Feminine Appeal

Feminine Appeal: Seven Virtues of a Godly Wife and Mother
Author: Carolyn Mahaney
Publisher: Crossway Books, 2004
Pages: 157


This book is the written form of lectures given by Carolyn Mahaney on Titus 2. The book is very readable and applicable to woman in every season of life. A chapter is given to each of the seven virtues listed in Titus 2:5: loving your husband, loving your children, self-control, purity, working at home, kindness, and submission.

In the chapters on loving your husband and children, she points out that we should take pleasure in loving them. This goes beyond a sacrificial, duty-driven love. We are to enjoy our husband and children, however mundane our duties are. The chapter on self-control was convicting. Some of the things she covers are eating to the glory of God, sleeping to the glory of God, and capturing our thoughts and feelings.

"Our feelings are either ruled by truth or ruled by sin." p. 75

The chapter on kindness was excellent. The selfishness of our hearts is deceitful. Those we love the most, we sometimes fail to be kind to. A kind person is "renown for praying, greeting, listening, encouraging, and planning." The section on planning was especially convicting. In order to do kind things for either our family or others it requires thought and planning. Those small kindnesses that can be given with just a little forethought are some of the most treasured.
The purpose of striving for these virtues is not so that we will have a happy home. That may and probably will be one of the blessings, but that is not the purpose. The purpose is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
This book has given me an even greater desire to seek out "older woman" to learn from so that I might not dishonor the Gospel.

Titus 2:3-5: ³Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, ⁴so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, ⁵to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored.