Joni Eareckson Tada, herself no stranger to chronic pain, writes of Anne Steele, “Hers was a ministry of suffering.”5. She goes on to say, “Do you serve God in your suffering? We serve him when we imitate Jesus’s endurance in our suffering. Or his patience in the face of disappointment or his perseverance while shouldering our cross. . . . And when we choose contentment over complaining, we imitate his glad willingness to submit to the Father’s terrible yet wonderful will. All of it comprises a fragrant, sacrificial service to God.”6 

When John Rippon published his influential hymnal A Selection of Hymns in 1787, 101 of the texts were by the short-lived but prolific Philip Doddridge (1702–1751). The second-most-represented author, with 47 texts in the hymnal, was Baptist poet Anne Steele. For many years, Steele’s poems figured prominently in evangelical hymnals, but by the early 20th century, her works nearly disappeared. By 1950, hymnologist Albert Bailey could write that “all but one of her 144 hymns are now forgotten.”1
However, Steele wrote hymns worth remembering and learning, hymns born out of a life of disappointment, grief, and suffering. When she was three years old, her mother died. A hip injury at age nineteen led to chronic physical pain for Anne. She also dealt with symptoms of malaria throughout her life. Many accounts of her life state that she was engaged to one Robert Elscourt, who drowned the day before or the day of their wedding. This may be a romanticized addition to her life, though she did remain unmarried her whole life.2 Her father remarried, but his second wife died when Anne was forty-three. A sister-in-law died two years later. Anne’s father developed poor health late in his life, and Anne cared for him until he died in 1769.
Despite the suffering and difficulty, Anne’s faith and hope were in God. Her father, a well-to-do merchant, also served as a deacon and eventually pastor of a Baptist church in Broughton, England. Anne joined the church at age 14 and from an early age exhibited a faith that expressed itself through poetry. She began to write primarily for her own devotional use, but her father saw the value of his daughter’s poetry and introduced these hymns to his church. Anne was initially reluctant to show her work to a wider audience, but through the encouragement of her father and step-mother, as well as a small group of pastors who championed her work,3 she submitted poetry for publication when she was in her early forties. The resulting book, Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional and published under the pen name Theodosia, introduced people to a significant new voice in hymnody. Baptist hymnologists Harry Eskew and Hugh McElrath state, “Miss Steele was the foremost of a group of Baptist hymnists . . . who, because their hymns possess a quality unsurpassed before or since, constitue a ‘Golden Age of Baptist Hymnody.’”4
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When we continue to identify our position in Christ with a particular sin, we are in essence denying the redemptive efficacy of Christ’s atonement.  What miraculously reborn believer wishes to announce or imply such an affirmation?  Denying the redemptive efficacy of Christ’s atonement assuredly rates equal to the heresies of the past that were so soundly resisted by the Church.

Church, Christians, —regardless of branch of the Church—we are in a battle, a battle never dreamed possible in our age.  It is a battle that is being fiercely fought by the invader and, sadly, ignored by many church leaders, leaving their flocks very vulnerable.  The early Church once transformed a pagan world (Acts 17;6); however, today the pagan world is transforming the Christian Church. What a turn of events.
How so, you ask? Unfortunately, to not a few, it’s something considered benign and something quite subtle as well.  It doesn’t appear to compare to the great doctrinal heresies of the past, e.g., tenets addressing the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which were soundly resisted by godly men and women as they stood on God’s powerful divine revelation in his Word.  And what is this new heresy that we must now fight? It is all about identity.
We find its beginning with those who were practicing, struggling with, or promoting homosexuality.  They claimed that they had been spiritually recreated by their new birth by the power of the Holy Spirit, yet they declared themselves identifying their brand of Christianity by the very sins and temptations they experienced beforehand. They claimed they had been redeemed and forgiven. Yet they rename some particular form of sin they once experienced or practiced with a euphemism, with the gravity and seriousness of that particular sin being diminished to the status of a faux pas, a foible, a mere flaw or tendency.  Thus, they can call themselves “gay Christians.”  Who can deny it sounds clearly and simply benign?  However, God never treated homosexuality as benign, in the old covenant or the new covenant.  It is one of the those sins modified by the harshest of adjectives and modifiers, as seen in the letter to the Christians in Rome (see Romans 1:18-32). It’s impossible to ignore the gravity of such sins, even as great effort is exerted to skew the Romans passage’s clear meaning and magnitude.
Many Christians come to Christ with a background of other sexually related sins, fornication, adultery, pornography, etc.  Through repentance they cease any such practices, and never identify their new, transformed life with their former sinful propensities.  It is unthinkable as well as shameful to identify the miracle of saving grace by what God declared as offensive to his holy character.  How incredulous that it is not treated as shameful today.  For over 2,000 years, Christians never identified themselves with the sins from which they had been delivered.
Sadly, this unthinkable identification with a sinful disposition is no longer limited to homosexuality alone.  The door has been opened to other perversions to God’s creative intent, such as non-binary gender ideologies.
The statement above, “It doesn’t compare to the great heresies of the past that were doctrinal tenets…” may not be accurate after all.  Why?  When we continue to identify our position in Christ with a particular sin, we are in essence denying the redemptive efficacy of Christ’s atonement.  What miraculously reborn believer wishes to announce or imply such an affirmation?  Denying the redemptive efficacy of Christ’s atonement assuredly rates equal to the heresies of the past that were so soundly resisted by the Church.
This battle is real; it is not insignificant.  Church leaders, are you faithfully warning and protecting your flock from such an epic error?  Are you lovingly arming and educating your flock to protect them from such perversity? Too many Christians have been taken hostage already to worldly passions masquerading as truth.  Remember your obligation not only to teach God’s truth but to protect the sheep of your flock.  As one shepherd has said, “Along with knowing the flock, leading the flock, and feeding the flock, a fourth biblical function of the visionary shepherd is to protect the flock. Sheep are in constant need of protection.”
“Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood”  Acts 20:28-30 (NASB).
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.
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The woman has an incredible responsibility for the future blessings of her home. She gets the right and the privilege of finding the kind of man who will love her like Jesus loves the church. And once she has found that man, she gets to help, encourage, and spur him on so that everyone and everything her marriage touches will be blessed. Far from being a trophy wife, she is central and critical to the blessings of her home. 

3 The older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things— 4 that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, 5 to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. – Titus 2:3-5 NKJV

Where We Have Been
As you will remember from last time, the apostle Paul used the word blasphemy when it comes to denying God’s view of womanhood. He was saying that if there were any older women, or anyone else for that matter, who was teaching a view of femininity that is contrary to God’s vision, then they have blasphemed God’s Word (a crime punishable by death in the Old Testament). Yeah, God takes womanhood that seriously. 
Instead of blaspheming God’s Word, Paul instructs older women how to come alongside the younger married women in the community. He calls on them to teach the younger women how to love their husbands and their children. Instead of loving them in a purely sacrificial way, which is so common for women, Paul admonishes the young women to become joyful “husband lovers.” Paul’s goal was not for women to slave away in the kitchen and dutifully serve their families as embittered slaves. On the contrary, he was calling women to be the lifeblood of the home. To fill the atmosphere and the aroma of her castle with abundant mirth, overflowing joy, and infectious delight for all who know her. 
These were the first two of seven essential concepts about womanhood that Paul was teaching, and again, we looked at these things in part 1. This week, in part 2, we look at the final five concepts that the older women are to teach to the younger women so that the Word of God will not be blasphemed. 
Supposing you are still here because you would not like the Word to be blasphemed, I say onward. 
#3 Teach Them to be “Moderate”
In addition to husband-loving and child-loving, Paul calls younger married women with children in the community to adopt a moderate lifestyle. The word he uses for sensible in the NKJV above (σώφρων – Soph-ron) really means embracing a life of moderation by living in the middle. He is encouraging women not to find themselves on the polls of things or to live in the extremes but to find her place somewhere in the balanced middle. Paul says if life were like a seesaw, then stand on the pivot point. This contributes to healthy womanhood. 
Now, before anyone can accuse Paul of being a world-class sexist, remember that he just commanded the men to be moderate as well (Titus 2:2). And, when we remember that Paul also gives this character qualification for anyone aspiring to the office of eldership (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:8), we should not view this as being peculiar to women, but simply an excellent quality to cultivate for any human. Paul is not saying that men are more moderate and women have some work to do. He says we are all prone to excess, and both genders need work here. 
For instance, Men are disproportionately prone to the kinds of immoderation that lead to risk-taking, aggressiveness, adventure and merry-making, overworking, accumulating shotguns and rare bottles of whiskey (on the gluttony side of immoderation), and neglecting emotional aptitude, communication, relationship-building, and physical health (on the anorexic side of immoderation). While women can certainly be immoderate in these ways, it is far more likely that a woman will struggle with moderation in spending, emotional overexpression, communication, comparison, dieting, perfectionism (On the high side), and isolation, bitterness, and jealousy (On the low side). 
These are generalizations, but Paul’s point in this passage, in particular, is for women to live moderate lives. To be content with that, she has. To avoid excess. To avoid asceticism. To live in the middle. And by doing that, she will live richly and conform to the pattern God has for her. 
#4 Teach Them to be Pure
Along with moderation, Paul encourages younger women to remain pure and chaste in their behavior and life. Like a young virgin who is keeping herself pure for her future marriage (1 Corinthians 11:2), and the man who sets His mind on the pure truths of God (Philippians 4:8), the godly woman will also keep herself pure in mind, heart, and body within her marriage. She will prioritize holy purity with her God. She will weed out sin, give no occasion for the enemy, and offer to her husband the continual gift of tender, loyal, and loving fidelity for a lifetime. This, of course, will bless and build up womanhood. 
#5 Teach Them to be Workers at Home
Some of the strongest language in the Bible has to do with when, where, and how men and women will spend their time. For the man, He must leave the home to gather resources. If he lazily loiters around the house all day, twiddling his thumbs and refusing to go to work and provide for His family, Paul says that man is “worse than an unbeliever” and that he has “denied the faith” (1 Timothy 5:8). Ouch! On the other hand, a wife is called to stay home. And this is not unclear in this text. Paul says if a wife and mother leave their home to join in the rat race, neglecting her house duties, her husband-loving, and all the needs of her children, then she has blasphemed the Word of God. 
The reason Paul speaks this way is because men and women are not the same. We are equal in personhood yet distinct in our roles. As male and female, we have a divinely appointed complementarity in the roles God has given us. 
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