True Woman 101 - Week 1: Gender Matters

Nancy: A number of our friends are going to be joining us for these True Woman Table Talk discussions.

Mary: Girlfriend time.

Nancy: Let me introduce you to the three guests who are with us today. On Mary’s left is Erin Davis. Erin is a wife and mom of two little ones. We have women in different seasons of life. I love that.

Mary, you have young adult sons, and Erin, you have little ones.

Erin Davis: Very little, yes.

Nancy: You’re our (I don’t want to say token, because that sounds like it’s not important), but we needed a younger woman. 

Erin: I’ll take it if you’re going to tell them I’m young.

Nancy: Enjoy it while you have it, because, as we’ve all learned, it doesn’t last.

Mary: It doesn’t last.

Nancy: But you have such a heart for teenagers, for young women. You’re passionate about that, and you’ve helped us be passionate about it, too.

Erin: That’s good, yes.

Nancy: And so Erin Davis, and then in the middle, Holly Elliff. Holly and I go back a long ways. We’re longtime friends, sisters, and you have eight children and six grandchildren.

Holly Elliff: I do.

Nancy: Then to my right is Dannah Gresh. Dannah, you have teenagers and young adult children, kind of in that age range.

Dannah Gresh: I still call them my babies. They’re always your babies.

Nancy: We had the privilege of writing together, Lies Young Women Believe. And what a journey that has been. I’ve learned so much from you and your heart for teens. And, by the way, what’s so neat about this gathering is that the Lord used you when Erin was a teenager.

Erin: That’s right. Dannah was my mentor when I was fifteen.

Nancy: Yes. And now you’re mentoring other young women, and we just see this whole thing of the beauty of true womanhood and legacy.

Now, I’m not married, and I’ve never had children, but all you ladies are moms. Can you remember, when you had that first child, did you all want to know whether it was a boy or girl? Did you find out?

Mary: There was no option when I had my kids.

Holly: When Mary and I had our first kids, probably . . .

Nancy: Okay, you’re dating yourselves. 

Mary: Okay . . . back in the day.

Holly: Back in the day when I was young. So the first half of my children, I didn’t know what was coming.

Mary: They never even did ultrasounds.

Holly: No. But the second half of my children, technology had caught up. So the first four I didn’t know. The last four I did know what I was having.

Mary: Well, I just got used to hearing, "It’s a boy!" "It’s a boy!" "It’s a boy!"

Nancy: Did you find out before your first was born?

Dannah: I did not want to know. I love anticipation.

Nancy: You wanted to know sooner or later—just not sooner.

Dannah: Yes. I wanted to know when that baby was in my arms, and I didn’t know until then. So that was fine.

Nancy: How about you, Erin?

Erin: I didn’t want to know. I had to find out with my first because he had a little medical thing, and so we found out with him. We were thrilled that he was a boy. But with my second, I was determined not to find out. So we had written in our birth plan, “No one can tell Erin except Jason.”

There were people in the waiting room. My aunt had a blue blanket and a pink blanket because they were waiting. Then I had the baby, and my husband’s eyes filled with tears. I’ll never forget it. He said, “It’s another boy!” I was so excited!

Nancy: Well, gender really does matter. If you’re a mom, whether you find out before the baby’s born or the moment the baby is born, gender really does matter. But we live in a culture that is promoting the message, in many respects, that gender doesn’t matter, or that genders are interchangeable.

Mary: There’s a case-in-point in Canada where there was a mom who had a baby and decided that she was not going to let anyone know the gender of the child.

Nancy: I’ve heard about this. This is big news. It’s huge news.

Mary: Yes. It was in Toronto, and the baby was named Storm.

Erin: It’s called Gender Storm.

Mary: Yes, because it just wasn’t announced whether this child was a boy or girl, and they weren’t going to let anyone know whether this child was a boy or girl, and then they were going to allow the child to choose its own gender. It’s upheld as an ideal; that this is a better way to raise children in a neutral, gender-free environment.

Erin: I read several interviews with that mom. I blogged about it. And the way she talked about it, it was that she was giving her child a gift; it’s freedom of choice.

Mary: Yes. It’s such a wonderful thing.

Erin: And that baby whose grandparents didn’t even know . .  Now, would that drive you nuts?

Holly: It would just mean that there would be a whole lot less people to change diapers.

Erin: That is for sure.

Dannah: I would be peeking.

Erin: I guess so, but the mom talked about it as if it was such a wonderful gift.

Mary: A wonderful thing she was giving the child.

Holly: And that it was optional.

Nancy: Well, you can see examples of this in a lot of places in the culture. 

Mary: I’ve heard so much since that time about gender-neutral preschools, about sending your child to a preschool where there will be no delineation between boys and girls, and they are going to take gender pronouns out. They’re going to make sure that the children play with gender-neutral toys. I’m not exactly sure how they function, but my guess is that the parents that send them there will send them there with the understanding that they’re not to identify the gender of that child in any way so that the children can identify with each other just kind of as humans and not through the lens of gender.

Dannah: And we think that we have sexual gender confusion now. Wait for ten years for that to kick in. I think of Katy Perry who made popular the song “I Kissed a Girl, and I liked it.” I kissed a girl, and I liked it.

Here’s what’s heartbreaking about that for me. It’s easy to make this an us-and-them issue, but it’s not. Katy Perry grew up in a Christian home. I have ministered to the teachers in her Christian middle-school. They were just heartbroken by the fact that the truth didn’t seep into her. It was available to her, but it didn’t seep into her.

Nancy: Yet. The story’s not over.

Dannah: Yes, that’s true . . . the hope of the gospel. But this erasing gender is creating this sexual confusion.

Nancy: You use the word confusion, Dannah. I think that’s so apparent. A friend of ours was telling us recently that she was filling out an application for a position, and on the question of what gender are you (it’s usually male or female, I mean, those are the only two I know about) there were seven options: male, female, and five others. I was so confused, I had to ask Mary, “What are these referring to? What are those options?”

Mary: And there probably was an option of none or not applicable.

Holly: Or it’s complicated.

Mary: Right—it’s complicated.

Erin: That’s sort of like it’s not an important question, and I can decide.

Mary: Exactly. A lady told me just a few weeks ago that she had gone to give blood at the Red Cross. As part of the intake interview, they went through their standard questionnaire, and one of the questions—and it just floored her—was, “Are you the same gender that you were at birth?”

Erin: Wow. From the Red Cross?

Mary: From the Red Cross, for giving blood.

Nancy: So there’s the thing: Does gender matter? And then: Can you change genders? You can talk to a lot of average people and find there’s a prevailing view that gender really doesn’t matter.

In fact, we sent a team out at a true woman event, out onto the sidewalks to ask women on the street, “What is a true woman?”

Woman: I would describe a true woman as a true human being, and with sex organs that are different from men, but a true woman is a true human being who, at her best, just displays all the best qualities of humankind.

Other than the physiological differences, a woman who puts her mind to it can do anything a man can do, I think.

Mary: Nancy, that video clip just so accurately reflects what we’re talking about. There’s a widespread belief that's becoming more and more common all the time that gender doesn’t matter. We may think that it’s something that’s out there or something that’s just in pop culture, but it translates into how we do life. It’s pervasive.

Nancy: It’s one that has implications for all of life.

Mary: It has implications for all of life, and we see it in terms of a gender role reversal with dads and moms or with young women going into a relationship thinking that there’s going to be a sameness about the way they interact with the young men that they’re going out with or thinking that it really doesn’t matter whether it’s a young man or a young woman. It’s just leading to so much brokenness and heartache, and it’s just tragic because women aren’t able to make relationships work, and it’s just so incredibly difficult to do so.

Nancy: One of the things we’re going to see all through this study is that God’s ways are good. They’re beautiful, and they work. And God’s design is for our good. Those who ignore or don’t know or reject God’s design, whether out in pop culture or within the church, are setting themselves up for so much pain and brokenness.

That’s one of the reasons we’ve done this study, Mary, it’s one of the reasons we wrote it. We just know that if women don’t get that gender really does matter and is good and is God-created, then there’s going to be so much pain and dysfunction and brokenness that could be averted.

Mary: And not only in their own lives, but in the lives of their families and friends, and really in the lives of their communities and really just the whole next generation.

Erin: I’m not sure moms understand how this is affecting their teen daughters and younger. We talk about pop culture, and it’s important to know that for teenage girls there’s no difference between what they see in pop culture and their worldview. Most of the time those lines are so blurry.

Nancy: And even kids in the youth group?

Erin: Certainly.

Nancy: The world’s been more shaped by what they see in pop culture.

Erin: And the same is true for even younger.

Mary: And so a mother, or even an older woman may not be feeling the pain of these things we’re talking about yet, but it’s worth fighting for.

Dannah: I talked with a friend the other day who has a daughter in elementary school. There is a lesbian couple with a daughter in their class, and they want the little girl to come over and play.

Mary: My kids—20 years ago, 15 years ago—didn’t have to face that information.

Erin: I mentor a girl who is working with college students on a campus with university athletes and with top caliber athletes. She says, depending on the team that these athletes are on, there is a very large percentage of the teams—sometimes as upwards as 80% of the team—that get drawn into, or pressured into, same-sex relationships with girls on the team, and it’s a whole different culture.

There’s just so much brokenness that comes through that. It’s a tragedy. But this isn’t something theoretical. 

Mary: This is hitting our grade-school children. The moms may not feel it, but our children are being raised with this idea that there’s this fluidity and that there are our sex organs, and then there’s our gender, and our sex organs don’t dictate our gender. We get to pick our gender, and we can choose to be one gender one day, and a few years down the road, change the gender. And if you’re a good parent, you will allow your child to choose his or her own gender.

Nancy: Yes. If you’re not aware of it, if you just start looking around and noticing what the culture is saying, there’s this widespread belief that gender really doesn’t matter, that there are not significant differences between male and female, or that they’re interchangeable or that they’re fluid. There’s variations on gender confusion.

But that’s, again, where we go back to God’s Word.

Mary: We have to.

Nancy: Which is what we try to do all through the study—on this and every other area of life—and we realize—and Scripture is so clear—that God created male and female for a specific purpose.

Holly: The lines are not blurry.

Nancy: He designed them differently. The lines are not blurry.

I love that passage in Isaiah chapter 43, I think it is, that says “God created sons and daughters for His glory”—for His glory. So I want to just park there for a moment as we start this study and say that everything in life is about glorifying God, including our womanhood or manhood gender. What does it mean? We kind of throw that term around a lot.

Dannah: I think it means that we illuminate Him. We make Him visible. He can be seen in us. He can be seen through us. I think that’s what it means to glorify.

Holly: Well, that we understand that the purpose of our existence is wrapped up in making God more known than He would have been apart from our life.

Nancy: Putting Him on display.

Holly: Glorifying Him, yes, displaying Him.

Mary: Shining a spotlight—taking a spotlight and going . . . Wow!

Dannah: Let me read this from Genesis 1. It says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.’” Then verse 27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female He created them.”

Nancy: No confusion in God’s Word, is there? He’s sure about it.

Holly: No, none.

Erin: It’s pretty clear what He’s doing.

Dannah: He’s saying, “You are in My image.”

I was reading this years ago, and I thought to myself, “There’s so much about humanity that’s amazing that God could have pointed to in this passage. Why didn’t He comment on our language proficiency or our ability to compose sonnets or our creativity or the fact that one day we would make an airplane fly? He doesn’t take any of those magnificent things. One thing, one thing only: male and female.”

I think it is through gender that we glorify God best because that’s what’s in His image.

Holly: And the interesting thing is that we’re totally not responsible for being male or female. At that moment of creation . . .

Erin: . . . God makes us that.

Holly: It is God’s business.

Nancy: We didn’t have any choice in that, nor did our parents.

Mary: Nope.

Holly: No. It’s nothing that we did at that point.

Mary: I love that verse, Dannah, because it’s fascinating. I mean, you go back, and you said, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image after our likeness.’” Well, okay—who’s the our and the us? There’s a lot of plurality going on there in the language. Who’s God talking to?Himself.

Dannah: Himself. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit—three in one.

Mary: And so there’s something about male and female that teaches us about the "us" of God.

Dannah: You know what I think it is? I think it’s this: God in three persons is a social being.

Nancy: Relational.

Dannah: He is relational, and without the distinct differences of the Trinity, there is no reason for socialness because it would just be one.

Erin: There’s no reason for Trinity if they would all be the same.

Dannah: But male and female, and their distinct differences, crave to know and be known and be social, too. So it is our gender that makes us social beings like God.

Holly: And the two parts of that gender that God set up, that He designed, display who He is better than either one could separately.

Nancy: That’s a cool thought. There are aspects of God’s image that men—males—can reflect in stronger ways, and ways that females—we as women—display God’s image. And you put them together, male and female, and then ultimately in marriage, in husband and wife, and you get together in that oneness a beautiful reflection of who God is.

Erin: That’s why studying gender through the filter of God’s Word is so exciting. I feel like when women hear that we’re going to study gender, they worry that they’re going to find out that we’re inferior. The opposite is true. God’s Word says, “Women, you put Me on display, you give Me glory in a way that men don’t.” The opposite is true.

So it’s really empowering, exciting to see that God says, “Hey, lady. Your purpose is to glorify Me, to reveal something about Me.”

Mary: I love the picture that we chose for the front of the True Woman 101 study. And throughout the study there’s this theme of artistry and this theme of painting and design and beauty.

Nancy: Craftsmanship.

Mary: All the colors that we chose for the inside are rich and bold and up close, and all the photos are very textured.

The thought of putting God on display is like we’re painting a picture and putting it up on an easel. We all know that pictures aren’t the real thing. If I paint a picture of a beautiful vase and flower, you know that that’s not the vase and the flower you’re looking at. The picture represents the real thing. It puts it on display. We’re talking about the glory of God. When we glorify God with our lives, we take that easel, and our lives are that painting that shows truths about God.

Dannah: You’re getting me excited.

Erin: I’m excited about it, too.

Dannah: When think of male and female being a picture, I think of the Mona Lisa. It was her smile that made her mysterious. And for 500 years our art history majors and all of humanity have been studying her because there’s a mystery in her that we don’t quite understand when we look at this painting.

Well, I don’t know if you know this, but in 1911, Mona Lisa was stolen. So the captain of the guard comes around the corner, where she was once hanging on these four posts, and she’s gone. And he thinks to himself, he reasons to himself, "She’s been taken out to be photographed for marketing purposes."

So the men entrusted to the portrait—the most valuable portrait on the planet—do nothing. That’s us. That’s us, church. That’s us right now. The picture of God is gender, and in large part, the body of Christ does nothing.

Erin: Well, let’s sound the alarm.

Holly: Right. We’re a little numb to the depth of it, to the breadth of what is happening in our culture.

Mary: Or the seriousness of it. We just think, “Oh well.”

Dannah: Or the pain, the pain of it, the brokenness of it.

Nancy: And maybe also, numb. I’ve been in church since nine months before I was born, and we’ve heard the story, the gospel, the mystery of Christ and His church. Ephesians 5 talks about husbands and wives and marriage, and then Paul says, “This is a mystery. I’m speaking about Christ and His church.” I mean, we’ve just read that so many times, heard that, done that, been there.

Mary: We’ve lost the wonder. It’s like the smile of gender, the mystery, the smile of it. What is it about that, when we look at male and female? We’ve forgotten that it’s about Jesus, and it’s about the gospel.

Holly: I remember John Piper saying a few years ago, "Womanhood exists because the woman displays God in a way that could not happen apart from woman existing"—something like that. And in the same way man does that as well. So God in his perfection knows exactly what our culture needs to perfectly display God, and we are ignoring that. We are dismissing that.

Mary: We need the reminder that it is about the Gospel. And a lot of women probably really haven't heard that; this is the first time they are hearing the whole idea that gender really . . . Okay, were putting the easel up and the easel is gender. Here's my painting of what I look like. They don't understand that my gender really is supposed to point to something else, which we talked about in Ephesians, which is really the relationship between Christ and the Church.

There is a disconnect because often we don't understand that the reason that history opened with the creation of a male and female and a marriage is because history is going to close and come to an end with a wedding. Who's the male? The Man Christ Jesus. And who's the female? The Church corporate—male and female, His bride and a wedding. And that is why we were created male and female.

Dannah: Really, the heart of it is that the gospel and our relationship with God is a love story.

Nancy: Okay, when you say that I have to raise something here. You women are all married so you see your marriage as husband and wife in the context of how it displays the gospel. Talk to me as a single woman. Does gender matter for me? For our single sisters who are doing this study how to our lives as women, even apart from marriage, how does that reflect the gospel?

Mary: Here's the thing that I find so exciting because so many single friends that I have, some are content in their singleness and know that is a calling on their life, some are not so content in their singleness. There is restless, longings. But here's the deal.

This is a temporary picture, this picture of marriage. It's a temporary picture that speaks to something way bigger and way more eternal and way, way more important. So this temporary picture of who male and female are and marriage and sex and gender really points to cosmic realities. The picture it is going to come to an end, but through eternity this reality will continue. And so the point even when Paul talks to singles and addresses them in Corinthians, he is telling them, "You are so vital, and who you are is so vital you get to take part in the big picture."

Dannah: And I would take it a step further and say this, the marriage supper of the Lamb takes place because we the Church are betrothed to Christ, engaged to Christ. Married, single, widowed. In our singleness we are in that betrothal period; we are in that engagement period of faithful waiting. Perhaps it is a greater picture in that faithfulness and in that waiting then we are even within a marriage relationship.

Mary: So just like male and female show different aspects of the cosmic relationship, I think singleness and marriage also show a different aspect. It's like we are all putting up our individual pictures, and it all points to the same thing.

Holly: And in reality those who are single, Paul says, may have a greater freedom to even promote the gospel than those of us who are chasing toddlers or children for that season of our life.

Nancy: And even as singles I think we need to say that our gender matters. The fact that God made me a woman (I don't know all the mystery of that), but what excites me as we are starting out into this study that says that womanhood, gender, womanhood for us, has profound significance. But there is cosmic significance. It is not a biological accident. It is intentional on God's part. There is a divine design there and, you know women, we have these moments ourselves where we feel so insignificant, so inferior, so unworthy, so inadequate. We all struggle with that.

Dannah: And isn't that sometimes why humanity acts out in gender confusion,  because they feel insignificant, they feel hurt, they feel wounded in what they are and who they are.

Holly: But in those moments it's because we have left behind God's original intentional design for us. We’re missing it. Sometimes we just need to go back and review, even as Christian women, we need to go back and review the value of understanding deeply why God did it this way. What was His intent?

Dannah: What you say about the significance of woman is so radical, and especially if you're just being introduced to the concept of biblical womanhood. I think sometimes there is some fearfulness.

Nancy: The widespread thought is that Christianity squashes womanhood. That's what one book said. That Christianity puts them down. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Mary: There have been those who have misused the Word of God to do that. But if you look at these Scriptures, there are so many radical things that God does. One of the things we do at the True Women event for the teens is we take them to the lineage of Jesus Christ. We simply read the lineage out loud, and every time you hear the name of a woman we want you to shout "Go Girl!" Because in that day and age it was a tremendous break from literary tradition to put the name of a woman in the lineage.

But here's the thing, ultimately, this Bible and the story in this Bible isn’t about man and woman. Ultimately, it's about the story of Jesus Christ.

Erin: It feels to me like what you're saying is that we've been focusing on an Etch-a-Sketch drawing, and really we’re missing the masterpiece. We focus on doodles, and the point of your doodles is not the doodles but to reveal a greater masterpiece, which is really so exciting when you get the bigger picture of who you are and why you are.

Mary: I think we go so wrong when we make it about us and that is sort of the "ah-ha moment" often for women who come to True Women conferences and it clicks for them. It's like "Wow, all of a sudden I realized it's not about me." It was a massive revelation that even the way she chooses to do her womanhood or live her life as a woman is ultimately not about her. It's about taking her life and putting it up on the easel and displaying, spotlighting, illuminating, shining the light on the gospel.

Nancy: As we do that it is what gives our lives a sense of worth and value. So many of these women are feeling worthless, like God doesn't care, nobody cares, feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. They get addressed, those feelings do, as we say "yes" to being that picture. That is where we find a sense of fulfillment and freedom. The world just has it backwards. We’re trying to find that sense of freedom and fulfillment, and we have not found it in pursuing that. But if you pursue Christ, you pursue representing him, you end up blessed.

Mary: If you don't get this point, you're going to have a hard time understanding the rest of the story. This is such an important point—the point that gender matters—because it's not about us. Our gender matters because it is about something cosmic, it is about something bigger, it's about telling Christ’s story—the story of God. That helps us understand a lot as we go on through the weeks when we’re going to be wrestling with, “Well, how did God create male, how did God create female?” We have to put it through that grid of He is wanting His daughters and His sons to display His glory.

Erin: Can I just say to the reader that if it's a point that you don't get immediately, I'm with you. It is such a complex and counter-cultural idea that it is really something that I continually have to think through. What does this mean? What was God's truth on gender again? How does that apply to the way I do X,Y or Z? But you have to get the foundational idea that it's not about you,  it's about a bigger picture.

Holly: Walking through these weeks of study in God’s Word really does just pinpoint the fact that it's not about me, but in the sense of God loving me enough to create me exactly like I am. It is about me becoming exactly the woman that God wanted me to be, who He had in His mind at the moment that He knit me together in my mother's womb, so that I could be born and have life. He is intentional about my life. But the reason He is intentional about it is so that it can bring glory to Him. So more people can experience the freedom and fullness of knowing Jesus.

Nancy: We're going to talk about some tough concepts in this series. They are tough because they are counter-cultural. Just the fact that gender matters is counter-cultural; that there are differences. We don't want to focus just on the differences. We are equal, created in the image of God, one is not better than the other. But the differences are significant, and as we highlight those and highlight some of those differences in our calling and God's design, I believe it's going to be tough for a lot of people going through the study. But I would like our people who are doing this with us to realize that we have grappled with and do grapple with these concepts.

Erin, you said you still grapple with these things, you're just getting it, and some of us have been knowing and teaching these truths for a long time but the truth in different ways has been difficult for us to embrace, at points, God's design for womanhood.

Mary: I thought God's design was good, that it was the right thing, way before I saw it is a beautiful thing. I knew it was right, but it didn't feel right.

Dannah: It was in your head and not in your heart.

Mary: Well, it's like going to the dentist and getting a tooth drilled. You know you have to, you know it's a good thing, but ouch . . .

Nancy: No joy there.

Holly: Something you survive instead of celebrating.

Nancy: Do you ever feel that way about being a woman?

Mary: Well, that's exactly what I'm saying. Yes, I started that way with God's design, thinking that it was the right thing to do but it wasn't the good and beautiful thing to do. I did not see it as lovely. I saw it more like a cavity. But I remember actually a very significant moment when this whole truth hit me, the big cosmic picture, when it actually dawned on me that this is not about me but that God loved me and valued me and esteemed womanhood so much. He esteems women so much that without women the story can’t be told in the proper way. It is integral to the message God wants to communicate. It was like a light bulb went on; it was all of a sudden. I remember the moment because I started weeping. There was a moment when I got it and when the big picture informed me that it is not only right, it is also beautiful.

I can't say that it was, "Oh, now I've got it." Because it still is a journey of walking through that, and I still wrestle with it at times thinking, "Are we crazy?"

Nancy: I think whether we are women or men, that in our fallen condition there are moments for all of us when we bristle against God's design and calling for our lives.

Dannah: Surely not Nancy Leigh DeMoss. I'll bet she's never bristled against God's design.

Erin: I've heard you talk about how sometimes you thought maybe you could serve the Lord better . . .

Nancy: Actually, this whole thing of womanhood was a long, slow, and at times hard process for me. I loved the Lord. I have wanted to serve Him. I was committed to the authority of His Word so theologically. I was orthodox on these principles, but I had a disconnect between that and my emotions because I wanted to serve the Lord. It wasn't like, "Oh, I hate being a woman." It was more like, “If I'd been a man . . ."

Holly: It was kind of a hindrance to you doing what you felt like God was calling you to do.

Nancy: To wanting to serve the Lord in ways that I could. I didn't believe biblically that God had called women to be pastors for example. I love teaching the Word. It was more like, "I could serve the Lord more if I'd been a man." I don't think I ever verbalize that; I certainly didn't say it out loud. It was just a little underlying thing. I didn't enjoy being a woman. I'm not married. My life's been a ministry life. So I was through my 20s and into my 30s just grappling with this. “Does gender really matter? and why?”

Dannah: Did you have a desire to pastor and teach the Word?

Nancy: I just wanted to serve the Lord, and it seemed that men had more chances to do that then women. It just didn't seem quite fair. I wouldn't have said that God wasn't right.

Dannah: Or that he made a mistake.

Nancy: I knew he doesn't make mistakes. There was just a disconnect there. Really, as I got into God's Word and began to study the kinds of things that are in this study, and to see that male and female created in the image of God with distinct purpose and value and mission and God began to unfold to me a vision for a mission, for showing and displaying his glory. Also, in the course of all that, I was ministering to women and I was seeing the brokenness, the hurt, the pain…

Dannah: Well, look at you now. How do you feel about teaching hundreds of thousands of women the Word of God through the radio?

Nancy: You know, it's a great joy, a great privilege. But I'll tell you this because the truth is, there are days when I still wrestle with this. I've come to see it, and I've come to really enjoy it. I love being a woman; I'm thankful for that. I think I was in my mid-30s before I ever felt thankful that God had made me a woman.

But there are still days when I see God's calling and design for women and I think, "grrrrr, it’s the bristling." But you know what? Whether you’re male or female, what it does is cast us on Christ and make us humble. "Lord, I can’t fulfill this calling on my own. I need you. I need your grace." And this whole message of gender keeps taking us back to the grace of God. How can we, mortal, failing, flawed human beings ever display God's glory? We can’t apart from Him.

Mary: Dannah, you weren’t the same kind of story.

Dannah: I was a girly girl. I remember as a young girl just thinking, "Alright there are three things I want—to get married, have babies, and then Jesus can come." That was all that mattered. I would say that, though, in more recent years, there have been times as God has expanded my ministry, ironically. I've been given these wonderful opportunities as a platform minister to youth. There are times I realize I could have more opportunities if I was a man. I could say yes to more opportunities if I didn't have children at home.

But they are fleeting, they are very small, because the blessing of raising Robbie and Lexi and Autumn and the delight and the desire not to miss a moment of it because it goes so quickly, it is such a blessing. I love womanhood. I love being a mom, and I love being a wife.

Holly: As we step back a little bit from that you really do see that. I can remember when my first maybe three kids were very young. I saw all of these things as a pastor's wife that I wanted to fix or do or create. My precious mother-in-law came to me and said to me, "You know, Holly, I know you're good at these things. I know you could do these things but nobody else can raise your children. Nobody else can be their mom. If you’ll be faithful to do that well as God enables you to do it, you will have a platform later to look back from a different perspective and do some of these things that are in your heart to do. But right now, you have little, tiny kids, and this is where God has called you. It was a surrender for me.

Erin: A dental chair moment?

Holly: I actually told my dentist one time that I would rather go through labor than come and see him.

Nancy: You know what, Holly? It is a surrender to the season of life and to where God has put you. I'm thinking of my single sisters as you say that. It is a surrender to say, "In this moment this is what God has given me. I receive it with gratitude. I embrace it, and I want to give it back to Him and let Him use it." And to bless others and to bring Him glory.

Holly: To step back far enough to see it as a good thing, if God has ordained it, then it is a good thing.

Dannah: And the Lord has given you a platform, you are on the "True View."

Holly: I can't imagine any other place else I would rather be at this moment.

Nancy: Hey girls, I think one thing we want to point out as women are getting started in this study. I know some of them are gung-ho, some are a little fearful, some are wondering where we’re going with this, skeptical perhaps. Women are coming in from all different places, and that's okay. It's not what Mary and I have written, it’s that we just want to get you to God's Word and get you searching there.

But the fact is as you begin to adopt and embrace and promote a biblical perspective on womanhood, you are going to be swimming upstream. We have all experienced that. Some doing this study have experienced this. If they haven't experienced it, they will. Because this is not the way the world is going, it is not the way the church, sadly, is going. I want us to encourage women for moment. I want to say it's worth it.

I've got to tell you this. On a break today, I stepped out into the office and one of the gals there showed me a video that she took at lunch today down the street here. I don't even know how she ended up there, but she ended up at a stream where the salmon were swimming upstream. She showed me a video there of the rushing water and the salmon jumping upstream against the current. And ultimately, to lay down their lives to give life.

I think of this thing of salmon swimming upstream and realize that true womanhood is a call not only to display God's glory, but it is a call in a way to die to self, to my own aspirations and ambitions. But knowing that beyond the cross there is the joy of the resurrection, that we don't end up in this place of misery. It's a place of joy, but it can be difficult.