The sermon, titled 'The Power of Women in Spiritual Warfare' by Tilly, discusses the unique role and power of women in spiritual battles, using the historical story of Mrs. Mary Murray as an illustrative example. Murray's act of inviting British soldiers for tea during the Revolutionary War highlights the subtle but significant impact women can have through domestic actions. The speaker emphasizes that a woman's power is different from a man's, likening it to a vine or stream that gradually but powerfully alters its surroundings. Women's influence extends through generations, affecting both the home and the world. The sermon outlines three ways for women to engage in 'feminine warfare': taking domestic skills seriously, restoring order in family relationships, and cultivating gratitude. Emphasizing the importance of respect and gratitude in marriage, the speaker advises women to be mindful of their responses to daily challenges, as these reflect on their relationship with God. Ultimately, a woman's cheerful gratitude and domestic contributions are portrayed as powerful tools in spiritual warfare.

Welcome to Our Lady's Luncheon. It's the first one. Yeah. It's great. Absolutely.

Thank you guys. I'm not sure whose idea it was. So our hope for you for this time is that you would be encouraged and emboldened in your vision of the future, your walk with the Lord, your role in your church and in your marriage or your singleness, in the newness of your marriage and the all-encompassing years of work shepherding your children toward heaven while tending the meals, the laundry, the music lessons, in the challenging years of launching your grown children into the place that God has for them, to your role as a mother-in-law and a friend to your grown children, to the sweetest years of grandkids and uninterrupted time with your husband, the husband of your youth, and your role as an old and wise woman of value in your local church. So we hope that this time hits all those categories. Tilly Dillehay will be talking about the foundational years of raising and concentrating on little children when you have all the little ones in the home.

Donna Aschall will be talking about the years of readying your older ones to be productive children who are a blessing to their generation and their church and to you And I will be speaking of the years Lord willing that you will have to be a really a holy asset to your church and to your family and what the pitfalls are that Satan employs to hijack those things. So our hope is that you'll be edified and convicted and encouraged and inspired by our time together. And so I'm just going to give us maybe a couple more minutes. Tilly, are you ready to go? She's done eating.

Okay, so let's start now. How about this? Let me pray. I was going to do that too. Scott took that too.

Father, I'm so grateful for Scott. Thankful for his vision for something like this, for the whole weekend, for his leading his family and his team all year long toward this weekend. And so we pray for your blessing on him as he leads and as he encourages these men that he loves so dearly as they speak to us. Father, thank you for this time. Let it be edifying and produce fruit in our lives.

Amen. I'm sensing a little bit of some feminist tendencies still in this room. Just a little, But I will say that when I grow up, I'd like to dress exactly like you. I just wanted to say that I want linen everywhere Okay, I need this higher Alright. Hello.

Good day to you all All my friends are right up here So sweet Well, I'm ready to jump in here. We're prayed up and ready, so let's go. So in the summer of 1776, 30, 000 British troops sailed into New York Harbor. They defeated Washington's army in Brooklyn, and it was a devastating battle. And then Washington retreated about 10 miles north with most of his men.

A little while later, British General Howe attacked landing on Manhattan Island at Kips Bay and the American unit that was supposed to guard the landing place panicked and ran so he and his redcoats began moving inland and up north to meet up with Washington's army. What the general did not know is that there were about 3, 500 Continental troops left behind under General Putnam, and they were trying to escape to join Washington before they were met up with, by this huge army. So, from her large home on a nearby hill, there was a woman watching all of this, Mrs. Mary Murray. The hill is still called Murray Hill after this family on Manhattan Island.

And she can see from up there in her vantage point, both of these armies. She can see the huge army coming in with the British, and she can see the 3, 500 leftover continental troops trying to get up north. And she can see that they're about to find out about each other and meet and that the American Army is hugely outnumbered and is going to be totally overwhelmed. So Mrs. Murray, a Quaker and a rumored sympathizer to the Patriots, she sends a servant out to ask General Howe to tea.

So it's a hot day. General Howe and his men have not been around women in a long time. They haven't had a decent meal in a long time. They've been eating off ships and in camp grounds, you know, for months. And so he halts his men and stops off for a bite with his officers.

So Mrs. Murray and her daughters are there. They're courteous and they're hospitable. Legend has it that they plied the officers with cake and tea and wine and in a good conversation. Legend also has it that a servant was watching upstairs while 3, 500 American troops escaped up north and joined Washington's army.

So the women delayed these British officers for two hours at a tea party. And when the evacuation was complete, she graciously bid them farewell and they went off and started marching again. So isn't that crazy? I love this story. Historians differ about whether this story happened exactly that way, about whether she intended to do this or if she was just a super hospitable lady.

But in the words of the book that I read this in a couple months ago, this story is so great that it deserves to be true. Don't you love that? I love that phrase. This story deserves to be true. So what I love about this story is that it is such a perfect picture of the unique kind of domestic warfare that women are capable of.

Mrs. Murray was kind of like J.L. In the Book of Judges, but with a lot less blood. Whatever her intentions were in hosting the British soldiers, she moved the dial in this battle and saved lives that would otherwise have been lost. And to move the dial in a battle is a great thing.

But I believe that what you guys are doing in your homes every day is of even more eternal significance than what happened at this tea party. What you believe about God, about yourself, about the job that he's given you to do, these ideas ricochet out of your heart and into the world, into your home and into the world and down through generations. That is the kind of power every woman's life holds. Every woman's testimony for good or ill resonates through generations. Woman is truly a dangerous being.

The question is just, whom is she dangerous to? Is she going to be a threat to the joy and flourishing of those around her, or will she be a threat to the world, the flesh, and the devil? A woman's power is not like a man's. If a man does battle like a battering ram or a bayonet, maybe, a woman is more like a living vine that multiplies and overtakes a wall and eventually crumbles it, or like a flowing stream that laughs and flows and bends and eventually cuts rock. She is oriented to the physical, to the environmental, to the relational.

By tending to the needs of the body, using tools like a pot of soup and a clean bed sheet or fresh flowers, she creates opportunities to tend to the soul using tools like the Bible, wise counsel, and prayer. So a woman's warfare looks different than a man's. Mrs. Murray with a bayonet would have been less effective than the worst of American soldiers. But Mrs.

Murray with a teapot Saved 3, 500 souls. So in the season of young motherhood, which is what I'm talking about here today, you will do most of your warfare by seeking to build your house instead of tearing it down. I'm getting this from Proverbs 14.1, which says, the wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down. So how do we do this? Briefly, I'm gonna talk about three practical ways that we do feminine warfare by building our house.

Number one, we build our house by taking domestic skills seriously. Number two, build your house by restoring order to the relationships inside it. And number three, build your house by learning the secret of gratitude. So number one, build your house by taking domestic skills seriously. We are all of us living in a time when true domestic skill has been disrespected and in many cases lost completely.

So we've been talking this whole time so far about domestic warfare, but I just want to make a plug here for treating the skills themselves seriously and recognizing that you may not have acquired them to the degree that you think you have. Challenging ourselves, learning to, learning to clean well. You can't take that for granted. Learning to cook well, you can't take that for granted or assume that you know how to do that. Keep yourself in continued education like a pilot or a teacher or a physical therapist would.

The work that you're doing is keeping culture and it's not easy and it takes skill. So move whenever possible, move out of the digital world and into the physical. Instagram is stealing your time, many of you. The physical world is where you do most of your best warfare. So this is the world of flower and water and dirt and blood and flesh.

I mean, all these things are so, the physical things that we do every day are so important because this is gonna, you're supervising a place that is gonna have more impact on human flourishing than maybe any other. So we have to take it seriously. I know that when your children are small, it's exhausting and it's hard to acquire new skills. But the systems that you put in place when they're small are gonna serve you so well later on. So this is the time to try to acquire some of those skills.

And it takes tremendous discipline and your full attention. So lean into that process. So that's number one, taking domestic skills seriously. Number two, build your house by restoring order to the relationships inside it. I think a young wife is often tempted to upend the authority structure in the home, submitting to her young children and requiring obedience from her husband.

If we reverse the prescribed order like this, we end up with a wife who dominates or ignores her husband and bows down in submission to the whims of her little children. And this creates chaos. And it's you tearing down bricks out of your house. Ephesians 5, 24 says, Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. And then Ephesians 6.1, children obey your parents and the Lord for this is right.

The order of authority here is laid out very clearly. And I have to confess, I've always agreed with this stuff on paper. But after I got married, I began to recognize that my skills were not what I thought they were. And I seemed to have no muscle memory for respect in the home, and a built-in magnifying glass for seeing the failings of my husband. So here are a few of the things that I learned just practically as I was having to reverse engineer respect as a new married wife.

I learned to show the respect of common courtesy. So basic things, kissing your husband goodbye as he leaves for the day, greeting him when he comes back home, the way you would greet any other person who walks into your house, putting down a phone and looking at him as he's speaking to you, the way you would again, anyone else who is in your house, Not letting the children interrupt him when he's talking. I can remember sitting in the front seat and my husband's telling me a story and I'm shushing him because the toddler said something. Because you know you're so excited the toddler is learning to talk. This is so so wonderful.

But if you do that you tell the toddler that he's the most important thing in the world which he doesn't need and you tell your husband that he's not a priority. So just small things. These are small but important. Show respect by saying thank you as much as possible. Thank you is the most powerful motivator that you have in your arsenal for your husband.

And probably your kids too. Thank you is more strengthening to your husband than all of the helpful critical feedback that you could craft for his edification. The more you pour blessing on your husband's head in the form of thank you, in the form of smiles and joyful sexual engagement, good food, really all of the ways that we bless our husband. The more you pour that stuff out on his head, the more you strengthen him for the good fight that he's fighting. You wake up every day as a journalist.

You are choosing every day what kind of story to tell yourself about your life, the life God gave you, and about the husband that he gave you. So listen to the advice in Philippians 4-8. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Everything your husband is currently doing to provide, to lead, and protect, taking you to church, going to work, reading to kids, praying, mowing the yard, changing the oil, all of those little things that he does, they are all an opportunity to thank him and to tell yourself a story that deserves to be told, a story that deserves to be true. So don't wait for perfection before you think your husband.

Show respect by asking for his input and letting him make decisions without interference. So I think early on I thought submission is just wait for a big decision that you disagree on and then let him be the tiebreaker and that's kind of it. But I did later learn there are all kinds of opportunities in a normal week for signaling to my husband I am leadable and I think that you are a leader. And as I began to practice some of these things, I saw him grow in his leadership and I saw just the function of the household improve. So this sounds like, let me check with my husband before I commit to you about supper plans or buying that thing or being on that board.

Honey, what do you think I should do about this incident that happened with the kids this week? Do you think I should sign up to help with this or that thing before you sign up for it? Should we go with this curriculum or this curriculum? Let me know what you decide about this and I'll implement. So it's just these are these are small moments but they're cues that you have opportunities to let him know and opportunities to lay bricks in your home and build relational order.

So final point, big point number three, build your house by learning the secret of gratitude. If you look around and you watch carefully, you will discover that the bitterest women you know are not the ones who have had the hardest lives, right? And the joyful women you know are not the ones who have had the easy lives, that's for sure. Not even close. We've all met women who have been through horrific things, horrible things we can't imagine, and who are still overwhelming to us with their joyful, fruitful, grateful, smiling character.

This is the kind of woman that shows you joy is not the inevitable result of good things that come into your life. We all face a barrage of hard and easy things in life every day, right? Every single moment of every day is a simple choice being offered to each one of us between gratitude and bitterness. Which will it be? Those are your two choices.

And I believe this is the greatest difference between a woman who is building her house and a woman who is tearing her house down with her bare hands. You must come to see yourself as what you are, which is fortunate. Your life is exceptionally good because you're alive in Christ. And it used to be quite bad because you were dead in your trespasses. And the way that you spend your days now either in gratitude with a smile and in cheerful labor or in grumbling complaining and cursing under your breath, this is the way you're spending your life.

And your life is short. You have to see that you're saying something about God every time you respond to the baby who wakes up early, the washer that overflows, the broken dish, all of these little sea calamities are really no different from the big sea calamities that also come. They are all moments of opportunity strengthening either your habit of gratitude or your habit of bitterness. So when you respond with grumbling and complaining, you aren't just shaking your fist at a broken appliance. You're shaking your fist at God.

God is the one who gave you this life in this house with these children. When you find fault with the circumstances of your day, you're finding fault with your good father who loves you and who ordained exactly those circumstances for your good and for his glory. So the bitter woman has made the habit of thinking that she's ill-used in her life and it doesn't really matter how ill the usage. The flat tire or the hospitalized child, everything is evidence to her that she's fundamentally unfortunate and she has a right to be angry. But the grateful woman is grateful around and between and throughout every hard season.

In the end, the hard season only serves to strengthen her faith and her gratitude and bring more victory. She's in the habit of responding a certain way and the habit does not disappear when a truly difficult thing comes. The woman who learns this secret is a woman who stands right in the middle of a dangerous house, dangerous to the world, the flesh, and the devil. She has become relentlessly, militantly, obstinately cheerful. And one brick at a time she is building a legacy that will echo through generations.

She's on the front lines doing spiritual battle the way only a grateful woman can. Let me just walk off or pray. Okay, I'm going to walk off.