True Woman 101: Trusting Our Designer

Dannah Gresh: The book of Proverbs warns us: There is a way that seems right to us, but it actually leads to the opposite of happiness. Mary Kassian sees evidence of that deception in the feminist movement.

Mary Kassian:When we grab hold of the whole thing that we can control our own lives, and we can be happier when we do it our ways than God’s way, if we self-indulge in that way, then, yes, we just become more and more miserable.

Dannah: On the other hand, says Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, we need to be deliberate and purposeful about living out our womanhood as God intended.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: If we want to see Christian women begin to think as Christian women, to think biblically, to think Christianly, to represent the heart and spirit of Christ in our world, to reflect His beauty, we’ve got to be intentional.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, coauthor of True Woman 101, for September 27, 2021. I’m Dannah Gresh.

This month we’re celebrating twenty years of being on the air. That’s twenty years of saying, “Yes, Lord” to His plans for us. And we’re taking some time to delve into one of our core messages over the years: That of saying “Yes” to God’s plan for our design as men and women. Today we’ll hear how cultural feminism is a departure from what the Bible teaches. But first, Vicki from New York City called to share her congratulations and let us know some ways the Lord has used Revive Our Hearts in her life.

Vicki: God has used Revive Our Hearts in so many ways in my life and in my family's lives. As I go for a daily exercise walk listening to Revive Our Hearts, I receive a daily infusion of both grace and truth. As Nancy, Dannah, and others follow Jesus, they lead me to do what God's Word says. Honestly, Revive Our Hearts has helped me make good decisions, especially in the area of my marriage, teaching me how to respect my husband with encouraging words using the 30-Day Husband Encouragement Challenge, among so many other great resources. So it's with great heartfelt gratitude I say "thank you" to Revive Our Hearts and "happy birthday" to Nancy and "happy anniversary, happy twentieth anniversary" Revive Our Hearts. See you at all. See you all at Revive '21.

Dannah: Thank you, Vicki! And yes, we’ll see you at Revive '21, October 8–9, in Indianapolis. If you haven’t registered yet, it’s not too late. Head to Revive21.com and sign up to join us online. In fact, there may be a few spots left to join us in-person.

Over the course of this month, we’ve been going over the Bible study True Woman 101: Divine Design. It’s written by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Mary Kassian, and we need to hear this more than ever in these days full of sexual confusion. Later in today’s program, I’ll tell you how you can get a copy for yourself. 

Mary, Nancy, and a group of us sat down in the studio to discuss this sometimes-difficult topic of men and women. 

Today you’ll hear from Karen Loritts, Carolyn McCully, Holly Elliff, Erin Davis, and I was there, too. Karen starts us off with an important reminder.

Karen Loritts: I think we have to celebrate that differences are not wrong, differences are just different. It’s just different. One of the things I am always concerned about in recent days is that we are trying to do away with those differences and make us all the same, and we’re not all the same. And generalizations are generalizations.

Mary: Yes.

Nancy: That’s why we need to go back to Scripture as our plumbline and say these differences are not the result of chance or biological accidents. God dreamed this up. God thought this up. So back to Genesis, we see how God created male and female with distinct mission and calling and purpose—both created in His image. So there is equality but with magnificent diversity—as God has in all of His creation.

Carolyn McCulley: In fact, that should always be our starting point when we talk about these differences, is to start first with the fact that there is fundamental equality because we both carry an image of God, and there is a purpose in doing that. So even as we look at and celebrate the differences, it isn’t to evaluate, which is a human way of thinking. “Oh, one is better; one’s worse.” It’s not.

The differences are there so that together, in working together in community and marriage and family that these things celebrate a wholeness of God that we can’t even begin to consider because our finite minds can’t wrap themselves around who He is.

Nancy: And that together as male and female, we glorify God which is what makes us infinitely different than the animals or the plants or the rocks or anything else in creation. That together we bring glory to God.

Mary: And, Carolyn, I love that point, because I think ultimately, the danger when we talk about differences is to have that “us vs. them” or “one is better than the other” or to think division. But that isn’t what God is thinking when He’s thinking differences. He’s not thinking this compartment over here; this compartment over here. Scripture just shows there’s this wonderful complementarity that the differences actually contribute to the unity and mutuality. They contribute to the oneness and the one piece.

It’s this beautiful picture of complementarity which is actually intended to image who God is. You have the God who is the Triune God, three distinct individuals in terms of who God is, and yet God is one. The overriding thing, God is One. God is One—the Shema of the Old Testament. God is One.

And that’s really the aim, I think, that God had in mind when He created male and female. You do have these distinctions, but there’s a oneness and an equality and a unity that is absolutely profound.

Karen Loritts: Yes, isn’t it the sovereignty of God that He’s the master designer of this male and female, so He knows the whole plan. He has a plan for each one of us, and we have a purpose and a reason and this master Designer has a great plan.

Dannah: Well, that plan of the master Designer is often challenged. Think back just a few weeks to the Olympics. Did you notice the strong emphasis on same-sex couples or transgender athletes? Even the commercials breaks seemed to be intentional about normalizing things the Bible calls sinful or shameful.

And it affects our children, too. Mary Kassian points out that girls are encouraged and applauded for masculine characteristics.

Mary: Nice is really seen as weak. Nice is wimpy. Women can’t be nice and can’t be gentle spirited because that’s seen as being doormatish.

Holly Elliff: What’s applauded for younger women, or for any age woman is to be aggressive, to be in charge, to be in control of the situation regardless of who is around you. And it’s pervasive. Not just in television shows or movies, but it’s invasive across our whole culture. I’m thinking of my daughter, Jessica, who is surrounded by girls that are from all different avenues of life.

And what they desire is so different than what my older daughters would have encountered fifteen or twenty years ago. These gals have grown up watching the Disney channel. So their dress is mature. I mean at thirteen they are dressing like mature women that are twenty-five. And their goals in life are very, very drastically different from a thirteen-year-old’s goals twenty years ago.

Dannah: Right. Well, let me tell you what is heart-breaking to me because this is where my heart beats. Years ago I was saying, “Lord, let me grow up and minister to women,” because I was ministering to teens. He goes, “How about eight-year-olds?” And I was like, “Really, Lord?” And I was obedient to that, and my heart has become so impassioned. But those little girls, when they dress to look like they are seventeen when they are eight years old, when they are listening to these songs, when they are becoming so consumed with beauty image issues; they are most at risk of eating disorders, body image issues, depression, and an early physical debut, an early sexual debut as teenagers.

Which means by the time they are married women in their twenties or thirties, their bodies are so broken and they have so many scars on their hearts from sexual sin, and they have so many body image issues that they can’t enjoy the gift of marriage that God has gifted to them. And on top of that, they don’t want to enjoy the gift of marriage. We are just dismantling the passion to be in the marriage relationship which is a picture of Christ and the Church.

Nancy: I think our culture misses something. I think our relationships miss something by not having that courageous, strong, but feminine woman of years gone by.

Dannah: So, if God designed us as men and women equal in value but beautifully different in responsibilities, how did we mess it all up so badly?

Nancy: The fact is, that we’re all sinners. Genesis makes that clear. Romans 1 makes that clear. When we pass judgment on others, we’re really passing judgment on ourselves because we’re all fallen. We’re all sinful. I think what we have to realize is that there is no hope for solving male issues, female issues, male/female issues apart from God’s solution, turning to the Word, turning to Christ and the redemption that is in Christ.

That’s why the gospel is good news because it delivers us from ourselves. We have watched God redeem fallen women’s lives, each of our lives. I sometimes think about where any one of us would be on the anger scale, the bitterness scale, the violence scale.

Mary: Double A personality anger.

Carolyn: Triple A bitterness will not be pretty.

Erin Davis: That is true. That is certainly true.

Nancy: We’ve talked about the pain and the sin and the brokenness but Psalms tells us that with Him is plenteous redemption. I love that word—plenteous redemption. There’s hope through Christ. Even if all the problems don’t go away, how do you get hope through the gospel?

Dannah: Well, I immediately just think that it is just so merciful and gracious of God that He would take someone like me who grew up knowing the gospel, who loved Him with all of my heart but then departed into sexual sin as a teenager. And then He would say, “You are the one I want to carry my message of purity.” And I would look back at Him and say, “I’m sure You’re pointing at the person behind me because do You know what I’ve done? Do You know where I’ve been?”

For me, in my hurt and my sin, you can talk statistics and science and understand it all from that standpoint, but until you understand God’s redemption through the gospel and the beauty of sexuality through the gospel, for me that was what was like, “Oh. This is why it hurts so much. And this is why I’m so healed.” It always comes back to the gospel and that He uses women like that every day.

I have a dear friend that was marred by abortion. She is counseling women in an abortion clinic every day to wholeness and healing and sometimes rescuing babies that would otherwise not been rescued. He takes our greatest weaknesses and He stamps His strength in that place.

Carolyn: Psalm 34, verse 5, “Those who look to the Lord are radiant, and they have no need to be ashamed.” Even in your worst circumstances, if you believe, you’re looking at them with gospel eyes. God can change this. He’s in the business of changing people. He’s about recreating the whole order. When you believe that, there is radiance.

Dannah: We’re listening to some highlights from a conversation that took place some years ago, with Carolyn McCulley, Mary Kassian, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, and myself. We were discussing the themes that show up in the Bible study by Mary and Nancy: True Woman 101: Divine Design. Cutting-edge viewpoints are often explored in pop music, and Helen Reddy’s song from 1971 gave voice to a new (or maybe not-so-new) attitude for women.

Music: "I Am Woman"

I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore.

Dannah: When you trace the Scripture and look at the word “good,” whether it’s talking about God or it’s talking about our call to be good, it’s talking about man and woman both thinking towards and for others. And it’s that what the feminist movement has taken away from us?

Mary: We’re just thinking about ourselves. "I’m independent. I don’t need you, thank you very much. I can take care of myself. I don’t welcome your manhood in my life." 

What’s interesting to me is that this whole change was based on the question: “What’s going to make women happy?” And that was, we said, about in the 1960s, early 60s, saying: “Women are going to be happy when we’re independent, when we’re financially independent, when we don’t have to associate ourselves with a male. In fact, we'll be happy when we very intentionally don’t associate ourselves with a male, when we get out in the work force, when we’ve got money, when we can do what we want sexually, when there’s no stigma to women sleeping around.”

Nancy: Here’s my question: Did it make them happy?

Mary: Well, that’s exactly what I was going to say. What’s real interesting is that Time did a survey: “The State of the American Woman” in, I think, it was October 2009. They took a look at history and statistics and concluded that as woman’s power and her impact and everything that she wanted—she started having more money, more prominence in the work place, more power—as everything increased for her . . .

Nancy: As they accomplished all of their objectives . . .

Mary: Yes, they accomplished all of their objectives, her level of happiness decreased, exponentially. And so she is unhappier now. Women, as a whole, are unhappier now than when the feminist movement set about to solve the problem of women’s unhappiness.

Carolyn: But you know, we see that in 1 Timothy. I was thinking of the fact that Paul’s encouraging Timothy to evaluate women in terms of their godliness, and especially the widows who needed help from the church. He talked about those who were godly, who would put all their hopes and trust in the Lord.

But then he goes on to say in 1 Timothy 5:6, “but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives.” And that is just the theme for our times.

Mary: Yes. When we grab hold of the whole thing that we can control our own lives, and we can be happier when we do it our ways than God’s way, if we self-indulge in that way, then, yes, we just become more and more miserable.

I think the feminist movement affects us all, and I don’t even think I understand or realize how much I’ve been affected by it. And sometimes it comes and hits me in the face and I just go, “Whoa! I didn’t realize how affected I’ve been by that.”

Nancy: Have we just imbibed the culture?

Mary: Right. Have we just imbibed the culture? And I, sad to say, when I sometimes evaluate my thoughts and the way that I approach situations, and when I ask myself the hard questions: “Why am I thinking this way?” I come to the conclusion that I’m thinking this way because this is how culture has taught me how to think.

Music: "I Am Woman"

If I have to, I can do anything.
I am strong (strong).
I am invincible (invincible).
I am woman.

Nancy: Well, and here is where we come back to, a key word is they were intentional. They had an agenda. They knew where they wanted to head. They were not going to be deterred by people who didn’t agree with them because at the beginning, most people didn’t agree with them. They set out to have a revolution to influence the culture. So they were intentional. By every means and every possible way, they were exerting their influence.

If we want to see Christian women begin to think as Christian women, to think biblically, to think Christianly, to represent the heart and spirit of Christ in our world, to reflect His beauty, we’ve got to be intentional.

As we’ve been talking today, a verse from Proverbs chapter 5 has come to mind. It’s verse 6, and it’s talking about a foolish woman. In the context, she’s an influential woman, but she has a negative influence on the men around her and on her culture. It says of this woman that “she does not ponder the path of life and therefore her ways wander, and she does not know it.” She’s oblivious to the fact that she is not following in the right ways.

As we’ve talked about how intentional the feminists were in developing their ideology and promoting it in our culture, I’m reminded that we need to be intentional as women about pondering, thinking about, considering, meditating on the path of life, the ways of righteousness, God’s way, the gospel way. As we ponder the path of life, we can be assured that our ways will not wander, but they will go in the ways of God, and we will lead others in His ways.

Dannah: So what does real femininity look like? Do we all have to wear pearls and be unflappable and even-keeled like the moms on TV from the 1950’s? How do our natural characteristics play a part? Here’s Nancy.

Nancy: I remember thinking as a younger Christian woman. I’d see these women with very quiet, reserved personalities, who seemed very godly to me, and just thinking, If I am ever going to be a godly woman, I’m going to have to have a personality transplant. Because that’s not how I’m wired. But really, we’re not talking about personality.

Holly: That would be contrary to Scripture because we know that God built us as we are. He tells us that. He loved us and fashioned us and designed us and planted us at birth the way that He wanted us to be.

Erin: He created our inmost parts including the core.

Holly: The volume of your voice or the personality He put in you.

Erin: Thank you Jesus. That’s right.

Holly: So it’s not a bad thing. But it’s also something that God wants to grow us into. Philippians says, “Let your manner of life bring glory to God.” So it’s about understanding who you are but then seeing that under God’s direction and provision in your life. And when that happens, then those parts of us (my husband calls me “spunky”) that maybe wouldn’t fit perfectly with the gentle word here become more like Christ as we more and more allow Him to do that—and it is a process that’s lifelong.

Mary: I wouldn’t want women to think that as we become godly we all turn into the same cookie-cutter personalities.

Holly: No.

Mary: That’s such a misconception because people think, I need to be gentle and quiet.

Erin: Well, I think there are some other great words that we can use, and the Lord doesn’t need the Erin Davis translation. So I’m not trying to change what’s here. But there are others— receptiveness, responsiveness.

There’s a version of gentle and then there’s a way of being gentle with others and being gentle in relationships and gentle in communication that is not like, “Oh, handle her with care,” or “Be so gentle with her,” but being gentle with others. So maybe there are some other words that we can use to describe it.

Mary: Let’s just clarify this because the word “quietness” really means “an absence of turmoil.”

Holly: It’s a spirit term not necessarily a volume term.

Mary: Exactly. I think you can be a very exuberant woman, and you can be a very boisterous woman, and you can have a lot of fun as a woman, and you can be an extrovert, and you can still have that spirit about you where you’re not churned up, agitated where you have that peaceability of spirit.

Nancy: Now, my quiet friend, here, is trying to get a word in edgewise.

Karen: I wish I could practice gentleness. But I was thinking there is a difference like when I sat under Mrs. Borne or Mrs. Ponder, the ladies that really mentored and discipled me through the years. You can see that their gentleness, their quietness, even with their various kinds of personalities, it was controlled. They were under the control of the Holy Spirit. The way it came out in their individual temperaments, it still had that quietness. And you embraced and accepted it because it was Spirit-controlled instead of person-controlled.

Mary: You still saw Jesus.

Karen: You saw Jesus. 

Nancy: Well, you’re making a good point here, because sometimes I’ll do a lesson like this or get to a passage like this and I’ll come away saying, “I’m going to be a gentle and quiet-spirited woman if it kills me.” And it may. So it’s not something we can do. This is the work of grace and the work of the Spirit in our hearts. This is not, “I’m going to be godly.” We start by saying, “I’m not godly.” It’s not a self-improvement plan. It’s Christ in me.

Dannah: A key ingredient in living out our God-given design as women is helping each other do it. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy: We have women’s Bible studies coming out our ears in this generation, and how thankful we are—and we’ve written some of those studies. We’re glad for people like those. But the danger of that is that we start to just get spoon-fed and get spiritually fat. We have a responsibility to take what God has poured into us.

There are women taking this study right now who have been in a Bible study every semester of their life for decades. Great! Hope you do it next semester—but have you ever thought to consider that God wants you to invest what you’ve learned in someone else?

Mary: And there’s never a point when you feel ready to do that. You never feel ready. Do you feel ready, Nancy, on radio? Do I feel ready when I go speak at conferences? Do you, Dannah?

Dannah: Nooo! I want to throw up!

Nancy: Do you know what happens? As we give out—of our weakness, of our weariness. Giving out of feeling, “I don’t have it in me to do one more thing,” or “I’m not there.” God sanctifies us, changes us. As I’m working on this book, as we’ve been doing this table talk, God’s speaking to me, He’s changing me. So as you give to others, you really grow.

Holly: There’s a reason why Titus 2 says the older women are to train the younger women in how to do these things, because it doesn’t come naturally to us.

Mary: Because of sin.

Nancy: “Train them to love their husbands.” You’d think that would come naturally, but it needs to be trained.

Holly: And even at the very beginning, “to pursue sound doctrine,” to love this Word. Those are not things that always come naturally to us. When I mentioned in an earlier session about my mother-in-law, who was so gracious to just speak truth to me as a young woman, and it changed my life.

All of us have women who are older and younger, who I believe the Lord has put there for that purpose.

Dannah: A lot of women don’t have this, but I had a mother who, from the time I was very small on up, would speak truth into my life. I remember a time that my marriage was just really struggling. I went to my mom and dad’s home, and I expected my mom to just feel sorry for me. “Oh, I’m so sorry, my baby!!!” [bawl, sob, wail] and badmouth him: “That man!” None of that! She listened to me; she let me cry; she held me; she handed me a tissue.

She said, “You’re welcome to stay tonight, but you belong in your husband’s home, and he’s a good man.” And that’s the kind of true woman truth we need to be giving—where we comfort and then we challenge—not necessarily what we want to hear, but what is God’s truth.

Mary: Even as we talk about a counter-revolution, this is not a strive message that we’re going out into culture and saying, “This is what you need to be doing. Get this checklist right.” That’s not what we’re doing here. We’re presenting a message that really at its core is get your relationship with Jesus right.

Nancy: The vertical.

Holly: And what it is, is then knowing those truths. They are truths about biblical womanhood, how God designed us. But then going to God’s Word understanding that He provides grace for us to take every step that He calls us to.

Mary: Grace and wisdom and discernment.

Holly: Yes, if I need to love my husband, or I’m a single and I need to know how to deal with loneliness or hope, God has grace for every step that He calls me to as I pursue Him. And that’s lifelong.

Mary: And in the most broken circumstances.

Holly: Right.

Nancy: And it then helps us also to extend grace to others who are in a different season of life, whose challenges are different than ours, whose calling is different than ours, and who may be broken themselves.

So the danger would be and what we would not want at all is for people to take these resources and hit people over the head with it—“You know, these young people, they’ve got to get true womanhood. They’re all so immodest,” or the whatever. It’s grace—breathing grace in, breathing grace out.

Nancy: You know the byline of Revive Our Hearts ministry is “calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.” And we’re really talking here about not getting something for ourselves but getting filled with Christ and His Word so that we can be givers of life to others.

Dannah: That’s the host of Revive Our Hearts, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. She and a group of friends have been discussing some of the themes you’ll find in the Bible study True Woman 101: Divine Design. Their comments are from a larger series. You’ll find a link to it in the transcript of this episode at ReviveOurHearts.com.

It’s easy for both men and women to set aside masculinity and femininity as God designed them and buy into lies and misunderstandings instead. That’s why we desperately need the truth — God’s truth. As Nancy said, being filled up with the Word of God is the only way we’ll truly experience the freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness He plans for us to have in Christ.

We want to send you a copy of the eight-week study by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Mary Kassian. This month True Woman 101 is our thank-you gift twhen you support Revive Our Hearts. As a listener-supported ministry, we depend on donations from friends like you to sustain our outreaches around the world as we work to bring the message of freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness to women everywhere.

And packaged with True Woman 101, we’re throwing in a beautiful art print that says, “Yes, Lord.” It’s a 5 x 7 print you can frame and put anywhere. It expresses the humble submission to God we all want to be characterized by.

Ask about the eight-week study True Woman 101 and the "Yes, Lord!" print when you contact us with your donation. To do that, head over to ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1–800–569–5959. Help us spread the message of freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ to women everywhere! 

Tomorrow Nancy begins a new series as she takes us to the Old Testament book of Daniel to look for sightings of God’s sovereignty there. She’ll show us that Heaven truly does rule.

Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Helping you understand and love our God-given differences, this is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. Calling you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.