One character trait leads to the next...

We have been chatting about self-control and purity. In the verse we are taking apart:
Titus 2:3-5 "Older women likewise, are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderous or slave 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 husbands so that the word of God may not be reviled"

I love the order God gave for each of His distinctives here. First priority for a married young woman is to love her husband, then her children. How precious this priority is and can I even say that loving our husbands IS loving our children. Children will grow up in the most secure, safe, loving home as husbands and wives love each other first. In that order they know that they are secure and protected under that love which mom and dad posses. When that gets skewed towards loving our children first, we set ourselves up for disharmony and tension.

Then God moves from an established home, ordered in love, to what that life will exhibit. And in that He also sets up a Godly order where one trait gives way to the other. Out of self-control, purity is born. When we are setting up protective walls for our mind and heart... purity is protected. When we don't let in corrupt morals, deceptive thought and self-centered emotion we preserve purity.

Now comes the hard questions...taking what we know out of our heads and putting it into practice...How are you doing? What protection have you established since we last talked about it? What have you walked away from in order to preserve pure thoughts? Are there warning signs in your life today, that you need to respond to and set up protection for yourself? How about for your children? What are the struggles that rob joy in your life? Remember taking control is not based on what you can do BUT it is based on the power of Christ in your life...it is exchanging the temporal for something much greater, much more enjoyable and eternal. It is as Paul says "Taking every thought captive and placing it UNDER the authority of Christ"
We submit every attitude, every emotion, every concept that we have about life and place it under Christ. That means His standard is our judgement bar. His Words become our plumb line...our measurement.

E-mail me your thoughts at Girlschat@gmail.com