Revive Our Hearts

Mary Kassian: Why is it important to understand God's design for women? Now when the enemy blurs and erases the distinctions between male and female, he isn't just causing social chaos. He's vandalizing the most beautiful picture that God ever painted. He's obscuring the gospel itself.

Dannah Gresh: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, co-author of True Woman 101, for July 9, 2026. I'm Dannah Gresh.

What does the fact that you're male or female have to do with the gospel? That's something we'll be hearing about today on Revive Our Hearts, and I'd like to set it up for you like this. I think most of us accept that God made us male or female. We understand at least the physical differences. But here's the question: Do you see your maleness or femaleness as good? Are you thankful to God for it?

You know, I work with girls and young women a lot. They contact the ministry I lead, True Girl, and they have questions. They have doubts. They are being told to question even the basic concepts of gender at young ages. I still remember with chills the moment that the very first audience Q&A question that I got from a little girl was, "Is it okay if I feel like I'm a boy?"

I had to answer that in front of an audience of other little girls with a lot of wisdom and a lot of grace and a lot of, "How about if you and I talk about it together alone in just a few minutes with your mom?" Little girls are confused. So one of our goals today is not only to explain what it means to be a woman, but also help women of all ages to see God's goodness in His design so that they can understand it for themselves and pass it on as a baton of truth to the next generation. Here's Mary Kassian kicking off the series, What is a Woman?

Mary Kassian: To be or not to be, that is the question. Well, that was Shakespeare's question, and perhaps a question for English majors, but that isn't our question. Ours is simpler, more fundamental. What is a woman? That is the question. If someone stopped you on the street right now and asked you to answer, what would you say? For most of human history, the answer was so obvious it hardly seemed worth asking. A woman is an adult female human being. Children knew it, dictionaries affirmed it, biology explained it, no one debated it.

But something has shifted. It's not that the question has become more complicated; it's just that the world started tap-dancing around the answer. When a Supreme Court nominee was asked during her confirmation hearing, "Can you provide a definition for the word woman?" one of the sharpest legal minds in America, a woman who was about to take a seat on the highest court in the land, looked at the committee and said, "I can't. I'm not a biologist."

Now let that sink in. Someone whose entire career had been built on defining terms with precision, someone whose job would include protecting the rights of women, couldn't define the word woman. Or wouldn't. Either way, it's stunning. A professor of gender studies came up with this definition: "A woman is whatever a woman is." Which sounds incredibly smart and profound until you realize it means absolutely nothing. It's the intellectual equivalent of saying, "A box is whatever a box is." Okay, but what is it?

Now the world says it can't answer the what is a woman question, and yet it answers it anyway. Not with words, but with images. Scroll through any feed, sit in front of any screen, and the pictures are everywhere. Pushed at us in advertising, entertainment, fashion, social media, quietly shaping what we believe womanhood is, what it's for, and what it's worth. And the pictures are everywhere.

The airbrushed model: chiseled cheeks, sultry eyes, a body sculpted by scalpel and starvation. The ninja warrior: in spike heels and skin-tight leather, vanquishing ten male assassins without breaking a nail. The picture-perfect influencer: perfect skin, perfect home, perfect life, all filtered, staged, and carefully cropped. The granite-hard girl boss: corner office, killer instinct, eats men for breakfast, takes no prisoners. The Sex and the City player: stilettos, cocktails, one-night stands, no strings, no apologies. The gender-fluid hybrid: untethered from social norms, liberated from the category altogether.

The world won't define it, but it can't stop depicting it. And here's what those images have done. We spend our lives measuring ourselves against them. Not pretty enough, not thin enough, not tough enough, not polished enough, not driven enough, not bold enough, not progressive enough. Too much, never enough. And we bend and reshape ourselves trying to fit images that were never true to begin with. Not one of those pictures is large enough, beautiful enough, or solid enough to build a life on.

There's only one portrait of womanhood that is, and it wasn't conjured up by Hollywood or Madison Avenue or a university gender studies department. It was sketched by the One who made us. And before I go any further, let me tell you why I am probably the most unlikely person to be having this conversation with you. I grew up with five brothers, five. I was what used to be called a tomboy, and honestly, in some ways I still am. I was never a girly girl, never. While some girls were playing with dolls, I was out in the garage with my dad learning how to use power tools. And let me tell you, nothing says Christmas like a new cordless drill. My husband has learned that jewelry is nice, but a good impact driver, now that's love.

So if you're just so sick of the topic you've already checked out, or if you're sitting there thinking, well, this doesn't apply to me because I'm not the feminine type, or if you're rolling your eyes because you're thinking I'm going to tell you to squeeze yourself into some stereotype, I get it. I really do. The topic of womanhood has never made my top ten list. I've never quite fit the cultural mold. But here's what I've discovered: True womanhood isn't about conforming to a cookie-cutter pattern. It's not about whether you prefer power tools or pearls, motorcycles or manicures, hiking boots or heels. It's about something far deeper. Something that goes all the way down, past personality, past preference, past everything culture has told you.

There's a thread woven into every woman's design, a thread that runs through all of us, deeper than our differences. And it goes all the way back to the very beginning. Not the beginning of the cultural conversation, not the beginning of the feminist movement or the gender revolution or the latest Supreme Court confirmation hearing, the beginning. The Bible opens with four words: "In the beginning, God." Four words, the most foundational four words ever written. Before there was anything, before light, before land, before life, there was God.

And when He spoke, creation came into being: the oceans, the mountains, the stars, every living creature. All of it called forth by the word of an all-knowing, all-powerful Creator, the Master Artist of the universe. In the beginning, God. That's the lens we're bringing to this question. Not culture, not science, not personal experience. We're going back to the One who was there, the only One who knows what He made and why He made it. He's the designer, and the designer gets to define what He designed.

Through the opening verses of Genesis, we watch Him work. God said, and it was so: light, land, sea, sun, moon, stars, vegetation, creatures of every kind. God said, and it was so. Again and again the same pattern, the same power, the same effortless creative authority. And then, then something shifts. Verse 26: "Let us make man in our image." Not let there be, not a word spoken into the void. A conversation, a deliberate, intentional, "this is different" moment.

And out of it comes the crowning act of all creation. So God created man in His own image, He created him in the image of God, He created them male and female. Male, female. Not spoken into existence like the stars, not called forth like the oceans or the mountains, not created the way the animals were: a word and then there they were. Humanity was different. God deliberated. Father, Son, and Spirit talked it over: "Let us make man in our image."

Then God knelt and got His hands dirty. Every other creature was spoken into existence; humans were formed by His hands, marked by His fingerprints, enlivened by His breath. Out of that intimate act came a binary written into the very architecture of what it means to be human. In a world that wants to offer us an infinite number of options, God sees two. Not because He lacks imagination, but because He had something specific in mind. Two sexes, intentionally designed, purposefully created, and here's the key: created to tell a story.

Because, and this might surprise you, your womanhood isn't ultimately about you at all. Let me explain what I mean. When God created male and female, He wasn't just populating the earth or organizing society. He was telling a story, the most magnificent story ever conceived. He was putting the gospel on display, a living parable written on human flesh, readable by every person, every nation, every generation.

Just think about it. Without the realities of manhood, womanhood, marriage, and sexuality, how would we understand desire, longing, the ache to be pursued and chosen, the comfort of being cherished and protected, the joy of belonging to someone, of being part of a family? How would we grasp fidelity, what it means to keep a covenant or shatter one, the agony of betrayal, the beauty of faithfulness, the deep satisfaction of being fully known and fully loved?

The visible world is God's object lesson for the invisible one. The physical gives us language for the spiritual, a way to grasp what would otherwise be beyond our reach. What we can see points to what we cannot see. Light and darkness point to good and evil. Clean and unclean point to holiness and sin. Hunger points to our need for spiritual food. A buried seed erupting in green shoots points to rebirth.

The natural world is saturated with spiritual meaning. But of all the object lessons God embedded in creation, none runs deeper than male and female. Every other symbol points to a single truth; male and female carry the whole story. They don't merely illustrate it; they are the story, in a category all their own. Theologians call this sui generis. It's a Latin term for one-of-a-kind. And this is why male and female matter so profoundly. Not as biological categories, not as social roles, but as symbols, load-bearing symbols that carry the weight of the greatest story ever told.

When you erase the symbols, when you declare them meaningless, interchangeable, or fluid, you don't just lose the symbols; you lose the storyline. Paul wants to make sure we don't. In Ephesians chapter five, he writes about the marital union of male and female, and then suddenly pulls back the curtain on what marriage points to. Ephesians 5:31 and 32: "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church."

Did you catch that? The one-flesh union of husband and wife doesn't just illustrate the relationship between Christ and the church. Paul says it refers to it, it points to it, it was designed because of it. Marriage isn't just a helpful metaphor that God chose after the fact to explain the gospel. No, right from the get-go, God built marriage to herald the gospel, to foreshadow it and proclaim it.

Ephesians says, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her." So the husband echoes Christ, initiating, sacrificing, laying down his life for his bride. And the wife images the church: response, receptivity, bringing forth new life in union with the one who loves her. Different roles, same story, told from different angles.

That isn't the only time Paul draws this connection. In 2 Corinthians 11:2, he addresses the church in Corinth, men and women both, and says, "I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy." He says, "because I have promised you in marriage to one husband, to present a pure virgin to Christ." The whole church is bride. Every believer stands in that position before God.

But here's what's remarkable: It's the female experience of being chosen, of being cherished, of responding to the bridegroom's initiative that gives us the most vivid picture of what it means to belong to Christ. So your womanhood isn't incidental; it's instructive. You are, in your very being, a living picture of the church's relationship with her Savior.

Here's something I want every woman to hear: You don't have to be married to participate in this story. Marriage puts it under a spotlight, it makes the picture vivid and visible, but every woman, married or single, young or old, embodies the bride's part of the story simply by being female. You do not wait on the sidelines for a husband before your womanhood means something. You tell the story every day, simply by being who God made you to be.

Now when the enemy blurs and erases the distinctions between male and female, he isn't just causing social chaos. He's vandalizing the most beautiful picture that God ever painted. He's obscuring the gospel itself. And that's what's at stake, and that's why this question matters. What is a woman?

In this series, we're going to explore a definition of womanhood that roots us in scripture, celebrates our God-given design, and points us toward our ultimate purpose. Not a cultural construct, not a church tradition, not someone's opinion. A one-sentence theological definition we'll unpack together, phrase by phrase. A woman is God's living masterpiece, handcrafted in His image, intentionally created female, fashioned with softness and relational beauty to receive and respond, bring forth and nurture life, bearing witness to the story of Jesus and the glory of God.

I know, that's a lot to take in. Some of you just heard "softness" and thought, "Oh, that's not me," or you heard "receive and respond" and you bristled. In a world that tells women to dominate, to compete, to take control, these words can feel like a step backward. But here's what I want you to understand: This definition is not a cookie-cutter mold. It's not a return to pearls and pies. God created extraordinary variety within womanhood: different temperaments, different gifts, different callings.

What this definition describes are threads, deep threads woven into every woman's design regardless of personality or preference. Threads that connect you to a purpose far larger than yourself. We're going to unpack every phrase of this definition together, one at a time. My prayer is that by the end, you'll see each word not as a limitation, but as an invitation. An invitation into something breathtaking.

Before we get there, I want to leave you with something today, something that I hope will anchor you for everything that follows. The world relentlessly bombards you with images: Hollywood, academia, social media, advertising. All of it pulling you in different directions, leaving you confused and exhausted and never quite enough.

But here's what I want you to know: There is a voice that cuts through all of it. Not louder in volume, but deeper, truer, more penetrating than anything the world can offer. A voice that was speaking before anything else existed, a voice that has never changed and will never change. The writer of Hebrews describes it this way: "The word of God is living and effective and is sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. No creature is hidden from him, but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account."

No creature is hidden from Him. You are fully known by the God who made you. Known not the way the world knows you, by your appearance, your output, your performance, your social media presence. Not known partially or conditionally or only on your best days. Known completely, known all the way down to the parts of yourself you've never let anyone see: the doubts, the questions, the scars, the quiet despair of never quite feeling comfortable in your own skin. He knows all of it, and He is not put off by any of it.

God doesn't see your pain and step back. He doesn't see your brokenness and look away. He moves toward you with truth, with kindness, with a word that is living and active and able to reach the places that nothing else can reach. His word cuts through the noise, through every competing image, every impossible standard, every message from your past, every desperate effort to self-define, all the way down to the core of who God created you to be.

So here's my invitation: Come and explore with me what God had in mind when He created you female. Let's look at what He says, let's examine His design, let's discover what true womanhood is according to the voice of the One who made us. I want to tell you what I've seen happen when women do exactly that. When a woman discovers what God had in mind when He made her, really discovers it, in scripture, for herself, something shifts. The noise starts to lessen, the competing images lose their power, and in their place something beautiful and solid and true begins to take shape. Not a stereotype, not a mold, something alive, something that fits because it was made for you.

That's what I'm believing for you in this series. That by the end, you'll see your womanhood not as a problem to be solved, or a question to be avoided, or a battlefield to be fought over, but as a glory to be discovered. That you'll understand that God created you female on purpose, for a purpose. What is a woman? The world is afraid to answer the question, but God isn't. And His answer is breathtakingly good.

Dannah Gresh: That's Mary Kassian introducing our brand new series, What Is a Woman? I can't think of anyone better to help us answer this question. Mary's an author, a distinguished professor of women's studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and co-founder of the True Woman movement.

She's also just released a book titled What Is a Woman? The Question Our World Is Afraid to Answer. It goes right along with this current series and would be wonderful for a group study. It's a Revive Our Hearts exclusive resource that you can find at reviveourhearts.com/store. We'll send you Mary's book when you make a donation of any amount to support Revive Our Hearts in July. It's our way of saying thank you for partnering with us in this way. To donate and request your copy, visit reviveourhearts.com or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow we're back with Mary to continue in our What Is a Woman series. She's unpacking what it means for women to be handcrafted in the image of God.

Mary Kassian: It means that you don't have to compete with men to prove that you're valuable; you already are. You don't have to erase the distinctions between male and female to claim your dignity; it's already yours. You don't have to become more like a man to matter; woman was never plan B. If you've ever thought being a woman is some kind of second-class status, you're going to want to hear this episode. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

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