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Dannah Gresh: What happens when you embrace God's design for womanhood? Mary Kassian says . . . 

Mary Kassian: Marriages begin to heal, children flourish, workplaces become more caring, churches come alive, communities are transformed, because when you live as the woman God created you to be, you're not just changing your own life, you're putting the gospel on display.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Adorned, for July 27, 2026. I'm Dannah Gresh.

What is a woman?

All month long, Mary Kassian has been helping us answer this question, and today we come to the final episode of our “What Is a Woman?” series. Now, if you've missed any of it, you’ll want to go back and pick it up, either on ReviveOurHearts.com or use the Revive Our Hearts app. But here's Mary to close out with one more powerful episode.

Mary: When I was a kid, my brother showed me a trick: take a lemon, squeeze some juice into a bowl, dip a toothpick in it, and then write a secret message on paper. Let it dry, and it looks like nothing's there. But hold it close above the heat of a light bulb, not an LED, the old-fashioned kind is what will work. LEDs have wrecked this for a whole generation of kids.

So hold it over an old-fashioned light bulb, and slowly the letters darken and become crystal clear, brown, and unmistakable. So I was obsessed. I'd write notes to my friends—playhouse 4 o'clock—or draw maps to our creek hideout, and the message was right there on the paper for them to read. They just needed heat to reveal it.

Those messages remind me of what Paul said in Romans chapter 1, verse 20. “For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made.”

It's the lemon juice principle. God's attributes—His eternal power, His divine nature—they're invisible, like that message written on paper. But when you hold them up to creation, creation acts like a light bulb. The heat and the light of what God has made reveals the message. It becomes undeniably clear, distinct, and unmistakable.

Mountains shout His majesty. Oceans declare His power. Sunsets whisper His creativity. And you woman, who together with man, are the very pinnacle of creation. Male and female shout out truths about God that nothing else in creation can. And once you see this, you can't unsee it.

Once it truly clicks in your heart, as it once did for me, it will change how you think about everything: your body, your relationships, your sexuality, your purpose, your very existence as a woman.

We started this series with a simple question, “What is a woman?” It’s a question the world seems terrified to answer. And over our time together, we've unpacked a definition that I pray has transformed how you see yourself, your purpose, and your calling.

And today, we're landing on the final phrase of that definition, and in many ways it's the most important one, because it answers the ultimate question, “Why does any of this matter?”

As image bearers, we were made to tell the story of Jesus, and to glorify God. Paul says it this way in 1 Corinthians 10:31: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.”

Everything! The mundane and the magnificent, the ordinary and the extraordinary. All of it can and should bring glory to God.

And specifically, so listen to this. As a woman, you were designed to glorify Him in a uniquely feminine way. Your womanhood isn't incidental to God's glory, it's instrumental to it. So, what story does your womanhood tell? It tells the most magnificent story ever told, the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.

Think about the plot line. Before the foundation of the world, God wanted a family, people bearing His image, who could know Him deeply and love Him freely, and experience His glory firsthand. But . . . He also knew the tragedy coming.

Sin would crash into the world and shatter that intimacy, so God set in motion a rescue plan that would require the ultimate sacrifice. The Son of God would step out of heaven, take on human skin, walk our roads, feel our pain, live the perfect life we couldn't live, and then die the death we deserved, paying the full price for our rebellion.

Three days later, He'd explode from the tomb, crushing death itself, and through all this, He'd win a bride, not through coercion, but through love, purchased with His own blood, loved with an unending love.

But here's the part that undoes me. This wasn't plan B. This was always the plan. Even in that act of creating woman from man's side, God was setting the stage before sin, before the Fall, before anything went wrong. The script was already in motion, male and female, designed from the very beginning to tell the story of Christ and His Bride.

So, when God created male and female, He wasn't just making people, He was embedding the gospel story into human design. The relationship you can see with your eyes points to the spiritual reality you can't see.

Remember Ephesians chapter 5? Paul lays out God's design for marriage, husband and wife, how they're called to relate to one another. Then he lands this bombshell in verse 32: “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

Mystery, mysterion, in the original Greek, that word means something that was hidden but is now revealed. There were hints throughout the Old Testament.

In Isaiah 54, God declares your Maker is your husband.

The Song of Solomon is tender love poetry, depicting God's passionate love for His people.

And then there's Hosea. God commands Hosea to marry a prostitute who would betray him, acting out in flesh and blood the agony that God felt over Israel's spiritual adultery.

Marriage imagery runs like a connecting thread through the whole story, but until Christ came, you couldn't see the full picture. The Bridegroom leaving heaven, pursuing His Bride, giving His life for her, preparing for the wedding feast to come. That's what marriage has been about all along.

And Paul says this mystery is mega, that's the word he uses, mega. It's like on thousand light bulbs clicking on at once. Since the very beginning of time, man, woman, sexuality, the covenant of marriage have all been about the story of the gospel.

Marriage was designed to paint this picture in the boldest colors, husband and wife as a living portrait of Christ and the Church. When the book of history opens, a man, a woman, a marriage. When the book of history closes, a man, a woman, a marriage. Jesus Christ, His Bride, the wedding supper of the Lamb. The earthly story foreshadows the heavenly story. The temporary points to the eternal.

Hear this. I've said it before, and I will say it again, you do not need a wedding ring to participate in this story. Single or married, seventeen or seventy, picture perfect life or total disaster, God calls you—yes, you—to turn to Jesus and discover your identity as His precious bride.

And here's a truth that might surprise you. Every woman bears witness to the gospel, some faithfully, some poorly, but all inevitably. Your body says something, your life says something, your femininity says something, and the question isn't whether you're bearing witness. The question is, what are you bearing witness to?

You're either making the gospel clearer, or you're making it harder to see. There's no neutral ground. That's why the enemy works overtime, attacking gender. Satan can't negate the power of the story, but he can try to blur the image, garble the message, make it harder for people to see God's redemptive plan.

And if there's one thing that you've learned during our time together, let it be this: your womanhood matters. Who you are as a female is inseparable from the cosmic story, God's message inscribed in flesh and bone, written into the very fabric of creation.

I've heard hundreds of testimonies, maybe thousands, from women whose lives were transformed when the click happened. Women like Jenny, who spent years in prison for drugs and violent crime. Childhood sexual abuse shattered her early. She hated men, but was still addicted to sex. Crime felt like survival. Behind bars, she met Christ and embraced her identity as His bride—loved, wanted, pursued by a bridegroom who would never exploit or harm her. Jesus freed her from the sexual brokenness, the hardness, the rage.

Or Lauren, the exotic dancer, whose self-image was in the gutter. She despised what she saw in the mirror, but didn't know how to escape until a street evangelist told her about Jesus, and suddenly everything shifted. She was God's daughter, Christ's bride, precious beyond measure. Her body wasn't a commodity, it was a gift from God, designed to tell His story. The gospel didn't just clean her slate, it gave her a whole new identity.

Or Pat, who embraced a lesbian identity for decades. She had rejected anything feminine, building her whole identity around not being that kind of woman, but when she encountered Jesus, really encountered Him, everything she thought she knew about herself began to unravel, not easily, not without cost. But as the gospel took root, she started embracing the design she'd spent years resisting, and she discovered a wholeness she never knew existed.

And then there's Ashley, the high-powered attorney, making partner, while her marriage crumbled, and her kids barely knew her. Success on the outside, devastation at home, until exhausted and desperate, she heard about God's design for womanhood, and the click happened. She made some hard choices, stepped back, reprioritized, and discovered that success without alignment to God's design is just another form of failure.

Different stories, different struggles, different starting points, but the same transformation, the same click, the same discovery—that who God made them to be as women mattered, that their womanhood wasn't incidental, it was essential, and it was part of God's story. Womanhood was created to bear witness to the story of Jesus and the glory of God.

Years ago I visited the Grand Canyon for the first time. I'd seen pictures, of course, everyone has, but nothing, and I mean nothing, prepared me for standing at the edge and seeing it in person. The sheer scale of it, the layers of rock, the play of the light and shadow as the sun moved across the canyon, the colors russet and ochre and crimson shifting with every passing cloud.

I stood there speechless, in awe. What do you say when confronted with something so magnificent and so far beyond anything you could create or even imagine? All I could think was, This shows me something about the One who made it.

Listen to how the psalmist puts it. He says, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the expanse proclaims the work of His hands. The heavens declare . . . the expanse proclaims. Creation isn't silent, it's shouting. Every star, every galaxy, every inch of the cosmos announces something about its Maker. That's glory. When something reveals the greatness, the beauty, the majesty of its creator, what you see points to Someone beyond what you can see.

If rocks and rivers can do that, if landscapes carved by wind and water can point to God's power and creativity, how much more should we? We're not rocks, we're not rivers, we're not mountains or canyons or stars scattered across the night sky. Humans were created to display God's glory in a far more intimate and far more profound way.

God declares this through the prophet Isaiah, "Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who bears my name, and is created for my glory" (Isa. 43:6).

Did you catch that? God specifically created sons and daughters, male and female, manhood and womanhood, for His glory, not as an afterthought, not accidentally. The human binary isn't incidental, it's woven into the very structure of creation.

And when God created humanity as male and female, He was doing something deliberate, creating two distinct expressions of His image, and together they reveal something one alone could never reveal.

And the question for you and for me as women is this: am I faithfully telling the story God created me to tell in my body, my identity, my demeanor, my attitude toward men, toward children, in what I pursue, and what I value, what I hold dear?

Your soft responsive spirit tells the story. First Peter 3:4 calls it the “imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.” When Jesus calls, the Church answers. When He leads, she follows. Your disposition can display the beautiful heart posture of Christ's bride.

Your relational nature tells the story. That deep longing for connection, it echoes the human longing for communion with Christ.

And your sexuality, there's no union with Christ outside of a covenant relationship with Him. When you guard your sexuality, reserving physical intimacy for marriage, you proclaim gospel truth. Union requires covenant.

Bringing forth a nurturing life tells the story. When Christ and His Church are united, people are born again. Your maternal design isn't incidental biology, it's gospel proclamation. You can participate in this work, whether or not the Lord blesses you with biological children.

Your attitude toward men tells a story. When you view men as partners and fellow image bearers, when you honor their God-given design rather than resent it, you put something on display that a watching world catches a glimpse of—in Ephesians 5, a living picture of Christ and His Bride, something beautiful, something they can't manufacture, but were made to long for.

So here's my invitation to you. Will you say yes?:

• Yes to being soft in a hard world. 
• Yes to pursuing relationships in a self-focused culture.
• Yes to creating a home when society devalues it. 
• Yes to receiving and responding when the world demands you control and compete. 
• Yes to nurturing life when the culture worships autonomy. 
• Yes to being a helper when feminism calls it demeaning. 
• Yes to God's pattern for sex and marriage when friends mock it, yes to displaying the gospel when it costs you something.

Will you trust that God's design is good, that His ways lead to flourishing?

This doesn't mean you'll perfectly live it out. You won't. You're a sinner saved by grace, and sanctification is a process. You'll have days when you're hard instead of soft and self-focused instead of others-centered and resistant instead of responsive. You'll mess up; you'll need to repent; you'll need grace upon grace, as we all do.

But by God's Spirit working in you, you can grow. You can become more of who He created you to be. As you do, something beautiful happens. You not only glorify God, you also find yourself, the real you, the you God envisioned before the foundation of the world.

C. S. Lewis puts it this way. He said, "The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become, because He made us."

So, here's the paradox: you experience the deepest joy when you stop living for yourself, you find your truest identity when you stop trying to create your own, you discover your fullest purpose. Would you surrender to His design?

It starts small. It starts right where you are.
Maybe it's softening your tone when you'd rather cut down,
Or refusing to echo the world's bitter sound,
Acknowledging the image of God and all men,
Recalling the story again and again.

Maybe it's calming the chaos when you'd rather collapse,
Tending a need when you'd rather relax;
Taking the time to slow down and attend,
Recalling the story that will not end.

Maybe it's making home matter when the world wants more,
Welcoming children when culture keeps score;
Cherishing marriage when passion grows cold,
Recalling the story that never grows old.

But ultimately, it's embracing your calling to help, not compete,
Refusing to bend or to cave or retreat,
Swimming upstream when the current says flow,
And whispering “yes, Lord,” when the world says no.”

You won't transform overnight, but you can take one step, and then another, and then another. When women start living out God's design, something shifts, not just in them, but in everyone around them.

Marriages begin to heal, children flourish, workplaces become more caring, churches come alive, communities are transformed. Because when you live as the woman God created you to be, you're not just changing your own life, you're putting the gospel on display. You're making the invisible God visible, you're showing a watching world what it looks like when someone says yes to their creator.

Let me return one final time to the definition we've been exploring together.

A woman is God's living masterpiece, handcrafted in His image, intentionally created female, fashioned with softness and relational beauty to receive and respond, bring forth and nurture life, bearing witness to the story of Jesus and the glory of God.

That's who you are. That's who God created you to be. Not someday, not when you get it all figured out, not when your circumstances change, right now, today.

The world is watching, and it desperately needs to see true women, women who know who they are, not because they've defined themselves, but because they've rooted their identity in the One who made them—women who've discovered that God's design is restrictive, but liberating, not demeaning, but dignifying, not limiting, but life-giving.

Think back to that lemon juice message. God's design for womanhood was written into your very being. And when Scripture illuminates your life, when you embrace what God made you to be, the invisible becomes visible, and the message becomes increasingly clear.

Be the woman God created you to be. Display His glory. Tell His story. Make the gospel visible through the gift of your womanhood.

Our world needs women brave enough to answer the question it is afraid to answer. Will you be one of them?

Dannah: Mary Kassian with an important question to close out our “What Is a Woman?” series here on Revive Our Hearts.

Will you answer the question, “What is a woman?” Will you put the answer on display with your life? We are in this together. Even though this series has wrapped, we're not leaving you to pursue God's design on your own.

As we've been sharing all month long, Mary Kassian has written a book titled What Is a Woman: The Question Our World Is Afraid to Answer. In this resource, she takes these same conversations we've had on Revive Our Hearts and digs deeper.

This is the kind of material you'll return to again and again, sharing it with the friends, sisters, daughters, and neighbors who are desperately searching for answers about who they are.

When you make a donation of any amount before the end of the month, we'd love to send it to you as our thanks. If you're in the U.S. or Canada, you'll receive a physical copy. If you're not, we'll send a digital copy your way. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959 to give and request, What Is a Woman?

Well, as you know from our time with Mary, a big part of what makes women unique is our softness and our relational beauty. This facet of our femininity shines in the home. It's time to dream about how we might use hospitality to live out God's design and invite others into it. Nancy is going to help us do that tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the CSB.