Revive Our Hearts

Dannah Gresh: Have you ever had a heart to mentor other women? I know I have, and I knew I was supposed to. Titus 2 tells us so. But when I really began to pray about it, God completely arrested my heart. He took it in a direction I didn't expect.

I'm Dannah Gresh, welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend, where we believe mentoring matters. Here's my story. Twenty-three years ago, I started a ministry for tween girls, ages 8 to 12, and their moms called True Girl. But I always felt, to be honest, like a bit of a second-class contributor in the church. God forgive me for even saying that out loud.

You see, I was comparing myself to women in leadership who were mentoring actual adult women. Shouldn't I eventually graduate to that? I would think to myself. Then, 10 years ago, my husband Bob and I were invited to attend a series of informal round table discussions and strategic prayer sessions.

This was a by-invitation-only group that included leaders from places like my little ministry, AWANA, and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. We called ourselves the Tween Gospel Alliance, and we were honored to have George Barna in our ranks.

The common denominator was that each of us was burdened by what we believed would be an increase in the number of young adults who would leave the church in coming years. Sadly, we were right. There's been a dramatic increase in church dropouts.

In 2011, about 59 percent of young adults would for some time depart from the church. By 2021, that was up to 74 percent. That should terrify you if you're a mom or a grandmother. But I bet it doesn't surprise you, because all of us have a child or we know someone whose young adult child is deconstructing.

What's causing it? Do we blame gender confusion, political upheaval, college biology class, TikTok? I think those things play a part. But after many meetings, members of the Tween Gospel Alliance agreed that the problem was not college or culture. It was the church failing to strategically plant and nurture deep roots of biblical truth into tweens and teens.

This departure, the deconstruction, is a cry. What are they saying? They're saying, "Why didn't you mentor me?" When I considered that, it burdened me so deeply. At one of those meetings for the Tween Gospel Alliance, George Barna turned to all of us and said, "I beg you, invest the bulk of your resources, your time, your money, your prayers, into children."

I'm begging you. Invest the bulk of your time, your money, your prayers and resources into the next generation so that Revive Our Hearts has women to minister to in 10 years. As you obey the Lord in fulfilling Titus 2, don't forget the little women.

Don't get me wrong. I love mentoring adult women, and I do. But the Lord has used that single moment with George Barna as a turning point for me. The Holy Spirit changed my passions. Since then, I have spent the majority of my time, my ministry funds, and my prayers investing into the next generation through True Girl. That's my unique calling to mentor. What's yours?

I know it's going to be as different as you and I are different. But make no mistake, God wants you to mentor. My friend Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth would agree. In fact, I know she would. She gave a message on Titus chapter 2. She wanted women young and old to know one thing: mentoring matters. Let's listen to part of that message.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: We have a lot of women today who are living frivolous, careless lives, spending their time on empty pursuits. Their conversation is foolish; it's vain. They're carried away by the values of this world. For those of us who are older women or moving into that category, there's a temptation.

I find it in my own life to look at the younger generation of women and roll my eyes and sigh and think, "The problem with this generation is..." and then finish the sentence. I can't believe the way women act today. I can't believe the way these women are whatever, whatever.

According to God's Word, if you're having those thoughts, as I confess I sometimes do, we are not to just sit on the sidelines and critique. We have an obligation. We have a responsibility to roll up our sleeves and get involved in the lives of these younger women.

If they're not thinking straight, if they're not living godly lives, if they're not succeeding in their marriage and their parenting, we as older women have to ask ourselves, have we fulfilled our responsibility to train these younger women to be sober-minded and sensible and self-controlled?

As older women, we're supposed to be modeling the beauty of an ordered life that's lived under the control and the lordship of Jesus Christ. Our lives are supposed to be creating thirst and appetite and hunger in the lives of these younger women.

We're supposed to be getting up close to them, life to life, heartbeat to heartbeat, up close and personal, into their lives, into their faces, loving them, training them, urging them, admonishing them, encouraging them, helping them to develop a life that is lived under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

I find that so many younger women today, just by virtue of the way they've been parented or not parented, are clueless when it comes to many practical aspects of marriage and parenting. They have no concept of how to make a marriage work or how to raise kids.

I'm thinking of a friend of mine who had her first child at the age of 27. She had never held a baby in her life. In practical ways, she was clueless. She needed an older woman to come alongside her and to help her, not just in big theological, theoretical ways, those were needed also, but just in practical ways. Here's what you do as a new mom.

The older women in the church need to get involved in training these new moms, these young wives, how to live self-controlled, wise lives and what that looks like in every area of life. How to fulfill their duty to God and their husband and their children and others, and how to juggle those things.

Can you remember back when you were in that season and it seemed so overwhelming? How many of you would have given a lot just to have some woman come alongside you and put her arm around you and encourage you and help you? Maybe you did have that.

We used to have more mothers and grandmothers who were around and had relationships such and lived in the same area so that they could have those kinds of relationships. I know Vivian, you have that with your mother and your sisters in the area. But a lot of women don't have that today.

As a body of Christ, a community of faith, we need to come around these women and take them by the hand and encourage and instruct and help. Let me say, by the way, that every woman is an older woman to someone. You may be 23, but you're an older woman to a 16-year-old.

There's some sense in which all of us should be engaged continually in the spiritual development of younger women. Who are the younger women around you learning from? They are learning. Who's training them? Who are their teachers? Is it their peers? That, by the way, is one of the dangers in my opinion of churches that become all the same age group of people.

A lot of churches are oriented that way. We want to reach this particular segment, so we just have people of that age. That's not a healthy church. It's great to have peers who love the Lord and are encouraging you in your walk, but younger women need older women.

So, who are they learning from? Is it just their peers? Is it Oprah? Is it Dr. Phil? Or is it you? Who is influencing their lives? That means as an older woman, you need to have an available and approachable spirit. You need to be the kind of woman that these younger women would feel comfortable approaching, that they would feel comfortable asking questions of.

But let me say this: If you're an older woman, don't wait for the younger women to come to you. Seek them out. Take initiative. Say, "How can I encourage you? How can I pray for you? What's God doing in your life?" Ask questions. Get engaged.

And then a word to the younger women. According to this passage, you have a responsibility. What is it? You're supposed to be being trained, not just by your peers but by older women. I was with a group of younger women, had them in my home recently, late teens and early 20s.

We were just sharing together, going around the room. They were telling me about their spiritual journey. One of these women, who is maybe in her early 20s, has a heart for the Lord, a heart for ministry. But she said, "This setting has been so good for me because I'm so prone... our generation is so prone to think as younger people that we have all the answers and that we don't need the wisdom and the input of older people."

She said, "I've realized I do need it. I need to learn. I need to listen. I need to be teachable." If you're a younger woman, ask yourself: Do I have a humble spirit? Do I have a teachable spirit?

Younger women, I hear this in the churches. I hear from the younger women, "The older women won't get involved in our lives." And I hear the older women say, "The younger women don't want us involved in their lives." Here's a solution to that. Don't wait for the other to come to you. You take the initiative.

If you're a younger woman, take the initiative. Find an older woman. Say, "I've been watching your life, and I see your relationship with the Lord. I see that you have a marriage that has held together, and you have children who walk with the Lord. That's the kind of testimony I want to have someday. Could you encourage me? Could you pray for me? I have some questions." Every woman should either be training or being trained, or better yet, both.

Dannah Gresh: How do you get started? Well, say, "Yes, Lord." Just say, whatever season of life you're in, "Lord, yes, I will do this. I'm committed to be engaged in this training process. I'm available. Use me."

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, reminding us just how much mentoring matters in the local church. Today's program really is all about saying "Yes, Lord," both to mentoring and being mentored. Maybe this feels a little intimidating to you. If it does, you're not alone.

A lot of women in the local church worry they aren't qualified to mentor because they're not perfect. But Donna Otto wants to help put those fears to rest. Donna is a mother, grandmother, and a spiritual mother. She's got lots of experience in training up the next generation to follow Jesus, and she wants you to know that you are qualified to participate in this work. Even your imperfections play an important role. Here's Donna.

Donna Otto: My definition of this thing called mentoring is giving your life perspective away. Giving your life perspective away. Of course, the passage that draws most of our attention is the Titus passage. For me, that passage was not only the reminder that God had called us to do it, but the reason for it, which is all summed in the last phrase, that the word of God will not be dishonored.

Dannah Gresh: And of course, the passage we're talking about is where older women are instructed to train younger women how to be a woman of God, how to be a godly wife, how to be a godly mother, and how to be a keeper of their home.

Donna Otto: What you just did is so seldom done with that passage, but you divided all women into four main walks of life. When we pause long enough to look at womanhood, we say, we're always a woman. My grandmother was 85 years old before she stopped taking care of the room she lived in, and we all take care of a space where we live until we die or are unable to.

Most of us are wives, and most of us are mothers. I'm not talking about the isolated cases; I'm not talking about the population that is single. They are still falling into two main categories of this passage. Here is Paul telling his young disciple, his young mentee, his young protege, his young son of the heart, "Now you go back and tell those old women."

The context there is that these old women had raised their children, had already recovered the sofa for the last time. Now, what were they doing? They had afternoon free. What they were doing is going from house to house, sipping a little too much wine and becoming malicious gossips.

Paul says, "You go back. I don't care if you're a young man. You go back and tell the women this is not what you're supposed to be doing. This is what you're supposed to be doing." So you ask the Lord, whose life do you want me to invest in?

We find a lot of reasons for being busy and not reaching in by the mandate of God to other lives. The reason why we don't want to knock on the door of someone's home is because we're afraid they'll think I'm knocking on the door saying, "Here am I. I have all the answers to your life."

Dannah Gresh: And you're not saying that as a mentor. Not at all. Actually, you're saying sometimes, "Learn from my failures. Learn from the things I wish I had done differently."

Donna Otto: Most often, because that's the authentic life of a godly woman who has not done it right and is not perfect, doesn't even try to be, just tries to live the standard and ideal that God has set before us in the Word. So that mandate is, go out there and give your life perspective away to a younger woman.

Speak to these younger women about the importance of asking God for a mentor. I think it is clearly God's desire for us and clearly the tool that God uses in our lives. When you have seen an older woman who has walked ahead of you and has been through what you've just experienced, devastation of health, financial reversals, unfaithful husbands, children who are unfaithful to the cause of all you taught them and gave to them.

I can go on and on with that list of things that are common to a woman's heart. Now you have an older woman who has walked through those circumstances, been driven by her conviction, has calm in her life because she's passed that, and she looks at you and says, "It'll be okay. The words and actions and deeds of God go before you. It'll be okay. I made it through; you too can make it through. It'll be okay. Let me show you how I menu planned."

I think there's no phase of a woman's life that she cannot learn from an older woman. Sometimes it is absolutely the minutia of life that rearranges us. It is that tidbit that says, "Here's how to put a menu together." "Oh, is that how you get it to the table hot at the same time?"

An older woman is that woman who comes in and gives her life perspective. When you're looking for a mentor or you're looking for a daughter of your heart, which is what I call these young women—daughters of my heart—look for someone who is authentic.

Look for someone who is willing to tell you, "I blew it. I was so bad at that. My husband has repeatedly asked me to, and I've not been able to." Looking for authenticity in a Christian woman's life is extremely important in engaging in this kind of relationship. Your sister relationship, she needs to be authentic enough to be vulnerable with you and say, "I blew it here." Looking for an older woman, "I blew it then; God taught me."

I've had young women who've come into my life and wanted me to mentor them, and they won't tell me the whole straight story. I can't have a relationship with someone like that. I won't steward my time that way. At some point I say, "Ta-ta."

The other thing you bring in is not only authenticity, is the fact that you should be looking for a woman who's not desiring to mentor to meet her need. This is very delicate. But if you've had a hard relationship with your daughter, sometimes an older woman is looking for a new daughter. Or you've had a hard relationship with your mother, sometimes she's looking for a mother.

I say that because I experienced that. I've experienced that on both sides. We had a young woman who lived with us for two years, and Kim wanted me to be her mama. It was so hard not to take that role. But I knew what God had taught me. I needed to tutor Kim, to give her my life perspective, which was, "Honey, you've got to find the answers to these questions with your God."

Most importantly, you've got to get to a place of reconciliation with your mama. Your mama was not a good mama; that may be true. But you've got to find a right relationship with her for yourself. I can't be your mama. God's sovereignty did not allow for me to be your mama. I am the older woman in your life. You are a daughter of my heart; you always will be.

We have to be careful that we're not exchanging this precious relationship of a daughter of the heart for a need in our own lives. We have to be really careful about why we're looking to mentor or be mentored.

Dannah Gresh: Donna Otto, casting a practical vision for mentoring in the body of Christ. As you think of yourself as an older woman, isn't this a freeing reminder? You don't have to have it all figured out. You have made some mistakes, and that's actually good. Tell the younger women around you about those.

As Donna said, the goal is to give your life perspective away. As you look at yourself as a young woman, look for authenticity. Find the older woman in your life who's going to keep it real and then be ready to be vulnerable yourself. That's one thing that makes the spiritual relationship so beautiful.

Now, we couldn't wrap up today without hearing from one of my favorite spiritual mothers, Susan Hunt. She's been deeply involved in the women's ministry world for decades, and she's the author of a book titled *Spiritual Mothering: The Titus 2 Model for Women Mentoring Women*. As she served in ministry, she saw just how powerful mentorship can be in the lives of women. Let's listen.

Susan Hunt: The uniqueness of these relationships is that they're gospel-inspired and gospel-empowered. They exist in the shadow of the cross and in the power of the resurrection. When we gaze on the glorious goodness of God in His Word, when we begin to see the redemption story of Jesus in all of Scripture, His Spirit begins to transform us into His likeness.

We begin to shine, to radiate the glory and goodness of God. Usually, like Moses, we're unaware of it because we are increasingly unaware of self. So, not only do we teach women about Him, but because of the mystery of our union with Christ, because He lives in us, our life begins to show the gospel story. Not always and not perfectly, but sometimes there are goodness sightings in us because the gospel has advanced in our hearts.

Paul captures this idea of teaching and training in 1 Thessalonians 2 when he writes, "We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel, but our own selves as well, because you had become very dear to us."

Teaching and sharing the gospel and our lives with one another. Note how Paul uses mother imagery. He talks about a nursing mother taking care of her own children. This is a nurturing ministry. It's a mothering ministry. Whether or not a woman has ever birthed a child, she can be a life-giving spiritual mother.

This is not just about formal teaching. We're always teaching in our relationships, in our conversations. Think about how often as Jesus was out and about among people, how often He used questions rather than immediately telling them what they should do.

I have five questions that I call my Titus 2 questions that I just have tucked in my mind so that I can use them whether I'm teaching a Bible study or in a conversation. Let's pretend for a moment that you have just shared with me a difficult situation or a difficult relationship. I would begin to intersperse these questions into the conversation.

Here they are. What will it mean for you to bring this relationship or situation under the authority of God's Word? What will it mean for you to glorify God in this relationship or situation? Is there any way you're being a life-taker? What will it mean for you to be a life-giver? How can I pray for you?

Good questions help us to orient women to God's Word rather than to her feelings and frustrations. It helps her to think about what is good and true and beautiful. At a True Woman conference a few years ago, I had done a seminar on Titus 2 discipleship. During the Q&A time, a woman told us that she had approached an older woman in her church and said, "Will you disciple me?"

She reported that the older woman eagerly and immediately said, "Yes." Then the young woman said, "That was six months ago, and I have heard nothing from her since." There was an audible gasp in the room. I looked at her and I said, "I can only imagine how devastated you are. But may I suggest that woman is equally devastated? Every day she wakes up and she thinks, I really want to do this, but I do not know what to do. What have I gotten myself into?"

So she delays another day, and each day she feels more and more guilty. So what can we do? Many of you are women's ministry leaders. When the women's ministry in a local church designs a Titus 2 ministry, trains Titus 2 leaders, and facilitates bringing women together, then we do not have frustrated, disappointed, guilt-ridden women.

*Titus 2 Tools* is a resource to help you do this. There are ideas for designing various kinds of Titus 2 ministries and also a section on how to train leaders. But some of you are thinking, "Our church doesn't have a women's ministry." Well, you have women. So invite a younger woman or an older woman or each or several to meet with you maybe once a month and to read through the book *Adorned* together.

However you do it, when Titus 2 discipleship begins, it is unstoppable. It will not be confined to assigned groups. It becomes a way of life. It changes the culture of a church. It makes church feel more like family. But some of you are saying, "I'm not an older woman yet."

Last summer, I did a Bible study on biblical womanhood for middle school girls. At the end of our time together, I asked them to write about a Titus 2 woman in their life. Kate, a 12-year-old who is our youngest grandchild, wrote about two 20-something-year-olds in her church. This is Kate's story.

"Two older girls at my church are making a huge impact in my life as they disciple me. Kristen and Autumn are so faithful and kind to give their time to us younger girls every Sunday to teach us about Jesus. During the week they text me and the other girls in our family group Bible verses and wise advice to help us make good choices as middle school students.

We also share prayer requests. We have built such close relationships that when girls have gone through tough situations, such as parents getting divorced, family members being diagnosed with cancer, or struggles at school, we can share with the group and know we will be prayed for. I'm so blessed to have Kristen and Autumn in my life. They are life-givers who teach me more and more about being a life-giver."

So girls, now it's your turn. Whatever your age, grow up and step up. Share the gospel and your life with another woman and be a part of extending God's kingdom. I don't know what will happen in the life of the other woman, but I do know that the kingdom will advance in your life because Jesus has promised to be with us. Who but God would have thought of such a strategy? Using ordinary, weak women to accomplish such an extraordinary mission.

Dannah Gresh: As always, wow. What a wonderful challenge from Susan Hunt. Share the gospel and your life with another woman and be a part of extending God's kingdom. I love that. Would you take some time this weekend to ask the Lord, "Who do you want me to share my life with?"

As He reveals His answer to you, I hope you'll reach out to that woman, maybe by sending a text or finding her at church on Sunday. Whether you're the younger or older woman, you can take the first step. You can initiate the kind of gospel-centered relationships we've been talking about today.

Our spiritual mentors become part of our spiritual stories, the stories God is writing for us. Isn't that a sweet thing to think about? Now maybe your story is feeling uncertain today. Maybe you're feeling anxious about the way ahead. If so, we'd love to point you to a book by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and her late husband, Robert.

It's called *You Can Trust God to Write Your Story*. In this book, you'll hear Nancy and Robert's testimony of God's faithfulness along with the testimonies of other believers who've walked through hardship and found God to be good. This would be a wonderful book to read on your own or with a spiritual mother or daughter in your life.

We'd love to send this resource when you make a donation of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. To do that, visit reviveourhearts.com/donate. Be sure to request *You Can Trust God to Write Your Story* when you do. Next weekend, we're celebrating Palm Sunday together, and we're going to be talking about the humble Savior who came to be close to us.

It'll be such a gospel-saturated episode. Thanks for listening today. I'm Dannah Gresh. We'll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.