"The way that you are ministering to her is flirtatious. I bet when you tell her, 'We need to stop hanging out', she's going to break down crying."

Pastor Mason then said, "Even though I was not sinning with her, it was an encumbrance that was stopping her from growing and stopping me from growing."

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Now what about the men who are in relationships, but not yet married?

These are the people that I just do not get. Sure, you're seeing somebody. Sure, you want to spend time with her. But don't ditch your boys in the process!

You see, you can be real around your boys. If you're following a worldly dating relationship, chances are you are not being real around that girl. Some of you are showing your girlfriends your best face so that you can keep her. And while it is a girl's business to know if her prospective future husband has any skeletons in his closet (spiritual or otherwise), if you're being as open about things you are struggling with to a girl that you are just dating, you or she can still decide to end the relationship, go your separate ways... and she can tell all of her friends your life story. Basically, what I'm saying is: during your non-married life your closest go-to people for spiritual advice, fellowship, or anything ought to be other men who seek to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world.

I have a few young men that I still fellowship with on a semi-regular basis. One thing they have in common is that most of them are single and not seeing anybody. But other young men (plural!) who would be a great source of fellowship have basically kicked me out of the orchestra (not even second fiddle) as soon as they started seeing somebody. Or at the very least, I become a third wheel.

I realize I may seem like I have been whining in this section of the post. But what I want to say is, I am there for you if you want me to be there. If you don't want me to be there, I suppose I should either make my case to you Biblically about why I should still be there, or get out of your way. Don't kick a single person out of your circle of friends just for being single, without giving them book, chapter, and verse as to why. And if your only reason why is that they are single, you won't be able to give them book, chapter, and verse - because it's not there. I realize that people in different seasons of their lives can, in some ways, be better ministered to by others who are in the same situation. However, the Bible still calls for cross-generational, cross- relationship status fellowship that does not come at the complete expense of ministering and fellowshipping with others who are like ourselves. All who the Lord has saved and, therefore, made into a new creation ought to claim their identity in Christ.

I haven't seen anything in the Bible yet that says the New Testament church needs to be segregated or divided on this particular line, or that there is any social hierarchy in the church's fellowship based on relationship status. (I do realize that elders and deacons need to be "the man of but one wife" - basically, one-woman men, since the Apostle Paul remained single. I am also not considering sinful types of relationships to be Scripturally valid. This is a separate rabbit trail and should not be considered the theme of this post or comment-worthy.)

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^{“ 4}For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

“ ⁵May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, ⁶so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“ ⁷Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. ⁸ For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God's truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs ⁹ so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy, as it is written:
"Therefore I will praise You among the Gentiles;
I will sing hymns to Your name." ¹⁰ Again, it says,
"Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people." ¹¹ And again,
"Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,
and sing praises to him, all you peoples." ¹² And again, Isaiah says,
"The Root of Jesse will spring up,
one who will arise to rule over the nations;
the Gentiles will hope in Him."^[f]

- Romans 15:4-12

Godly Fellowship: Part Three: Future Footnotes in History vs. The Eternal.

I have been fortunate to have had some Christian co-workers early in my career. I could talk theology at length with some of them in the office, and nobody else would seem to care as long as we got our work done. Later, I worked in a place where nearly all of the conversation that was not work-related was about either computer games or drinking. As far as I know, there were probably no other Christians at this company. I liked that job for the challenges that it gave me. The work was the hardest work I'd ever done, and I sought hard to do it "as to the Lord". I was nearly always exhausted at the end of the day; and without the encouragement of Christian brothers, every week felt like a climb of Everest without an oxygen tank.

In it, the Lord taught me something about the great value of reflecting on Him alongside others who know Him as we each seek to make His name great throughout each passing week. Just as spiritual things are not merely to be left in church, godly fellowship is not meant to be confined to church services or church functions. Don't invite God to your small group and then kick Him out as soon as you say Amen in the closing prayer.

There is a sense in which the things of God can be the only worthwhile topic of conversation. Our lives are but a breath. We can speak only finitely many words during a day, even when we consider our myriad ways to communicate with the technology of today. And most of the things we talk about do not even matter beyond today, let alone beyond this life. What movies did you make a big deal of, ten years ago? Does anyone talk about them today? Do people still speak with the same enthusiasm about Star Wars Episode I or The Sixth Sense today as they do about Harry Potter and Twilight? Maybe a few do, if they worked on those aforementioned films and/or want to relive their glory days. But most do not.

Do you memorize movie quotes or Scripture? Do you spit back song lyrics from the radio or the truth of Christ? Do you ramble on about baseball or football statistics that will be a footnote in athletic history as soon as next season, or do you encourage your friends to live their lives for the Lord of glory? If you say you love God, how many of your words make much of Him?

"But I do that in small group!"

Yes, but we often tend to divide our schedules into time slots saying, "I will learn about Christ for this hour", or "I will listen to what my brothers have to say for two hours on a Thursday." It is true that we must be disciplined in remaining in His presence through prayer, meditation, sacred reading, and all the others. But if we truly live for Christ, he is not an item on our schedule that we check off and then go do all the other things that we find more important than Him or that we would rather be doing.

"If any occupation or association is found to hinder our communion with God or our enjoyment of spiritual things, then it must be abandoned. Anything in my habits or ways which mars happy fellowship with the brethren or robs me of power in service, is to be unsparingly judged and made an end of-- 'burned.' Whatever I cannot do for God's glory must be avoided."

- A.W. Pink.

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"The church must be marked by a different language than the world exhibits, a peculiar speech. We must choose to speak redemptively."

- Tullian Tchividjian, Unfashionable.

As I continue to walk with Christ, I realize the futility of my efforts to be “relevant” to my culture – both the American culture where I grew up and the Filipino culture that I have more or less adopted – because relevance becomes an idol. When I look at men in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, that God used to do great things for Him or just to love Him deeply, I sense that some of these men were set apart from their culture, even from other people of God – taking Nazirite vows, having only a couple of friends, and so on. Daniel and his three friends were noticed because they were set apart as holy. The prophets in general were men that did not “engage the culture” and seek to be as much like it as possible in order to present God’s message, but men who knew their Lord and could say with confidence, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says”. If we used the energy that we expend on learning how to be like the world and become “relevant” to them to learn the things of God instead, then I think the people of American Christendom would feel far less empty.

Pastor Matt Chandler signs his letters not with “Love” or “Sincerely” or “Your Friend”, but with “Christ Is All”. And a song we sing at my church, by Tim Hughes, says, “God in my living / There in my breathing / God in my waking / God in my sleeping / God in my resting / There in my working / God in my thinking / God in my speaking: // Be my everything.” To the Christian, Christ is more necessary than food, than water, than air, than life. Therefore, the divide between sacred and secular should not exist; such a divide, at times, gives the "secular" a more important place than the sacred. All things are made by Christ and for Christ (Romans 11:36). Any time that we live, work, or speak as though Christ were not All is wasted time.

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Leslie Ludy writes in When God Writes Your Life Story,

"Most of us are all too familiar with real-life mode versus Christ mode. For some of us, the switch is less obvious. ... But still, it is all too easy to split our lives into spiritual and non-spiritual categories. During our daily life, as we interact with friends and watch movies and pursue our dreams, we rarely pause to listen to the soft inner voice of God's Spirit. ...

"To really abide in Christ, we must determine that every day, every hour, every minute will revolve around Him, not us. We must become like eager servants, standing by the chair of our Master, awaiting His next request, willing to do whatever it takes to please Him."

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"When I ain't know who I was, every day I wasted life.

Pagan days of people pleasing 'cause I wasn't chasing Christ.

Worried about the he say, she say - I'd repeat it like a replay.

I was chasing their approval like a runner in a relay.

I was believing that if I got it, no doubt it'd be all good.

But even if I got it, somehow it would fall through.

I tried to keep standing, living by a weak standard,

Believing even Jesus received me based on my weak merits.

Lies from the pit, lies I won't forget;

Lies that ruin lives and keep you blind to who you is:

[a] Sinner saved by grace, through faith for Jesus' sake.

So what you have, count as loss as we press to see His face. ....

"Every Christian's on the track, but are we focused like a scope?

Or are we racing, never pacing? Are we running to the goal?

Upward calling, full in knowledge?

Nothing hollow like the lotto; true rewards from God the Father?

Well we should be, no matter what they say, or even throw at us.

Keep rolling up, and pressing in; and showing folks you rest in Him.

See, when it's all said and done, I wanna be true to Christ.

I wanna see fruit that's proof to know it's true to life.

So look to Him; give up everything you have to make it to Him.

To know Him fully, becoming holy as you pursue Him.

To all my saints, who know they're saved

But know there's more to gain:

Keep pressing till the end, when we will see Him face to face!"

- Tedashii, "Work"

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"Why don't we have relationships that are like camaraderie in a cause? The answer: no cause! You don't make deep relationships watching television with anybody; believe me. You don't make deep relationships watching movies. You don't make deep relationships sitting arm-by-arm working joysticks. You don't make relationships that way.

"Relationships are made when you link arms in a cause worthy of a human soul, and you risk something, and you take a chance, and you suffer together, and you meet each other in the hospital or somewhere - and you say, 'We made it!', or 'We didn't make it, and I'll see you in heaven.' There is something that happens in relationships when you are devoted to a cause worthy of your life."

- John Piper, "Be Strong and Fervent in Spirit in the Cause of Truth and Life".