*This list is for women. For the checklist that is men-specific, please check out Leader Development

Introduction

Note on how to use this book

It would be very easy for a daughter (or a parent) to be overwhelmed when they first read through this book. Wow! I have to learn all that?! However, these principles represent a life-time of growth in a woman’s life, and it is likely that most women will not fully graduate from this checklist. Therefore, to avoid discouragement, I strongly recommend that you not take the whole self-diagnostic survey all at once. Instead, this booklet can be a guide for several years of mentorship. This gives time for a parent to learn right along with his or her child. This book is designed to be a progress guide of what has been done and what still needs to be accomplished so that mentoring a daughter becomes less haphazard and more systematic. We have an expression: “eat the elephant one bite at a time.” That is certainly appropriate for this “elephant.” Do not worry about the fact that many issues in this book are beyond your reach right now. Just select a few topics that you believe are most critical, and work on those.

When I disciple my teen-aged daughters, I actually involve them in the process of selecting which issues they want to work on. We don’t have as a goal to be perfect in each area. Our only goal is to have some growth in each area before marriage. I have asked my daughters to take a yellow marker and to highlight two to six things each week that they want to discuss and work on. Since the daughters are prayerfully involved in the selection process, this makes it much more likely that a parent’s mentoring will be useful and appreciated. Once we have made some good progress on each of those items, we start to look at some new items in which the daughter feels weak. This makes the booklet much less daunting. The issues of this booklet are gradually achieved over many years, not in one year.

While I am assuming that the father will take the lead in mentoring his daughter, it will become very apparent as you progress through this book that a father cannot do this alone. In fact, the Bible assumes that we fathers will be somewhat clueless on how to mentor our daughters in at least a few areas (Tit. 2:3-5). But we still need to be aware of the progress our daughters are making. Preparing mature daughters is a team effort of husband, wife, and daughter.

Why is this book different than the mentoring book for young men?

Valuing our Daughters as Daughters.

“Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies.”

Proverbs 31:10

The description of the ideal woman given in Proverbs 31 begins with God’s evaluation of her value, and it does so in a way that gives women a tremendous sense of security. We tend to get our sense of security from what others think of us. But Scripture begins with God’s opinion. It gives us a God-centered focus on life. Unless our daughters and our wives become strong in the issues outlined in the first major section of this booklet (Christ – Developing a God-Centered and Empowered Life), they will continually find themselves struggling with their sense of security.

But just as importantly, God’s ascription of worth is for who she is, and not what she does. “her worth is far above rubies…” It doesn’t say, “The worth of her yearly output.” He starts with her as a person. If you try to gain your sense of security by looking at all of the expectations of others, or even the things that this ideal woman does, you could very easily get discouraged. This woman didn’t walk into that overnight. The things she did so well in this chapter flowed out of a sense of who she was, not vice versa.

And this is how God starts the Bible. After declaring His entire creation to be good several times in Genesis 1, God shocks us with the following words after the creation of Adam: “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” There was something about the woman that was needed. God could have been Adam’s companion, but Adam needed a woman. Another man could have helped him with his work, but he needed someone quite different to complement him. God imputes great worth to a woman as a woman when He created Eve. Following the creation of the woman, Scripture says for the first time, “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” (Gen. 1:31).

Adam certainly felt this to be true because, prior to her being created, there was nothing in all of creation that satisfied his need for a helper suitable for him. She was worth more than rubies and more than all the creatures that came before him. And she had that worth before she did a single act of service. God's declaration that His creation was very good was declared before she did anything. Her worth came from who she was in God’s eyes and the role that she embraced, not from how much she was able to accomplish.

I think if mothers could start with that principle rather than with all of the actions of Proverbs 31, it would help them to be less stressed. One of the dangers in looking at some books on Proverbs 31 is that they will on occasion impute worth to a woman based upon how much she can do

• based upon her performance. And as women read through the chapter they can easily become intimidated. “Wow! Look at what the Proverbs 31 woman does! She reads, teaches her kids, sews clothes, cooks, cleans, engages in gardening, purchasing real estate, mercy ministries, runs a cottage industry, manages the household, and never seems to go to sleep! I’ll never measure up!” But measuring your worth by your ability to keep up with this woman is a terrible danger to fall into. It is one that can make you feel worthless during times of tiredness, sickness or even during those times when you, perhaps as a new Christian, are learning the ropes of what it means to be a Christian woman.

In fact, that is the very error of feminism. Feminists have declared over and over again that the worth of a woman is measured by what kinds of things she can do. If there is something a man is doing that a woman is not allowed to do, she feels that her worth is being attacked. But the feminist is doubly cursed. She not only has the jobs she has taken from men, but still has all of her own work. So one of the things that all of us need to learn (male and female) is that doing must flow from being. Who you are in Christ is far more important than what you do for Christ. Think about it: Does God really need your service? Does the God who in one day created trillions and trillions of stars by the Word of His power really need our service? No. He gives us opportunities for service so that we can benefit. He gives us challenges so that we can learn to depend upon Him, taste of His power, grow in our relationship with Him, and learn to be pleased by pleasing Him. He cares about us and our character far more than He cares about our yearly output. Doing must flow from being, and you are valued by God not for your doing, but for your being which results in doing.

Daughters are Different than Sons!

And what is your being? It has been and always will be womanhood. Throughout eternity women will be women. You will never gain a sense of value by comparing yourself to man. You will never gain your sense of worth by trying hard to please others. It is in the sense that you are secure in God’s grace and in God’s opinion of you that enables you to serve even when unappreciated.

We live in a day and age when women feel demeaned if they are treated as women. They want no distinctions between the sexes. All traditional differences are being eroded in the interests of promoting a woman's worth. The book of Proverbs contrasts the woman of folly and the woman of wisdom. The woman of folly is abandoning her femininity. She rebels against her husband, is boisterous and loud, tears down her household rather than building up her household. The woman of folly is an incredible description of feminism.

Elisabeth Elliot said:

"There is a fundamental and to me quite puzzling omission in most 'feminist' discussion - the failure to talk at all about femininity [i.e., what is distinctive to women]."¹

"We are not required somehow to 'overcome' our sexuality. We affirm it. We rejoice in it. We seek to be faithful to it as we seek to use it as a gift of God. Unfaithfulness to one's sex is unfaithfulness to everybody… The husband who is not faithful to his masculinity defrauds his wife, and the reverse is equally true."²

We need to realize that ultimately, an attack upon God's definition of a woman's worth is an attack upon God and God’s order. Elisabeth Elliot says:

"We are called to be women [not men]… I have accepted God's idea of me, and my whole life is an offering back to Him of all that I am and all that He wants me to be."³

True worth comes when you embrace your calling to the Biblical model of womanhood. Don’t worry what the world thinks about you. And don’t even get your sense of worth from what you perform. Get it from God, and you will be freed up to learn to do the things in this chapter.

We should train daughters differently.

From the time that our sons and daughters were toddlers, we began to teach them the differences between males and females and helped them to glory in their unique callings. Obviously, there are many things that are the same: Both males and females have the same sin nature, the same need for God’s grace, and the same need for a daily relationship with God. Both males and females must learn how to relate to the communities of family, church, and culture. Both must learn how to grow in character and in competencies. But a daughter’s feminine calling shapes and influences everything in profoundly different ways than a son’s leadership calling will. We want to prepare our daughters to be godly mothers and wives. It is not our goal to make them clones of our sons.

For example, we gradually trained our sons to be more and more independent of parental control. While our daughters were able to earn some side money by taking on extra jobs for us, our sons earned a great deal of money both from the family and outside the family. While we bought everything our daughters would need, we gradually had our boys select and buy more and more of their own clothing. While we taught our sons how to be initiators and leaders, we taught our daughters how to be responders and help-meets to leaders (a kind of leadership in its own right). Even the sexual temptations that our boys faced were different than those faced by our girls. The point is that our leadership training will take on a different look with the girls than with the boys.

What should daughters do after graduation?

We have frequently been asked the question of what to do with daughters who have graduated from high school. Should they leave the home? Should they go to College? Should they have continuing education in the home? Should they help the family business? While the answers to these questions profoundly affect how the principles in this book will be applied, I will only seek to give general principles here:

Take your cues from Scripture

First, this is not a time to stop glorifying God (1 Corinthians 10:31). Another way to say this is that this is not a time to start taking your cues of what to do from the world. Parents who have provided a Christian education for their children have bucked the expectations of government, neighbors and even Christian friends in order to provide what they believed God wanted for them. But oddly, many of these same parents stop bucking and start conforming when it comes to the question, “What’s a daughter to do after graduation?” Without even batting an eyelid, they embrace the paradigms, expectations and pressures of the world for education and preparation for life. If we would take our cue from the Bible rather than college recruiters, our answers might be different.

Bring these years into sync with the woman’s primary calling

Compare the words that Scripture uses to describe a wife with the words used to describe a daughter. Often, the years from graduation till marriage are quite different from these descriptions. Why? Ephesians 5 describes a wife’s role as including submission, respect of her husband, being cleansed with the water of the word, being loved, protected, and connected, belonging, being nourished and cherished. But these are the very principles that godly parents have been seeking to provide and instill into their daughters for their first 16-18 years. So you have 16-18 years of Ephesians 5 principles, and hopefully many more years of Ephesians 5 principles after you are married. So it is puzzling that many parents seek to get their daughters to do the exact opposite from the time that they are graduated until such time as they get married.

Though the daughter of marriageable age in 1 Corinthians 7 is living at home, under the father’s authority and being protected by his authority, modern girls are often sent off to live at a dorm in another state only seeing their parents twice a year, if that. They are learning how to survive independently. They are not being protected, nourished or respected. Instead they are being disrespected by teachers who are hostile to their faith. They are being exposed to the affections of other young men and are gradually losing their sense of belonging, security and being daily watched over. Then suddenly at marriage, the father wants to step in again and give his daughter away and hope his daughter will relearn the principles of Ephesians 5 with her new authority. Others get jobs and learn financial independence and then have to switch gears at the time of marriage. Some have more connection with their bosses at work than they do with their dads, or later with their husbands. There is a disconnect between graduation and marriage that doesn’t look anything like what they will eventually become by God’s grace.

In fact, you can diagram it this way:

From birth until graduation homeschoolers learn the beauty of femininity and all the godly characteristics of a dependent wife. Then after graduation they learn to live quite the opposite. Then when they get married, hopefully they learn those principles of Ephesians 5 once again. Scripture’s general philosophy is that we should remove this disconcerting piece in the middle. There is no such thing as graduation from home in the Bible. Daughters continue to need the protection, love, nurture, sense of belonging and care under their fathers that Ephesians 5 says will be transferred to the husband. Parents should think of their daughter’s next major transition as being marriage, not graduation.

Don’t leave and cleave prematurely

Ordinarily, daughters should not leave their father’s authority till it is time to cleave to their husbands. This doesn’t mean they can’t go on trips. Even the Proverbs 31 woman went on trips. But the relationship and protection of their “authority” needs to be present. 1 Corinthians 7 indicates that a virgin daughter stays at home until her father gives her in marriage.⁴ And that text indicates that this is true even when she is getting past the flower of her age. Other Scriptures say the same thing: Genesis 24:21; 29:19; 34:8; Exodus 22:17 are four examples. But this feminine need for protection was true of even divorced or widowed women who either came under the protective covering of their father (as in Genesis 38:11 and Leviticus 22:13), or a son (as in the case of John 19:25-27 where Jesus took that role for His mother), or a grandson (as in 1 Timothy 5:4), or another member of the family (as in 1 Tim. 5:16), or a friend of the family (as when Jesus gave His mother into the care of the apostle John) or (in worst case scenario) under the protective care of an elder (as in 2 John and 1Timothy 5:1-19). But the bottom line is that God wants the hearts of sons and daughters to be restored to the fathers and the hearts of fathers to be restored to their children. The last verse of the Old Testament indicates that the mess we are presently in today is precisely because of this problem.

In the musical, Fiddler on the Roof, Tevya spoke of his beloved town of Anatevka saying, “In Anatevka everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do.” That’s not always the case in our modern world. Everything seems up for grabs. And daughters especially don’t know what their place should be. My eldest daughter always dreads the questions people tend to ask after graduation: “What school are you going to?” “What do you want to do when you get out of College?” “Where are you going to live?” Our pat answer is that she is going to Kayser University for a M-R-S (Mrs.) Degree and will be continuing to live where she has always lived – at home, where she will be loved and protected. And people are usually just as shocked about that as they were when we first started having home education, and when we had more children than the American average. And their arguments are just as lame. Any time you buck the culture, you will find people who don’t understand. This is not to say that women shouldn’t get a College Degree, or shouldn’t start a business. It’s just how they do so that will make all the difference in the world.

Fathers should help their daughters pursue an M-R-S degree

We joke about the M-R-S degree. It is preparing our daughters for marriage. If College fits into that, fine, do it – preferably by extension and preferably without debt. Why spend $60,000 on preparing for a career that most women will only have a .325% chance of ever needing. But this does not mean we are opposed to education. There is much learning, mentoring and ministry that can ease the transition into motherhood. On the learning side, let me put in a plug for you to read and digest R. J. Rushdoony’s book, The Institutes of Biblical Law, volume 1. Doug Phillips said that this book was the best and most influential book that he has ever read. His father said that this was the book that most profoundly shaped his life. Andrea Schwartz said that it grounded her not only in richer homeschooling, but became the basis for being able to discuss any area of life from a Biblical perspective. There are many other great books that girls should master.

Girls should learn how to raise leaders

But there is more to discipleship than education. When a girl gets married, she will be a leader under her husband’s authority. And it is critical that she knows what is involved in raising leaders. Even when they are young, they can start doing some of the things that married women do. They can start teaching their younger siblings. They can extend hospitality. They can begin to develop skills that a future husband might need. They can begin strategizing how to implement the principles in this booklet and the leadership booklet for boys into the lives of their future children.

Make sure that God has your heart

Finally, make sure God has your heart. Make sure you know what it means to find delight by delighting Him. Make sure you understand the secret of intimacy with God. If dwelling in the secret place of the Almighty is not the most natural part of your life right now, such intimacy will be crowded out by the busyness of motherhood. Victoria Brookes said:

Our ministry to mankind, though important in its own right, must always be the result of communion with God, never the other way around. Any work that we do among men, women, and children here on earth must emerge directly from our intimacy with God. Nothing less can sustain it (John 15:4-7). Any comfort we give, any help we offer, must always be colored by our contact with God’s heart. Everything we do to fulfill the second commandment must always pass through the filter of the first.

Whatever worthwhile tasks and goals we may pursue here on earth, it is ultimately God’s pleasure, not our productivity, that validates our existence...

“What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever!” With great rejoicing these words have become the theme of my existence. The woven word of God has wrapped me fully round and now I wear these simple sentences everywhere. I never take them off. I sleep in the comfort of their closeness and walk with them through each new day. I never tire of their pattern. I attend christenings and funerals alike in this garment; and in this I will be buried, for it is what I want to be wearing when I meet Him face-to-face. I am sealed for all of time in this apparel of praise, cloaked in the sure knowledge that I do not exist for me at all. I have been created for God. ⁵

May the Lord prosper your efforts as you use this guide to raise daughters who seek to honor God with everything that they are and have.

Mentoring Checklist

Rank yourself in each of the competencies that follow. Fill in each blank according to this scale:

Press the Tab key to go move from field to field. Answers will be remembered if you close the page and come back later.

The lower your score in a section, the better prepared you are to be married. Keep in mind that most people will be overwhelmed if they try to fill this book out in one sitting. Remember to “eat the elephant one bite at a time.”

Christ - Developing a God-Empowered Life

Do not overlook this section. The most important thing we can do with our daughters is to make them secure in their relationship with God. We are successful if we can show our daughters how to derive the strength, wisdom, joy and graces they need from the fountainhead, Jesus Christ. Think of how Jesus developed in his leadership (see Luke 2:52). His parents were involved (v. 51), but it was the heavenly Father that was the source of all Christ’s leadership. Everything Jesus did in His leadership flowed out of His relationship with the Father. He was fully and inwardly submitted to the Father’s will. He said, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of Him who sent Me.” (John 6:38). We have no authority when we are not submitted to God’s authority. All authority flows from God. We cannot give life if we are not experiencing life from God. We do not have power and joy if we are not experiencing God’s power and joy. Jesus said in John 5:19, “Most assuredly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.” The Father was the source of all Christ’s words and works and wisdom and power. In John 5:30 Jesus said, “by myself I can do nothing.” If that was true of Jesus, how much more so should it be true of each of us? In John 15:5 Jesus said, “Without Me you can do nothing.” But the same verse says that if we abide in Christ we will bear much fruit. Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13). Our maturity is powerfully impacted by the strength of our fellowship with the Triune God. If we want our daughters to have the savor of Christ, then we need to make sure that we teach them how to enter into union with Christ and how to abide in union and fellowship with Christ.

Deep Communion with God

Developing a Sonship Relationship vs. an Orphan Heart

Spiritual Vitality

Worship

Bible Study

Prayer

Measure your prayer life by your sense of communion with God

Measure the breadth of your intercessory life

Measure your prayers by the depth of your life

Measure your prayers by the height of your life

Measure your prayers by the length of your life

Spiritual warfare skills

Learning to Relate by Grace to Family, Church and Culture

General Community Principles

Communication skills for daughters

Conflict Management/Peacemaking

A Woman’s Role as Daughter, Wife and Mother

Learning to Develop an Inward Beauty by God’s Grace

Joy

Measuring your fellowship with God by your joy

Measuring your knowledge by your joy

Measuring your worship by your joy

Measuring your Spirit infilling by your joy

Faith

Measure your faith by your response to circumstances

Measure your faith by your attitudes toward God

Measure your faith by your response to Scripture

Measure your faith by your obedience and action

Measure your faith by your vision

Measure your faith by your outflowing streams

Measure your faith by your initiative

Measure your faith by your perseverance

Measure your faith by your ability to praise God

Disciplines of Thought

Humility

Love

Self-Denial

Confidence/Security

Personal Integrity/Moral Purity

Understanding Suffering, Personal Limitations and the Fellowship of Christ’s Sufferings

Personal Life

Likeability/Sense of Humor.

Learning to Leverage Your Role in God’s Kingdom

Mission/Vision

Future Orientation

Preparing for Your Calling as Wife

A woman’s preparation for marriage begins when she is a little child. She will catch far more by watching and imitating her parents than she will by being verbally taught. Rather than waiting until a girl is married before she is taught how to love her husband, how to manage his household, etc., she can be taught by doing those things within the home. Obviously there will be many differences once a marriage has taken place, but the transition from being under the authority of the father to being under the authority of the husband should be a much smoother transition than it normally is. The following are some areas of preparation that can be made long before a woman gets married.

Preparing for Your Calling as Mother

Preparing a child to be a mother can start quite young. Even the youngest children can be taught proper attitudes through dolls. Later they can be involved in watching out for the younger children. Character issues should be frequently discussed and practiced. A vision for having many children can be deeply inculcated. Of course, far more is caught by watching a parent than as is learned from verbal instruction.

Preparing for your calling as a manager of the household

This category and some of the others also relate to motherhood, but I have separated out these competencies in a topical arrangement for convenience.

Household management (cooking, sewing, etc)

General Planning/Management/Handling Stress

Stewardship skills

Delegation

Leadership skills

Note that though a wife is under authority, she is also a person who is in authority. The fact that she cannot lead men does not mean a woman should not learn leadership skills. Every mother must have leadership skills or she will fail to inspire her children. Every older woman should aspire to mentoring immature Christian women (Titus 2:3-5). The woman of Proverbs 31 (like Lydia) had to know how to manage servants. Thus, it is imperative that girls be raised to be leaders as well.

For an excellent discussion of the 5Cs and 4Ds of leadership development, see books 2 and 4 of Malcolm Webber’s Spirit Led Leadership series. These can be purchased at www.sgai.org. The 5Cs are Christ, Community, Character, Calling and Competencies. The 4Ds are Spiritual, Relational, Experiential and Instructional.

Leadership development in others

Ministry management

Outward Beauty – Dangers, benefits and management of

Further Competencies

Theological Background

Teaching from the Bible

I can teach the following issues from the Bible:

Worldview issues

Logic

Apologetics

Summary of scores