This is the opposite of many of the things that are loved in the Charismatic Movement. In the Charismatic Movement you are very special, and you are very gifted, if you have trances and things like that, and subconscious states. Yet the Scripture forbids that, and exhorts us all to be safe in mind. The rational faculty is never to be turned off. The Holy Spirit works through the rational faculty, not by anaesthetising it and laying it aside. If you speak in tongues, you are out of control. You imagine that this is a real language, that the Holy Spirit is inspiring you to speak, but it has bypassed your conscious mind and control, and you are under command to be safe-minded, to be always alert, always rational, always thinking. So that is a big mistake that is made, even by many earnest Christian, and the older women are to instruct the younger women to have the mind always switched on and to be good thinkers.
Now women have tremendous, and rather distinctive and special, emotional sensitivities and gifts, and they can sense things, and know things, and read situations, and feel things very tenderly. That is very valuable and important, and in every marriage, if men don't listen to their wives, they are fools. But that very mechanism and those tuned sensitivities of feeling are not actually to take the place of rational thought. They are in addition to rational thought, and they are precious and valuable. But the older women must be clear thinkers and an example to the younger women of clear-thinking in everything, and of appealing to Scripture for everything. So, ‘that they may teach the young women to be’ safe in mind and in thought, and not reacting emotionally. But that is not to decry emotions, or minimise their importance, but to keep the rational faculty active.
‘To be safe-minded, to love their husbands.’ Of course, this applies the other way round as well. How firmly does Paul in Ephesians, and here in a little while, say to husbands, ‘Love your wives’! In Ephesians he puts the standard so high: ‘Love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.’ Your love for your wife must be immensely patient and sacrificial and giving. ‘Oh, but am I not lord of the home. I been listening to some of these Internet preachers’ – from across the Atlantic, I am sorry to say that – ‘who say, “Husbands are big authorities, and they are in charge and they are the boss, and that's that. She has got to do what he says.”’ Really? ‘Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.’ Care for her; love her. We read it in 1 Peter: how husbands are to love their wives sacrificially. So it applies both ways.
‘To love their husband.’ What does that mean? It means that every day you thank God for your husband, just as every day your husband thanks God for his wife. And when he is irritated by something – it’s probably a trivial thing – he banishes that thought, and he says, ‘Lord, I thank thee for my dear wife, and all that she means to me, and all that she has done for me, and she says the same, then there is no quarrel. And because you love each other, if there is something that really does need to be sorted out, then it's easy to sort out, because you sort it out, not out of irritation or annoyance, but when you are calmer, and you appreciate your husband or your wife, you raise it in a different tone in a different manner, and the whole thing can be properly resolved and settled.
‘That they may teach the young women to love their husbands’, which means the older women have got to love their husbands, in order to set that example and to teach the younger women to do the same. This mutual love is so vital. Love your husband; support him as much as you can. Improve him as much as you can; that too is your duty. Help him as much as you can. But always thank God for him, and love him.
‘And love their children.’ Well of course mothers love their children. Yes, but love for children can be strained and eroded away, because children can be such a handful. When they get to the rebellious years, they can sometimes be monstrously insulting. I remember we had a visiting speaker once who said these words, and I found them rather surprising. He said, ‘You can't “out-selfish” a child’, and there is a lot of truth in that. Children can be very selfish or appear to be and locked up in their own world. All this can erode away a lot, even of mothers’ love. So it is something we have to guard: to love our children. You are always going to be your child's best friend, and then when the going gets difficult, and there are difficult things to communicate, and difficult training to administer, your child knows that it comes from his or her best friend in the world.
Love their husbands; love their children. What a responsibility for the older women by example and advice, to pass this on to another generation. We can just have a savour of heaven on earth, if we can accomplish these things.