Warning: Wild Women Ahead

Leslie Basham: Sinful behavior looks attractive to women, but sin never delivers what it promises. Here's Mary Kassian.

Mary Kassian: It always does have consequences and Satan paints this picture that evil and sin are so attractive and beneficial. Countless women have told me, and you Nancy as well, you've heard so many stories of lives that have been broken and shattered with this script.

Leslie Basham: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Wednesday August 18.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Well, I'm so delighted to welcome back to Revive Our Hearts my longtime friend, Mary Kassian. Mary, thanks so much for being with us today.

Mary: Good to be with you Nancy.

Nancy: I actually have told people, I think maybe we were twins separated at birth. Although if you look at us, with your six-foot frame and my five foot one, there's no possibility of that.

Mary: We're wearing the same color today.

Nancy: We did that, and we didn't make notes.

Mary: We didn't make notes, and we didn't plan on that.

Nancy: But we have a lot of the same DNA. I have just been so blessed over the years to be your friend but also to learn from you. It was back in the mid-90s when I read one of your first books, The Feminist Mistake. I was so enlightened and so alarmed by the things that I read. God really used that reading to spark in my heart what were the very germ ideas and seeds that became the ministry of Revive Our Hearts, the True Woman Movement, and the True Woman Manifesto.

Since then, its been a real joy to get to know you and to do radio together, to do conferences together, and mostly to be impacted by your heart for Christ and biblical womanhood.

Mary: It's been my joy too, Nancy. I don't think people realize how much feminism as a philosophy has affected our society and has affected women. We don't like to think about it very much, and yet it affects us so profoundly in the very fabric of the day of our lives

Nancy: It's in the air that we breathe.

Mary: It is.

Nancy: Women who are under forty today can't even envision a world that’s any different in the way it thinks about womanhood and manhood and relationships and marriage. Those ideas have been so formed by the feminist agenda that when we talk about a biblical worldview in these matters, we're really swimming upstream.

Mary: We really are swimming upstream. I think most young women today wouldn't even identify the way they think as feminist. We're in a post-feminist culture. It's just the mainline way of thinking. It's just the way that young women today think; it's a normal way of thinking. It's the way they have always thought.

Nancy: That's why the latest book you've written . . . I think it's such an important one that we're trying to get into the hands of women and even men everywhere. It really gives us a way of thinking about life that is so different than what we're saturated in, in the culture and day by day. The book is called Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild. Before we look at girls gone wise, I want to look for a moment that the fact that it is a world that is gone wild. It doesn't take a PhD or a rocket scientist today to be aware of that.

Mary: Girls really have gone wild. It's a terminology for a way of thinking, a wildness, a wild way of thinking. In fact, Newsweek dubbed it as a girl gone wild phenomena. It's a way of thinking where girls are wild, where they think that they're free, and they exert their sexual freedom and their power through their sexuality. That's a very common way of thought in this day and age.

Nancy: And yet, we're not just talking about young girls on spring break who would disrobe and do all kinds of things that we would consider wild. There's a wildness of heart that affects all of us, isn't there?

Mary: There really is. It isn't just those young girls. There's a wildness that affects women of every age. I will never forget that conference that I did once on speaking on Girls Gone Wild. This seventy-year-old women came up to me afterwards. She had tears streaming down her face. She said, “You know, I came here to get some advice on how to help my granddaughter, but I see now that it's me who is a girl gone wild.” Really, that sums it up. She saw that there was wildness in her own heart. There is a certain amount of wildness that I believe is in each one of our hearts that the Lord wants to tame.

Nancy: As you wrote this book, did you find yourself at points thinking as I did as I was reading it, there's some wildness in my own heart that I had not really dealt with or reckoned with that I maybe wasn't totally aware of?

Mary: I certainly did. I was writing and thinking, "Yes, this will really help those women." And then as I'm writing, the Holy Spirit is convicting my heart that I need this, and I need to be instructed in the way of wisdom, and I need to be increasingly wise and less wild in my own heart.

Nancy: Your whole book is really dealing with this contrast between wild women and wise women. Or, as the Scripture would use the terminology, wise and foolish.

Mary: That's right. I use the word wild for what the Scripture calls foolish or unwise or a woman who really sets herself against the ways of the Lord. That contrast is throughout Scripture, but perhaps nowhere more prevalent than in the book of Proverbs where we see that wisdom and foolishness are contrasted very clearly.

In the book of Proverbs there are some sixty-five odd verses that talk about a wild woman, and there are several others. Then there is a whole passage that we're so familiar with in Proverbs, chapter 31, that talks about a wise woman. So it's really prototypical.

The largest passage that talks about a wild woman in the book of Proverbs is Proverbs chapter 7. That's really the story. There's a story there about a wild woman. That's really what Girls Gone Wise is based upon, that story.

Nancy: In fact, lets just open to Proverbs 7. We've got our Bibles open here. As you're listening, if you're in a place where you can stop what you're doing and open the Scripture, I'd invite you to join with us in walking through this story. This picture of a wild woman is in Proverbs chapter 7.

It's interesting, the context here is a father, a wise man speaking to his son and encouraging him to live a God-fearing and godly life. He says,

Son, keep my words and dreasure my commandments with you; keep my commandments and live; keep my teaching as the apple of your eye; bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart. Say to wisdom, "You are my sister," and call insight your intimate friend, to keep you from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words (verses 1-5).

So he's warning; he's cautioning his son about a certain kind of woman that is going to trip him up and mess up his life.

Then he tells this story of a kind of woman his son needs to be careful to avoid. And he says,

For at the window of my house I have looked out through my lattice, and I have seen among the simple, I have perceived among the youths, a young man lacking sense, passing along the street near her corner, taking the road to her house in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of night and darkness (verses 6-8).

What does that picture describe to us about a woman who is not so wise?

Mary: As we read the passage, we find out that this story is about a woman who is a young, married woman. Now, that isn't really very obvious at the very start of the passage. That comes out a little bit later. But what we do see at the very beginning of the passage is that she's out at the time of night and darkness. She's out, and she is looking for this young man. She goes out looking for this young man.

Nancy: She's got an agenda. She's on a mission.

Mary: She is on a mission. She really goes out quite intentionally to trip him up. She is looking for someone to have an affair with, is how the story unfolds.

Nancy: And it's interesting, she's not doing this in broad daylight. It goes to great pains to say it's in the twilight, in the evening. It's the time of night and darkness. What does that suggest?

Mary: Well, that suggests that her behavior is inappropriate. She's crossed some boundaries. The sage is suggesting she should not have been out at that time of night. It was inappropriate. She had crossed the boundaries. And that is one of the marks of a wild woman. She crosses boundaries. She doesn't have those safeguards in her life. She doesn't observe the boundaries that would keep her from sin. She crosses those boundaries and really opens up the doors to sin.

Nancy: Both she and the young man do this. They're both in a time and a place where the natural bent or inclination is going to be to sin.

Mary: That's right.

Nancy: So he's lingering, loitering around her house. She's out at night. And both of them are in a place where they're going to be vulnerable to make choices that are going to be deadly, actually.

Mary: He does this out of his naivety, out of his simplicity. He's foolish. But she does it quite intentionally. We'll see that as the passage unfolds here that she is quite intentional in her behavior. She is really stalking him.

Nancy: You see that beginning in verse 10.

Behold, the woman meets him, dressed as a prostitute, wily of heart. She is loud and wayward; her feet do not stay at home; now in the street, now in the market, she lies in wait. She seizes him and kisses him, and with bold face she says to him, "I had to offer sacrifices, and today I have paid my vows; so now I have come out to meet you, to seek you eagerly, and I have found you (verses 10-15).

Mary: There is so much in that chunk of verses there. The woman comes out and she meets him, and she's dressed as a prostitute. So, her appearance is very suggestive, very provocative. She isn't a prostitute. This is a young, married woman. She isn't a prostitute. That isn't her occupation. She is a proper woman, but here at the time of night, the time of darkness, she dresses seductively in order to seduce the young man. So she dresses in a way that's inappropriate, in a way that's suggestive.

Then it says she's wily of heart. So, she's crafty, and she's manipulative. Wily of heart; the word wily means that "she has a hidden agenda." There's something not quite upfront. She comes out to meet him and perhaps she isn't being quite upfront about what she wants right away. But, she's very crafty and manipulative. She's set up the situation in a way that she can take advantage of it and try and manipulate the young man to do what she wants him to do.

Nancy: It goes on to say more about her character, her manner, her attitude. She's loud and wayward. I think some of the translations say she's loud and stubborn, and her feet do not stay at home. What's the point of all that?

Mary: Loud and wayward, that shows her character.

• She is demanding.
• She is loud.
• She's clamorous.
• She's a my-way-or-highway kind of a girl.
• She has got an attitude.
• She's wayward and is actually ungovernable.
• She's stubborn.

The picture is of a mule putting its heels into the ground not wanting to be moved. So the loud is, "I'm going to tell you what I want." And the wayward is, "Don't you tell me what to do." So she has an attitude that really is very self-centered, and she's very stubborn and very intent on getting what she wants. So that loud and wayward really talks about her character.

And then her feet do not stay at home. Now in the street, now in the market, every corner she lies in wait. That talks about her habits, about what she is accustomed to doing. So she is not a woman who has her heart centered in her home. She is concerned about being out. You know, going out to the party. Going out to meet people. Going out where the action is. She is concerned about what is going on out there. She wants to be socializing. She is not about putting first things first. It talks about her priorities.

Nancy: It sounds also like maybe there is some restlessness there; that she's not really satisfied with what God has given her in life. I'm thinking about a woman I interviewed lately who said, "I was looking for living water. I was looking for love." She was out in an illicit relationship trying to find something that she wasn't finding in Christ and in her God-given priorities.

Mary: That's right. So just a discontentment and thinking that I am going to go out and I am going to find what I think will satisfy the deepest needs of my heart.

Nancy: She takes pretty extreme measures to do that. She goes and finds this young man. Verse 13, "She seizes him and kisses him, and with bold face she says to him." Doesn't that describe the aggressive, assertive woman who is taking initiative to bring down this guy.

Mary: That's right. Nowadays it might be that she's the one that sets up the meeting. She text messages him; she emails him; she calls him; she's the one that grabs hold of him. She is really the one who is setting the pace in the relationship. She's going after him. She's making herself available to him. And yet, she also takes the initiatory step. She's the one who kisses him. She's the one. She's dressed provocatively. She actually takes the first step and comes on to him sexually in a very physical way. And with bold face, so she's brash about her behavior and unashamed about doing it.

Nancy: Then she spiritualizes it. She said, "I had to offer sacrifices. Today I paid my vows" (verse 14). I mean, this is church lady.

Mary: This is church lady. She was probably at church that morning fulfilling her vows. The woman that you saw at church that morning looked very different than the woman you would have seen in the alley that night in the time of darkness.

Nancy: You wonder if he was at church that morning and she was checking him out.

Mary: She could have been. This is a religious woman. This is a woman who does the right things. From outward appearances it would seem that she loves God. She's in church. She's very religious. She's paying her vows. And yet, her behavior when she's not in church absolutely does not match the face that she puts on when she is in church. She's very duplicitous. She goes out in the evening to meet the young man.

Actually, to seek him out because she has this sense of neediness that she is going to go and she is going to get a guy. She has these unfulfilled needs in her life. We don't know what was going on in her situation. We don't know what her relationship with her husband was like. We find out later in the passage that he was away from home. Maybe he traveled away from home quite a bit. But, for whatever reason, she wasn't content. She was going out to seek the young man. And she was going out to seek love.

Nancy: And in a very sensual way. In a sensual definition of love. She says in verse 16,

I have spread my couch with coverings, colored linens from Egyptian linen; I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love till morning. [Not really a biblical definition of love.] Let's delight ourselves with love. For my husband [we find out that she's married] is not at home; he is gone on a long journey; he took a bag of money with him; at full moon he will come home (verses 16-20).

Mary: So basically, there's no chance we're going to get caught. The coast is clear. No one's watching. And who this woman is when no one is watching is very different than who she is when people are watching. We see when she talks about spreading her couch with coverings and colored linens from Egyptian linens, she really has a designer label mentality.

She's very much about consumer goods. She's probably a shopaholic. Just the descriptions that she uses in this verse, she's very particular about describing how opulent, how luxurious, and how indulgent her possessions are. She tries to entice the young man sexually that way

Nancy: And you can't help but wonder if she'd been investing this kind of effort and attention in her marriage, how her marriage might look different.

Mary: Exactly. She obviously put a lot of time and effort into preparing a situation to welcome this young man in hopes of luring him home and getting him to come home with her. She's inviting him. "Let us delight ourselves with love." She's given him at this point her best sales pitch.

She has this seductive dress. She's dressed herself seductively. She has come on to him physically, very brazenly, brashly. Kissed him, given him every indication that she's available. And yet he's still hesitant at this point. And so, in verse 21, she has to ramp it up a notch and pull out another weapon out of her toolbox.

Nancy: Her speech. "With much seductive speech she persuades him; with her smooth talk she compels him."

Mary: That's right. So we see this woman, she's tried everything in terms of her behavior, and then she starts smooth talking him. Probably saying things like, "You're the only one who makes me feel special. You're just the right man for me." Maybe confiding in him, telling him how miserable her life is with her husband, how inattentive he is. "He's gone again, and I’m so lonely. I’m so scared of being at home alone." And so she smooth talks him. She uses her speech, and she smooth talks him and seduces him verbally as well as physically.

Nancy: And he goes for it. He falls for it.

All at once he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a stag goes till an arrow pierces its liver. [Pretty graphic here.] As a bird rushes into a snare; he does not know that it will cost him his life. [And the end of that passage says that] her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death (verses 22-23, 27).

What looks so attractive and enticing and alluring really turns out not to be.

Mary: It really does blow up in both their faces. It looked good. It seemed to be what she wanted. She convinced him that it would do no harm. She convinced him that the coast was clear and they wouldn't have consequences, and yet it did, and it always does. It always does have consequences. Satan paints this picture that evil and sin is so attractive and so beneficial. Countless women have told me, and I know Nancy, you as well, you've heard so many stories of lives that have been broken and shattered with this script.

Nancy: The story in this chapter does not have a happy ending. It ends with death. But thankfully, there is an alternate way. It's the way of wisdom. And I can't help but think of chapter 8, the very next chapter of Proverbs, where Lady Wisdom call out. She says "wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her" (verse 11). 

Mary: We've just given a broad overview of this descriptive passage of a wild woman. I think some of our listeners are probably thinking, whew, I’m glad that I'm not that kind of woman

Nancy: And yet, as I've walked through this passage and you have as well over the years, we've realized that there are aspects of this kind of woman in each of our hearts. So over the next few days, we want to pull back and look more specifically and in greater detail at some of the characteristics of the wild woman and contrasting characteristics of the wise woman. Let God show us where are our hearts are a wild thing, a wild woman, and let him by His power make us into wise women as only he can do, by the power of His Spirit, and the power of the Gospel.

Leslie: Wise. Foolish. You make choices day by day that determine which word best fits. Proverbs 7 shows you how to be a wise woman. Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Mary Kassian have been helping you dig into that passage. They'll continue this week and next. I hope you'll study Proverbs 7 for yourself.

I hope you'll take some time with Mary's book, Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild. She'll show you twenty points of contrast between a wild woman and a wise woman. Get a copy of this book and learn to reflect wisdom in your attitudes, habits, appearance, possessions, speech, and influence. Support Revive Our Hearts with a gift of any size, and we'll send Girls Gone Wise as our way of saying thanks. You'll also receive a CD set with the complete conversation between Mary and Nancy.

Today's conversation is available because of listeners who donate. When you support Revive Our Hearts, your gift will be multiplied in hearts of women who are learning to be wise, hearing biblical truth over the radio and learning to live it out. Ask for Girls Gone Wise along with this series on CD when you call with your donation of any amount. The number is 1-800-569-5959, or donate at ReviveOurHearts.com and indicate that you'd like a copy of the book.

Mary and Nancy will be speaking at the True Woman conferences this September in Indianapolis and in Ft. Worth this October. With the conferences coming soon, some business owners are deciding to send employees. Debbie Hancock is a customer service specialist at Revive Our Hearts, and she received a call from a man who heads up an international organization.

Debbie Hancock: He purchased 10 tickets.

Leslie: Which means he was eligible for an 11th ticket at no charge.

Debbie: But one of the ladies that's coming is one of his employees from the Philippines. He said, "I'm committed. I want these ladies to have this, and here's the tickets."

Leslie: Debbie got a call from a husband and wife who run their own business.

Debbie: They purchased 11 tickets, so they've earned the one free. Bringing and paying for their employees; teens and adults, because they said this is so important.

Leslie: Why would a business owner make that kind of investment of time and resources? Here's what this couple thought.

Debbie: This is the kind of business, these are the kind of employees that we want, and they need to hear that.

Leslie: Maybe you have the resources to send a group to the True Woman conference. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com for details on sending them to True Woman Indianapolis or True Woman Ft. Worth. When you order 10 registrations, you'll get one at no charge. Maybe you can't send a group of employees, but you can bring yourself. We want to see you. Again, visit ReviveOurHearts.com or call our special True Woman number at 1-877-966-2608 to learn more

Well, where do you get most of your council? Nancy and Mary will be back to discuss that question tomorrow. You'll find it enlightening when you join us again for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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