What Is a Woman?—Week 3

Dannah Gresh: Mary Kassian says your womanhood is more than skin deep.

Mary Kassian: God didn't just sprinkle femaleness on you like seasoning, He wove it into the fabric of your existence. Woman isn't something you wear, it's something you are.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, co-author of True Woman 101, for July 15, 2026. I'm Dannah Gresh. 

We're back with Mary Kassian today to continue in our series, “What Is a Woman?”

Mary: Every year, Glamor magazine, a global women's publication, chooses recipients for its prestigious Woman of the Year award. In 2025, Glamor UK selected nine award recipients. When I saw them on the cover, something immediately felt off: the exaggerated poses, the thicker bone structure, the facial angles, the Adam's apples.

Sure enough, not one biological woman . . . not one. Let that sink in for a moment. A magazine ostensibly celebrating women didn't feature a single female on its Women of the Year cover.

And this isn't an isolated incident. We see it everywhere: biological males competing in women's sports, winning women's scholarships, being housed in women's prisons. The word “woman” has become so fluid and so malleable that it's starting to mean nothing at all.

It's not just about confused terminology. When we lose clarity on what a woman is, we obscure the gospel itself, because when God created male and female, He was telling a story, the most important story in the universe.

In this series, we're unpacking a Bible-based definition of woman, phrase by phrase. Last time we explored what it means to be God's living masterpiece, handcrafted in His image. And today we're focusing on the next phrase: intentionally created female.

Because here's what I want you to understand: your femaleness isn't random or arbitrary; it's a gift, a calling, a glory to be discovered. And in a world where even women's magazines can't figure out who women are, we desperately need to get back to what God says.

So, let's turn to one of the most beautiful passages in all of Scripture, Psalm 139. Now, this is a familiar passage about God knitting life together in the womb. But I want you to think about it in a way you may not have thought about it before, not merely from the perspective that God knit you together, but from the perspective that He knits you together to be a woman, verses 13–16.

For it was you who created my inward parts,
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I will praise you
because I have been remarkably and wondrously made. 

Your works are wondrous,
and I know this very well.
My bones were not hidden from you,
when I was made in secret,
when I was formed in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw me when I was formless;
all my days were written in your book and planned
before a single one of them began.

So, what does this passage reveal about the fact that God created you female?

First, “your eyes saw me when I was formless.” This is where it all begins. Before you had shape, before you had form, before those two lines appeared on a pregnancy test, before the ultrasound technician could see your bits and pieces, and before the birth announcement, God saw you, and He saw you as female.

Your sex wasn't assigned by the doctor who cut your umbilical cord. Your sex was assigned by God at the moment of conception, that miraculous instant when sperm met egg, and you became a genetically unique human being. At that moment, before you had a heartbeat, before you were the size of a poppy seed, before anyone knew you existed, God assigned your sex, and the twenty-third chromosome pair that determined whether you would be male or female was divine design.

Those two X chromosomes you received, they're a blueprint, a beautiful blueprint that profoundly shapes your development, not just in the womb, but through your entire life.

Pause, and really let that land. As the God who spoke galaxies into existence, the One who flung stars across billions of light years of space, was personally, intimately involved in determining your sex.

This wasn't delegated to biology alone. It was a decision made in the council of the Trinity, woven into the very first moment of your existence. At the moment of conception, and arguably even before that, God saw you as female.

“You knit me together in my mother's womb.” Now, that word "knit" is the same word used for weaving fabric. God was like a master craftsman, carefully interlacing every strand, every thread, every fiber of who you would be—nothing random, nothing haphazard, intentional design.

From conception, your XX chromosomes began orchestrating your development as a female, and around the seventh week, they directed the formation of ovaries that would produce estrogen and progesterone, hormones that would shape your body throughout development and across your lifespan. 

But the influence extends far beyond your reproductive system. Your XX chromosomes affect how your brain develops, your voice, your skin, your metabolism. Nearly every cell in your body carries this signature.

So, if a scientist examined your remains one hundred years from now, those XX chromosomes would still declare this person is female. Your chromosomes don't change based on feelings or fashion or philosophy; they declare a biological reality woven through your entire being, and no surgery, no hormone therapy, no legal document can alter the fundamental genetic signature.

So, God didn't just sprinkle femaleness on you like seasoning, He wove it into the fabric of your existence. Woman isn't something you wear, it's something you are.

“My bones were not hidden from you when I was made in secret.” My bones . . . even your skeletal structure, God designed it all with purpose. You have smaller, lighter bones, graceful in design, more delicate hands and feet, softer shoulders, a smaller rib cage, a finer skull with smooth feminine contours, a gentle curve to your jaw and chin, those wider hips, that curved pelvic inlet designed to carry in birth new life.

The structure of those bones is among the most prominent indicators of your biological sex. Did you know that even the carrying angle in your arm is different from a man's? I don't know if you ever noticed this, but you have a bend in your arm that makes it a bit awkward to throw a football overhand. It's perfect, though, for cradling a baby to your breast.

Now, you may be an athlete, you may learn to position your torso to counteract that natural carrying angle, and you may throw a football just as well as some men. But given the structure of your skeleton, you are never going to be an NFL quarterback.

You may think this isn't fair. Part of you may want to roll your eyes. Really, God, you made my arms inconvenient for sports, so I could be better at baby holding?! But this isn't a design flaw, it's a design feature.

Just imagine your very bones were shaped by God with intention. Your bones were not hidden from Him. He designed every difference in bone structure that marks you as female with purpose, with care, with a plan in mind.

And His intentional design goes even deeper. It was “you who created my inward parts.” The Hebrew word here literally means “you acquired or you possessed.” The idea is profound. God took ownership of your formation from the very beginning, including those distinctly female parts. He didn't delegate this; He didn't leave it to chance; He personally oversaw every detail—your inward parts, your ovaries, your uterus, your breasts.

These are not just biological features; they're symbolic. They tell a story before you ever live it. Your ovaries hold potential life. Your uterus is designed as a sanctuary for nurturing and protection. Your breasts are equipped to sustain life. Those organs speak, they declare something about who you are and what you were created to reflect.

And here's what's remarkable: this female design goes all the way down to the cellular level, nearly every cell in your body carries that XX signature. Your sex isn't skin deep, it goes down to the core of who you are.

And this is why the attack on womanhood is never really just about biology. It is always ultimately an attack on the story God is telling. When the world blurs the meaning of woman, it blurs the picture of God.

God didn't just give you a female body, He created you—all of you—female. Femaleness isn't something you wear, it's woven into the very fabric of who you are.

“You have been remarkably and wondrously made.” Other translations say “fearfully and wonderfully made.” It's the kind of workmanship that takes your breath away. It's so extraordinary, so intricate, so intentional that you can't help but stand in awe.

You are His masterpiece, and womanhood, that's His masterpiece too. Think about that. After creating mountains and oceans, sunsets, stars, forests, and flowers, after all of that breathtaking beauty, God's final creative act was woman. And when he stepped back and looked at everything He had made, Genesis tells us He declared it very good, not just good, very good. Woman was the crescendo, the grand finale.

Think about the intentionality of the sequence: first light, then sky and sea, land, vegetation, then sun, moon, and stars, then creatures of the water and air, then animals, then man, and finally, as the crowning act, woman, and the order isn't random, it's architectural.

Woman is the apex of creation, not an afterthought, and there's something about woman, or rather about what she symbolizes or points to, that brings God's creative work to its fullest expression. We're going to unpack that idea more later in this series.

We opened today with that Glamor cover, nine individuals celebrated as women of the year, yet not one biological female among them. It's a stunning picture of how confused our culture has become.

We're being told that womanhood is so undefined, so meaningless, that anyone can claim it, as if being a woman is just an identity you choose independent of your body. But that's not what God says. Listen again to the psalmist. “Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well.”

Your female body, with its particular architecture, its graceful design, is one of God's wondrous works. Every curve, every characteristic, every God-designed feature tells a story. Your softness, your capacity to create and nurture life, your relational beauty, these aren't flaws to overcome; they're blessings to embrace.

Now, I need to address something our culture has tried hard to separate: sex and gender.

We're being told that biological sex is about our bodies, but gender identity is about our mind or feelings. And if those don't align, we should change our bodies to match our internal sense of self.

But this division is foreign to Scripture. The psalmist says, “You knit me together.” He knit you. God didn't just knit your body, He knit all of you, body and soul, woven into one unified whole.

When you knit something, you can't separate the threads without unraveling everything, and that's how God made you. Your body and your identity are not two separate things that might not match. They're woven together into one seamless reality.

This is actually the ancient Christian understanding of what it means to be human, what theologians called the unity of the person.

The early church fought hard for this idea, pushing back against Gnosticism, which taught that the body is just a prison for the soul trapped inside it.

No. You are not a soul accidentally trapped in a body waiting to be freed from flesh that doesn't match how you feel. You are a body/soul unity.

Your body isn't just a container for the real you, it is you. Which means, your female body isn't a mistake to be corrected, it's a gift to be received.

Now, I know this isn't simple for everyone. Some of you have wrestled with your female body for as long as you can remember. And the disconnect feels real. For you, accepting your womanhood is a daily battle. If that's your story, hear this: God doesn't measure your value by how easily you accept His design.

All of us are living in the wreckage of the Fall, where everything, including our sexuality and our sense of self, has been damaged by sin. Your struggle is real, and you're not walking through it alone.

Here's the hope the psalmist clung to: “all my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began.”

God wrote every chapter of your story before page one, including this one, with these exact struggles. Nothing about you catches Him off guard. He's present with you right now.

So let me ask you this, “What if the path forward isn't reshaping your body to match your feelings, but asking God to reshape your understanding to match how He made you?”

What if this painful tension you feel is an invitation to deeper trust?

Your physical body offers solid ground in a world that says everything is negotiable. God saw you. He shaped you. He numbered your days as a woman, and this is His doing, His plan. You could trust Him with it, even when it's hard, especially when it feels hard.

So, where does this leave you today?

Maybe you're sitting there thinking, Mary, this all sounds good in theory, but my life is complicated. I don't feel comfortable in my female body. I resent being a woman. What then?

Or maybe you're wondering, What does this mean for me practically? I hate all things girly girl. Does that make me less of a woman?

Perhaps you're single and wondering if any of this even matters, or married and you're confused about how this plays out with your husband.

So, here's what I want you to hear: God created you female, and that is not a problem to solve. It's a gift to unwrap. Your womanhood has purpose, it has beauty, it has meaning. What it looks like will be unique to you, shaped by your circumstances, your personality, your calling. You don't have to have it all figured out. None of us do, but God does.

And here's what remains true, whether you feel it right now or not. The body you live in, this female body, is not just packaging for the real you inside. Your female body is you. It's God's creative genius on display. It's a testimony written in flesh and bone, and every cell carrying those XX chromosomes is declaring something about who God created you to be.

How you feel about being female doesn't change the fact that you are female. Some mornings you wake up and celebrate being a woman, other mornings you wish you could opt out, but feelings are like weather, aren't they? They change with the wind.

Your identity, that's bedrock. It was settled at conception, even before conception, when God assigned your sex, not the doctor, not your parents, not culture, not you, God.

And here's what you can trust: if God went to the trouble of intentionally creating you female, it is good. He knew what He was doing. The potter doesn't make mistakes with the clay. So what's the path forward?

It's not how do I change my body to match how I feel, it's choosing to trust God to let what He says take precedence over what I feel. And really, that's the challenge for all of us, not approaching our struggles with the question, did God make a mistake, but will I trust that He didn't.

Our culture will keep insisting that you can be whoever you want to be, that womanhood is whatever you make of it, or that it doesn't mean anything at all. Hollywood will keep serving up its version of what a woman looks like. Medical technology will keep promising to reshape you. Influencers will keep telling you to define yourself, but underneath all the noise, there's this unshakable reality: God knit you together in your mother's womb to be female. He numbered all the days of your life as a woman, and this was His plan from before when you drew breath.

Listen to how the psalmist responded, "I will praise you, because I have been remarkably and wonderfully made."

Praise. Wonder. Trust. That's the posture God invites you to today. Not confusion. Not resentment. Not resignation, but worship.

Now, I know that some of you are wrestling hard with this, maybe you've battled gender dysphoria for as long as you can remember, maybe you've never felt at home in your female body, not for one single day.

Sister, hear this.

God does not measure your worth by how easily you embrace what He says about you. He sees your struggle. He knows this battle is real, and He hasn't abandoned you. He's not impatient with you. He's near, walking through every hard, confusing moment.

He intentionally created you female, not by accident, not as plan B, not as a cosmic mistake that needs correcting, but intentionally, with purpose, for a purpose, and that purpose, it's glorious.

You are a woman. Your biology confirms it every day. You're the work of the master potter's hand, shaped with intention and skill. And what He has made, it's good, so very, very good.

Let me pray.

Father, thank You for making us female. Thank You for creating us, that You didn't do so randomly, but You did so with purpose and intention and love.

And, Lord, for those wrestling with this truth, for those that find this hard, please meet them in that place. Help us trust when trust feels hard. Help us see ourselves the way that You see us, O Lord, the way that You see us, even when we don't understand, even when we don't see ourselves aright.

We are fearfully, wonderfully made, knit together by the God who loves us so very much. We pray that You will help us trust that truth in Jesus' name. Amen.

Dannah: Yes, Lord, help us to trust You.

Mary Kassian has been showing you how intricately God wove you together, how purposefully He made you a woman—not just on the surface but down to your very bones.

If today's episode left you wanting more, you've got to get Mary's latest book, What Is a Woman? The subtitle is The Question Our World Is Afraid to Answer. In this book, Mary takes conversations like you heard today and expands on them. You'll get more truth and cultural commentary in this Revive Our Hearts exclusive resource. It'll help you stand confident as a woman in a world of shifting and shaky definitions.

We'd love to send you a copy when you make a donation of any amount to support Revive Our Hearts this month, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959, and be sure to request What Is a Woman? when you do. If you live outside the U.S. or Canada, you'll get a digital copy.

Now, before I go, I've got a special announcement today. The summer Bible study sale is here. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com/summer2026 to shop all kinds of helpful Bible study books and resources at reduced prices. We hope this sale equips you to press on in the Word all summer long, or maybe it'll help you plan for what to study this fall. The summer Bible study sale is here until the end of the month. 

Tomorrow, Mary Kassian is back, and she'll be unpacking the next phrase in our definition. What is a woman? To continue answering that question with us. I hope you'll be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scriptures is taken from the CSB.