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We’re living in days of revolution. Many are trying to start a revolution, to change the nation and even the world. So far, the effects appear to have been mainly destructive. They’ve made the world a worse place.

I invite you to join me in another kind of revolution. A revolution that will turn the world upside down – which will actually put it the right way up?

The context of verses 11-15 is right order in the church that will promote salvation. Here he limits public teaching roles to men. In chapter 3, he further limits it to a certain kind of men – gentle shepherds and loving servants.

THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN’S ROLE IS CLEAR

“Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet” (11-12).

NB: Men and women are essentially and spiritually equal, but physically and functionally different.

Learn quietly: In a culture that viewed women as intellectually inferior to men and therefore only educated men, these were liberating and dignifying words. Learning for women is in, but certain kinds of teaching are out; specifically the teaching of men by the authoritative proclamation of God’s Word in a public worship service. Men have much to learn from women but there’s one forum where that is not to take place, and that’s public worship in the church.

Submit humbly: “Submission” means to yield to God-given authority, which here is the elders of the church. To submit to God-given authority is to please and honor the Lord by cooperating with the way God has designed and ordered society.

Teaching and ruling may please us, but learning and submitting pleases God.

“Is there any reason to this?”

THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN’S ROLE IS REASONABLE

“For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (13-14).

The order of creation: “Adam was formed first, then Eve.” In the Bible, being firstborn was not about superiority, but authority and responsibility. When God made Adam first, he wasn’t just setting up our first parents but male-female roles and relationships for all time. God wants the creation order to be reflected in church order.

The order of sin: Eve was deceived first. Look what happened when the creation order was reversed, when Adam gave up his God-given role and Eve took over a role that was not hers.

Male and female roles are based on timeless truth not cultural considerations.

“Is there any encouragement to this?”

THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN’S ROLE IS BLESSED

“Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control” (15).

Continue in godliness: Continue in faith, love, holiness, and self-control is shorthand for following God’s order.

Saved through child-bearing: Childbearing is shorthand for giving, protecting, and sustaining life. If you follow God’s order you will not only be much happier, you will be much more influential as well. Women will exert godly influence from the bottom up by Christ-like influencing of children. Woman can re-create world order by re-creating the creation order.

Revert to God’s order and you’ll revolutionize world order.

LIVING THE BIBLE

Accept your God-appointed role and responsibilities and you will massively influence children, and therefore the church and the world, for good.  To be a godly mother is to be a revolutionary.

You can catch up with previous episodes at the Living the Bible website or subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcast. Growing your faith five minutes a day.

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What is a beautiful woman? The world’s answer to that changes every year. Therefore, if your primary question is, “How can I be beautiful?” you’ll never have the right answer for long. There’s also the added problem of not just the world changing but you’re changing too as you age.

Yesterday we looked at one especially male sin – being too angry to pray. Today, in 1 Timothy 2:9-10, we’re going to look at an especially female sin – being too pretty to work.

“Likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works” (1 Timothy 2:9-10).

DON’T FOCUS ON ELABORATE HAIR OR EXTRAVAGANT CLOTHES

Elaborate hair: If you went into the Ephesian church and looked out across the congregation you would have seen row after row of braided and be-jeweled hair, fancy hairstyles with towers of hair, ringlets of hair, and all topped off with numerous attachments of gold and pearls.

Extravagant clothes: Some were dressing for church in the latest high and pricey fashions. The Bible makes clear that there’s nothing wrong with nice clothes (Prov. 31:22) and attractive jewelry (Song 1:10-11; Isa. 61:10). As John Calvin put it, “The fault is excessive concern and eagerness about dress.”

If your appearance is your focus, your God will be out of focus.

“So, what should I wear? Should I never try to be pretty?”

FOCUS ON FITTING MODESTY AND BEAUTIFUL PRACTICALITY

Modest clothes: “Respectable apparel” means clothes that are becoming, appropriate, fitting for a Christian women. “With modesty” means keeping within the bounds of what is decent and proper. “With self-control” means not dressing seductively or suggestively. To put it bluntly, you can’t dress like a prostitute and say you are a child of God.

Practical clothes: He’s stated what’s not fitting or becoming, and now describes what is most becoming, fitting, and beautifying for a godly woman – good works. There are three areas of good works that are especially commended to women in the Bible:

• Devoted service to your husband and children
• Hospitality to Christians and non-Christians
• Mentoring of younger women

These kinds of good works make you beautiful and attractive to God and to others.

What’s a beautiful woman? Here’s God’s answer. Do something beautiful for God and you’ll become beautiful doing it. That kind of beauty can grow with age. It can reverse the aging process.

Paul’s contrasting the artificial glamor of the world and the true beauty of a godly life, the cheapness of expensive clothes with the value of godly character and service.

John Stott wrote, “The church should be a veritable beauty parlor, because it encourages its women members to adorn themselves with good deeds.”

True beauty isn’t skin-deep, it’s soul-deep.

LIVING THE BIBLE

Men are to speak godly words and women are to do godly works. A focus on self, lives for people to say, “You’re so beautiful!” A focus on others, makes God say, “You’re so beautiful.” Which are you living for? Which did Christ live for?

You can catch up with previous episodes at the Living the Bible website or subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcast. Growing your faith five minutes a day.

Many anxious teens will feel as if they are completely weird, that no one else is like them or understands them. They look around at their peers and can’t imagine anyone else their age feeling like they do. They see the carefully curated social media images of perfect, happy, and confident classmates and conclude that they are the odd one out. Ashamed and embarrassed, they withdraw from friends, family, and social occasions, to suffer alone in lonely isolation. “I’m just weird,” they conclude.

One of the best things we can do for our teens is to explain to them that many teens suffer in the same way. Despite what the social media feeds communicate, the reality is that teen anxiety is at epidemic levels, so much so that it is now the most common issue for which teens seek counseling.

• Nearly a third of thirteen- to seventeen-year-olds will experience an anxiety disorder (38 percent of girls and 26 percent of boys).
  
• An estimated six million American teens presently have some kind of anxiety disorder, although the number is probably higher because the majority do not seek treatment.
  
• Fifty-four percent of college students surveyed said that they had “felt overwhelming anxiety” in the past twelve months.
  
• In 2011, 11 percent of teen girls had a major depressive episode in the past year. By 2017, that number had risen to 20 percent.
  
• While the depression rate for boys has risen more slowly, the suicide rate has spiked to a thirty-year high.
  

Anecdotal evidence backs up the statistics. One female Christian counselor recently described how, when she first started counseling twenty-four years ago, “Probably one out of every twenty kids coming in were dealing with anxiety. . . . Now, out of my new appointments, I would say at least sixteen of every twenty families are here for that reason, if not more.”

It’s not just common in our culture, it’s also common in the Bible. Even strong and mature Bible characters such as King David and the Apostle Paul battled worry, anxiety, and fear (Ps. 56:3; 2 Cor. 7:5; 1:8). The most common command in the Bible is “Fear not!” which means it must be a very common problem.

Teen Anxiety and Depression Often Come Together

You might be wondering why one book would try to deal with both anxiety and depression. Aren’t they different problems? While there are differences, many experts now view them as two sides of the one coin, or two faces of the one basic problem. Yes, someone can be depressed but not anxious, or anxious without being depressed, but about 50 percent of teens who have one also have the other, to some degree.

When it comes to depression, 13 percent of twelve- to seventeen-year-olds experience major depression in any one year, with depression affecting about 20 percent of adolescents by the time they become adults. That’s every fifth teen in your child’s class.

We also find biblical figures who experienced depression. Look at how depressed the psalmists were in Psalm 32 and Psalm 88, how depressed Elijah was at the lowest point of his ministry (1 Kings 19:1–8), and how Job slipped into depression at various times (Job 3:11–15; 30:16–26).

As anxiety is more common than depression for teens, and it usually comes before depression, the primary focus of this book will be anxiety. However, most of the remedies work for both anxiety and depression, as we will see.

Teen Anxiety and Depression Are Normal

Apart from using statistics and the Bible to assure teens that anxiety and depression are common, one of the best ways we can “normalize” these problems is to talk about mental illness and other emotional disorders as common experiences in a fallen world. Speak about it around the supper table or in the car. If we are teachers or preachers, we can talk about it in the classroom, in the pulpit, or at youth groups. Look out for long-term changes in your teen’s behavior and moods and take opportunities to ask her what’s going on in her thoughts and feelings. You could say, for example, “You seem to be a bit down or troubled. Can I help in any way?” To maximize the chances of your teen opening up to you, try not to come across as judgmental, critical, or scared.

Only one thing is worse than never talking about such disorders, and that is to mock, shame, or stigmatize those who suffer with them. Such a cruel and arrogant attitude will ensure that our teens will never talk to us about these challenges or seek our help. They will either bottle it up and suffer in silence, or else they will seek help from others outside of the Christian community, who may lead them astray. At worst, they may start cutting themselves to find temporary relief, or even attempt suicide as a permanent solution.

Instead, in our homes, our schools, and our churches, we want to talk about these issues as normal abnormalities in an abnormal world. We want to build a culture of transparency and trust so that our teens will feel free and safe to talk about their fears without fear. Anxiety and depression are simply two of the many consequences of the fall, and teens should be able to talk about them just as we talk about asthma, broken arms, disrespect, purity, and so on.

Teen Anxiety and Depression Are Varied

We must avoid stereotypes of anxiety and depression because they actually can manifest themselves in multiple ways. Just because we or someone else we know suffered in a certain way does not mean that everyone experiences it in that way.

There are many kinds of anxiety. The most common are panic disorder, specific phobias, generalized anxiety disorder, and social anxiety disorder. Some anxiety (and depression) is genetic, sometimes it is a response to trauma, and sometimes it is caused by exhaustion or perfectionism. Some of these disorders are long-term but low-grade. Other times they are brief but acute. They make some kids withdraw and others aggressive. Sometimes it is the result of guilt—both true and false guilt. Nervous kids get it, but so do hyperconfident kids. Girls get it, and so do boys; although more girls admit it than boys. Help your teen identify their unique symptoms of anxiety—physical, spiritual, emotional, mental—so they can recognize it in the future.

It’s important to appreciate the variety and diversity of anxiety and depression, because if we have a set but limited caricature of an anxious person, we could miss it or respond to it wrongly. This is why it’s important to get experienced professionals like doctors and trained counselors involved in diagnosing these disorders.

Teen Anxiety and Depression Are Terrible

Imagine that you are driving your family to church, and you suddenly hit black ice, spin out of control, and start heading toward a precipice. Your fight-or-flight system is firing on all cylinders. You’re sweating, your heart is pounding, your muscles are tensed, your insides are doing somersaults, and you know you are about to die.

But, by God’s grace, your vehicle stops just before going over the cliff. You are safe but shaking uncontrollably; your guts are a mess, you can hardly string two words together, you want to cry or even scream.

That’s what anxiety is like for many of our teens. You will calm down an hour or so after your brush with death, and eventually the memory of the black ice will fade. But for anxious teens, it’s like they are heading toward the precipice twenty-four hours a day. That’s how terrible and terrifying this can be for them. It’s as horrifyingly real to them as you heading toward the cliff. Try to remember that when you are talking with them. Or look up the hashtag #thisiswhatanxietyfeelslike on Twitter to sample some of the raw descriptions that people have submitted.

Depression is no better, and often is worse. Imagine the sadness you would feel if one of your loved ones died. That can be the level of pain in depression, often with no hope of alleviation. In 2016 the demographic with the highest increase in rate of suicide was ten- to fourteen-year-old girls, for whom the rate tripled. Again, look up the hashtag #thisiswhatdepressionfeelslike for more graphic descriptions.

Teen Anxiety and Depression Are Treatable

One of the most encouraging aspects of teen anxiety is that although it is so common, varied, and terrible, it is also one of the most treatable mental or emotional disorders. That’s why it’s so tragic that a 2015 report from the Child Mind Institute found that only about 20 percent of young people with a diagnosable anxiety disorder get treatment.

Depression is more stubborn to remove, but, there’s still much that can be done. God has provided many ways to heal these agonies or help your teen to manage and handle them better. As parents, pastors, teachers, and counselors, we have a great opportunity to reach out to our suffering teens and help them access help, as well as play a role in providing help ourselves. One of the first steps in becoming a resource for our suffering teens is understanding what’s actually happening in these disorders.

Why Am I Feeling Like This?: A Teen’s Guide to Freedom from Anxiety and Depression

Why Is My Teenager Feeling Like This?: A Guide for Helping Teens through Anxiety and Depression

After many months of battling anxiety, Pam had taken an overdose of pain medication and was rushed to hospital. Thankfully it wasn’t a fatal dose, and the next day she was transferred to a mental health unit for teens.

A week or so later, Pam returned home to her still-shocked parents. Pam’s attempted suicide had rocked them to the core and left them in the rubble of confusion, anger, fear, helplessness, and despair. They had attended some seminars for parents at the mental health unit while Pam was there and returned home with lots of leaflets and booklets, but they didn’t really know where to start. They called me and asked if I would meet with them. As they looked at me and then at Pam, their faces said, “We don’t know what to think, we don’t know what to say, and we don’t know what to do.”

I’ve been in similar situations in different homes and with different parents. Most of them were really good homes and really good parents. Their kids went to really good schools and really good churches. But they were all in really bad situations.

“Friends,” I appealed, “we’ve got to stop looking at ourselves or at one another. We have to look to God. He knows what to think, he knows what to say, and he knows what to do.”

Everyone relaxed a little, I prayed for the Lord’s help, and started to reorient us all in a God-centered approach to recovering from this blow. While grateful for all the interventions and instructions from mental health professionals over the previous week, both Pam and her parents also needed a God-centered approach for long-term recovery. I therefore walked them through three truths that I’ve found helpful to parents and their kids through these times.

God Understands Anxious Kids

When anxiety invades our kids’ lives, confusion and perplexity storm into ours, and so do many unanswered and unanswerable questions. What did we do wrong? Why did she do this to us? What will people think? What’s really wrong with him? Is he on drugs? What’s God doing? While God may not answer these questions, we can answer on behalf of God in these two areas.

God Knows the Factors

It’s so important to bring our ignorance, our bewilderment, our demoralization, and our questions to God. Why? Because he alone knows all the factors involved in Pam’s suffering (Ps. 139:13-18). Anxiety can be an incredibly complex problem, and often has no single cause. It’s usually a mixture of various life events and life choices, some within our control and some not. What came first, second, third, and so on? What’s cause and what’s effect? God alone knows.

Therefore, go to God and acknowledge this, praise him for it, and ask him to share his insights with you, to lead you into more understanding of the various factors involved in your child’s suffering: physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, and social factors. The more we understand, the more our children will sense our understanding, which alone be a huge accelerator of healing.

God Understands the Purpose

God not only understands the factors involved but he also knows the ultimate purpose of it all (Jer. 29:11). Although it may seem random to us, it’s not. God has brought this into our child’s life and into our life, but he has done so with a wise and good purpose (Rom. 8:28).

I’ve seen many kids transformed for good after recovering from anxiety. God uses their painful experience to mold them into more caring, sympathetic, and resilient adults. But perhaps God’s purpose in our children’s suffering may also be our own good. He uses such times to humble us, to make us more prayerful and dependent, and to equip us to be caring counselors to others too (2 Cor. 1:3-7).

“Alright,” you respond, “I’ll use God’s understanding of the factors and the purpose to help me understand the factors and purpose better. And I see how this will help me communicate more understanding to my child. But we’re still sinking. I need more than God’s understanding. I need his strength.” That brings us to a second stabilizing truth.

God Supports Anxious Kids

God doesn’t just understand and sympathize, he also acts to support anxious kids. How does he do this? He does it by listening and by speaking.

Kids with anxiety often feel like no one listens to them, which of course only deepens the anxiety. We therefore want to encourage our kids to speak to God in prayer and sing to God in worship, because God listens to their prayers (Matt. 7:11) and appreciates their worship (Matt. 21:14-16). The fact that God always listens to and appreciates their voices can be used to help our kids express themselves to God honestly. God’s promise to listen to them is a strong support. But there’s another strong support.

God speaks into our kids’ lives through his word (Ps. 34:11-17). We therefore want to encourage our kids to keep reading the Bible and to read it, even just a few verses a day, as if God is speaking to them personally. We need this for ourselves too, and we can help our kids speak to God and listen to God by showing them how we speak and listen to God.

As we and our kids are supported by speaking to our listening God and by listening to our speaking God, we learn how to support one another. We learn how to listen supportively and speak supportively. These supports will stop us and our kids from sinking further and stabilize us for recovery.

“Yes, what about recovery?” you ask. “Understanding and support are great, but can God actually heal my kid, get her up out of this turmoil, and give her peace again?”

God Heals Anxious Kids

God sympathizes by understanding, he stabilizes by supporting, then he heals by providing many helpers and many helps. Neither the parents nor the kid are going to recover on their own. All have to reach out for God’s help. The key to rebuilding after anxiety is to use all the helpers and helps God has provided. Here are a few of them.

God Provides Many Helpers

• Pastor: Even if the anxiety is mainly or partly a physical or biological problem, spiritual guidance is still needed. Ask your pastor to help with the child’s spiritual needs. Pastors can pour in the truth of God’s word and pour out their hearts in prayer.
• Counselor: A pastor can do much, but a specialist counselor may also be required to help with more complicated issues. Someone who deals with anxious people all day every day is going to have a lot more experience and expertise than most pastors.

God not only understands the factors involved; he knows the ultimate purpose of it all.

• Doctor: Involving a doctor at an early stage is also advisable as certain medical conditions can cause anxiety. Doctors can also provide a good objective outside assessment of whether your child is getting better or worse.
• Friends: Although anxious kids tend to withdraw, encourage their friends to stay friends and maybe guide them in what to say or not to say. Socializing with those who love them is very therapeutic.

God Provides Many Helps

• Routine: God has made us in such a way that our bodies love routine and thrive when there’s rhythm and regularity in our lives. Try to help your child get into a good sleeping, eating, resting, and working routine.
• Rest: 7-8 hours of sleep a night and a weekly Sabbath are God’s gift to us and our kids (Ps. 127:2; Mark 2:27). Therefore, let’s receive these presents from God’s loving hand and use them to heal.
• Exercise: When we exercise, our bodies expel damaging chemicals and produce healthy ones. Regular exercise gives a sense of well-being and accomplishment.
• Digital downtime: Our brains are susceptible to over-stimulation from digital technology, so deliberate breaks and fasting from devices is usually essential for mental and emotional peace.
• Nature: Jesus points us to nature to heal anxiety (Matt. 6:25-31). A God-centered view of the world is a uniquely powerful therapy.

Let’s help our kids and ourselves by using God’s helpers and God’s helps.

Use God’s understanding, support, and healing to understand, support, and heal your anxious children.

Why Am I Feeling Like This?: A Teen’s Guide to Freedom from Anxiety and Depression

Why Is My Teenager Feeling Like This?: A Guide for Helping Teens through Anxiety and Depression

Kim bought her son Jack a remote-controlled monster truck, but didn’t give him any instructions about how to use it. What do you think happened? Yes, within an hour, the truck was in pieces, and so was Jack. He had taken it outside, set it off at top speed, didn’t know how to turn it, and therefore smashed it into a wall.

Kim felt really bad about this because she hadn’t taken the time to teach Jack how to use the truck properly. So she bought him another and this time spent hours and hours going over all the minute instructions. Then she added lots of rules of her own about how to use it, where to use it, and so on.

An hour or so later, she realized she wasn’t hearing Jack playing with the truck. Worried that there had been another accident, she went to check and found him sitting on the ground just staring at the truck, which was still in its box.

“What’s wrong, Jack?”

“I’m just so scared of using it. I keep reading all the instructions and then all your rules and I’m just so scared I’ll get it wrong.”

Without instructions, he broke the first truck. With too many instructions, the second truck broke him. In both situations, the truck was useless and Jack was miserable. The gift that should have given him and his Mom joy had made them both sad. They were sad because the first truck was misused due to lack of rules, and sad because the second truck was underused due to too many rules.

We can run into the same kinds of problems with how we use the Sabbath. Jesus said the Sabbath was made for humanity (Mark 2:27). It’s a gift designed by our Creator for our good and for our joy. But sometimes we use it wrongly because of lack of instructions. Other times we don’t use it at all because too many rules have made us scared rather than joyful.

So, let’s go back to Genesis 2:1-4, when God designed this gift, so that we can get God’s original instructions on how to use this great gift.

GOD GAVE US A REST DAY (2)

• God rested from his work
• We rest from our work

So I just spend the day doing nothing?

GOD GAVE US A BLESSED DAY (3)

• God packed blessings into the day
• We spend the day unpacking the blessings

What kind of blessings?

GOD GAVE US A WORSHIP DAY (3)

• We worship God
• We worship together

We need some instruction to use the Sabbath gift happily. But too much instruction and too many rules, and we won’t use it at all.

Without instruction, we’ll break God’s Sabbath gift. With too many instructions, the gift will break us.

LIVING THE BIBLE

Use God’s gift of Sabbath rest, blessing, and worship to maximize your joy and peace.

This episode of Living the Bible lines up with Expedition 1: Day 4 in  Exploring the Bible Together: A 52 Week Family Worship Plan and Exploring the Bible: A Bible Reading Plan for Kids. You can catch up with previous episodes of the Living the Bible podcast here or subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcast.

Few of us realize the power of the tongue for good or for evil. We therefore don’t maximize the good our tongue can do. But we also minimize the damage our tongue can do

Our tongue has a major impact on our lives and on many lives. It is the influencer of the year in many ways. So how can we maximize the good and minimize the evil? Let’s see how James gets the balance right in James 3:3-8.

1. YOUR TINY TONGUE CAN ACCOMPLISH SO MUCH

• Big horses are controlled by tiny bridle (3)
• Big ships are controlled by tiny rudders (4)
• Big people are controlled by a tiny tongue (5a)

A tiny tongue can be a big blessing. It’s wonderful how much good a little piece of flesh can do. So, should we just let it loose?

2. YOUR TINY TONGUE CAN DESTROY SO MUCH

• A tiny tongue can start a big fire (5b-6)
• A tiny tongue is an untamable beast (7-8a)
• A tiny tongue can be like cyanide (8b)

A tiny tongue can cause terrible trauma. It’s horrendous how much damage a little piece of flesh can do isn’t it?

LIVING THE BIBLE

Recognize how much our tongue can accomplish/destroy and use it for good not evil.

PRAYING THE BIBLE

We praise you, Lord Jesus, for your perfect tongue. Your tongue has accomplished so much good and never done any harm.

In contrast, we confess that we have accomplished so little with our tongues and done so much damage. Our tongues have burned like a fire, savaged like a beast, and poisoned like cyanide. We ask you to forgive us for Jesus sake.

Going forward, help us to recognize how much terrible trauma we can inflict with our tongues and stop us. Help us to recognize how much good we can accomplish and help us to do it. Especially help us to speak your truth to recover and rebuild lost sinners. Amen.

Listen to this episode on Living the Bible podcast. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and Spotify. Index to Living Faith in Testing Times series.