True Woman 101 - Week 2: Snips & Snails

Nancy: We have some new guests with us this week, and I want to introduce them to you. To Mary’s left is my friend, Kim Wagner. She’s a pastor’s wife, a mom, a grandmom. Kim, we are so glad to have you on our set this time—our Table Talk.

And then in the middle, Karen Loritts, married to Crawford Loritts. He’s a pastor and a broadcaster and an author. Karen and Crawford have been my friends for many years, and we’re glad to have you with us. Karen is also a mom and a grandmom. How many grandchildren now, Karen?

Karen Loritts: Eight grandchildren. They’re growing.

Nancy: Wow! Bless you! And we are so glad you are able to join us. And then to my right, Carolyn McCulley. Carolyn is a filmmaker. She makes . . . what do you call those?

Carolyn McCulley: Documentaries.

Nancy: Documentaries, a certain kind that have social causes. You have a real heart for people for issues that need to be surfaced and people need to get greater understanding of. We’ve been friends for a long time, and that’s what this True Woman Table Talk is. It’s Mary and me getting to talk with some of our friends. So this is a lot of fun for us, and I’m glad that as we are talking about guys today that we have some different seasons of life represented. We have moms, grandmoms, single women. Mary, you have all sons.

Mary Kassian: All sons. Grown. They’re grown, and I have my first daughter-in-law which is great. And it just even showed more profoundly how big of a difference there is between girls and guys.

Nancy: Like when you choose movies at your house?

Mary: When we choose movies—that’s a big one. I mean,  I have never been able to watch like chick flicks. It’s just a big deal.

Nancy: Just you and the sons.

Mary: Let me tell you what it absolutely floored me. Clark and Jacqueline got married, and Jacqueline was hanging out at our place. I come home from a shopping trip and I’ve got bags in my hand. I came in with the bags and normally I just go upstairs and put them away in my closet. I hear this voice from the living room and Jacqueline’s there, “What did you buy? I want to see.” And so anyway, now that Jacqueline is in our household it’s turned in to this big joke because I was just so blown away that I was asked to interact on what I had purchased. It’s just so much fun to see that and just to enjoy those differences in adulthood between male and female and to enjoy those.

Carolyn: Well, I’m so excited we are talking about the differences between men and women today because I love talking about men. It’s one difference I’m changing. (laughter)

Kim Wagner: We just witnessed the differences right here as we were getting ready to record. Karen and Mary and I were talking about, “Oh, what color are you? What season?”

Karen: It was such a big thing. Can you imagine our husbands saying that? “Oh, what season are you?”

Kim: “I’m like an autumn.”  

Nancy: I can wear orange.

Mary: You can’t, you’re not an autumn.

Nancy: I’m not an autumn.

Kim: And so, some of the men on the engineering crew were standing up here and heard what we were saying. One of the men turned to the other one and said, “What season are you?” (laughter) Another camera man said, “Well, are you talking about deer season? Or time season? What do you mean?” There are differences.

Karen: Men are . . . they are different. A couple of weeks ago, we had three of our four grandsons at our house. We went up to a friend’s house to take them into the pool to do some swimming. One of the little guys was jumping off a ten-foot wall into the pool, and I’m screaming, “No! No! No!” And then the other one jumped and got his foot jammed, had blood, and I’m screaming.

Mary: Oh, blood. That’s almost a prerequisite for fun. It’s a boy’s thing. It’s a good play time when there’s blood.

Karen: It’s a boy’s thing. I want them to calmly swim, like my granddaughters. But no, they do the boy’s thing as the grandmother, the woman, is screaming because of blood.

Mary: My husband always used to describe our kids, three sons, torn between the desire to build or destroy. Like it’s not a good play time unless something has been built and something has blown up. Like you need both.

I used to just cringe because I used to go to my girlfriends who had all these little girls. They were so well behaved. They would sit there coloring and fussing with their little girl things and whatever tea sets or whatever it was. And my boys would be ripping the place apart. The lamps would be falling over; they’d be running. Finally, I just gave up and said, “You all come to my house because my house is boy-proof; yours isn’t.”

I was asking myself, “Am I like a bad mother?” Like, they are just so different. It’s just the way they are. I mean I tried to neutralize it, but it just didn’t work.

Kim: And when we fight against those differences rather than appreciating them and embracing them, it’s really harmful to men.

Mary: It’s harmful for them. It would be very, very harmful.

Karen: I remember one story growing up. I’m from a single parent home, and we lived in the projects. We had those old radiators back then.

Mary: Old What? Radiators?

Nancy: Radiators.

Karen: Radiators. (laughter) So I would be cooking toast on the radiator, and my little brother would be crashing cars up against the wall in our home while mom was trying to sleep. So we saw the differences. He was like four and I was eight, and we saw the differences early. But I was cooking, and he was banging around.

Nancy: My mother had, in her first five years of marriage, six children, three girls and then three boys. Two of the boys were twins. She said it was just night and day differences between the energy level, what it took to parent. Of course, the differences when they are children, the boys are more physical and the girls more verbal. But then you get to the teenage years and you have differences, too, in terms of the emotions and the hormones.

Carolyn: Boys become a lot easier in the teenage years and the girls—whoa, drama!

Mary: Well, you grew up with sisters.

Carolyn: Yes, my poor dad was the only male in the family. Even the dog was a female. So I think by the time we added brothers-in-law, sons-in-law to the family, he was really happy. In fact, he and one of my brothers-in-law aligned over the fact, “On Father’s Day, we don’t want any big activities. Just leave us alone. We just want to do our own thing.” They had an alliance. “No more family events. We just want to be in our man cave.”

Karen: Isn’t it just special that you didn’t have to teach the little boys what they’re supposed to do with the little girls. You go into a nursery and see the differences? No one has set down and taken them to Gender 101. It’s God that has created them to be that way.

Nancy: In spite of all the attempts of sociologists and psychologists and social engineers to say there are no differences. If you have had kids or watched kids, you just know that from the time they are little, little, little those differences start to come out.

Mary: It’s so very different. It really grieves me in our culture, having raised men, just how much culture tries to shame the maleness out of men. All those things that God has poured into them as such positive, wonderful, wonderful things, that guys are really shamed so that they are embarrassed to be men.

Nancy: We had a young woman post on the Lies Young Women Believe blog yesterday. They were blogging about this whole True Woman project we are doing. One of the gals, the young women, wrote this. She said, “Could you define why God made guys and girls so different as in why we think and act so differently? Sometimes it gets so frustrating. Like, why can’t guys see things the same way we do?” Here’s a teenage girl who’s saying “Why are we different? Why can’t we be the same?”

Mary: We think different.

Carolyn: I am so glad that men and women do think differently. I have been served so well, especially in the workplace, between the differences between men and women. I would come in and I’d be all upset about something, and my boss would just look at me and cut to the chase. “Well, this is the issue.” Boom. Done. Just the clarity of that.

There have been times when I’ve sought counsel from men. They just hear it. Then, here’s the problem; here’s your solution; go. It’s more compartmentalized, and I appreciate that. I appreciate the, “I’m taking you to the bottom line. I’m not trying to waste time or cut you short, but here we are.”

Now, my brother-in-law has taught my sister. He’ll just look at her when she gets going and go, “Is there a point here?”

Mary: Brent just says, “Let me make sure that I understand your point.” There was no point! I was just emo-bing. Okay?

Karen: Some of our longest conversations in forty years of marriage, I can remember, I’m trying to have this discussion (we call marital adjustment times) with Crawford.

Mary: Marital adjustment.

Karen: Not arguments. We call it marital adjustments.

Mary: Adjustments.

Karen: Yes. We were sitting there, and I have all this information I want to get out, and Crawford is, “Just land the plane, Karen, land the plane. What is the issue? One thing at a time.” He helps  me because I was all over the place, and it really wasn’t helping our relationship. But it is different how they just help us focus. They can have the patience to hear our heart, but help us to get right there.

Nancy: Now I’m sure some women are sitting here thinking, listening to this discussion and going, “Okay you are making women sound dizzy and emotional.”

Mary: There are personality differences, there are. I tend to be much more of a logical thinker and a linear thinker than a lot of women are. That’s just my personality. I tend to clarify things and get down to the point more so than other personalities. But there are physiological differences that are responsible for this. It’s the way that the two sides of the brain  are connected with male and female. The men are more, I think, left-dominant, where they are better at special relations and mathematics and those types of logical, linear thinking.

Nancy: You realize what you are saying is not politically correct.

Mary: I know it’s not politically correct. 

Nancy: You know people have lost jobs over making comments like what you just did.

Mary: But I’m just saying there’s a reason our brains are connected different. Women are more holistic. There’s greater connection between the hemispheres. So we tend to look at issues in a much more complex, holistic, relational, global way. And tie in to that also our emotions. Neither is better or worse, they’re just different.

Karen: I think we have to celebrate that differences are not wrong, differences are just different. It’s just different. One of the things I am always concerned about in recent days is that we are trying to do away with those differences and make us all the same, and we’re not all the same. And generalizations are generalizations.

Mary: Yes.

Nancy: That’s why we need to go back to Scripture as our plumbline and say these differences are not the result of chance or biological accidents. God dreamed this up. God thought this up. So back to Genesis, we see how God created male and female with distinct mission and calling and purpose—both created in His image. So there is equality but with magnificent diversity—as God has in all of His creation.

Carolyn: In fact, that should always be our starting point when we talk about these differences, is to start first with the fact that there is fundamental equality because we both carry an image of God, and there is a purpose in doing that. So even as we look at and celebrate the differences, it isn’t to evaluate, which is a human way of thinking. “Oh, one is better; one’s worse.” It’s not.

The differences are there so that together, in working together in community and marriage and family that these things celebrate a wholeness of God that we can’t even begin to consider because our finite minds can’t wrap themselves around who He is.

Nancy: And that together as male and female, we glorify God which is what makes us infinitely different than the animals or the plants or the rocks or anything else in creation. That together we bring glory to God.

Mary: And, Carolyn, I love that point, because I think ultimately, the danger when we talk about differences is to have that “us” “them” or “one is better than the other” or to think division. But that isn’t what God is thinking when He’s thinking differences. He’s not thinking this compartment over here; this compartment over here. Scripture just shows there’s this wonderful complementarity that the differences actually contribute to the unity and mutuality. They contribute to the oneness and the one piece.

It’s this beautiful picture of complementarity which is actually intended to image who God is. You have the God who is the Triune God, three distinct individuals in terms of who God is, and yet God is one. The overriding thing, God is one. God is One—the Shema of the Old Testament. God is One.

And that’s really the aim, I think, that God had in mind when He created male and female. You do have these distinctions, but there’s a oneness and an equality and a unity that is absolutely profound.

Karen: Yes, isn’t it the sovereignty of God that He’s the master designer of this male and female, so He knows the whole plan. He has a plan for each one of us, and we have a purpose and a reason and this master designer has a great plan.

Mary: It’s breathtaking.

Nancy: We are going to talk later about how the enemy has messed up this plan. Satan came in and created the battle of the sexes, focusing on the differences becoming a means of irritation or annoyance or conflict. But we want to go back and see how what God made in those differences and that equality is good. So as we look at Genesis chapter one, we see this big picture of the creation. Then we get to Genesis chapter two, and it’s like a replay with the details coming out.

Mary: You know how appropriate that is for the guys. Like a sports re-start.

Nancy: Instant replay.

Mary: Real guys zoom in, and we are looking at the guys.

Nancy: One of the things that comes out that and some of these you don’t notice when you’re reading through Genesis the first time, it doesn’t stand out as being really significant. But when you get to the New Testament, you realize these things are significant, such as the fact that God created the man first.

Now you say, like big deal. But it becomes a big deal in New Testament theology. God puts the man in the Garden of Eden. He commands him to work, to keep it. He gives him the rules of the garden and has Adam name the animals. And Mary, one of the things we reflect on is this chapter is that those details have significance as to why God created man and what man’s male purpose is.

Mary: What maleness is all about.

Nancy: What maleness is all about.

Mary: And again, we put it through the grid that we talked about in last session of all of this is for the glory of God. All of this is to give that WOW factor to showcase who God is. And that’s why God created male and female. We have to put it through that grid when we approach this, but each detail is significant.

I think God was so very, very intentional in the way He created. I mean, He could have just boom, here we are male and female. He could have created one sex. He could have created us so that we are just creatures that pop out like amoeba’s divide. But there was a message that was so important that He wanted us to get it and to actually have it on display everywhere. And that is the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the message about truths of who God is.

So God creates the male. Have you ever thought about where the male was created? He wasn’t created in the garden. He was created out in the wild, and then God takes him and He puts him in the garden.

Nancy: Whereas the woman was made in the garden.

Mary: So right off there’s a huge difference.

Karen: There’s a plan there.

Mary: There’s a plan there. Then he took man and put him in the garden. I think that’s really significant because later in the chapter we see that a man leaves his place of creation to establish a new family unit. So I really think that it’s an incredible picture that God created men to take initiative. That’s one of the core aspects of what it means to be a man.

Nancy: Each one of those core aspects is going to correspond to a core aspect of womanhood that we’ll talk about in the next session. So, man the initiator, woman the responder. We’ll see woman being responsive. All of that is pictured in the early creation there.

Mary: It really is.

Carolyn: What I love about that picture, too, is that the man is the initiator. But really God is initiating the issue of relationships because we have no record that Adam said, “Well, where’s my partner?” or that “I’m alone” or anything. It was God who recognized that and God who wanted to institute that relational tightness, that bonding and intimacy.

It’s like, “Okay, now we’ve gone through all the animals, but now I’m going to bring someone to you who is your perfect complement.” And God who exists in fellowship wanted to make sure His beings would exist in fellowship, too. But as a single woman, I take great comfort in the fact that it’s God who notices when a man needs somebody. You don’t have to worry if everyone around you seems to be oblivious.

Nancy: God has designed women, also, to complement men, and God’s the ultimate matchmaker.

Mary: Yes. And this whole think of initiation really comes down to . . . I always ask people, “Well, what do you think we’re telling guys when we’re telling them to “man up”? What are we telling them?

Kim: Take leadership. Fulfill what you’ve been created for.

Karen: Step into the role for which you’ve been created for. God created you with a purpose. Step up and show who God is.

Mary: Because there’s not the same sort of a saying for women, is there?

Kim: We don’t tell, “Woman up, girl. Girl up.” 

Mary: You just don’t say that.

Karen: That’s a good phrase.

Mary: Maybe we should “Girl up. It’s time to girl up.”

Karen: No that doesn’t sit. 

Mary: It doesn’t fit, but it’s because it has a very specific meaning.

Karen: Isn’t it a reminder? It’s a reminder that when you’re getting lost in who you are, and another man will say to him, “Man-up. Be on the stand. This is what you’re created to be. I’m calling you to step up to manhood.” 

Mary: You don’t even need to be a believer because that’s just an intuitive thing. I mean, there’s been a lot of articles, Carolyn, lately about difficulties in manhood. I’m sure you’ve read some of them.

Carolyn: Yes, especially in certain communities and sub-cultures where adult men aren’t present for a variety of reasons. Younger men need that. They need the role model. So I love it when I read about men who are sacrificing their time and energy and effort to go into communities where younger men don’t have those role models so that they can see this is what responsibility looks like, this is what benevolence looks like.

I mean, one of my favorite phrases to describe what masculinity is, is that benevolent masculinity initiatives that kindness that reflects God. So there’s a leadership that is oriented toward serving others. When we think about leadership, we put it in our American individualistic terms, our consumeristic mindset.

Nancy: Take over.

Carolyn: Take over and everybody is there to serve me.

Mary: Authoritarian.

Carolyn: Exactly. And abusing authority. You’ve written so wonderfully in the chapter that authority as Jesus defined it was to serve. It was to bring others to be more conformed to the image of God. It wasn’t to conform people to your desires and your pleasures and your preferences. So I love it when I see men who turn around and they notice needs of others around them, and they take the initiative to do something whether it’s to serve widows or orphans or to rebuke bad theology in the church or to care for others. I mean that kind of initiative in serving is incredibly attractive.

Mary: Yes, it’s very core to manhood . . . working it and keeping it . . . here you’ve got your provision and your protection. I think that’s also core to what it means to being a man. Have you ladies seen that?

Karen: In our church, with the economy as it is, we’ve seen a lot of men who have lost their jobs. One of the heartbreaks is to listen to some of the wives who feel so sorry for their husbands because the husbands are so sad that they can’t provide for their families.

How to encourage her to encourage him is really going back to the Word of God and helping him.

Mary: It affects a man in a different way than it does a woman.

Karen: It does. How do I encourage my husband who is going through depression, because he has a God-shaped need to provide for his family, yet by no fault of his own, he’s without a job.

Nancy: Yet, it’s interesting that in our culture, for most of our lifetimes, there’s been this push that “it doesn’t matter who provides.” There’s no strong sense in the culture of a husband or a man having responsibility to provide for his family, but it’s built into his DNA.

Karen: I take difference with people who say it doesn’t matter, because it does matter. You see a man who’s depressed and he becomes so self-absorbed he loses himself. And they don’t even have to be men of God. We’re seeing that in this society.

Mary: I think men are connected to work in a way that women are not connected to work. Women are connected to relationships in a way that men aren’t, and men are connected to work in a way that women aren’t.

Now that’s not to say that women don’t work, and that women never work, and that women’s sole existence is tied up in the home and they don’t contribute in any other way.

Kim Wagner: At this table we’re all hard workers; we’re very, very busy. You can’t say that women don’t work hard.

Nancy: And in the home, women who don’t have vocational, paying jobs outside the home, they’re working hard within the home. God honors that.

Mary: God really honors that, and I think God expects that also. A woman’s nurturing is that work flows through her grid as a woman to nurture her family, but it’s kind of got a different flavor and a different emphasis for women than it does for men.

I think we do ourselves and we do men a disservice when we say it’s all the same, because it isn’t.

Nancy: It’s interesting Mary, I’m thinking about a woman who came to one of the first True Woman Conferences. She’s a professional woman. When she and her husband got married, they had this agreement that she would be the provider for the family.

Mary: I had a girlfriend just like that.

Nancy: That’s the way their thinking was. She enjoyed her career, and he was fine for her to enjoy it, and so they were young when they got married. Well, she came to the True Woman Conference and listened to your session on the history of how we’ve gotten to where we are.

Mary: I probably shared the story, because I share it often, of a particular woman that I observed with this pattern of interaction and how it didn’t go well.

Nancy: She was so challenged by what you said in that session; the “light” went on. She started processing this and working it through and realized that God had gifted and wired and called her husband to be responsible as the provider for the family.

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t bring in any income, but that he had that responsibility. Well, she went back to their marriage and wisely didn’t just dump this on him. She was grappling with this when I met her a year after the conference, because her husband was so much the product of a culture that says, “whoever, whatever . . . it doesn’t matter" . . . this amorphous female, male, it doesn’t make any difference. She was sensing that God’s calling on her was to be more connected to her home, but he wasn’t “there” yet.

We realize that there are all kinds of situations that people are in, that maybe are not God’s ideal, and that there’s a process of getting to what it really should look like in your situation.

Mary: There’s the ideal, and then we live in a broken and fallen world.

Nancy: It’s not just in the leadership area, in this whole think of provision. I think our whole consumer culture and mindset has made, not just women but men and families, not content to live with what God can provide through the husband.

I realize there are some husbands that physically, or for whatever reason, are not able to provide . . . we have unemployment issues, but we’re talking about an ideal here. Our “have to have” two cars and certain kinds of schooling and clothes, and whatever . . . Our whole economy now has become very dependent on two incomes.

So, it’s very tough, but this whole contentment issue really becomes important for us as women . . . and the willingness, as God enables, to live within what God provides, so that the woman can focus, in that season of life, on the home, managing the home, and being willing to live within what God provides through the husband.

Again, I realize there are many different situations.

Karen: I think of the word you used, contentment. When is enough, enough? When are we satisfied? When are we being creative as we manage our homes? Those coupons? (I’m not a coupon person, because I always forget to take those coupons to the store.) But just doing those creative things to help. We don’t need all this stuff that is going to burn up anyway.

Nancy: How many women do we know, and maybe have been at times, who are stressed off the charts because of trying to manage the home, and be the provider, and do more than maybe what God has really given us to do, and feeling that constant stress and pressure?

I think that if we were willing to do with less, in some cases, and to live with what God provides through the husband’s income, where that’s possible, there might be fewer things in the house, less stuff, but maybe more joy and peace.

Carolyn McCulley: I want to circle back to what you said about there being women who are listening or watching whose husband’s leadership, for whatever variety of reasons, is going to look different. That made me think immediately of friends of mine who have been in a dating and now marriage relationship for five years.

The first (almost) year of their relationship he was fine, but then he had a car accident, had a traumatic brain injury. They thought he was going to die . . . and long story, wasn’t going to talk again, wasn’t going to walk again. God slowly healed him on a variety of levels, but he’s still not able to hold a job.

What she’s done has been to be very creative in building up his leadership in whatever ways. He had started a phone company with friends of his, so they’ve made sure to keep him involved in that, at whatever level. They always refer to him as one of the founders of the phone company; in fact, it’s headquartered in their home.

So he has these people around him. He has that sense of participation, even though she actually brings in the paid work. She’s always looking to him for counsel. “Help me sort through my feelings. Tell me about God. What are you reading?” She's getting him involved in whatever capacity he can be.

So I look at women who are creative in where the boundary lines have fallen in more difficult places, and yet they’re still trying to live this out.

Mary: They’re still trying to really encourage that foundation in their men, of manhood.

Nancy: And it’s not the boundary lines that are really the issue. It’s the disposition, the heart, the inclination to honor how God has made men, and to be how God has made us to be as women.

Mary: Another thing the passage talks about in terms of how God has wired men is to keep the guardians as protectors, and we see our men as protectors. It’s been so amusing to me to watch my own sons rise into that protector.

At a very young age, as they started getting to be bigger and bigger boys, they started to feel the sense of protection and benevolence and responsibility for me, which is really kind of fun—cute to watch in the boys—but also for their female cousins.

We ran into a few incidents. At school one time there was a boy paying some unwanted attention to a female cousin. So my son felt that it was his responsibility to take this boy and hold him very gently up against the locker and tell him, “You mess with my cousin, you mess with me!”

It’s just interesting to watch that just come out of them. The same thing happened a couple months ago when a thirteen-year-old cousin celebrated her birthday. My twenty-four-year-old son said, “I just wanted to be there so those guys knew that I was there.”

Nancy: It’s interesting how that provision and protection mirrors what Christ does for His Church. As men step up to the plate on those matters, isn’t that what it’s all about, reflecting Jesus, giving an earthly picture of who Christ is?

They’re showing Christ to the world, as they fulfill those roles.

Karen: And it all comes down to a measure of trust. Do we really trust God, who’s sovereign, to do what He needs to do? And He knows what He’s doing. Really. That’s the bottom line.

Mary: He knew what He was doing when He created men different.

Karen: Right. My second little grandson is such a sweetie. He’ll be nine pretty soon. He has three brothers and a sweet mom and dad. He shows the protection of his Mimi (I’m his Mimi). They were here, and he would open the car door for me, and make sure the door was locked, “Are you locked in Mimi?” “Yes, Mimi’s locked in.”

Mary: Where did he get that?

Karen: Well, first of all he sees that modeled in his dad, and he just knows that, “I’m the man; I have to protect my Mimi.”

Mary: There’s such joy that comes into a man’s life, I think, when he can do that for a woman. And there’s such a blessing when we welcome it and we receive it.

Carolyn, as a single woman, I’m sure that you’ve had instances where you’ve really welcomed that kind of input from men.

Carolyn: Oh, definitely. I’m going to use the term chivalry, because I appreciate that. It’s kind of an old-fashioned word and may throw some people off. But there are small moments of consideration when you realize that the man in the situation realizes that you are a woman and there’s a difference.

Whether it’s from small customs—you usually see this in the South, where the man walks on the outside of the sidewalk—but it’s handy in certain cities. When we travel internationally, we’ll read, “If you walk too close to the street and you’re carrying a bag, there’s going to be somebody who comes on a motorbike and takes that.”

So when I’m traveling with the guys on my film crew and they know these kinds of things, they say, “Okay, this is how we’re going to lead and guide and protect.”

As meaningful to me as the physical protection and the small courteous efforts that are made is the spiritual protection. When men take the initiative and they see a problem, they see it coming, so often it’s so easy to think, “I don’t want to get involved.”

But I appreciate, especially the colleagues I work with who are dealing with me on several levels (not only whatever goal we have) but also as fellow believers when we are all believers working together—what’s the spiritual goal?

I’ve had many a film trip where I have been tired and cranky and uncomfortable. It’s my responsibility as the producer and director to make sure we’re all working together. But one of the guys, who’s a brother in Christ, will take the initiative to take me aside later on and say, “You know what? You’re actually really setting a bad tone for the crew. I’m hearing the pride; I’m hearing the anger. I just want to pray with you.”

Normally, in the film world hierarchy, that’s your employee . . . 

Nancy: We see that all the time in Revive Our Hearts ministry, in the True Woman ministry. We have wonderful women but also some godly men on our team who serve this ministry because they care about this message and mission.

Carolyn: You have an incredible group of men. One of the things I love about being around this ministry when we’re here and when we’re able to work with all these men is, they’re not afraid of being around women.

The celebration of the differences isn’t the, “Ugh! Don’t make me look in your purse,” phenomenon. It’s more a matter of, “Yes, there are differences, and we celebrate them.” They’re encouraged to be fully secure in their masculinity, and to be helping in what you’re doing.

Nancy: And they provide so much of that practical protection and also spiritual covering and blessing, and I’m just so thankful for that.

Karen: One of the things I’ve really loved and enjoyed at the True Woman Conferences is the men that were praying. We had this big circle of men that were praying over us. That was our shield, our spiritual bodyguard. I felt so safe that they were in the rooms, not only praying, but there was something about men standing there.

Nancy: It was so sweet. It pictures the way that Christ intercedes for His Church. This whole thing of biblical manhood is intended to reflect who Christ is, as our womanhood is intended to reflect Christ as well, but also how the Church responds to Christ.

Carolyn: I have a really tender story about that. A friend of mine was saved out of a background of prostitution. She became a Christian, and few years later met a man and said to her pastor, “Okay, when do I tell him what my background is?”

He said, “We’ll keep tabs, we’ll let you know as he gets closer to engagement. That’s a precious piece of information, not to be shared with everybody, and so we’ll just wait.” So as the relationship grew more serious, he called her and said, “Okay, tell him.”

So she brought him over one night and she laid it all out. She said, “I will understand if now you don’t have faith for the relationship to go forward. I want you to feel released.”

He paused for a second and, this isn’t an exact quote but it’s to the point. He looked at her and he said, “It would be my privilege to represent Christ to you, because He has chosen you and washed you and redeemed you. I don’t see you through anything else except that. If He’s called me to represent Him, to love you on this earth, then that would be my privilege.”

It was an incredible response, but it was incredibly theological as well. It was so reassuring to her, because he wasn’t saying, “You can count on my love,” but he was saying, “You can count on Christ’s love.”

Nancy: And that’s the context in which we need to think about another aspect that’s core to manhood, and that is authority, oversight, direction. And if we could think of it in that context, we take on a whole different hue than it often does in our culture when we think about male authority in the church or in the home. Talk about politically incorrect—I mean, that’s just like waving red in front of a bull. Yet in the biblical context, it’s really a gift that men can offer to the home and to the churches to provide that kind of leadership.

Mary Kassian: I think we often think of authority as power, and it’s just the wrong way to view it. When we view it as Christ did, it just puts a whole different spin on it for men and for women.

I was sitting with a number of guys in their 20s, we were doing a “Girls Gone Wise” video shoot. Each of them had their turn to sit and tell whatever they wanted to about manhood and womanhood—we asked them some various questions. But it really struck me when one of the young men said this: “You know, I don’t think women understand how God has wired us to have this sense of wanting to serve, to direct, and guide. [He said in a very positive way.] That’s just kind of wired into who we are, and it’s not like we view it like a right. It’s like a responsibility.”

Kim Wagner: It’s the keeping—the keeping of the garden. Because if you don’t have the authority to take the initiative and to lead, guide, and protect, then everything’s going to fall apart. It’s just going to descend into chaos. So keeping what God has given you is exercising authority under Him, and Christ always talks about how "I have no authority except that which the Father has given Me." So everything flows from God. If we’re going to rebel and do that, it means I’m rebelling under God.

Nancy: But there are some of these passages in Scripture where it talks about the husband being the head of the wife, about wives submitting to their husbands. I mean, here in the context of marriage, you have authority. We could take a lot of time to talk about what all that means, but I think, in our culture, that sounds like abuse. It sounds like pushing women around. It sounds like something that’s really, really wrong. How are we as Christian women to see this the way God intended it, as a positive thing?

Kim: I see my role in submitting to my husband as it being not the man so much as I’m submitting to as the God above him. That authority is what I am submitting to ultimately.

Mary: That helps you make the right decisions, doesn’t it?

Kim: Right. And when it really clicked for me was when I recognized that the way I treat my husband, the way I love my husband, the way I submit to his leadership and authority is tied to my purpose of glorifying God. When I’m not doing those things, I’m actually, like Titus 2:5 says, bringing reproach or reviling the Word of God when I’m not honoring that authority that God’s placed over me of my husband and ultimately honoring God’s authority.

Nancy: For a moment, though, as we talked about the men—which is the focus this week—when we talk about men having authority, exercising headship, what are we not talking about?

Mary: I was just going to go there because I think we need to avoid being simplistic.

Nancy: We’re not talking about men making all the decisions?

Mary: Yes.

Nancy: We’re not talking about men bossing women around? I mean, what are we or are we not saying?

Mary: That’s what we’re not talking about. We’re talking about co-dominion. We’re talking about unity. We’re talking that this is ultimately to contribute to this complementary and unity and interchange and oneness. So we’re not talking about women being passive or being doormats or guys stepping on women or guys being abusive towards women or guys being domineering or authoritarian. That is so not what we’re talking about.

Kim: Or even that we don’t have any input in the decision-making process or that we don’t use our creativity.

Nancy: I’m kind of thinking that none of you women who are married give input to your husbands. (laughter)

Mary: I think we do them a disservice if we do not share what’s on our hearts and everything that God has poured into me. If I am perceiving something, I need to tell my husband that. If I am sensing a check spiritually, I need to tell my husband that. If I’m afraid we’re heading in the wrong direction, I need to tell him that.

I need to give him all that input that God has put into me in a respectful manner that gives him as much information as he needs. So we consult, and we talk, and we wrestle with things together, but ultimately, I understand that he has that responsibility on his shoulders. When we get to stand before Christ, He’s going to take Brent to the wall for what happened in our family.

Kim: He’s not going to say, “Kim, did you fix your husband? Did you straighten him out?” But He will say, “Did you love him well? Did you fulfill your calling?”

Karen: Responsibility.

Kim: Yes, to honor him as the church is to honor and respect Christ.

Mary: And that ties back to the way that men and women can look at each other in dating relationships. I’ve often heard from guys who look at a woman and say, “Oh, she’s more gifted than I am here,” or “She seems to be stronger in the Lord,” etc., and they want to back away. And I’ll say, “No. If you’re smart, you’ll go after that woman, because she and all her gifts are being created—if God is calling you together—and you get that. That’s your booster rocket. That’s the person who’s got your back. Why wouldn’t you want somebody whose gifts complement you or help shape you? Why would you want anything less?”

Karen: I had a crazy idea what this whole marriage thing was about. I went to Bible college. I met Crawford, this manly man, with this great mom and dad relationship, and here I am from a single-parent home. Men were an endangered species in our home unless he was born in our home. And I get to Ephesians chapter 5, and you talk about submit, submit, submit. Well, submitting in my family was a no-no. I was raised to be self-sufficient by my aunts, my cousins, my mom.

And yet the Spirit of God moved in my heart because I looked at it, unless it was the power of the Holy Spirit, a supernatural power of the Holy Spirit taking over my life, there was no way I was going to enter into this and it would survive. It has survived for forty years, and it’s because it’s a moment-by-moment submission to the power of God and who He created me to be. Even though I was deficient in my upbringing. God just knows all things about me, and so when it came to submission, in the earlier years, I did have a little struggle. 

Kim: Just a little struggle?

Karen: But I decided that I was going to represent God in a godly way. And no matter if Crawford listened to me or whatever, and we had our conversations. I had to walk with God myself, and I just became a student of the Word. Then God brought some godly women into my life who modeled that for me. But it was a struggle, ladies.

Mary: That’s really key because I think apart from the power of God’s Holy Spirit and sitting under the instruction of His Word and seeking counsel from other godly women, we don’t know how we ought to live.

Karen: And then, Mary, really, having the courage to obey God’s Word. Having the courage and saying, “Karen, you don’t know everything.” And if God saved me, then he can save my marriage and all the dysfunction in my upbringing, He’s powerful enough to overcome that, and He has.

Kim: It’s taking all of the strengths that you have (each of you are so gifted), but in delivering that input, delivering that help in humility. I’m so thankful for the promise that when we approach things in humility, we will have that grace poured out on the situation. I think that’s just the key to strong women relating to men in a way that does not demean them or harm them in the relationship. But we’re able to bring our strengths there in humility, and God gives grace.

Nancy: Okay. We’ve been talking a lot about how God designed men—which is kind of odd that five women would be sitting here talking about. I kind of feel like a lot of the men who are not in front of the camera here should be the ones discussing these things and teaching us these things. But I want to focus for a moment here on what is God’s design, the way He designed men, what does that tell us about God’s heart toward us as women?

Carolyn McCulley: That’s a great question because what it shows us is that our distortions—when we talk about these things out of a fear-based mentality, our distortions of sinful domination and authoritarianism and self-centered leadership are not part of God’s design because He doesn’t lead and guide us that way. That’s not His model. So I love that question.

Mary: His heart for women is profound—just so profound. He’s given men the responsibility to serve and to protect and to be those heroes that stand around us and encourage. He’s put that responsibility on them. It just shows how He values and loves women. To care for us that much that He’s concerned that we’re protected—single, married, it doesn’t matter—that those men, for Carolyn who’s not married, that there will be men in her life that rise up to provide that for her.

Carolyn: And I’ve seen that.

Kim: I have, too.

Mary: And that God loves us so much.

Nancy: So when we undermine manhood, we really undermine God’s plan for ourselves.

Karen: We’re saying He doesn’t know what He’s doing; He’s made a mistake.

Nancy: And we’re hurting ourselves. We’re actually shooting ourselves in the foot . . . isn’t that true in the culture how much we’ve lost? Now, as women, we’ve said all these years, “I can do this myself.” “Go ahead. Do it yourself.” So to find a gentleman today is a little more uncommon than maybe when we were younger.

So what are some of the ways that, as women—and I know we’re going to broad brush here—but that we undermine manhood at church, the men we work with, the men in our homes? What are some of the subtle ways that we as Christian women can undermine who God has made the men to be?

Carolyn: Nancy, you said in a few minutes, I mean, we could be here for hours. But I have learned a lot from you specifically over the years in sitting down and talking with you. I've just learned what it means to humble myself—especially in the work context with men. I have learned so much from you. And it’s still a learning process for me.

Nancy: And for me. Just ask the men in our office. It’s a learning process for all of us.

Carolyn: But it’s so good to look back and to realize that there are patterns of expression or patterns of selfishness that could be contained under the spirit’s guidance that bless men. So in my life, it’s the lack of a filter.

I would be in a group context where there is a man who’s leading. He’s called the meeting, or he’s leading, or whatever. I would think of something different we could do, or an alternative, and there would be no filter. It’s just like—mind—pffft—out mouth.

I had to learn, especially from one of my former bosses (he and his wife remain very good friends, and I’m grateful to them). He had to teach me over and over again, “I’m not trying to be authoritarian here. I’m not trying to scold you, but this is what your lack of filter does in a group dynamic.”

It’s like a ping-pong game. He setting an agenda, and then—boom—I offer this ultimate agenda, and then everybody’s watching, “Okay, who’s going to win?” It’s realizing that they want input. They do. But there’s a time and a place.

Karen: And how you say it—your tone.

Mary: Then there’s the fear there; there’s such a fear. When they take initiative and step out, that’s a very vulnerable position because that’s at the core of their identify as a man. If you come in there and start criticizing them and telling them what’s wrong with what they’re doing and have a better way to do it, then you’re cutting their knees out from under them.

Karen: One of the things I had to really watch, because my mouth always got me into trouble . . . like you were saying, Carolyn, no filter. It was with our oldest son, and I learned really early that I needed to honor my son as a young man even though he was only eight or nine years old, to be respectful to him.

If he had a suggestion and it was, to me, like he hadn’t thought it all through . . . We women, we have the whole thing thought through, and they’re still on letter A, and we have gotten to letter Z. But I learned just to honor him and let him talk it through. If there was a disagreement as to his decision, I had to let him step up as the man (going through his little manhood training thing) and let him make that decision to do that. This was especially true when Crawford was traveling and stuff like that. So I really had to honor and respect and not talk over my boys because I’m the parent, to do all those things in front of the children. So it really started early with me, just watching how I spoke, the tone—not dismantling them on their thinking.

Mary: Just helping them—asking them questions.

Nancy: Questions, that’s key.

Mary: Yes, questions, and bringing all the inter-connectedness that we bring to the table, just enlightening their eyes to other parts that, when they’re thinking in a linear fashion, we can bring so much help.

Karen: I think, too, we as women have to watch our facial expressions because sometimes we don’t even have to say anything. Be careful of that.

Kim: I can demasculinize my husband in a breath. No one else can do that. No other woman can do that. No other man can do that. But if I give him a glance, I can just cut the heart out of him.

Karen: Yes. That strips a man.

Carolyn: Nancy was the one who helped me to understand that in a group brainstorming context. I come to those with a critical attitude—in the best possible way, in a sense of critiquing something. But out of a lack of humility, it comes across as critical because people will be throwing in ideas, and I’ll say, “No, I think we should . . .” and then that starts everything.

Nancy was the one who helped me understand that by asking a question, I could convey my same thought process but leave it open for people—men and women alike—to feel like there was more of an opportunity to discuss something. I didn’t just have to come in and then—bam—there’s my idea. But saying, “I think that’s a good idea, and I see where you are going, but what would you think if we did ‘X’?” It’s just more humbling.

Humility doesn’t mean squashing who you are. It means modeling yourself after Christ, and so the parts of me that are not Christ-like need to be submitted to Him and the desire to just have everything my way needs to be submitted to Him. And that’s a technique that’s helpful.

Nancy: Asking a question and then giving a chance for the answer. I know we’ve got some men on the crew here who would, if they weren’t trying to be really quiet, would probably say, “Amen” at this moment.

Two of the ways I’ve seen me, myself, undermine the men around me: One is with just verbal barrage—you know, too many words, and exhausting the men and not giving them a chance—like, “Stop.” A lot of times we are verbally quicker to the draw and not giving them a chance. Proverbs 25, I think it is, says, “Wisdom or counsel in the heart of man is like deep waters, and a wise person will draw it out.” So not to fill the space with my words, but to stand back and let them have input and ideas.

And then the second thing is, one of the leaders in the ministry I work with used to say to me (he’s now with the Lord), “Put your cards on the table, and take your hands off.” At one point, in like a really tense moment, he referred to me as having pitbull-like tendencies. It was not a compliment.

What I am prone to do is, I’ve got my way of thinking. I put my cards on the table, and then everybody has to agree, and I’m going to take this thing to the mat, tape this thing to the wall, and not stop, not let up until every person in the room agrees with me. That is so . . . it’s dehumanizing to people. It’s proud. It’s arrogant. I’ve just watched; I’ve seen other women do this—it’s easier to see it in others. I’ve seen other women do this to their husbands; they do it to other men in the room. I’m just watching that man kind of shrivel up, and he doesn’t have anything to offer. It’s shutting him down.

Karen Loritts: We had little boys. Moms that have little boys, we have to be very careful how we are raising our little boys because they will back off if they’ve had a mom who is always in their face, always stripping them of who they are.  

Mary: Even in our interaction with teens or any man. I think that you can interact with any man you come in contact with, whether it is your man or not, whether your little boy or your husband. Any man you come into contact with as a woman, you can affirm him as a man and you can affirm his masculinity in a way that is very God-honoring and that builds him up.

Kim, you had some male comments that you brought along today when you knew we were talking about this topic.

Kim Wagner: I did. On the blog I asked men to let us know . . .

Nancy: Is it the True Woman blog you’re talking about?

Kim: Yes, the True Woman blog. I just asked men, “What is it that women can do to encourage your leadership?” It was interesting. I love to hear from men what they think helps them to step up to the plate as men, to be leaders. 

One man said, “Stop treating men like little boys. Even in some cases like little girls. Let them be rough around the edges, dirty, loud, and stinky. It’s okay. They will be fine in the end and they’ll grow up to be men that their wives will love and more importantly respect."

Another man said, “Accept us for who we are and stop trying to change us. Accept us. And chances are, we'll come around closer to what you’re looking for. So many women feel they need to straighten their men out. It is an attitude issue. We need to feel respected as much as women need to feel loved."

Mary: I love that. We need to feel respected as much as a woman needs to feel loved. I found that to be true in my own marriage—the respect.

Nancy: And as women, we tend to think men ought to love us regardless of how loveable we are or aren’t. Unconditionally. But we should only respect men if they are respectable, which is kind of the mindset. If men only loved us when we were loveable, or showed kindness to us when we were worthy of it . . . That is a real paradigm adjustment that so many of us women need to make. This is a man created in the image of God. We’re all fallen; we’re all sinners; we all have rough parts of us, but we need to show the respect. Even a husband or a man who has almost nothing that is respectable but to respect him as a man created in the image of God.

Kim: This man’s response says, “Trust us to lead, provide, and protect, realizing that in doing so your trust is really not in us at all but in God. Refrain from saying things like, 'I’ll just handle it myself.' You may well be better equipped to do so than us; however, in doing so you are taking matters not out of our hands but really out of God’s hand. 

Then a couple of women responded as they were reading all of these men’s comments, and I though it was interesting. One woman said, “I am absolutely amazed at what I’ve read so far.  Reading through all of these posts is eye-opening.” 

Another one said, “I never knew men were so fragile. These comments are helping me immensely. My husband is getting a new wife today.”

Carolyn McCulley: The difference between perseverance and expediency is something that really struck me late in life. The fact that we want to encourage men to persevere through to a solution or problem. But what often happens is we say, “I’ll take care of it myself," or "Don’t worry about it” because I am more about the expediency. 

I actually, remember that time we were all on vacation together and the DVD player wouldn’t work. Your (Kim's) husband LeRoy showed up. I was saying, “Hey, I don’t know how to make this work.” So he labored for hours to make that work. I was sitting on my tongue, wanting to say, “We really don’t need that DVD player.”

Kim: He was determined to accomplish that task. You had asked him, and he was ready to jump in and help a woman in need and fix it.

Carolyn: But my attention span was, “Okay, I’m done, we'll do something else. We don’t need the DVD.” 

But you encourage perseverance in men and not discourage them from it just because it didn’t fit my time schedule. We joked about that because it is a really minor thing, but I think the world of you and your husband both. We can be so impatient with men—shame on us.

Nancy: I think as a result of a study like this, a week like the one we’ve just had of talking about manhood, it would be easy to take these things that are core to what it means to be a godly man (and men aren’t doing this study, women are doing this study). So it would be easy for us to start comparing men unfavorably to the standard and thinking, "Oh, I wish my husband was more of this. Or the men in my workplace, they should be more like this.” And to be frustrated over the gap. It is so much easier to see other people's failures and flaws than our own. 

An expression of humility and one of the most important things we can do for the men in our lives is to pray for them and to ask God to transform them. He’s transforming us; He can transform them, too. It is not our job to make these men godly or manly. That is God’s job. 

Mary: I think the way that you encourage men to be more manly is for us to be more womanly.

Nancy: And that is an inspiration to these guys. When they step up to the plate it inspires us. When we step in and fulfill God’s calling in our lives, that is inspiring to them.   

Okay, now as we’ve talked about husbands and what their role is and their calling—provider, protector, leader, stepping up to the plate. Of course, we’re talking about the ideal here. God’s ideal for men and for women throughout this whole study. We’ve got to recognize that none of us are at the ideal. 

I know we have a lot of women taking this study who are thinking, “My husband is nowhere close to that ideal. He’s not a believer, or he claims to be but he is addicted to pornography, he is just not there at all.” What does my response to him as a man look like in that situation? 

Kim: Nancy, there are so many women that are struggling in relationships like that. When I have an opportunity to speak with them or share with them the truth from the Word, I always encourage them with, “I’m not giving you something to try and fix your marriage or improve your man or make it better.”

Nancy: Because there really are no guarantees, like: If we respond God’s way then wallah! He’s going to be a true man.

Kim: There are no guarantees. Women who I sit down with after their husband has committed adultery against are saying, “I can’t trust him. How can I go back to this marriage? How can I ever trust him again?” What I share with them is, “Your trust is not in this man; your trust ultimately is in God.” How do you respond to this man? You must think of it as, “This is my response to God. What God would have me do?”

Nancy: Which is more difficult because God doesn’t act that way.

Mary: And I can tell you I have walked this path with many, many women.

Nancy: We probably all have.

Mary: It is excruciating. It is heart wrenching, and it is not easy. I think that is where we really need the guidance of the Holy Spirit and prayer and the counsel of godly sisters and knowledge of the Word above all and the Body of Christ. Because in some situations the counsel that you give, you always aim for the ideal. For me, I always ask the woman, “Are you doing what you know to be true and right and godly?” And sometimes that is even difficult because of bitterness, anger.

If the man is asking her to do something ungodly or is interacting with her in a way that is very harsh and difficult, I’ve counseled women to exercise humility. You express your opinions and you appeal in a way that is gentle. You pray. There are so many different aspects of how you need to interact. I think we really need to avoid being simplistic and saying, “Oh, here is your one size fits all solution.”

Kim: If he is caught in a pattern of sin, thankfully Scripture has given us recourse—Matthew 18. Once you’ve appealed to your husband and you say, “I see this in you, and I’m concerned for you,” then you take it to your church leadership. Even if he is non-believer and a woman is enduring physical abuse . . .

Nancy: That is against the law.

Kim: You go to the civil authority, so we do have some recourse.

Mary: You appeal to other authorities. There is a danger on one side, and I know there is a camp on one side that would say, “Oh, just submit to your husband." Women have heard that. And I say, “You have not walked this path with woman if you’re saying that simplistically.”

Karen: Or they are not biblical; they are not using the Word of God.

Mary: Exactly. It is not simple, and it is not simplistic. We need the Word of God; we need the counsel of the Holy Spirit to guide us; we need to be wise women, and we need to be women who are responsive first and foremost to our God.

Carolyn: To women who suffer in these relationships for a really long time or who have been deserted or abandoned, there is one perspective to offer that can be helpful, and that is our life is but a breath, according to Scripture. It is a very short time. It feels very real, very long.

You have to live with the idea that one day you will stand and look at your Savior face to face. You will rewarded for what you did, not what you changed in someone else, but what you did that reflected Him and the hope of knowing that He is in the process of restoring all things—even these things that seem so heavy that you can’t possibly change, and you have a struggle day to day that anything will ever change.

But if you live in light of eternity, you will realize that out of His grace He is going to give you a crown to reward you that will wear for all eternity from the grace He gave you to enable you to respond. He’s going to reward you for that. 

Nancy: And this "light, momentary affliction," which seems very heavy and long, is shaping and sanctifying and molding us, conforming us to God’s image. Even with a good husband, a great husband or father, or men who are worthy men, there are still issues that rub, and God uses those differences. He uses even the failures and sins of others to sanctify us. Pressure sanctifies. It’s not like you say, “Okay, bring on pressure.” But it is going to come, and God uses that to mold us.

Karen: Isn’t it refreshing to know that God is sovereign, and He just didn’t start and step back and let everything happen.

Mary: He is engaged in my life, and He’s engaged in my girlfriend’s life who needs some good wisdom in knowing how to deal with her horrible situation.

Karen: I want to have a word for the women who aren’t married yet. This is instructive to you. When you go into a relationship, know that it has to be God-honoring and God-directed. You don’t marry a possibility. You are marrying what the deal is right here, you’re not going to change that. 

I’ve met a lot of women who wished they had listened to godly counsel. “I’m going to change my husband. He’s going to be this type of person.” Then a couple years down the line there is a splitting of the home, the children are at a grief stage, and it just breaks your heart. It’s good to listen to godly counsel and listen. Don’t let the hormones or the biological clock or that everyone at the family reunion wants you to be married and have this beautiful marriage . . .

Mary: It goes back again to the picture that we’re talking about. I think even girls who are dating need to understand that this is who God created male and female to be. And this is how it will function in the marriage. And is there enough wholeness in this man? Is he on the right path? Is he a man whose heart is inclined to going in that direction? 

Carolyn: A great picture I think of that is . . . I always encourage single women about this. Watch the way a man you’re interested in treats not only his mother, but the bride of Christ. He’s supposed to be representing Christ who gives Himself all for the bride of Christ. So if he’s not interested in the church, if he’s not serving in the church, if he doesn’t consider that of value and a priority, and if he’s not accountable to other men in the context of the church, those should be huge red flags. 

I have a friend who when she got married, her husband took her aside after they returned from their honeymoon. The first day in their new home together he said, “I want you to understand something. If you ever feel like I’m not listening to you, that you have no voice in this marriage and that I am in a hardened heart place, I want you to know that you not only have my permission but you have my urging to go around me to our pastor right away, because I’m in a place where I’m not listening to God. I need you to get my back.”

That was incredible! You know why he had that perspective? Because he walked with other godly men in the church. He knew that he was accountable to them in the relationship and in the function of the church. It’s not just, “I’m the head, so I’m accountable to no one.” No, you’re accountable to God and that authority is going to be exercised through His Church.

Nancy: I just feel prompted here for us to take a moment and stop and pray for our men, husbands, dads, brothers, sons, pastors, church leaders—these men, friends, brothers in Christ. I’m going to ask Karen if you would just lead us. Let’s join hands and join our hearts in praying and asking God to bless, to encourage those men, and to help us be women who inspire them to be all God wants them to be.

Karen: Oh Father, you know our hearts. You know our desire to honor you. Lord, we as women have such a responsibility to fulfill our roles, our God-given roles, to honor you and what you called us to walk in.

So Lord, we do pray for our men. Oh God, it is the strategy of the enemy to strip our men from who you created them to be. Their manhood is being traipsed upon. Lord, forgive us.  May we be women of courage who will pray for our men, and do all that we know to do. May we listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit, to walk in His power each and every day. Lord, that You will bring to mind all those areas in our lives that speak loudly only about ourselves, our pride, what we want. Lord, give us Your servant’s heart that will honor who You are. You are the great servant leader, and may we walk in the image of God every single day, powered by the Holy Spirit.

We do pray for these men. Lord, raise up a new generation of men who will be courageous enough to believe and accept You and who You are and who You made them to be. We love You, Father. We pray for these men of faith that they will continue to walk in the power that You’ve given them and that You will continue to raise up more and more men that will honor You and celebrate their maleness. Thank You Lord, for who You are. We believe in You, Father. In your name, amen.