Living Life as a True Woman

Dannah Gresh: Generations ago, girls were taught to set their future hopes on meeting a Prince Charming. That was the case with a woman named Cora.

Cora: I grew up in an era when “happily ever after” was the answer.

Dannah: Marriage was the ticket to security and fulfillment.

Cora: You grew up and you got married to the man of your dreams, and you lived happily ever after.

Dannah: And if Prince Charming didn’t end up making you happy, a woman needed to take matters into her own hands and get that prince to act the way she wanted him to act. Cora observed this growing up, too.

Cora: My mother was very much in control. So that was the role model I had growing up.

Dannah: Cora followed the example she saw growing up once she met her Prince Charming.

Cora: Consequently, I was married to a man for over thirty years that I pretty much controlled. Unfortunately, there are no “do-overs” because he’s not with us anymore. I’m not the woman I was when I was married to him. I never got the chance to be the wife I wanted to be. 

Dannah: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, co-author of True Woman 101, for July 23, 2026. I'm Dannah Gresh. 

Throughout July, Nancy's been walking us through some of the True Woman Manifesto. This week, we're going to continue exploring the way God designed women. Now, a reminder from last week. We’ve examined true virtue from the inside out.

Nancy: If you have virtuous behavior without having a virtuous heart, you know what you’ll turn out to be? A self-righteous Pharisee.

Dannah: And we talked about giving men respect—creating a welcoming home environment.

Nancy: Think about what it’s like when you and your husband re-enter the house at the end of the day. Do you make re-entry for him a joy? Or do you make it a burden? Do you make him wish he’d stayed at work?

Dannah: Some women have been listening to this series along with us. They’re sharing how this message is affecting them. In a few minutes we’ll hear how God spoke to a woman who had been in a homosexual lifestyle. But first, let’s get back to Cora. She wishes she had heard this material years ago.

Cora: I never got to have the chance to be the wife I wanted to be. I thank God that He’s been in my life all the years that I wasn’t walking with Him. He never left—I did. Consequently, I was able to come back and start becoming the person that He needed me to be. I just thank God for that.

Nancy: Thank you, Cora. What a reminder that we do have a gracious, redeeming God who is making all things new. And when you say there are no do-overs, that’s true in a sense. But in another sense, we would have no hope if there was not the possibility of our whole life being a do-over. It’s not me doing it over, but Christ giving me a whole new life and making us into new women.

Now that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences and that there are not losses sustained. I’m so thankful, by the way, that we have a combination of younger and older women here today and listening on the radio because there are older women who are saying, “If I could go back and do my life again, here’s how I would do it differently.” My hope is that some of these younger women are hearing and receiving this counsel. Our desire for you is that you will live your life in such a way that you will be able to have the kind of marriage and family, and if God calls you as a single woman, that you will be able to look back and say, “By God’s grace, I lived life to the glory of God.”

So these are wise words. And those of you older women who think you can’t mentor because you’ve blown it, sometimes it is out of how you’ve blown it that you do some of your most effective mentoring. The things that God has taught you really are powerful when they are illustrated in a life message.

Dannah: Our first guest, Cora, grew up in an era where women were encouraged to find Prince Charming and live “happily ever after.” Maybe you can relate? Even today, turn on your average romantic comedy, and characters are so easily falling in love that it can be easy to think, Something must be wrong with ME if I haven’t already found my Prince Charming! Am I right? Well, our next guest grew up in a different era. She was told she didn’t need Prince Charming at all.

Kim: I do remember a time back in the seventies when some of you all were not even around. I was going to college. I was in the midst of, “We are women; we can do everything for ourselves and with nobody else.” I was the first woman to be in sales at the radio station where I worked—which was something unusual down South. I was raised by a single mom who wanted me to have everything out of life that I could get.

Well, then I met Tom. We were young, and when we were first married, we weren’t thinking about those things. As time went on and I got into my thirties and started to hit forty, I was thirty-eight, I had Virginia (Ginni, our third child). Although the Lord had been working on me many, many, many years—from the time I was seventeen and accepted Him, I probably began walking closer to Him and Tom as well when God gave us Ginni.

Ginni was not expected. She was planned only by One, and that was the Lord. Once I found out that I was pregnant with her, it began a journey of giving up things and going from that woman of the seventies who I had been (part of the Baby Boomer generation), to becoming a wife and a mom and realizing that was what God really wanted me to do.

We think we have control here. We don’t. God does. By realizing that and relinquishing that, I was able to let go of a lot of things. I let go of worry. I don’t know if any of you are in single mother homes or anything like that, but if you are, you learn from your mother about worry. The Lord taught me not to worry through the pregnancy of that child. He taught me not to worry about money. We went through a couple of things when I was pregnant where my husband gave up things he thought the Lord did not want him to be doing, and the Lord provided. He showed me grace. He showed me how to be a woman.

I did not realize until this ministry and going to the True Woman conference just what God was preparing me for: from forgiveness for my dad to a lot of things that we have a tendency, particularly as women, to hold on to.

If anybody is telling you now that to be a modern woman is the greatest thing in the world—no, it’s not. The greatest thing in the world is to be a woman God has designed you to be.

Laura: I wanted to say first to Cora, Proverbs 31:12, “She does her husband good all the days of her life.” It doesn’t say all the days of his life. So there is still opportunity to do your husband good, even though he’s gone, because it is “all the days of your life.”

So I want to encourage you to speak highly of him, to never say anything that would be cutting of him, and just to praise him to your family and friends, and do him good by the way you live your life now. So God can still give you that opportunity. That’s something I really like to share with women.

My mother-in-law was widowed for about eighteen years, and she always did her husband good all the days of her life. They had a lot of rough roads in their marriage, and she could have dwelt on those things, but she didn’t. She really honored him for all the years for all the years she was widowed. So I just want to encourage you to do that.

The other thing, with the whole issue of respect, in respecting our husbands but also respecting men, is our adult sons. I have an adult son. He’s twenty-six. He’s at Moody studying for the ministry. I was really convicted a few years ago that I needed to stop treating him like a child, and I needed to treat him as an adult and give him that same respect that I would show my husband or any other man.

Then I have an eighteen-year-old son. He’s still in high school. So I’m trying to transition with Justin, to stop treating him as a child, even though he is still in my home another year, to treat him as a man. I want him to be a godly man, so I need to treat him like that and treat him with the same respect.

It’s amazing to me that when I share that with women in the churches we go into, I always have older ladies, older than me, come up to me afterwards and say, “My son is forty, and I treat him like a child.” They are so convicted. One lady came up and said, “My son had to move back home with me, and I just realized, the Spirit convicted me, of how I speak to him. I tell him to clean up this and pick up that like he was twelve and he’s forty.” So I just want to add that to the whole topic of respecting men—to think about your adult sons.

Dannah: God has a special plan and design for you as a woman. Some of our listeners have been talking with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth about discovering that design and about living it out day by day. Nancy will be right back. She’s going to give advice to women who have wondered if God’s called them to write or speak like Nancy does.

Maybe you know someone who could benefit from today’s program. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com, to share the link with a friend! Or share the Revive Our Hearts app with them. They can listen or read the transcript from there.

As you just heard, God teaches us to be true women day by day. Everyone has things to learn. Everyone has room to grow.

This is one reason we’d love to invite you to True Woman '27—a conference where thousands of women gather to grow together. You’ll hear from Nancy, Mary Kassian, and me, in person! Along with many other wonderful teachers of the Word. Visit TrueWoman27.com for all the details, and register early to enjoy a discount!

We’d also like to send you a new tool to help you understand what God’s Word says to us as women. Who are we? How did God create us to live? Mary Kassian’s book What Is a Woman? will help you answer those questions. 

This month, when you support Revive Our Hearts with a donation of any size, we’ll send it to you as our thanks. If you’re in the U.S. or Canada, you can request a physical copy. If you’re further away, we’ll make sure you get a digital download instead. To donate and request What Is a Woman? visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. 

We know that a lot of Revive Our Hearts listeners have a desire to communicate God’s truth like Nancy does. We still have a couple minutes and want to share some practical advice Nancy’s learned as a best-selling author.

Woman: What are some tips that you can give to women who want to be writers someday?

Nancy: Women who want to be writers someday. Well, I was not a woman who wanted to be a writer. It’s kind of funny. I still don’t think of myself as a writer. I guess I am, but I don’t think of myself that way because writing is not something that has come very easily for me. It’s not something I’ve really aspired to. But it has been something God has . . . He’s put a message on my heart, and burned it there like where you have to communicate it. That’s where writing has come for me.

But I would just encourage you, especially if you are younger and want to get into writing, to do what you can to get the tools. You don’t learn to write today by texting. You don’t learn to write today on Facebook. You don’t learn to write today on email. There are some basic tools. Unfortunately today, even our schools are not teaching, in many cases, the basics of good writing. So get all the training you can.

I have some friends who have daughters who are in their early twenties who would love to write; who are aspiring writers. I have these teenage girls who are writing these long novels—amazing things. Encourage that, but get all the training that you can in terms of the techniques, the disciplines, the tools of the trade.

There are some wonderful writer’s conferences that are available. The things that I could most recommend (and I’m standing here at Moody Bible) is Mr. Jenkins’ program called Christian Writer’s Guild. They have a whole, depending on how old you are . . . For teens they have one, for adults they have another, they have a whole online training that’s available. You pay for it, but you get what you pay for. It’s really good. You get a mentor. You get someone who will work with your writing. I think those are opportunities that I would take.

Then realize that success or not, life is not measured by whether you are published or how many people read your books. It’s measured by obeying God and doing what He wants you to do.

Maybe the Lord wants you to write for friends, for people church. Or, speaking . . . how can I develop as a speaker. Tell the Lord where you are. Use the opportunities He gives you; make the most of them. Then see what doors God opens up to develop those skills in those areas.

Dannah: Tomorrow, Nancy’s continuing to walk us through the True Woman Manifesto. The episode is titled “A Body, a Building, a Family, and a Bride.” Curious what all these words are pointing toward? Please be back for 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.

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