Transcript

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Well, Mary, we're over halfway through this series on True Woman 201: Interior Design. We've been looking at these elements, one at a time, that make up a beautiful woman of God. We've looked at the whole area of discernment—how a true woman is characterized by right thinking. And we've come back to that again and again.

Mary: It seems like we're coming back to a lot of them. They all mesh one into another.

Nancy: They do, and they all take us back to the Word of God, to the authority of God in our lives, that our lives are intentional, they're purposeful, they're not just lived haphazardly, but we're women of discernment.

And then the second one we said was so foundational.

Mary: Reverence—that honoring God in our lives is the foundation of life. We ought to live in a way that we are always aware of His presence and living out temple-appropriate behavior. We are to be women who are truly reverent of God in the way that we think and we speak and we act.

Nancy: And then we came to a woman who loves family: she loves husband, she loves children . . . and that was your anniversary day.

Mary: That was my anniversary day. You surprised me! You really did. I had no idea that while the tape was rolling my husband was going to call in and wish me a happy anniversary!

Nancy: You were wrecking your makeup.

Mary: I was. They had to dab it all off.

Nancy: I just wanted to see if you really love your husband. I knew you did, but it was really obvious. And he loves you.

Mary: He's a sweetheart.

Nancy: We talked about loving husbands and children. And then, true women are self-controlled.

Mary: That was a convicting one!

Nancy: That is one of the two hardest ones for me. We're getting to another harder one later on, but that self-control one . . .

Mary: I think that is the hardest for me, because I tend to be a procrastinator sometimes.

Nancy: It has to do with making wise, intentional choices—not just drifting through life but being purposeful.

Mary: And not just self-help or having willpower, but actually walking in the Spirit.

Nancy: Depending on the grace of God.

Mary: And when we walk in the Spirit, we gain more self-control.

Nancy: We're gaining it as we grow. And then in the last session we looked at virtue, or as it says in Titus 2, "purity." A true woman cultivates this goodness as a reflection of the purity of Christ. We as women have an opportunity to tell the "bride part" of the story of Christ's love for His Bride. He wants a pure Bride, one who has kept herself for Him.

Mary: And that's a really unpopular message. It's hard sometimes, because we struggle in those areas—I know a lot of women do. We feel guilty because of our impurity, but the good news is that in Jesus Christ, as we confess our sins, He's faithful and He's just and He makes us pure and cleanses us (see 1 John 1:9).

Nancy: All of these are unpopular, as you think about them, and that's because we have an enemy who hates God. He wants to tear down at every opportunity he has God's way, God's plan. So he always proposes a counter to God's plan.

Mary: He does that by something that is just a bit off, sometimes it is something more obvious. But it is to get us off-track and thinking in a way that's not godly, that's not biblical.

Nancy: And nowhere is that more true than in the element we're going to look at today. Let's go back to the passage. The apostle Paul says, …