The Divine Fingerprint

Leslie Basham: Janet Parshall says God always knows what He’s doing.

Janet Parshall: If He made us male and female, none of us are a biological mistake. If before He hung that first star He knew us by name and knows the number of hairs on our head, then our gender as we walk around in this costume known as flesh is not a mistake but a divine fingerprint. You have to start with understanding that principle because if you don’t, then what’s going to happen is Satan will absolutely fertilize that little seed of what I like to call victimology.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Friday, June 22.

For the last couple of days Nancy Leigh DeMoss has been talking with Janet Parshall. She'll be a speaker this September at True Woman '12, the conference hosted by Revive Our Hearts.

Janet has found a lot of success as a talk show host based in Washington, D.C. But as we’ve heard, this isn’t her highest priority. It’s God, her family, and then everything else. Making her marriage to Craig a priority has been a process, and she’s back to offer wise advice to couples.

Now here’s Nancy continuing her conversation with Janet Parshall.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Okay, I’ve got to go back to something else you’ve said that is radically counter-cultural. You say it like it’s just everyday, but it is against the culture, and that is where you’ve talked about the husband as being the head of the wife. Those are fighting words today. You’ve used the “S” word, submission, which is something of an epithet today.

I’m listening to you. You’re a strong woman. You’ve got a lot of opinions. You’ve got a great head on your shoulders. You know what you think. You know what you believe. You’re very verbal. I’m thinking, “How does this live out in Janet Parshall’s marriage? What does it look like?”

I think sometimes the image we have of this submissive woman who has a meek and quiet spirit is: She doesn’t think. She doesn’t have opinions. She’s not influential in her marriage. That’s obviously not the way you understand the Scripture to teach.

Janet: No. You want to know what, Nancy, I think Satan does that. I think he promotes that mythology so that women will not come into alignment with what Scripture teaches. Satan has taken this whole idea of submission, and he’s created in our minds the idea that in America we wear a kind of spiritual burka.

We walk five steps behind our man. We have to fold our hands and be very quiet, and we cannot speak unless we’re spoken to. That is not at all what the Scriptures say. In fact, if you go back through those passages, it is a much more difficult calling for the man to love us as Christ loved the church. My Savior gave up His life for me. That’s sacrificial, unconditional love.

You know I can submit myself to Christ Jesus because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He’s loved me with an everlasting love, that nothing can separate me from His love. So going to Him puts me in a position immediately of trust because He loves me.

Take that paradigm and put in my marriage. I know that my husband loves me unconditionally. I know that he’s somebody that I can trust because he’s willing to sacrifice for me. So when my husband says somebody has the last word in this household and it’s me, I look at him and I go, “Thank You, Lord.” It’s no threat. It’s a comfort to me. Who wouldn’t want to submit to something like that?

Nancy: So for the woman whose husband is not Craig Parshall and is not loving in Christ-like, selfless, sacrificial ways . . . I’m not talking again about where there’s abuse. I know there are a lot of those issues, but we’re hearing from a lot of women who say, “My husband doesn’t seek the Lord.”

Janet Parshall: Exactly.

Nancy: He’s not providing spiritual leadership in this family. How does a woman continue to live out the gospel and submission to Christ’s authority and the headship of her husband?

Janet: You just answered the question. It echoes exactly what we find in 1 Peter. You don’t even have to say, “O Lord.” It’s the living out. It’s interesting. I’ve heard story after story in all these many years I’ve been sitting in front of a microphone where a woman will say, “You know, I started praying for my husband.”

It’s funny because when you think, "I’m praying for my husband because, boy, he’s going to have this Damascus Road experience spiritually, and he’s going to radically change." But what it ends up doing is—surprise and caution—it ends up changing you. You begin to start seeing the fruit of the Spirit being manifest in your life. The idea of mercy and forgiveness and patience and love and all those things.

All of a sudden the next thing you know, this husband who “won’t follow what the Lord wants him to do,” starts seeing this fruit in your life. He goes, “Wait a minute. That’s pretty spectacular.” As you begin to transform and live this out in your life, what happens is it’s just this perfect ebb and flow where all of a sudden he rises up going, “Wait a minute. I have the privilege now of being someone who loves you in return. I begin to understand what my role is in your life.”

So it isn’t a matter of wagging a finger in his face. It isn’t a matter of shoving the Scriptures under his nose when he comes home from a long day of work. It’s a matter of you, the wife, going before the Lord saying, “Lord, transform me. Let me live like You in this relationship. And Father, I will leave the transformation of him to You.” He will again complete in him the good thing which He has begun.

So without saying a word, just start living it out in your own life, praying for him on a regular basis. Then when you feel the liberty of the Holy Spirit, look for ways to affirm him. So often men just go, “I didn’t know that she loved me. I just didn’t feel that. We’ve been married twenty years, and I don’t know, we stopped saying that we loved each other years ago.” Little note in the lunch box. Little squeeze on the neck before he walks out the door. Having his special dinner.

It sounds so simplistic, and it sounds at some level so trite, but it goes back to the love languages that we’ve all been taught about. Learn to figure out how he loves to tell you he loves you. Learn that language:

• touch
• gifts
• acts of service
• affirmation, whatever it is.

Then say you love him vis-à-vis that language that he is most receptive to receiving it.

Love covers a multitude of sins, as the Scriptures say. If we can manifest Christ’s love for our husband, I have to tell you, that will transform it. In all those years, Craig and I don’t have a perfect marriage. Nobody does. They’re two fallen, flawed, fractured mortals living in a relationship.

On those times when the ebb and the flow takes place and I’m thinking this is not where I would like it to be, my prayer has been for thirty-six years of marriage, Nancy, Lord, help me to love Craig the way You love him. I’m telling you that causes radical transformation in my heart and in my life and in my approach toward Craig.

Nancy: But you really have to be willing to die to your own self, your own emotions because what comes naturally in those situations is the wagging of the finger, the badgering, the demeaning, the belittling—out of hurt. Again to not go that way is counter-intuitive in a sense.

Janet: Let me bring something else up because I bet there’s somebody listening who just thought, “Well, okay but what about my needs? I need to be affirmed. I need to be loved. I’d love for him to put his arm around my neck.” No one can deny those needs and they are just exactly that.

But let’s go back to Scripture. What does the passage say? “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19 NKJV). That doesn’t mean, I believe, just the clothes on your back and the food on your table.

If you have emotional needs, then ask God to provide them in whatever way He can, whether it’s a mentoring friend who can help you during those dark periods. Whether it’s your ability to pour your life into another woman to help them be mentored at the same time. But there are ways in which some of those needs could be met until God raises your husband up to the position he should hold in your relationship.

I've had the experience of debating some of the most reknown feminists in the world. Let me tell you a quick story. I was asked to go to New York to debate a feminist. In fact, I was asked to debate Susan Faludi, who at the time had written a very seminal book on the subject of feminism.

It was going to be myself, and I was told a professor from Yosheba University, Susan Faludi, and at the time, it was going to be Patricia Ireland, who was the president of the National Organization for Women.

Unbeknownst to me, which is so sterotypical, the professor has been cancelled. It's just me on the conservative side, and there are five feminists on the other side: Gloria Steinem; the actress, Dianne Lamb; Patricia Ireland; Eleanor Smeal, and Susan Faludi—all five against one. I thought, “Oh, how in the world am I possibly going to do this?” Well, I have to tell you, God used that moment as a profound, profound tutorial in my life.

There were two females hosts of the show, and before the camera lights went on, the two female hosts went to the five feminists and said, "Oh, we love your work. We believe in everything you do."

I'm going, "Oh, Lord!"

Nancy: Seven to one.

Janet: Exactly! Time for me to die, right now!

Well, long story short is there was a live studio audience. As the women would speak, Nancy, what happened is the Lord just took the earplugs out of my ear and He moved aside the cloud in my heart, and He was saying, “Listen. I want you to hear.”

As I listened to these women get angry and angrier and angrier. I just looked over and one of the feminists has two snake rings wrapped around two of her fingers. I looked over at the dias of five and I realized out of that five, how many of them had abortions. One had two that I knew of. She had been very public about those abortions.

I thought, if you really understand the nature of anger, it really is hinged to depression. So as they got angrier, I thought, "What hurt happened in your life? What happened? Who hurt you that you felt the way in which you had to get involved in this movement that is catapulted by anger? What moved you to that position?"

What I heard them say over and over again was, "I'm a victim; I'm a victim; I'm a victim." That's not saying that people don't get hurt in this world. The last time I checked, this was a flawed place that we live in. This world is fallen. This is not, as the saying goes, as good as it gets. Thank you Lord for that. It is as C. S. Lewis says, "a shadowlands."

So as I listen to these women, I just heard the hurt in their lives. I thought to myself, "That's the catapulting; that’s the energy. The fuel in this movement is hurt and anger." The problem is, ideas have consequences. The ideas that they were promoting have deadly consequences: abortion on demand, advancing, so-called, same sex rights, radical redefinition of marriage, promoting the idea of divorce, the idea of equal pay for equal work (which was the drum song that they sang over and over and over again). What I really began to hear with these women as I was doing this debate in New York was they’re hurting. They’re broken, and they are very, very unsatisfied.

Now their same issues, the same idea of victimology, the same idea that "I deserve something better," " I deserve something more," "I haven’t been satisfied" has not gone away. It’s just multiplied, and it is an insidious issue.

I’ve never questioned the fact that God says, “Janet, you’re never going to be allowed to be a pastor.” Yet God’s called me into the oval office to pray with the President. I never got short-changed. I got exactly what God had planned for me, got to step in exactly the role that God had defined for me.

So what I’m excited about is this idea of women radically becoming counter-cultural and rediscovering again exactly what the role of women is. Boy, I’ve gone back to 1 Peter, maybe because that’s where I’m digging right now. But it’s interesting because in the New King James it says, “Gird up the loins of your mind” (1:13). You think of girding your loins, but you don’t think of girding your mind. Basically what the challenge is in 1 Peter is so you’re going to get good, sound doctrine.

Look, if He’s Lord, Nancy, He’s Lord of everything. He’s the God of Genesis 1 and He’s the God all the way through to the book of Revelation. But absolutely, the opportunity to be everything God has called us to be, planted perfectly in the role He designed us for. 

Nancy, that gives me self-esteem. That gives me self-worth. I’m not only not a victim in God’s economy, I am a daughter of the Most High King. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Janet: We are told when Paul is giving his tutorial to his young student, Timothy, he said pray for those in authority. Then he goes on to explain that there is a benefit to us when we do that.

In 1 Peter it says point blank pray for the emperor (2:13). Go back into your Bible history. This was not a nice person who had the authority of the emperor at that point in time. Yet the directive was not only if you agree with his politics, if you happen to agree with his public policy. The mandate was given to pray for those in authority, period.

We understand that when the righteous rule, the people rejoice. When the wicked rule, the people groan. Alright, who wants to rejoice versus who wants to groan? The power of praying women to transform the culture, and then whatever the outcome of the election is, first of all we have to go back to the sovereignty of God. He's not in the throne room wringing His hands wondering if there will be "hanging chads" at the election. That's not who our King is.

The bottom line is, however, He knows who will be king. And whoever that individual is, we have to pray for that person.

If they know the Lord, "Thank You, Father. Continue to give them wisdom and the direction to know how to rule." If they don’t know the Lord, above all, being president pales in comparison to the fact that someday they'll be standing before a King. And the world will be divided into two camps: those who know Him and those who don't. Whether or not you are a pauper or president will matter not as you are standing in front of the King.

So we need to pray for the salvation of that individual. If they don't know the Lord, the Bible is filled with stories of bad rulers and it never bodes well for His people, but it has a way of transforming His people.

You talked about revival and repentance. I don’t know what the future holds. I truly don’t. But I do know this, if God gives us somebody who isn’t righteous, if God gives us someone that’s going to trouble America, then that may take us to our knees and that may be part of His perfect plan. I’m not a prophet. I don’t know that. But here’s what I do know. In this world, denying yourself is a very hard message that falls difficultly on post-modern ears.

What's the president? The president is who has the power of a bully pulpit. He or she will cast a net of morality or immorality over the whole country. We are in a position to bang on the gates of heaven and to ask God to give us a leader who will take us in the right direction vs. the wrong direction. The profound nature of what that means literally takes my breath away. 

Do I think it could bring about change? No, I know it could bring about change. I believe we have a written guarantee in His Word. 

Nancy: Regardless of what happens in the White House or the State House, it’s what happens in your house and my house and the house of God. I often picture, Janet, what it would be like if there were an army of pure-hearted, God-fearing women who love the Lord, love their husbands, love their children, love the Word of God, are filled with the Spirit of God, are praying women, women of faith, women of holiness, women of compassion, women who reach out their hands to the poor, who live out the mandate of Scripture.

To think that the impact of those women, I think could far surpass—in God’s economy—that of those who hold some of these highest positions in our land, in God’s ways of doing things. It’s a teenage virgin in the town of Nazareth. A no-good town that God chooses out and says, “Mary, I’ve got a place for you. I’ve got a role for you. I have influence for you, and it’s to bear the life of Christ.” In the day of Caesar Augustus and all these big wigs and the high-powered people, God chooses a 14- or 15-year-old girl and says, “I want to use you. I have a purpose for your life.”

Janet: Exactly.

Nancy: But who remembers who Caesar was in that day?

Janet: Exactly. But you know the message to our friends when you say that, Nancy, is it’s very easy to ascribe a kind of absolute power to the office of the President of the United States and in so doing forget the awesome, absolute power you have in taking care of your family. In God’s economy, to go back to what you said before, I would think the latter far outdistances the former.

Nancy: Janet, would you take just a moment—I know you’re a praying woman, and I thank you for that. Thank you for sharing with our listeners in this conversation.

Let’s just take a moment here and go before the throne of God. Would you pray that God would raise up this army of true women in this country that would have that influence in heaven and on earth by fulfilling the mandate that God has given to us and that there would be this reformation and revival of biblical womanhood, not only among our listeners, but in their homes, in their churches, in their communities, and in this nation.

Janet: Our gracious heavenly Father, we thank You first and foremost that You have given us permission to boldly approach the throne of grace anytime, anywhere, Father. You are our great and holy King, but you are also our Father. So as your daughters we approach You now.

Father, we have the privilege of hearing from You, of having our hearts transformed by You, of listening to Your Word, Father, of being challenged, perhaps sweeping away the cobwebs of complacency in our spiritual life and finding ourselves recommitted to what is often referred to as our first love, and that is You, Father.

Everything will pass away, but You will always be. You are our all in all. We thank you for that. Father, we thank you for this burden, and it is in so many respects a burden that's been laid on Nancy's heart, to really call women to authentic, biblical womenhood.It is so amazing cross-cultural, and I thank you for that. We that you that you are calling us to be different. You are calling us to be biblical.

Father, we do want revival, but we understand the precursor to that has to be repentance. It has to be the dying to self. It has to be moving away from the idea that we’re a victim or the idea that the self is the most important thing in the world, Father. That old idea of who sits on the throne of our life. It’s either You or it’s either us, but we can’t co-occupy that chair.

Father, we do repent. We've been lazy and sloppy and unbiblical in our thinking. We've been taken away with vain and hollow philosophies predicated on this world rather than the sound doctrine of Your Word.

Father, I pray that You would make us hungry for truth; that we would know truth; that when we hear what is being broadcast or spoken or printed, we would have such discernment in our hearts that is something goes off we would say, "That's not from You. That's not biblical." Father, the way that happens is getting into Your Word.

I love what D. L. Moody said. He referred to Your Word as the straight stick of truth. Father, we need a plumbline of measurement for what is absolute truth. And particularly in this idea of, if I can use this phrase, Father, of gender assignment, or being a woman, what does it mean in Your world? What does that mean in terms of what we are called to do. How can we serve You as women? Father, that is our desire. That's our heart. We want to know what You want us to do as your daughters.

It's not that we are in this costume of flesh by mistake as a woman. It's a divine handprint. It's a divine hallmark. It's a divine shaping of who we are. 

So Father, thank you first of all for making us women. And second of all, Father, we desire to know Your heart for our role; how we can influence our husbands—those who know You and those who don't. We want to know how we can influence our children and how we can with the act of intentionality pass on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Father, we pray to know how we can influence our culture. I loved what Nancy said. As bad ideas are being promoted in the culture, where good is called evil and evil good. I love the challenge that Nancy is giving, to be able to be radical transformers of the culture by living out our lives with the eloquence of the gospel.

Father, I pray that we would come prepared to die to self. Father, that is a hard prayer. That's a hard prayer because we have been told since we walked out of the garden that it's all about us. "We shall be gods" as he said that lie to us. And we still think that it is all about us.

Father, the day is coming when we will be in that throne room, and we are going to bow our heads. Every knee is going to bend, and every tongue is going to confess that You are Lord. At that moment, Father, there is a part of me, personally, that thinks, "I don't want to live in regret. I don't want to ever say I missed the opportunity to lift up Your name and live for You before I got to that point in the throne room. I want to live like that now.

I know that is the heart cry of so many, many women. So Father, transform us; renew us; revive our hearts so that we are conformed and transformed into the image of who You want us to be as women who love their God. We pray this in the name of Jesus, our Savior and our Lord. Amen.

Leslie: That’s Janet Parshall, radio talk show host, and she'll be speaking at the Revive Our Hearts conference coming to Indianapolis this September. It's called True Woman ’12: Seeking Him Together for Spiritual Awakening. 

We just heard Janet talking about the power of a praying woman. At Revive Our Hearts we take prayer very seriously. So do some of our listeners. Our host, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, explains.

Nancy: From the very earliest days of Revive Our Hearts, I knew that it was crucial for this ministry to be supported in prayer. I knew that we could not be effective without God’s people praying for us and with us.

That’s why I’m so thankful for the Revive Our Hearts Ministry Partner team. These are women and men and couples who believe in this ministry so much that they have committed to praying for us. In addition to their prayers, they committed to sharing this ministry with others and then investing financially each month in this ministry.

Now, you may have been listening to this ministry for some time. You’ve been blessed by it. I want to ask if you would prayerfully consider supporting us as a ministry partner, committing to pray, to share this ministry with others, and to give to help support the financial needs.

When you join the Ministry Partner team, we’re committed to letting you know what’s going on in this ministry so you can pray more effectively. I’ll keep you updated regularly with what’s going on in the ministry, including sending you a special monthly resource to encourage you in your walk with the Lord.

Plus, when you sign up as a Ministry Partner, you’ll receive one of my books and then you’ll also be able to attend one of our events each year at no charge.

Most importantly, you can know that as a ministry partner your faithful prayers and your regular financial support will hold us up, will let us focus on our ministry to women, and will allow us to take advantage of the ministry opportunities that God is providing. So consider joining the Revive Our Hearts Ministry Partner team. You can get more details by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com. If you’d rather call, you can do that toll-free at 1-800-569-5959.

Leslie: Thanks, Nancy.

We're told we live in a "service economy." But does that mean we really know what it means to be a "servant?" Nancy will give you a biblical picture of servanthood starting Monday. I hope you'll be here for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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