Trevor Sheatz chose to treat his wife with compassion, forgiving her sexual past, seeking her sanctification, and pointing her to the mercies of Christ. Joel Webbon chose to sleep with a woman attending the ministry he was leading, despite occupying a position of spiritual leadership over those meetings, bringing hurt and shame into the situation. I know which man's testimony I find more admirable and inspiring.

She's been found safe and sound! Thank you for your prayers!

The more I think about these hyper patriarchy guys, that women shouldn't vote, have a job, be around other women without supervision, the more I see how simple minded they are about it all. They are assuming that the existence of something means that it is mandated by God. They don't take culture or politics or social structure into consideration. For example, women voting. The Bible doesn't say women shouldn't vote. There didn't seem to me much voting at all except for a few selected magistrates in certain circumstances. Voting is a much more modern invention. So no Biblical statement here. Women working. The Proverbs 31 wife owned property and she hired workers. She also made things to sell at market. Now was she a boss babe? No, she wasn't. Her job was to provide for her family. But she is described as "an excellent wife and the heart of her husband trusts in her and he will have no lack of gain. " So Biblically speaking a woman ABSOLUTELY can work. This woman is praised for her work. The woman not being unsupervised with other women thing.....there is no evidence of male supervision over women being with each other. I just looked that up and women interacted with each other without male accompaniment all of the time. Again, the hyper patriarchy guys are creating a narrative that never existed. If ANY point in history that supervision would occur, it would be in that time period. I had one person say that the Bible doesn't mention it because it would have been expected and they wouldn't need to bring it up. From what I'm reading, it WASN'T a thing to begin with. Again, eisegesis. These men are not honest characters, and it shows. They are essentially the PSEUDO Christian version of the Taliban and they are to be avoided just as much as one would avoid the progressive pseudo Christian "churches" and "pastors.". They are both demonic sides of the same coin, meant to destroy the Faith and those in it.

Last month I posted a warning to sisters in Christ about hidden sin, false teachers, and social media use. Apparently I was a little premature for the trending controversy. So here it is again, with an additional caveat. Exercising caution and engaging in mutual accountability between spouses when it comes to on-line activity (yes, my husband has full access to all of my phone/computer accounts/apps) is not the same thing as isolating women completely from other women or supervising all sisterly interactions. The suggestion this week by @Brian_Sauve that "We consider normal what is actually insane. We consider normal women having unsupervised access to one another all the time. That’s not normal" is a tricky one because it points to a true phenomenon -normalcy bias- but then categorizes something as insane which has actually been the historical and biblical norm, that of women having unsupervised access to one another all the time. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the norm was for women to spend FAR more time with other women than with their own husband. Nearly every household chore was done in company with other female members of the household, servant girls, or out in the community with veritable strangers. Women harvested, threshed, ground, and baked in female groups. They drew water, bathed and laundered in female groups. They spun, dyed, and sewed in female groups. The gave birth with females around them and helped rear each other's children. They cared for one another in sickness and mourned in female groups together in death. In the early church they prayed together, and served the poor together, and washed the feet of the saints together. During the reformation they studied scripture and sang Psalms and hymns together and were martyred together by drowning and fire and sword. They did all this without male supervision. The insanity we experience today is the isolation. For the most part, women do all these things now in their own homes, utterly alone. For many women, especially SAHMs, social media is the only contact they have with other women for days on end. The awkward part is that they are often engaging with one another under the gaze of strange men. That is weird. And what's even more insane is some of these men who claim to be Christians feel comfortable in public berating and calling these sisters all manner of vile slurs. That has most definitely not been the historical norm in Western Civilization, though it thrives in the Middle East under Islam. So yes, husbands and wives should have open accounts with one another. A husband should absolutely be able to say, "honey you should probably delete that post." Mine certainly has. But let's be very, very careful about normalizing the already insane isolation many women are already living under. And Christian women, let's be doing everything in our power to obey the New Testament mandates to be exercising the One-Anothers with our sisters, both on-line and in-person.

I've been saying for years that colonialism saved more souls than modern missions ever has or can.

"Women having unsupervised access to one another" is one of the funniest sentences I've heard in a long time. It sounds like a Seinfeld line, honestly. More seriously, the fear behind some of the "patriarchal" mindset is noteworthy. Guys, there's something better than fearing that your wife might go wild on you. It's trusting your godly wife in a God-centered and grace-driven way. Do you lead her and watch out for her as her "head" (Eph. 5:22)? Absolutely! You better do so. But do you distrust her, overburden her, and unwisely suffocate her? Not at all. The Bible gives us the grace-driven way. It's right there in plain sight before all of us. The godly husband of Proverbs 31:11 is one who goes outside the home to provide and lead the city. Mark his "heart" attitude toward his wife while he's gone: "The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain." Note the relationship here: he "trusts in her" and as a result enjoys great blessing from God. Some of what I see from "patriarchy" voices runs the opposite direction. Women are feared; women are untrusted; because of this, women live under a man who is domineering and frankly ungodly toward his wife. Such men are not Proverbs 31:11 men; they do not trust their Christian wife. They micro-manage her. They leave her little freedom, little room to breathe. She thus lives in some combination of anxiety, fear, anger, and repression. This is part of why women in such environments will on occasion go off the reservation. It will shock people when they do, because to that moment she has been buttoned-down. She has painted by the numbers, and the family life has looked like a patriarchal fairy-tale. But behind the scenes, her husband has failed her. He has failed her not because he has led her, but because he has misled her. He has suffocated her. He has micro-managed her. He has not trusted her in a righteous way. He has lived in fear toward her, and not committed her to Christ, who is her Lord and master and king. Has feminism had many bad effects on the church? Yes. Have some women been influenced at some level to not submit to their husbands and to see even godly authority in the home as bad? Yes. Is the rightful response to this to distrust our wives and leave them without "unsupervised access" to one another? Not at all. Our churches have lots of freedom in living out Titus 2. But it is a good thing for women to get together, go on retreats, train one another for godliness and womanliness (per Titus 2), meet up together privately for coffee, have events, hear from godly mature women at conferences, read good books written by godly women, and lots more besides. Again, we have much gospel freedom in what all this can look like. I have said it before, but there is a better paradigm than a fear-based one. Fear-based paradigms are almost always shame-based paradigms, which are the opposite of grace-based paradigms rooted in the gospel. Instead of living in fear, we can live in the gladness of the finished work of Christ. We can trust in a good God to work in our marriages and families. We need such work, in truth; we break things and get things wrong and need a whole lot of divine help to be godly men and women. This very much includes me! My prayer here is that the church will reject fear-based thinking and embrace grace-based thinking. This is what is behind the Proverbs 31:11 husband; he trusts in his godly wife, and his life is not filled with sorrow and pain as a result. His life is filled with "gain," God-given gain. So can ours be, brothers.

This is an example of why some think you are off. You select one portion of his post that bothers you the most and divert attention to that. Then, in one sentence, deflect any potential answer to his examples before finally forcing people into a this or that scenario.

My sweet friend has passed. 😢 😭 Pea. Patricia. Patty P. Thank you all for praying for her. I don’t know what the Lord knows. I hope to see her again. Share the gospel with your friends, guys. ❤️‍🩹