TRAINED TO BE KEEPERS AT HOME (Training Our Daughters to be Keepers at Home)

By Pastor Richard Minet

TRAINED TO BE KEEPERS AT HOME
(Training Our Daughters to be Keepers at Home)

Contents:

• What food represents in our cultures.
• The use of by God, Satan and man to achieve different purposes.
• Success in the workplace at the expense of the home front.
• The true meaning of the word "keeper".
• Working class 21st century ladies

Tit. 2:1-5 
As for you, Titus, promote the kind of living that reflects wholesome teaching. Teach the older men to exercise self-control, to be worthy of respect, and to live wisely... Similarly, teach the older women to live in a way that honors God. They... should teach others what is good. These older women MUST TRAIN the younger women to love their husbands and their children, to live wisely and be pure, TO WORK IN THEIR HOMES, to do good, and to be submissive to their husbands. Then they will not bring shame on the word of God. (NLT)

Apart from being a source of nourishment for sustenance of life, food represents a lot of other purposes. From place to place, people to people, culture to tradition, etc, food means different things to different people.

For example In some eastern part of Nigeria, refusing food is regarded as refusing their friendship. In Gen. 18:1-8 Abraham urge God to accept his food as a sign that he had indeed found favour with him. In Gen. 27:1-4, Isaac ordered for food from his son Esau to be used as a propellant for activating divine blessing.


Food throughout history has been used by God, Satan and man to achieve different purposes. The fall of man that ushered in death and altered God's wonderful plan for man was via this tool. Other purposes of food are;
For connecting to fatherly blessing: Gen. 27:1-4
For enhancing unity: Acts 4:33-34
For promoting division: Acts 6:1-3, 1Cor. 11:17-22
For friendship acceptance: Lk. 19:1-10
For a show of love or compassion: Jas. 2:15-16
For sealing a covenant: Gen. 15:7-12
For binding oneself under an oath: Acts 23:12-14. The list is endless.
God has further shown us the importance of food in his eternal purpose and place, in the fact that it continues into eternity. Lk. 22:15-16

Considering the numerous roles food plays in the life of man, it should not be out of place to believe that it must also play a vital role in marriages and relationships. The bible understands the importance of food in homes, therefore it not only teaches but gives clarity as to whose primary duty it is as well as commands that the custodians (women) be taught the importance of managing the home-front, especially as it relates to food today.

Our Christian mothers must realise the role of food as a major sign in showing care and affection for family and hospitality for guests and the need to learn as well as teach the younger women and their kids to cook well. Tit. 2:3-5, Matt. 15:32-39, Lk. 11:5-8, Heb. 13:1-2. Besides, cooking is an impeccable sign of a woman's commitment to her duty and service for her family. Mk. 1:30-31.


Sadly, most ladies today are making a success in the workplace at the expense of the home front. Today's ladies can hardly cook more than two to three soups (meals) and in most cases, that which their mothers learnt from their mothers, and from their grandmothers and to endless generation which was also transferred to them.

Worse still is the fact that these young ladies, can't cook meals outside their tribe or with little resources, which would have been a plus in times of recession like this. Their mothers learnt to make the most, if not the best of meals, using whatever meagre resources available at their disposal, but the career ladies today, put in so much only to produce so little tasty and satisfying meals. I believe one of the reasons we have more widows than widowers today, women who make life giving meals are becoming scarce, and why some men find it hard to leave their mothers aprons, kitchen power!

A major problem with this is that our mothers are failing in TRAINING and ENFORCING our daughters in this art, we are instead investing so much in preparing them for the workplace and consequently pitching them against their male counterparts. This is an anomaly, very unchristianly, and believe me, it will become one of the issues that will be used by the enemy to cause one of the major damages that will make marriage uninteresting in our time as predicted in scriptures. 1Tim. 4:1-3.
Food is so powerful that apart from the fact that it can bring life if properly utilised and death if abused, 1Cor. 11:29-30, 34, it can also serve as a tool to naturally in-still homely, submissive and marital service values in a women towards their husbands and their family.

The word keepers translated as “workers at home” in the Greek is Oikourgos and suggests the following: (oikos = house + ergos = worker.) Bible scholars translate the word to mean: “house-keeper”, watcher, or guardians of the home. It means to be “busy at home”, “carrying out household duties” or “working at home”. Oikouros simply refers to a home life that was typical of respectable married women in Greco-Roman society.

Unlike what some women may think however, Paul was not talking about women taking on a significant role of spiritual protection or guardianship of the household, rather he wanted the young women to comply with the usual moral standards of the typical Roman matron.

Again, Paul was not speaking about women scrubbing floors or washing clothes when he used this word, he was speaking about the management of the home, which would have included the management of slaves then (but servants now) and home-based industries such as spinning and weaving.

In contrast to the thinking or argument of most working class 21st century ladies, housework is a necessary part of life, and there is nothing at all wrong with a woman devoting her time in addition to her career to keeping a clean and orderly home, without being subjected or confined to a domestic or kitchen life.

There is no better time and way to begin the year than to brace up yourself to show love, affection and care for your family by adding new delicacies and possibly new life and excitement on your family table. This is God's intention, that food be used for glorious purposes

POINT OF MEDITATION:
1. How many dishes (soup) can you make as a lady and how many do you consider as average?
2. What can be done to make cooking and home chores natural and more attractive for women?
 
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