An Excellent Wife (Proverbs 31)
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Ben Kreps:
Welcome to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our Executive Director. Mark, a couple weeks off the conference and still remembering with a lot of joy what we experienced there. We talked a little bit before about the sermons, the fine sermons that we got to sit under during the conference. But also there was an excellent slate of breakout sessions that served us big time. One of them was for the ladies, and you wanted to talk about the breakout that Carolyn Mahaney taught.
Mark Prater
I do. In fact, all the breakout sessions, the audio for all the breakout sessions along with the main sessions is available on our website, the Sovereign Grace website. So, if you're a listener or a reader of this podcast, those are available to you, and I really encourage you to listen to them. I've started working my way through the breakout sessions, and I started with the women's breakout session and listened to it sometime in the last week or so, and I could not be more excited about this women's breakout session. It was entitled The Excellent Wife because Carolyn Mahaney taught from Proverbs 31. That was followed by a panel, which I'll talk about in just a moment. But Carolyn did just a great job of teaching Proverbs 31 verse 10 through the end of the chapter. First of all, she just started with wonderful observations about the text. It's an acrostic poem and she said that verse 23 is the theological center of that particular passage.
Each of her points sprang clearly from the passage, and she taught them energetically, not just energetically, but she taught them with a lot of practical application as well. And I just thought Carolyn did an excellent job of teaching on this topic; an excellent wife. Now her teaching was followed by a panel that Carolyn sat on, along with Betsy Ricucci and Julie Kauflin, Beth Mellinger, Cheryl Kittrell. And my dear wife Jill was the panel moderator; who led that panel. And they followed Carolyn's teaching by just providing additional practical application. And also were able to talk about some points that are hard to make in a 45 minute teaching. So they expanded some of the topics as well, and they did an excellent job, both Carolyn and then the panel. So I really want to encourage you to listen to this breakout session.
Obviously, if you're married, I would encourage you to listen to it as husband and wife together and talk about how it can help you to grow in your marriage. If you're not married, consider listening to this breakout session, either for the wife that you may be someday, or for a guy who may be looking for a wife or to look for in a Proverbs 31 woman. I'd also encourage all the pastors that are listening to this particular podcast to consider listening to this breakout session together, possibly with your wives in a small group setting, and talk about how you can grow in your marriages. And then also for our pastors, this breakout session is a pastoral resource for you. So consider who in your church you could point to this breakout session; have them listen to it and do a pastoral follow up. It may just be a way that strengthens their marriage. So just some practical ways that you can listen to this breakout session and benefit from it.
Ben Kreps:
Excellent. Yes, I know my wife and the rest of the ladies that we brought to the conference were served wonderfully by that teaching and panel discussion. A couple of the ladies were introduced for the first time to Carolyn and Betsy and others that we've benefited from over the last many years. This served us in an important way because this is part and parcel of our complementarian conviction. It's an area of deep importance. Talk to us about that.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, I think this breakout session is so important for a number of reasons. First of all, it's one that we can all listen to and benefit from in learning how to grow as husbands and wives in our marriages. So it will strengthen our marriages. I think it's also very foundational for us in Sovereign Grace. First of all, it can strengthen our homes, and that's a foundational aspect of who we are as a family of churches. But it can also strengthen us. It's also foundational and strengthens us as churches itself, because as you just mentioned, Ben, we are complementarian in our theology, and we want to walk that out well, in obedience to God's word. It's also foundational because you think about what Caroline taught and you listen to it, you'll, I think, agree with this. What she's teaching today is very countercultural.
And so as we take Proverbs 31 and we apply it to our lives, and we attempt to live that out in our day, it will contrast the culture, I believe, in a way that will be appealing to those that Christ is drawing to himself, because those that Christ is drawing to himself, they'll look into our churches and they'll see the kind of marriages that we see hopefully in scripture by the grace of God. And that will be attractive. And they'll come to our churches and hear the gospel and my prayer is that they will be born again. So it's just very foundational.
And I want to close this by just telling a story regarding our complementarian convictions and how this breakout session strengthened our complementarian convictions. There was a couple at our conference, Rodrigo and Luciana Fournier from San Jose, Costa Rica. Rodrigo leads a church in San Jose, Costa Rica that is pursuing adoption into Sovereign Grace. So the breakout session was on Wednesday afternoon, and on Thursday morning, Rodrigo and Luciana found Jill, and they wanted to talk about their excitement regarding the conference and Luciana said that the women's breakout session was so good. She said, "I've heard teachings on Proverbs 31 before, and I always left them feeling burnt, but that wasn't the case yesterday. I left inspired and I left equipped and helped in faith so that I can apply this text to my life." She was just very excited about not only the teaching, but then the panel discussion just added more practical application for how she can grow as a wife. And Rodrigo jumped in and said that they've been to other conferences, other pastors conferences. But this was the first one where the wives of pastors were honored and appreciated. And he knew that was intentional on our part. And they both thanked us for that. Those two experiences strengthened their understanding of who we are as a complementarian family of churches. And by the way, one of the reasons they want to be adopted into Sovereign Grace is because of our complementarian values. So, there's a lot of fruit and that's just one story of many more I believe, of the fruit that will come from this breakout session. So please give a listen.
Ben Kreps:
It's excellent. As everyone watching or reading this knows, it's not only countercultural, our complementary convictions, in the secular culture, but even the church in the West is increasingly turning away from complementary convictions. And so I'm happy that we get to be in a family of churches where we happily and faithfully without reservation, teach and declare all that God's word says about his beautiful design for men and women. So, thanks again to Carolyn and the other ladies on the panel discussion. Thank you, Mark, for your encouragement to check that out and utilize that resource. And thank you all for watching or reading. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.