Celebrating a Decade of the True Woman Movement

Leslie Basham: Here’s Laura Gonzalez.

Laura González: When I came to Christ, I knew that my life was to be lived for Him, for His glory. But I had no idea what my calling was as a woman. My gender had something to do with the way I served the Lord.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Betsy Gómez, for Monday, October 8, 2018.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: So Betsy, a week and a half ago you and I were with about 7,000 other ladies at True Woman '18 in Indianapolis. Wow! What an incredible experience that was. You spoke at that conference.

Betsy Gómez: It's amazing to see so many women with a thirst and hungry for the Word of God. It's just impressive to see how God is sparking a revival among the women.

Nancy: And not just women in the United States, but in the Spanish-speaking world as well. You are a part of our Spanish-language team, Aviva Nuestros Corazones. Just explain what it is that you do with that team—which I know is a lot!

Betsy: I manage the blogs. We have a youth blog, one for women, and also one for leaders. Also, I get to manage the media teams. It's very active. It's very fun. And . . . it's an amazing team.

Nancy: At True Woman '18 we did some reflecting on the first True Woman conference, True Woman '08. This is the ten year anniversary, not just of that event, but what has become a movement.

One of the special things we did at the True Woman '18 conference was to roll the clock back and reflect back on the first True Woman conference, True Woman '08. It seems like a long, long time ago, because so much has happened since then.

The first thing that I think was really significant, Betsy, was that conference sold out, I think, ten weeks in advance of the event. We had never had a True Woman conference. It was the first national conference that Revive Our Hearts put on, and we didn't know what to expect.

So when the doors opened and they were just flooding into the auditorium . . . We had the True Woman totebags sitting on the chairs. And all of a sudden there was this mass of humanity of these women who were so eager.

I think a lot of these women were up to that point feeling like they were alone in wanting to be women of God, following Christ in a radical way. Sometimes you live according to God's Word and you think, Am I crazy? Because the world is going a different direction. But here were women who discovered that there were a lot of other women who had a similar heartbeat.

Betsy: My friend, Laura González, who is the director of the Hispanic outreach of Revive Our Hearts, today, she was telling me that truth was being proclaimed. All these women were so thirsty. You could walk in, and you could feel God's presence.

She told me when she was inviting me to the conference in 2012, "Betsy, you need to be there because you need to feel how it is. You need to experience the Word being taught, and women listening attentive to the Word. It gave me chills when she told me that and what basically happened.

Nancy: My memories are so similar to that. Since there is so much emphasis on entertainment today, would women really sit and be attentive to the Word being proclaimed? Is that boring? But during the sessions, people were so attentive to the Word of God. There was a prayful sense and a reverent sense and a joyful sense—much like you read about in the Old Testament with the reading of the Word. People stood and they honored the Word, and they said, "Yes, Lord."

One of the things that happened at that conference that we didn't know at the time was Laura, whom you just referenced, she and one hundred other women from the Dominican Republic had come to that event. We saw they were there. We knew they brought a lot of life and joy. They were very excited about the conference. But what we didn't know was that God was really stirring in Laura's heart—and a number of the others as well—to say, "We need this ministry in Spanish."

Betsy: And our team recently interviewed Laura about the memories she had of True Woman '08.

Nancy: And also, what God has continued to do since with the True Woman Movement—both in English and Spanish. So let's take a few minutes and hear Laura's story.

Betsy: Laura González was a pastor’s wife in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic.

Laura: In our church there was a young girl who is now working for us, ANC, Yamel Garcia. We did not know anything about mentoring or anything like that. She approached me and said, "Laura, I think I would like to sit with you and talk about life, and you can just mentor me."

I didn't know what that was, but I said, "Sure."

She used to come to my house, and she gathered a group of other girls from church, and they would come to my house. In looking for resources and ideas to share with them, I looked in the Internet and found Revive Our Hearts. At that time there was a program and Susan Hunt was in it. They were sharing about womanhood in general, and I said, "This is a great resource and a great site for me to find resources."

Betsy: She started listening to Revive Our Hearts and connecting to the website every day.

Laura: It became a wealth of information and teaching for me personally.

Betsy: One day, Laura heard about a Bible study resource being offered on Revive Our Hearts: Seeking Him.

Laura: I had no idea that it was a book that we should do in a group, so I just ordered it for myself. When I got it, I realized it was a thing we should do in a group, so I invited some people from my church, and all our hearts were just revived through the study. While we were doing the study, they started to advertise the True Woman '08 event. We just said, "We should go to that event." All of us . . . the ones in that group.

Debbie Hancock: I remember that Laura had called us to get information and to see about registering

Betsy: Debbie Hancock answers phone calls at Revive Our Hearts.

Debbie: I could just hear something in her voice. She was intent on coming. So we started to help her with that. We did a couple registrations.

Laura: Then we said, "Let's invite more people." We had no idea what the Lord had in mind. Patricia invited people from her church.

Debbie: And she kept calling, getting more registrations and more tickets.

Laura: We invited people from our church, and eventually 100 came to Chicago in 2008.

Debbie: The more we talked, I just had this sense that this is bigger than what we know. They want to translate. They have a passion for the Lord, a passion for Revive Our Hearts. This is not going to end with just them coming.

Laura: We just thought it was a cool thing to go together to a conference, but we had no idea that the Lord was going to change our lives completely!

Debbie: Before you know it, there is over 100 at True Woman. That was pretty awesome!

Laura: The face of the ministry for me was Debbie Hancock, and I had a lot of contact with her throughout the registration process.

Debbie: When I did get to meet them face to face, then knew who I was and came rushing over. It was like I had known them forever. It was such a connection.

Laura: I remember that a group of us got there early. We got our hotel rooms, but we were so excited we just went to the place where the conference was going to be held, to peek, to see what was going on. We found that they were preparing the totebags. So we said, "We want to help! Can we help? We are here and we have nothing to do." We were just so excited.

Betsy: Shortly after True Woman '08, Laura wrote this in her journal.

Laura: "You have been given a role to play and no one else can fill it. These words still resound in my ears and my heart. Nancy's final message, "For Such a Time as This," still pierces my heart like an arrow. What a thought that the omnipotent God would consider using weak vessels to carry out His Kingdom purposes here on earth. That I can be useful to You is beyond understanding. Nancy's message inspired me to say, 'Yes' to You, Lord. I want to get involved in Your counter-cultural mission. I want to share all the women around me the same truths that have been revealed to me."

Nancy: A true woman knows that God knows and understands everything about her and her situation. He knows what to do. He has a plan, and His plan will not be thwarted.

Betsy: This is Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth from True Woman '08.

Nancy at True Woman '08: A true woman accepts God’s plan, His design, His will, and His ways as good, though it may not be the way we define good. It’s God who defines good, so she leans on Him. She depends on Him in times of prosperity and joy, with gratitude, but also with gratitude and trust in times of pain and hardship and loneliness and uncertainty and confusion.

Laura: And then there were other speakers like Mary Kassian who was just so illuminating. When she said, "You've come a long way, baby." I remember that was the title of her message. She showed how the culture had worked in such a way that changed the way women related to the family, the importance of the home, and the priorities how they had been changed through the years. She showed how the culture had played a big role in shaping the way we think through programs and TV series.

That was really illuminating. It just made us understand so clearly how culture affects us and how we so need to be in the Scripture. Our minds so need to be transformed so that we don't wander from God's plans for our lives.

Betsy: This is Mary Kassian.

Mary Kassian at True Woman '08: Women, I believe that God's instructions for us in His Word are not only right, they are also good and pleasant and desirable. Our problem is, we come and try to present a whole list of do’s and don'ts. We don't capture women's heart for the beauty of the vision of what womanhood is all about, and it's our only hope for wholeness to understand that our whole purpose is to live for the glory of God.

Laura: Another highlight from the conference was John Piper's message. It was so powerful—just his prayer to open the conference was so powerful, just siting Scripture. The the influence that women have, especially women on their knees. He mentioned that we women there were like a huge host that is so powerful when we are in the Lord. 

He said something that stuck with many of us: "Wimpy theology makes wimpy women." That is so true. And that resonated with so many of us. When we do not live according to the right doctrine, we will not lives correctly. And we will not live in God's ways. And also, we were will be very weak. So that was something that resonated with all of us and stayed in our minds.

John Piper at True Woman '08: Wimpy theology makes wimpy women.

Betsy: This is John Piper.

John Piper: Wimpy theology does not give a woman a god big enough, strong enough, wise enough, good enough to handle the realities of life in a way that enables her to magnify Him and His Son all the time. He's not big enough. God's ultimate purpose for the universe, and all of history, and your life, is to display the glory of Christ in its highest expression in His dying to make a rebellious people His bride.

Betsy: Now, ten years later, Laura sees some long-term and even life-changing ways that God has used the first True Woman conference in her own life and in the lives of others.

Laura: When we went back to the Dominican Republic after the conference, we just had the desire that He put in us to share this message. He took that desire, He brought about Aviva Nuestros Corazones through all of that. It was a little seed that kept growing—the Lord kept growing it in front of our very eyes. We were just doing the little that we could do.

That's how I think we need to be with God. We just need to be available each day, doing what He calls us to do—even it is a small thing. He'll take that, and He'll carry out His purposes, which are bigger than we are thinking.

Betsy: As she thinks about ten years from now, Laura Gonzalez says . . .

Laura: Ten years from now I just want to be doing His will, serving Him, always being available.

Sometimes I think . . . I see old ladies or even old men that feel that they are old, that they don't have the same strength that they had before, or that they can't be used in the same capacity there were before. But I think in God's economy, we are all useful in every season. It just changes.

So what I want to do ten years from now, I still want to be available until He calls me home.

Nancy: Betsy, I just love hearing the stories of the lives that have been impacted—in Spanish and now other languages around the world as well—through this message of true biblical womanhood.

Yours is one of the lives that has been deeply impacted through this message. As you said earlier, you weren't at this first conference in '08. But a couple of years later you heard about this thing called True Woman. Do you remember how that came about?

Betsy: Yes. My husband came from a conference and he told me, "You should find out about this True Woman ministry."

One night I couldn't sleep, so I went online and I Googled True Woman. The first thing I found was a message that you gave at True Woman 2010 called, "What Is a True Woman?" So I thought, I think this lady is going to describe myself. I just needed a little bit of encouragement.

So when I started listening about what is the definition of what is a woman that is conformed to the truth that is in the Word of God and how that is lived out . . . I remember that you were teaching on Titus 2. That was the first time I saw the connection between my womanhood and the gospel.

Honestly, I was in tears. I was a church girl for my whole life. I was in ministry. I was in my own understanding "rocking the marketplace." Yet, I didn't have an idea of the implications of the gospel in my role as a woman.

I claimed to be a Christian leader, but I didn't have a biblical understanding of how the gospel should be displayed in a woman.

Nancy: And there was such a hunger in your heart that you didn't let it stop there. You went on continuing to investigate, searching, and that led you back to the messages from the True Woman '08 conference that we've just been talking about.

Betsy: Exactly. I felt that I was sitting there among these women, even though I was in my house with my headphones, trying to be really quiet in the middle of the night.

I learned about the meaning of womanhood and how wimpy of a woman I was. I thought I was strong, but I was not strong at all. I realized that I was a wimpy woman because my theology was wrong. I was not living according to sound doctrine.

Finally, I remember about the message from '08. It was "From Him, Through Him, to Him" that you were sending women to live out this message in their daily lives. That was very, very impactful. You also said that a true woman says, "Yes, Lord."

That night the Lord starting bring me a lot of conviction and repentance and a lot of sins that were hidden in my heart. I remember that my husband woke up in the day after and I was with my eyes open and saying to him, "I need to repent. I haven't been submissive. My work is my idol. I don't have a heart for my home. I don't have a heart for my children."

All of a sudden I had to say, "Yes, Lord" to a lot of things. It's been now almost ten years, and I'm still in that process of saying, "Yes, Lord" in the midst of my life, in my daily and ordinary life.

Nancy: That's what this true womanhood is all about. It's a lifestyle of saying, "Yes, Lord," grounding out lives in the Word of God whatever season of life we're in, continual repentance and obedience and faith and humility. That message that I gave at True Woman '08, "From Him, Through Him, to Him" taken from Romans 11, we're going to be airing that tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

There is more to your story, and our team has recorded a video of you telling that. We'll link to that at ReviveOurHearts.com if you'd like to hear more of Betsy's story.

It is so encouraging now to look back over these last ten years and to see what the Lord has done. Then, also to anticipate . . . We took at little time to do this at the True Woman '18 conference to anticipate what the Lord might have in store in the years ahead. Who knows, I'm now in my sixties, you are in your thirties. There are women of every age connecting and becoming a part of what God is doing through this movement. I think in English and Spanish and Latin America and North America and all around the world, that we've just begun to see what God has in store as women say, "Yes, Lord," then as we take that baton and pass it on to the next generation, the generations that are coming up behind us.

Betsy, our listeners have been such a huge part of helping this ministry continue over this decade of making the True Woman Movement possible—events like the True Woman conferences and this program day after day—putting the Truth in the hearts of women. I know you are grateful, and I am, for those who have invested day after day, week after week, month after month, to make this ministry possible. To support not only Revive Our Hearts, but also Aviva Nuestros Corazones. How's my Spanish?

Betsy: That's right. Aviva Nuestros Corazones . . . that's perfect.

Nancy: So what we are hearing in English every day, there's also a daily program going out in Spanish for the women in Latin America and Spanish-speaking parts of the world. All of that requires daily, ongoing support of prayer and finacial gifts.

This month when you make a gift of any amount, we’ll say thanks by sending you the 2019 Revive Our Hearts wall calendar.

Betsy, have you used those calendars in your home?

Betsy: Yes, and they are beautiful! I love those calendars. And let me tell you, that's the perfect Christmas gift! I have friends that in November are like, "Betsy, where's my gift? Where's my calendar?" I love them. They are beautiful, and . . . we need reminders. As believers, we need reminders. So what a great reminder of the truth. So, what is it about this year?

Nancy: The theme of this year’s calendar is taken from the book Seeking Him: Experiencing the Joy of Personal Revival, a book I co-authored with Tim Grissom. Each month is a quote from that book. I know that you and a lot of your friends in the DR have been through that book, and many of them in Spanish.

Betsy: Let me tell you, after I heard these messages, the next thing I did was do the study with Moisés, my husband. It was life changing! We had so many deep conversations and confessions. The Lord made us anew and made our marriage anew. We thought we were fine, but when you get closer to Jesus, you can see how big is your need of grace. So that book and that study so infused Truth and confrontation and also with grace.

Nancy: And grace is one of the monthly themes in this new calendar. Seeking Him is going to be our theme throughout 2019, so it is our calendar theme as well. Each month you get a theme like: grace, repentance, holiness, or different aspects of seeking the Lord so you can have those prompts, those reminders.

I wrote that book with my friend, Tim Grissom years ago, and I need those reminders in my own heart day after day. So I'm looking forward to have that calendar in our own home as well, in 2019.

We're glad to send one copy of the Seeking Him calendar per household to anyone who makes a gift to Revive Our Hearts this month. Be sure and ask for that calendar when you make your donation at ReviveOurHearts.com, or you can give us a call at 1–800–569–5959.

Now, all those Christmas gifts that you wanted to send out, Betsy, of the calendar, one per household with the gift of any amount. But if you'd like to order more for your friends to send at Christmas gifts, those will be available at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Betsy: Tomorrow we will continue to look back to the very first True Woman conference. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts. 

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants to help you grow in freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. It’s an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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