What is Titus 2 Missions?

Titus 2: 3-5 provides the Biblical mandate that "older women" train and instruct the "younger women" to be the women who God intends them to become. Indeed, God's Word has much to say about what God desires women to be, how we should live, how we should act, how we should treat others, and how we are to live out His commands.  This blog, Titus 2 Missions, is my effort to be and become the Titus 2 woman that I am commanded to be. This blog is the culmination of many nights of ceaseless prayer. I have begged and cried out, searched and wondered, "Lord, what will you USE me for? Lord, please show me what it is that YOU want me to do!" He has been working this plan out in His way probably since eternity past and knows the end of the plan into eternity future. However, I have been feeling His tug at my heart since 2007.


Having just returned home from the The Gospel Coalition's 2012 Women's Conference in Orlando, Florida, I am absolutely thrilled to share what the Lord has been doing in my life. Today's post is simply intended to be the overview, and I will add more updates along the way. Although I have dabbled in blogging in the past, today's blog represents my renewed effort to get serious about expressing the gracious work God is doing in my life. Before I can get to work, I must introduce the entire situation. I want you to understand exactly where I am coming from.

My husband and I have three children together, and we have been married for ten years. He works in the financial industry, and I am employed as an English teacher in a public high school and as an adjunct instructor of English at a local community college (I teach online college classes and face-to-face high school classes). In the largest part of my heart and soul, I have long desired to be a stay at home wife and a homeschooling mother. In fact, shortly after I placed my faith in the Lord, I grew an enormous faith that He would make those dreams into a reality at some point in time. I was pregnant with my now 4-year-old when I began praying that He would make the homeschool, stay-at-home-wife dream into a reality. I have spent endless days and nights crying in disappointment that my plan has obviously NOT been the Lord's plan for my life so far.


Sorrowfully, I can now admit that I have lived day-to-day believing that God has been silent in answering my prayers. In fact, there have been days, the worst and most upsetting days, when I have actually felt condemned and abandoned by my Lord. I have struggled to keep my faith, but HE has continually brought me back to HIS promise that HE will never leave me nor forsake me. HE has continually reminded me that there are no heights of mountains nor depths of the sea, nothing, that could separate me from HIS love. And though HE has written HIS words upon my heart, I have truly struggled many days to see and truly believe and to love Him with all my heart, all my soul and all my might. 


What I see now, ever so clearly, is that all this time that I have been waiting, I was simply NOT seeing that God has already answered my deepest prayers. I see now, in fact, that He has not only answered my prayers, but He has answered in a MUCH BIGGER way than I ever could have expected. Not only has God protected my children, blessed my home, delivered me from the evil of the world, but He has also provided me with a Mission Field. When I asked that He allow me to stay home in order to spend more time doing His work with the church or to become involved in local missions, He went BIGGER and brought me all the way into the Mission Field. 


My Mission Field includes anyone reading this blog, any woman I have spent time with, invited into my home, planned playdates with, or any one who has ever been my student online, in the classroom, or even here on this blog today. The Lord has gifted me as a teacher, and He has given me a teachable spirit. I am just as interested in learning as the Titus 2 "young woman" as I am in instructing as the Titus 2 "older woman." 


I would like to encourage you to ask questions, provide insight, and simply to comment on my posts. If you are an "older woman," please do not hold back your wisdom. You have valuable wisdom that the rest of us need to hear. If you are an "younger woman," please ask questions; let me know where your struggles are. Not only will you be encouraging me to remain faithful to this mission field, but you will also help our sisters in Christ to know they are not alone, since most of us share the same struggles and are frequently too ashamed to ask for help.


As a final thought, please note that I have used the terms "older woman" and "younger woman" with quotations around them to indicate that these terms are in relation to spiritual maturity and not necessarily chronological age, as Susan Hunt pointed out at the conference this past weekend. 

"But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?"-- Romans 10:14, NLT