A Wiser Woman
From Erin (author of Restore Your Marriage and most of the other books available in Encouraging Bookstore): When my fourth child was born, I was in my early thirties. This was my first of 3 daughters. Daughters who would forever change my life because I knew that someday my daughters would look to me and emulate me as each grew to womanhood. I knew I needed help. When I discovered the passage in Titus 2 about the “older women teaching the younger women,” I went to my pastor and asked him where I might find an “older woman” to teach me. His reply was simply, “I don’t know.” If a woman came to your pastor today and asked the same question, what would be his response?
Unfortunately, most young women do not even know that the Bible tells them where they are to get help, and even if they did, would they find you? It has been my heart since the day my house fell (when my daughter was just two years old) to be an older woman who helps younger women prevent their houses from falling. I made so many mistakes that could have been avoided, had I just had a godly woman willing to show me what the Bible said and to love me enough to tell me when I was making a fatal mistake, as with my contentiousness, which resulted in my marriage being destroyed. Today, to complicate matters, most young women do not want to listen to anyone about anything. They seek out “experts” in child-training, rather than the woman who has well-behaved children. They listen to talk shows to get marriage “advice” from other foolish, arrogant women who are in the world, and then they follow that fatal advice with their husbands.
I believe that providing this book, A Wise Woman, this course, is just one of the ways that the Lord has given me “the desires of my heart.” My ministry, for the most part, was spent helping desperate women who have just found out that their husband has been sleeping with their best friend, has moved in with her, or has just filed for a divorce. Recently, I have turned my focus to ministering to your girls "His Princesses" and training ministers because I believe that every Believer should have their own ministry!
Years before my ministry began, I watched GOD restore my parent's marriage but didn't know, never dreamed, He would call me to give hope to women who wanted to restore their own marriages, beginning with mine, but also train women since God called all of us—"The Ministry of Reconciliation” for women.
“Now all these things are from God,
who reconciled us to Himself through Christ,
and gave US the ministry of reconciliation...”
2 Corinthians 5:18
Even though for decades God's used me and my ministry to help women find Hope and show how to get their marriage out of crisis (the same way He showed me that's documented in the Restore Your marriage book). For years, my heart has desired to be able to somehow prevent the pain and heartache that I had to endure watching my own parents separate and then later when my husband abandoned me with four small children while visiting my parents (disappearing after he'd cleared out our entire home; not knowing where he was for an entire summer until an SOS call to a former colleague that his 2-year-old daughter was having surgery caused him to resurface).
Rather than waiting for any marriage problem to arise, I pray that God will send MORE women to start ministries of their own devoted to preventing marriages from falling into the same marriage crisis most of us have faced or encouraging couples who are in marriage crisis—understanding we've all been given the Ministry of Reconciliation.
As an “older woman” (whether in age or spiritually) you can simply invite women to study A Wise Woman along with you, and use the hundreds of restored marriage testimonies of women who shared what brought them to RMI and what caused their lives to fall apart—primarily due to tearing their own homes down with their own hands.
FIND A FRIEND
Most groups are born when just two like-minded friends get together. This was true when Erin and her friend Sue went through all the Bible verses and how it related to their fallen marriages—which then became the workbook A Wise Woman.
Almost immediately they each meet someone who benefitted from the information, and more women began meeting with them. Their group grew by word of mouth, and the fruits, as you already know turned out to be incredible! RMI was started.
God’s way of starting a ministry does not happen by forming a board of directors or a vote, or through a college course or degree. We've discovered His way begins with women, like you and maybe a friend (you don't even know), who have a passion to help other women. By simply starting a Facebook page, posting A Wise Woman chapters, along with RMTs, you will discover that you are offering real truth—much different from anything women have ever read or heard. Its message might prove difficult to accept for many, but the women who are hungry for truth will soon discover a “peace” settles over them. They are forever changed by the power of God and through living the principles and promises of His Word.
Has God placed a burden in your heart for the women in your life, church, and community to help prevent a crisis from taking down and wiping out another family? If so, then I would urge you to begin asking Him about either signing up to learn how to do this online. Or, by simply opening your home (or a friend who would hostess the get-together) in order to encourage women whom the Lord will send you. By simply opening your home (or meeting in your friend’s home once a week), you are about to begin changing the world around you. This is just the first step in your ministry to reach women with the Good News and to heal the broken-hearted.
Will you fulfill the call that the Lord has on your life?
Is Your Life a Dead Sea?
Stop withholding, hanging onto and find freedom, joy and live life the way He intended it to be. Be someone who is known for being upbeat, enthusiastic and fully of energy—all because you’ve taped into what will prove to be the secret to joy.If not, the easiest (and maybe the most effective) is reaching out to women and taking advantage of social media.
Rather than becoming a Dead Sea and is why the church is, for the most part, dead—not providing nourishment to the men and women that prevent divorce and all the other maladies that lead to families being destroyed. When there are only inlets and no outlets, a body of water will begin to die. Losing its life, such as vegetation and all other forms of life.
No, not everyone is called to minister like I have been, but ALL of us are called to be ambassadors and Ministers of Reconciliation giving us "The Ministry of Reconciliation."
Prevent becoming the Dead Sea—A Doer, not just a Hearer
"But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves"— James 1:22
"For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror, for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he really was"—James 1:23-24
"But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does"— James 1:25
An EASY Outlet
Most everyone total spends time on their computers, tablet or phone. Many park on social media and end their day by watching entertainment. But what if you could use your time on your device to help other women? What if instead of entertaining ourselves, we invested into our future that had the potential of changing the course of our lives?
With so much happening in our lives, it’s almost impossible to slow down long enough, and tune out everything good enough, to really make our days, matter.
The only way to not just survive but to thrive is to move to the side of the rat race, disconnect ourselves from the chaos, and get quiet long enough to hear what He is saying. Then gently learning how to feel the gentle flow of His plan, and know what it feels like to not use our own efforts, but instead allowing Him to guide us.
Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing”— John 15:5.
The only way we can do ANYTHING worthwhile, effectively, and what will change our lives and the lives around us, is IF we are abiding in Him.
Abiding means: To wait patiently for; to withstand difficulty; to remain with; to continue to be sure or firm; to endure; to dwell; to await in expectation; to withstand or sustain—in other words to not give up.
Let’s stop here and let this have time to sink in.
Jeremiah 23:28 “ ‘… let him who has My word speak My word in truth. What does straw have in common with grain?” declares the LORD.’”
Ask the Lord, your Heavenly Husband, to shine a light into your heart. Unless we ask Him to help us find the time and determination to do something different, to feed on grain (what's worth feeding our minds and souls on) from straw (junk food for the brain and spirit), how can we possibly survive the destruction that’s sweeping through our lives? And then, asking Him how He wants us to reach out to others who are perishing for a lack of knowledge.
Remaining close to the Lord, intimate with your Heavenly Husband and remaining still and quietly enough, will change your life from destruction to begin doing the impossible. If you ask me, it’s worth practicing.
“Therefore do not be ashamedof the testimony of our Lord,