Titus 2 for Life

We wait for the blessed hope: Jesus Christ!

And while we wait, we live as men and women eager to glorify God.

Living in such a way, we affect the lives of others and God transforms the culture.

Biblical Womanhood

Adopted...by the Father

A Letter from your Heavenly Father

Toward Healthy Femininity: A Testimony

Who are "the little ones"?

Voices of Experience

Dear Child,

 I want to remind you today of how beautiful you are because there is a father of lies who will try to deceive you.  He will try to tell you that you are not good enough, not attractive enough, not thin enough, not strong enough, not smart enough, not righteous enough, and that you are simply unimportant to Me.

 He will try to tell you that you have broken one too many promises, that you have fallen one too many times, that you have lived one too many lies, and that you’ve been going in the wrong direction so long that it is pointless to turn back now.

 But guess what?

 You do not belong to him.  He is not your father.

 I AM.

 You see, you are My creation and My workmanship.  You have been born of My thought – every part of you carefully put together by My hands.  You have My thumbprint upon you.  You are the prince/princess, did you know that?  You are My child – the child of THE King!

 You are not loved because you are precious.  You are precious because you are loved by Me!  There is no ocean too deep or mountain too high that could separate us and no price too high to pay to be with you and call you My own.   

 In fact, My own Son paid the price for you - in the name of Jesus Christ these things have been accomplished for you!

 I have done everything there is to do and given all that there is to give through the suffering, death and resurrection of My Son and your Savior Jesus Christ.  It is finished!  Your life is precious because I created it, love it, and redeemed it!  There is nothing else you need to do!

I desire to be with you every moment of every day.  How I long for you to talk to Me every day.  My love for you never grows cold.  My promises are never broken (contrary to what the father of lies might lead you to believe). My character never changes. And you, my child, have been made in My image.

I love you dearly, unconditionally, and completely.  I understand every emotion that you feel.  I’ve been there.  I count every tear that you cry.  I know every hair on your head.

And do you know what?

I even know your weaknesses and your failures and your fears.  I know those hidden parts of you that you wish would go away.  Those dark corners of your world that you stuff deep down, praying that no one will ever see.  I have already seen them and they will not change My love for you.

 Nothing will.

 I love your heart and I desire all of it.

 I want to remind you today of how beautiful you are and that you are precious because of the great and sacrificial love I have for you. 

 With love demonstrated on a Cross that will last for eternity,

 Your Heavenly Father

 (NOTE: THE AUTHOR OF THE ORIGINAL “LETTER” IS UNKNOWN.  IT WAS ADAPTED BY LINDA BARTLETT TO SHARE THE AMAZING MERCY OF THE HEAVENLY FATHER THROUGH OUR SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST.)

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Toward Healthy Femininity:

A Testimony

By Judy Johnston

   “[Femininity is the] capacity to be, that state out of which comes the power to respond to God and to others.  The true feminine nourishes relationship . . imparts life to others.  Discernment and wisdom flow out of this responsive faculty when it is joined with God.”  (Living Waters Guidebook by Andy Comiskey)

   What a beautiful description of femininity!  That’s what God made – what He intended.   Femininity really is a beautiful gift.  It nourishes and imparts life.  It is lovely and it is also mysterious.  As God saw in Genesis 1:21, it is very good!

   I didn’t always have such a positive view of femininity.  For many years, I correlated being feminine with being seductive, and I equated being a woman with being sexual.  That’s what femininity was all about, or so I thought . . . but it is so much more.

Imparting Life Through Relationship

   God gave women the wonderful gift of imparting life to another.  I’ve given birth to three children, and it was an extraordinary experience each time.  But whether or not a woman gives birth to a child, every woman can impart life to those around her.  Edith Stein, a contemplative nun and martyr of the Holocaust, wrote, “Both spiritual companionship and spiritual motherliness are not limited to the physical spouse and mother relationships, but they extend to all people with whom woman comes into contact.”

   The true feminine nourishes relationship.  It’s a gift God has given to woman.  In Genesis 2:22, we read, “The Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man.”  As distinct from Adam whom God formed from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7), Eve was formed from Adam’s side.  The initial creation of woman was itself a relational act – she was formed from that which was once connected to another.

   This relational quality is shown even in the differences between how men and women deal with stress.  When a man feels stress, his body releases testosterone, which enables him to better protect others in a dangerous situation.  But a recent study has found that when a woman feels stress, her body releases oxytocin, a chemical related to bonding – the same chemical that induces labor and that relaxes a mother when she is breastfeeding.

   In other words, when a woman is under stress, she is more likely to seek out the company of a girlfriend or a family member with whom she can talk.  Is it any wonder than women have a natural desire to join and connect?  Out of the true feminine comes our natural ability to nourish relationship and to respond to others.

Broken Femininity – Our Sinful Responses

Emotion, Vulnerability and Self-Protection

   As women are able to embrace who they are in their unique capacity to respond to God and others, it is natural for them to let the people around them be who they are.  What a wonderful gift!

   But after Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, Eve’s unique gift of bearing life, nurturing relationship, and responding to others became more difficult.  If we haven’t known safety in our relationships with men, we may attempt to make ourselves secure by bending into men or we may try to protect ourselves from being hurt by rejecting our own femininity.  We grasp, we control, we cover vulnerability, and we protect ourselves.

   I spent most of my life protecting myself.  I denied deep wells of pain.  I hated my emotions.  I felt embarrassed when I cried.  I shoved down feelings of anger, hurt, and grief.  Years of stuffing my feelings led to a battle with depression, which I’ve come to realize is far worse than experiencing my emotions.  Now I know that the pain I was experiencing was trying to tell me something.

   As I face the reality of the pain in my life, and as I experience my emotions, feelings have become less intimidating to me.  As the pain is felt, I am comforted, and comfort brings healing to the pain.  And then peace comes in, and I’m embraced by a calm I’ve never known before.  It takes a lot of work to figure out what I’m feeling and why, but when I do, depression dissipates.  We should not be quick to get rid of pain until we have benefited from it.

How Femininity Gets Broken – Sins Against Us

The Impact of Pornography

   My skewed views on femininity began in my family.  Playboy magazine was in our home, and although it was stashed in my Dad’s room, everyone knew it was there.  We have a family video where my dad is sitting on the deck perusing a Playboy on a family vacation.  One Christmas my brothers gave my grandparents Playboy magazines in their stockings.  Everyone laughed.  Years later, my family still laughs.  For most of my life, these incidents didn’t seem like a big deal to me.  But they were.  And I don’t think it’s funny anymore.

   Children who are exposed to pornography develop deep-rooted and harmful ways of viewing sexuality, like I did.  I believed a number of lies: Women are objects.  Being seductive is what men want you to be.  Men don’t want a relationship, they just want an orgasm.  Sex is something you do to feel good, it’s not about the other person.  Because pornography was such a part of our family life, whenever I speak to a group about the effects of pornography, I have to remind myself that it is a big deal and that it really is damaging.

  

The Impact of Sexual Abuse

   Sexual abuse in my family also contributed to my faulty beliefs about femininity.  Just as porn was “normalized,” so was the abuse.  The tremendous amount of denial in my family meant that no one called what happened “sexual abuse.”  But it was.  I remember when my grandfather inappropriately kissed a female relative.  When that relative told my mom, my mother laughed it off.

   My eldest sister committed suicide three years ago.  I believe that one of the roots of her deep pain was the sexual abuse that occurred in her life as a young girl.  Years of asking family members very specific questions has helped me come to grips with the reality of the abuse and to uncover the truth.  I learned that my grandfather wasn’t the only one in the family who was abusive sexually.

   Why would I want to uncover these terrible hidden things?  Because my life was affected by them and I want to be free.  Because my marriage is being affected by them, and I want to have a healthy marriage.  Because my femininity was damaged, and I want to be the woman God created me to be.

Help on the Journey

   It has taken years to get to this place I am in my feminine journey, and I have so much yet to learn.  I will always be a work in progress, just as you are, but there are things that have occurred in my life to help me along this journey –

1.      Healing through relationships.  I have experienced relationships that reinforced my wrong views of what it means to be a woman but also relationships that celebrate my femininity and treasure who I am.  As I continue to surround myself with healthy people who celebrate the differences between men and women, I am able to identify the lies I believed and correct them with truth.

2.      Understanding and experiencing truth.  It has taken a long time for truth to penetrate my broken heart, but it is happening.  I no longer dismiss or deny the terrible impact abuse has had on my life, and I choose to live in that reality.  But it doesn’t stop there.  As I understand and experience the Truth and the Life – Jesus, He gives me a deeper reality in which to live.  It is one of freedom, hope, security, and peace.

3.      Receiving healing prayer.  Once, when friends were praying for me, I felt feelings of terror and pain.  My friend, Willa, was telling me to go to Jesus, but all I could say was, “No!  He’ll abuse me, too, just like everyone else did!”  But, when Willa showed me a picture of Jesus with a young girl at His feet, the terror dissipated.  I knew I was safe with Jesus.  My husband purchased a smaller version of that same picture and I’m able to look at it every day and remember the words: “I will never fail you.”

    I know that I won’t always respond as I should in relationships.  Sometimes I will believe lies instead of truth.  Prayer may not produce immediate results.  But, in Jesus, God is freeing me to be the woman He created me to be.  This is an amazing gift!  May God resurrect our feminine souls and lead us to the healing He desires for us.

This article was reprinted with permission of the author.  It first appeared in “Regeneration News”. Regeneration Ministries helps bring men and women out of the bondage of homosexuality and lesbianism.  This ministry recognizes the power and mercy of God’s love:  “Behold!  We are new creatures in Christ Jesus; the old has passed away!”  (2 Corinthians 5: 17)  Linda Bartlett wishes to publicly thank Judy Johnston for sharing her story and, by doing so, helping others on the journey of hope.