Ten Years of Proclaiming True Womanhood

Leslie Basham: Amy Lumpkins says that early in her marriage she was like a pit bull.

Amy Lumpkins: Bless my husband. In the beginning of our marriage, I would come at him one direction. He would say, "Amy, whatever. I don't agree with that." So I would back up, regroup, and come at him another way. I would not stop until I literally beat him down and just tore his spirit until he said, "Okay, you're right."

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Tuesday, September 6.
Welcome to a special edition of Revive Our Hearts. We’re thanking God for helping the ministry reach a big milestone!
“Congratulations Revive Our Hearts!”

Janet Parshall: “Ten years—that’s a decade.”

Crawford Loritts: “Praise God for ten years of incredible faithfulness.”

Laura Chavez: “Ten years of service for the kingdom.”
“Happy anniversary!”

Leslie: Yesterday, we focused on the topic of revival. We looked back on the way revival has been explored and promoted over the last ten years on Revive Our Hearts. If you missed it, you can hear the program at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Today we’ll focus on biblical womanhood. How has this important topic been covered on the program?

In the very first series that ever aired on Revive Our Hearts ten years ago, Nancy described her vision this way.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: What if thousands and thousands of us as women would say, "We don't have to be in control; we surrender our lives to the Lordship of Christ. We are willing to gladly embrace His calling in our lives, to be thankful women, to be surrendered women, to be submissive in the relationships that require that, to be Spirit-filled women, to have a spirit of meekness and quietness that the Scripture says is what makes a woman beautiful to God " (1 Pet. 3:4).

I began to envision a kind of counter-Revolution, if you will. I said to women, "This is the revolution that doesn't require that you go march in the streets or that you write your congressman. In fact, you don't even have to leave your house to be a part of this revolution."

For some women it may mean coming back into their homes to become women of influence through our prayers, through our faith, through our obedience, through our surrender to the Lordship of Christ. I believe that when we as women take our place in seeking Christ, in loving Him, in influencing others to love Him, then the men around us, the children whose lives we influence, will be motivated to want to love Christ.

I often hear women express that their frustration is that men won't be spiritual leaders. So many women are frustrated with this sense that, "If I didn't take the reins in my home, no one would."

I really believe that when we as women begin to model those surrendered, meek, gracious, loving, kind, wise ways of God, then men are going to be motivated to take the kind of leadership that we as women have really been longing that they would.

Leslie: That was Nancy in 2001, describing her vision for biblical womanhood. In the ten years since then, she’s explored this theme in several series on Revive Our Hearts. For instance: Becoming a Woman of Discretion

Nancy: God designed for the men to be the initiators and for us as women to be responders.

Leslie: The Counter-Cultural Woman, a series on Proverbs 31

Nancy: The godly woman is a strong woman. She’s able; she’s valiant; she’s of valor.

Leslie: A Vision for Biblical Womanhood

Nancy: Men and women are equally important to God, equally valuable to God.

Leslie: God’s Beautiful Design for Women (Titus 2:1-5)

Nancy: Marriage and family is not just a nice idea. It is a crucial part of God’s redemptive plan. It is critical to preserving and passing on truth to the next generation.
Not only that, but many guests have helped us understand God’s design for us as women over the last ten years.

Jennifer Epperson: I said a lot of really mean things to my mother when I was a college student. “Why did you waste your life staying at home with us?”

Mary Kassian: I’m praying that God is going to raise up a counter-Revolution of women.

Jennifer Epperson: I’m so glad that publically I stood up before the church and said, “I repent mom of those things I said to you.” What a lovely mother she was.

Mary Kassian: Women who hold the knowledge of our times in one hand and the truth of God and the clarity and the purity of the Word of God in the other.

Carolyn Mahaney: There is something so powerful in making a home and in raising our children and really learning to love them.

Janet Parshall: Whether you have biological children or not, we are all spiritual mamas to somebody.

Donna Otto: I am who I am because older women took the time to reach down into my life—not waiting for me to ask, not looking around and saying, “Which one deserves it most,” because I didn’t. They reached down into my life and had an effect on me.

Bunny Wilson: The real question is not whether we are or are not submitting. The only question is, who and what are we submitting to?

Carolyn McCulley: As a single woman, I don’t have a husband to submit to, but there are plenty of other biblical categories for me to submit in: to my pastor, to my boss.

Pastor John Piper: Wimpy theology makes wimpy women.

Mary Kassian: True womanhood is not about exalting women or womanhood, it is about exalting Jesus.

Revive Our Hearts also crafted the True Woman Manifesto, presented at four True Woman Conferences so far.

“We believe that God is the sovereign Lord of the universe.”

“We believe that sin has separated every human being from God.”

“We believe we live in a culture that does not recognize God’s right to rule.”

“We believe that Christ is redeeming the sinful world.”

 

“Men and women are both created in the image of God and are equal in value and dignity, but they have distinct roles and functions in the home and in the church.”

 

 

 

Leslie: Nancy, as you look back on all the ways God’s been calling women to embrace His design for them—what comes to mind?

Nancy: It’s amazing to think back to that point more than ten years ago when God first planted in my heart the seeds for what we’ve come to call a counter-Revolution. Over these years, through prayer and hard work and a lot of God’s grace, we’ve watched those seeds begin to grow.

Now we are seeing the early stages of I believe will grow into a great movement of God’s Spirit. As women embrace God’s calling and His will on their lives, we are seeing families, churches, and even pockets of communities being transformed.

Now if you zoom in on this movement, you’ll see individual lives that are being transformed. We’re about to hear from two sisters, in fact, twin sisters, who have a dramatic story about what it means to become God’s true women, and how God has used the ministry of Revive Our Hearts as a huge part of that process in their lives.

Leslie: Here’s the story of twin sisters, Ginger Resta and Amy Lumpkins. Our first interview with them aired in 2003.

Amy: I would say we grew up in a moral home. We knew right from wrong. Our father didn't take as much of a leadership role as he should have. He was traveling. I don't think it was by choice. I think it just happened to become that way. The example that I grew up with in regards to a marriage is just that the woman would do it all.

Ginger: So my mother would make the decisions. My mother would contradict. The things that Dad would say “no” to, she would say “yes” to.  I grew up learning to fight for my rights.

Amy: I was 24. I got saved, but I encountered so much negative response. I didn't get the encouragement that I had expected.

Nancy: After you got saved, you and an older sister who had come to know the Lord began to work on Ginger.

Amy: Oh, yes, ma'am—like a roaring lion. We joke about this now, because Ginger called us Bible thumpers, freaks, cultists, anything else you can think of. I knew she was trying to fill a hole, just from our experiences and our background. I knew she just had a hole to fill, and she was using the wrong things to do that.

Ginger: I saw a difference in them. I was scared, because I grew up in the drugs and relationships and drinking. I was bulimic and anorexic for many years. I recognized my need. I repented and I trusted in Him.

Then I got married to a wonderful man. I couldn't accept him loving me the way he did, because I never experienced that from an earthly man.

Amy: In my mind, winning an argument is changing that person’ mind. I was like a bulldog—basically a pit bull. I would go after it in different directions. Bless my husband. He’s been with me and we’ve worked through this. In the beginning of our marriage, I would come at him one direction. He would say, "Amy, whatever. I don't agree with that." So I would back up, regroup, and come at him another way. I would not stop until I literally beat him down and just tore his spirit until he said, "Okay, you're right."

Ginger: She verbalized it more where I internalized it. But when I would get angry, I would have a very explosive temper. That’s how my defenses would come up if I got hurt, or anything like that.

So I think it’s kind of interesting with my marriage now. In the beginning I would internalize it and wouldn’t say a whole lot, and then if I did have something to say, it would be very explosive when I said it.

A lady at my church gave me a pamphlet actually about your conference. It was in Irving, Texas. It was a Revive Our Hearts conference. I had never heard of you before. I had been praying really strongly and pleading with the Lord.

Andy was very strong in the Word. He was helping me, but it just wasn't that. I was really thirsty for an older woman to come into my life, to pray with me, to be the mom that our mom wasn't at the time, because she doesn't know the Lord or anything. So I wanted to get godly counsel and not the worldly counsel, because it's so opposite.

Anyway, we went. A friend of mine and I went to a Revive Our Hearts conference. Since then, my life has never been the same. It's like I had no idea how the Lord would use that to just totally impact my life.

I saw it from a woman's point of view. It was like my spirit was saying, "Listen to this lady more. You can really grow from her. She is teaching the Word."

A lot of things that you were saying were so much against what the world was saying. I said, "That's it!"

Submission was a big thing.

Amy: Yes. The "S" word.

Ginger: And how you painted it as a beautiful picture, and it's not anything to resist, but to embrace because that is God’s design. God has an authority of what a husband should be.

Nancy: Did that represent a different way of thinking for you in your marriage?

Ginger: Very much so, because you didn't have to be loud. You don't have to fight for your rights. That wasn’t the way to go either. My attitude with Andy was that I would tear him down with the words that I would say. My dad would call me stupid a lot, so I would tell Andy he was stupid. It helped me to restrain my tongue, very much so, and to understand what it was to have a gentle and quiet spirit, because I thought that that was weak. I didn't understand that. I'm like, "I'm not quiet, and I'm not too gentle."

So our marriage now we help each other and we pray for each other and we encourage each other.

The big thing on Proverbs 31 was that I had a tongue--a deathly tongue--that would tear him down with the words that I would say when we would get in arguments, about calling him stupid and he didn’t know what he was doing, and he didn’t really hear from God. He couldn’t possibly be saying that to us. And not really being, "Okay, I trust you."

So we now pray together. We don't argue like we used to. It's not yelling anymore. I'm respecting him more as my husband and the authority and the priest of the home now. You wouldn't see what our marriage is now. It’s not the same as when we were first married. It's a different marriage, because I changed.

Nancy: Amy, you were coming along in your own understanding.

Amy: Yes, but I was still struggling quite a bit.

Nancy: The pit bull here.

Amy: Yes the pit bull. I was just so confused because it was my heart to know what a biblical woman was.

My mom is the youngest of five girls. All of the women pride ourselves in being very strong, very independent. All the cousins—the majority of them are women, too. So we're just a big family of women. We are just so fun to be around, if I may brag a little bit.

But the downside is that there is a very bad culture in not respecting some of the men that are in our lives. So it’s not just our mother but the entire family. So that's the perspective that I'm coming from. I didn't like men. I really thought that they were just goofy. I didn't appreciate the differences. Their differences annoyed me.

So my sister graciously said, "Now Amy, we need to start learning about what it means to be a godly wife." I had gotten married three months before my sister did. We both were in this new season of life. We just got basically kind of thrown into this marriage thing. This isn't what my mind had created. I had this wonderful picket fence and this beautiful, loving husband, and everything would be perfect.

Nancy: It wasn’t quite that way?

Amy: No reality came rearing its ugly head pretty quickly. I realized that I needed to do some work.

Ginger actually invited me to another Revive Our Hearts conference. It was in Dallas at the time. I can remember one of the sessions that you spoke about was outlining a foolish woman. Me, being so prideful, thought, “This isn't going to be for me. I'll just listen to this and take it back to some of the people that I know who are foolish.”

I will never forget just a huge lump in my throat as she was going through this. The one specifically that really spoke to my heart, "A foolish woman does not listen to correction."
I could not deny the fact that I was a foolish woman. Having a college degree and being in all the honor classes and all my life all the teachers saying, "You're the cream of the crop," and all that. And I'm thinking, “Here I am, but I'm really foolish.” So that was the beginning of a huge work that the Lord has done in my life.

I've learned to appreciate my husband for his uniqueness. I often talk about him being my anchor. I am very talkative. I have a tendency to be a little hyper, high strung—that’s my nature. My husband is the really quite reserved one. He thinks first and then he says it. I'm learning to trust him, because I now understand my role as a wife.

God put the man as the head of the household. At first I didn't like it. I didn't understand it. That's why I didn't like it. A lot of times your response to things you don’t understand is anger and confusion. That’s what it was for me. Now I understand that God put the man as the head of the household. I am to be his helper. I now so embrace that. I found it such pure joy to help my husband.

Before I saw it as a subservient role, I saw it as lower class, if you will. A helper is not as glorified as the one that you're helping. That's not how I see it anymore.

Nancy: I'm thinking, Amy, you have now a little son. How old is he?

Amy: He is seven precious months.

Nancy: And Ginger, you're expecting your first in several months. A little boy. And when I think of where God found you girls and how He rescued you, by God's grace, you are starting a whole new family line.

Amy: That is the one thing that just gives me such hope and such joy—it's raising Elijah in a godly home. I can't wait to teach him the truth. I can't wait to sit down and memorize verses and just play Bible games and bring him up in the way of the Lord. I can’t wait.

Leslie:  We also talked with Ginger and Amy again last year at the True Woman Conference in Fort Worth.

Ginger: Nathan, he’s my son, and he’s eight years old, and Rachel, she’s four years old. The ministry has helped me to embrace being a woman and also being a mother. It’s challenging. I have a whole new respect for moms now. You don’t know what it’s like to be a mom until you are in it.

I love that Nancy celebrates the high and holy calling of being a mother—not only to my physical children, but also to the daughters below me that are younger than me.

I’ve taken that baton seriously. She’s challenged me to do that. I’ve taken the call, and I don't want to have young girls or my daughter to go through the struggles that I’ve gone through. I know they are going to go through their own testing but I hope not as much as I did. I don't want them to see their identity in how they look.

I even fight against that now with Rachel. She’s got beautiful curly hair, and the first thing a lot of people comment on is her hair, like I was when I was young. It’s a blessing to recognized for that, but that doesn’t define Rachel. So even now I tell her that is beautiful, but that’s not you. That’s a part of you. So that message, even now, I want to infiltrate that through her because her identity is not in her appearance. It’s in the character of her heart.

So what I am challenged to do, and I pray that the Lord reminds me to do it every day, is to celebrate the characteristics that I see that are godly. When she helps me with cooking or she wants to do things for me, to make that a louder voice than just the outward.

Although she is cute. God designed beauty. He likes beautiful things, but that doesn’t define her. I want that to be passed to the younger generation probably more than anything because of my struggles growing up—the heartache and destruction it caused in my life, the lie that your appearance is what gives you beauty. But it doesn’t define you in who you are.

Leslie: Amy was one of the women on stage that publicly read from the True Woman Manifesto.

Amy: "Children are a blessing from God. Women are uniquely designed to be bearers and nurturers of life, whether it be their own biological or adopted children, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, or children in their sphere of influence."

Nancy: I’ve so enjoyed getting to know Ginger and Amy over these years. They’ve become dear personal friends. Each time I hear them describe the change that’s happened in their lives, I am so moved by God’s faithfulness. Their stories are the fruit of a lot of investment. I’m so thankful for the prayers of our listeners and for all who donate and make Revive Our Hearts possible, letting us speak into the lives of women like Ginger and Amy over these last ten years.

My prayer is over the next ten years and beyond, that the Lord would multiply this kind of story in the lives of hundreds of thousands of women across this country and around the world. 

At Revive Our Hearts, we’ll continue building on the momentum of the True Woman movement.  I’ll give you just a couple examples of what you can expect in the months to come. My friend Priscilla Shirer will be a guest teacher on Revive Our Hearts early next year as she teaches a series based on a book she’s written recently on biblical womanhood. You won’t want to miss this in-depth and practical study.

And Mary Kassian and I have just completed an eight-week curriculum on biblical womanhood called, True Woman 101: Divine Design. It’s a study we’ll be making available to churches and small groups all across the country when it is released, Lord willing, in the spring. 

Your prayer and your support are so needed as we ask the Lord to continue using this ministry to help women discover their place in the kingdom of God. Through your investment, you really can be a part of what God is doing to build a true woman movement that I believe will bring great glory to Christ in the days ahead.

Leslie: If you believe in the vision just described by Nancy Leigh DeMoss, will you help us fulfill it? When you support Revive Our Hearts with a gift of any size, we’ll say thanks by sending you Nancy’s classic book, Lies Women Believe: And the Truth That Sets Them Free.

We’ll also include a booklet by Nancy called, “Up Close and Personal.” It will give you a behind-the-scenes look at Revive Our Hearts. Nancy shares journal entries from 2001 as she grappled with God’s calling to begin daily radio. The booklet will help you learn to say “yes, Lord” to any courageous act He’s calling you to take.

Ask for Lies Women Believe and “Up Close and Personal” when you contribute any amount to Revive Our Hearts. The number is 1-800-569-5959, or visit ReviveOurHearts.com.

I hope you’ll celebrate with us by visiting our website and watching a short film our team has created. It displays ten years of ministry in the life of one mom and one daughter.  Be sure to check out the short film at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Lorna Wilkinson thought her marriage was over. Find out what gave her hope. That’s tomorrow, on Revive Our Hearts.

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