Transcript

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Mary, we've known each other a long time now. And there's a particular word that you have added to my vocabulary. I've heard you use it quite a few times. I think you exemplify this word maybe better than any woman I know.

Mary: I don't know about that one.

Nancy: It's the word "amenable."

Mary: Amenable. It's a good word, actually, because it's based on the word "amen," which means, "yes, so be it." So, in a way, agreeable. Agreeable is another way to say that word. But amenable is just to have a disposition where you are agreeable and easily leadable.

Nancy: And I've watched you even on this production of this series on True Woman for radio and for video. There are so many pieces and parts of this behind the scenes that we've had to deal with, and people working on our hair and our makeup and our wardrobe and the way we sit and the way we look and the way we talk and earrings on, earrings off.

You are just "Okay. Okay. Okay. Sure." And I look at you, and I think this is a quality that we see in the text Titus 2 that we've been looking at. And this is where we have to go to get our plumbline, our standard for what it means to be a woman of God.

And so, back to Titus 2. Older women are supposed to model this life of biblical womanhood. And then they are supposed to teach what is good and train the young women. So now we're older women, and we're supposed to be training the younger women in these things which means we have to be experiencing them.

Mary: We're still learning them.

Nancy: Still learning. Still working on them. Working on them and then it gives the curriculum. You're supposed to train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, to be pure, to be working at home, to be kind (see Titus 2:3–5). We've talked about each of these things. And then there comes this one that a lot of us kind of at first sight wish wasn't there.

Mary: This is a tough sell in our culture. It says to be submissive to their own husbands. And it's that word that a lot of people just don't like.

Nancy: It is radically counter-cultural.

Mary: Radically counter-cultural.

Nancy: In fact, we were talking recently about how you use this concept in our culture, and people think, What planet did you come from?

Mary: Exactly. Did you like just pull up in a spaceship? Where are your antennas?

Nancy: And yet, the great thing is as you unpack this word in the Scripture and this concept which includes the idea of being amenable, we'll come to that. You see that it's not something that's a burden to be borne. It's actually a blessing to be enjoyed.

Mary: Some people have some misconceptions about that word "submission." And they are prevalent in our culture. There is the thinking that submission means that you don't have an opinion, that you can't speak truth, that you can't address issues in your husband's life or that there's' never any conflict or that you don't communicate—that you just are this "yes girl" that just nods her head and says "yes" to everything.

Nancy: And then their fear is that "I'm just going to get run over."

Mary: Yes. Exactly. The doormat.

Nancy: I'm going to get hurt.

Mary: I don't want to be a doormat. And that's how this whole submission concept is presented that makes women into a doormat and inferior to men. And there's nothing that could be further from the truth.

Nancy: Which is why we want to say, "What does this word mean …