Pointing to Something Greater

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Abigail Dodds says we should pay attention to how God is using our physical attributes to remind us of spiritual truths.

Abigail Dodds: Get your mind working, like, “Wow! I wonder why God did give me this womb? I wonder why God did give me a body?” Being able to see with those kinds of eyes all that that God has given me.

Nancy: We’ll learn to see the bigger picture today on the Revive Our Hearts podcast for May 6, 2021. I’m Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Let me ask you, What kind of woman does God want you to be? Yesterday Dannah Gresh and Mary Kassian began a conversation with our friend Abigail Dodds about what the Bible says about women. They’re continuing that today as they explore God’s definition of womanhood. I’ll just give you a spoiler alert: That definition is not one you’ll hear very often in our world today, and it makes a lot of people really uncomfortable.

Abigail recently wrote a book titled (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole and Called in Christ. You can get a copy of that book for yourself or for a friend at the store on our website: ReviveOurHearts.com.

Now, let’s jump into today’s conversation.

Dannah Gresh: Mary, will you call yourself a typical woman?

Mary Kassian: Nooooo. I’m atypical.

Dannah: You’re a typical?

Mary: No, I’m not a typical woman. I’m atypical woman.

Dannah: Is this like a “Who’s on First?” conversation. (laughter)

Mary: I would say atypical, which means that I do stuff, like, work in the garage and use power tools.

Dannah: What kind of power tools do you like?

Mary: Well, anything with power—drills, saws, anything.

Dannah: I like my husband’s riding mower.

Mary: Power tools are good!

Dannah: Power tools are good.

So today we’re going to talk to our friend Abigail who is going to tell us how to be a typical woman, or is it “a” typical?

Mary: It is atypical—you have to explain that.

Abigail: Right. Well, my contention is a little bit that all those atypical women, as misfit as we feel sometimes and as out of place as that can make us feel in culture or growing up, or whatever that is, that, really, God’s given us this gigantic gift.

And I also have a theory that every woman actually thinks of herself as atypical. I think if you sit down with any woman long enough, and she talks to you about her life, you almost always get to a point where she’ll say something like, “You know, I just didn’t really feel like I fit,” or “I just really felt different in this.”

Mary: Did you feel that way, Abigail?

Abigail: Sure. Yes. I mean, to varying degrees, and at different times of life, absolutely. I didn’t necessarily feel like I fit the real feminine model, but I wasn’t really a tomboy. There were times when I definitely felt like a misfit in life.

And what I really think is true is that God has just given us this huge gift, because to be a Christian is to be an alien and a stranger. And, really, it’s a call to be a misfit.

And sometimes I think that instead of saying, “How can I get rid of all these misfit feelings?” If we could look at them and say, “You know what? I could channel this into being more like Christ. Like, I could think about this in a way that actually helps me identify with Him more and say, ‘How could I be a Christ-like misfit?’”

Dannah: And so you’re saying you found the peace in feeling like you do fit in, or, well, you don’t fit in. The funny thing is that, as much as we struggle as women with the insecurity of feeling like we don’t fit in, we also, as women, want to be unique and different and stand out. We hold the tension of that, and I think the peace is in finding out what kind of woman God wants us to be.

Abigail: Yes.

Mary: You say that the goal of a Christian woman isn’t to be typical. Explain what you mean by that.

Abigail: Right. Well, what I really mean is just that the goal is to be like Christ. And so that’s not going to be very normal, very typical. That kind of sacrifice is always going to be strange to this world.

But what I don’t mean . . .you always want to close the gates on what you don’t mean. Be what He’s made you. If He’s made you a woman, be that. But what I mean is: Our goal isn’t to be some cultural ideal. 

Dannah: Cookie cutter.

Abigail: Some cookie cutter that He’s made or some magazine cover that we’ve seen, or even to try and be our pastor’s wife. Our goal is to be, in as much as we can, like Jesus—to smell like Jesus, to talk like Him. That’s going to always look strange.

Dannah: Yes. In fact, it’s going to look strange right now in our culture because we’re told being a woman is ultimate. And, of course, the definition of what that means is all over the place. You can be any kind of woman you want to be.

And I think that’s filtered into the church where sometimes we’re women before we’re Christians. Do you see that?

Abigail: Yes. I think that’s probably true. There can be a sense of, “I am a woman who can do it all and have it all, and I want to celebrate everything about me.” And in some ways I think it’s just a culture of “self” that’s really permeated the church, and that can kind of take the tack of exalting being a woman primarily.

So in all these things, just to always be coming back to a submissive heart before the Lord. That’s just the baseline for where we always have to start: “What have You made me? And am I willing to receive it as a gift?”

So that’s kind of another big discovery for me that’s going to sound very simple, because it is.

Mary: Well, it’s profound. Just saying that the gospel informs, the Bible informs who we are as women, and that has an impact practically day to day in our lives. Our bodies matter. Who we are as women matters. That’s actually super counter-cultural.

Dannah: Let’s talk about why they matter, Abigail.

So in the New Testament, we have the supreme pinnacle of Scripture, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. And then way back in the beginning, He created woman. Do those two things have anything to do with one another? And if so, what?

Abigail: Oh, they do! But isn’t that a hard connection to make?

I think for me, trying to bridge that gap of, “Why do these bodies matter?” was a slow process of thinking about simple, simple things.

Like, over the years that I was having our children, I remember just thinking things like, Lord, why a womb? Like, why did You give me a womb? or Why softness? Like, “Why are women a little bit softer than men?” Like, “Why don’t we have as much muscle mass?” And just kind of thinking, Is this all just sort of arbitrary? Did You “eennie, meenie, minie, moe” us, and I just got this thing?

As I started to look at the Scriptures, I had those same thoughts when I would read the instructions for women to work and manage the home. I was like, “Why in the home?” Again, “Am I the recipient of a divine round of “eennie, meenie, minie, moe” in which this is just the straw I drew?”

The more I saw those two realities, what I saw in my body that God had made, and what I saw in the Scripture what God had spoken, I saw they matched. I started to think, Wow! God actually made my body a home. He made my body a home. I shouldn’t be too shocked that He would call me, then, to work and manage the home. There’s something homey about me.

And this just started to take root. I thought, Okay. Well, this makes more sense than I thought it did. It’s not so arbitrary as I thought.

And then what really, really bridged the gap all the way to Jesus was realizing that our home is with Jesus, but right now we are hidden in Christ at home in the Lord. But He is preparing a place for us even now as our home. And the significance of my calling just hit me.

Mary: So when you say that God made your body a home, are you talking about a physical home for children, like having a womb?

Abigail: Yes—the home of my womb.

Mary: Okay. But what about women who are childless or single?

Abigail: Right. I want to be so sensitive, because I think even talking about it can be painful.

Mary: It can be very painful.

Abigail: I don’t in any way want to imply in the least that bearing children somehow is the marker of your womanhood. But I just want to say this as gently as I can, and I want to say this with the love of Christ: Even if you don’t bear children, your womb is testifying to you something about you. Your womb, even if it’s empty, even if you long for that child to be in there, the existence of the womb is testifying to you.

There’s something profound about God’s design for you, about His plan for you—not to have, necessarily, biological children, but about your calling, either as a spiritual or as someone who is able to make home in a way that, for whatever reason. I think men can’t.

Mary: Well, I think that. In True Woman 101 we talk about this, and we say that women are life givers. Even women whose wombs are empty are givers of life.

Would you say that? In what way is that a part of womanhood . . . Wouldn’t you say that men also are called to that purpose?

Abigail: Absolutely. I mean, men are called in a sense to reflect God’s life-giving nature. But I just think our emphasis is different. God is the giver of life, and that is a virtuous thing that He is that. That I get to uniquely reflect a piece of that is a privilege.

Even though we can say, “Well, yes, of course. Men also—especially if they have some involvement even in biological life, of course, no woman produces life of her own accord, biologically,” but the emphasis is different.

I think it’s just asking, “Well, what’s the emphasis in manhood? How is that different than, say, this idea of mothering?” There’s a whole different idea of how men are called to protect, to guard, to keep, to provide. There’s a certain strength that comes with being a man.

So, while it’s true that they are life givers in the same way that it’s true that women are going to be doing some protecting at times, some things that we might associate more with men, I think it’s a matter of emphasis in our lives. I think we can just be so thankful that we get to reflect God in unique ways.

Dannah: You’re saying that the physical represents or points to something spiritual.

Abigail: Yes.

Dannah: So our wombs point to something bigger. Our physical wombs point to something eternal.

Abigail: Yes, yes.

Dannah: And its fruitfulness . . . Is being a spiritual mother equally as important, or more important than being a physical, biological mother?

Abigail: Well, I want to be careful here. I think they’re both so important—probably equally important. Although, I will say this: If your biological children are not spiritual children, if they are not going to be in eternity with us, then, in a sense, even a very fruitful mother biologically is barren.

And so fruitfulness, ultimately, we want it to be spiritual. We want it to last forever. We want fruit that lasts forever. And that only comes through new birth, through Christ. Christ gives us that birth. We give physical birth. He gives spiritual birth.

But I don’t want to downplay the importance of having actual children, because how can God be faithful to a thousand generations when there are no more generations?

Dannah: And pictures matter. The physical portrait matters. This physical world is constantly reminding us of spiritual truths. So let’s just break that down just a little bit in terms of male/female. What is it portraying? Male/female coming together, what is that a picture of? Because we’re getting to womb, which is getting down into the minutiae of woman, but let’s start with the bigger picture. Let’s go there.

Abigail: A husband and wife is the picture of Christ and His Church. Let’s say we know that all these very physical, very practical realities that exist, that have allowed the human race to exist for all this time, and keep going forward. No plagues have wiped us out, miraculously. God has sustained us through all these different times.

And yet, it all is pointing to something so much greater: That one day Christ’s Church, His Bride, will be brought into a marriage with Him.

So, really, just reading the Scriptures in such a way that we are always mindful of these bigger things that are happening. God is so good at giving us object lessons. He’s so good at giving us tactile ways of experiencing the future reality to come.

Even when He gives us a loaf of bread, and He breaks it, and He has to actually chew it up and eat it, it actually nourishes our physical body. And then He tells us the point: “I’m the Bread of Life. I’m the Bread come down from heaven. It’s Me.”

Mary: He does that with light and darkness. We have so many images in Scripture.

Abigail: Yes. So just fleshing out these metaphors, and then get your mind working. Like, “Wow! I wonder why God did give me this womb? I wonder why God did give me a body?” And being able to see with those kind of eyes all that God is doing.

Mary: Abigail, on what basis do you say this? I mean, you’re saying, “Christ in the Church,” and that maleness and femaleness and husband and wife, that it’s an object lesson for us. What’s your basis for saying that?

Abigail: Well, in Ephesians chapter 5, starting in verse 22, this is what God tells us about the mystery of marriage. He says, 

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

And then He goes on to explain it like this: 

This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church (vv. 22–32).

Dannah: Every time I read that last verse, I think it’s almost like, if you didn’t know, “Did the apostle Paul had ADD, and he lost his focus?” Is he still talking about a man or a woman?

Mary: Exactly! Like, “What is he talking about?”

Dannah: But he is saying, “This is mysterious. You’re not going to understand it fully and completely. Therefore, just submit. Trust me. Trust Christ. Trust the Word. That male and female, man and woman, is a picture of the greatest spiritual truth there is.

Abigail: Yes.

Dannah: Is that isolated to Ephesians 5? Is that the only place we can find that in the Scriptures?

Abigail: Revelation paints a beautiful picture of the end of the age. And what we see as the culminating moment in the end of the age is marriage. It’s not earthly, human marriage. It’s marriage between Christ and His Bride, the Church. So just to see that all of history is actually pointing us to a marriage.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re single or married right now. You are part of a great marriage to come. You’re betrothed to Christ.

Mary: You know, the apostle Paul actually said in Corinthians, he told his friends, “Don’t worry about whether you’re single or married now. If you’re wanting to be married, and you’re not able to find a spouse; if you’re single, you don’t need to be concerned about that because you can be part of the story, too. Because this other story, the story we participate in as man and woman on earth is just a temporary one, and the eternal one is about Christ and the Church.

Dannah: And the eternal one is the greater one. In fact, he even said, “I wish you were like me. I wish you’d be single because the eternal picture is what really matters.”

So Revelation, Ephesians, does it just suddenly start in the New Testament? Or is there Old Testament teaching for us to embrace the idea of being distinctly woman?

Abigail: Well, I think the Genesis account is probably the best place for us to start. But I think it’s really woven throughout. I mean, you see so many different stories of women, many of them wonderful examples, but also a few who really messed some things up.

Mary: A few that were sinned against that really had hard situations and terrible sin against them.

Abigail: Yes. But what you don’t often see in the Old Testament, or ever, I would argue, is men and women being the same, or giving them the exact same position. So one of the beautiful things we see about the genealogies that we see for Jesus is how this line has been preserved and how different random women are sort of inserted into this line of Jesus.

So we just see that women are, of course, this integral part of the story that God is telling about Himself. They matter. They are not inconsequential.

Dannah: Well, even the fact that they are listed in the lineage, the genealogy of Christ, was a big break in literary tradition of the day. You just didn’t include women in those accounts. It wasn’t necessary. And so when you compare that genealogy and that lineage to other documents from that era, you won’t find the names of women. And yet, we do.

We find that God values womanhood so much that He does something very culturally inappropriate when He records the names of women in the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

Mary: Some people would say that all of this is just cultural. And the reason we don’t see male and female doing the same sort of things was a cultural thing, and now we’ve moved past that. And that in this world and this day and age we need to be equal, and we need to do the same things, and we need to be interchangeable, and anyone who says otherwise just doesn’t really understand the way life works.

Abigail: I think, when I hear that, I’m sympathetic, but I quickly would want to bring it back to something very concrete, which is: We really do have female bodies, and those really do affect how we move in this world. And would it actually be kind for God to pretend that we didn’t? Would it be kind for God to put us in positions, say, fighting the wars, where we really are at an actual disadvantage physically?

Mary: Now, let me just interrupt here and say: In the movies, you’ve seen where the girls are portrayed as being able to take on the guys physically. So you’re saying that that’s not the case?

Abigail: I think the only way you get there is sort of by suspending reality. There’s a sense in which . . . There’s just no way, no matter how many hours I spend at the gym, that I’m as an average-sized woman, that I’m going to be able to take down an average-sized man.

Now, there are, of course, always one or two exceptions to that rule where you’re going to find a woman who is able to be a man at something. But anyone who is willing to acknowledge the nose on their face has to acknowledge that there’s a difference in muscle mass.

And so I just think it really helps to get concrete and say: “Okay, is this cultural, really? Or is this born out of something we’ve been made as?” If we can grasp the physical piece of it, then I think it’s a little less hard to grasp maybe some of the ways that God directs us then in His Word.

Dannah: You mentioned earlier that God created us soft.

Abigail: Yes.

Dannah: I’m wondering: How is that good or useful? How does that fit into the picture that we’re talking about?

Abigail: It dawned on me just as I was thinking through some of these things. Grandmothers—they’re such a wonderful thing—happen to be extra soft.

Mary: Dannah, you and I are grandmothers.

Dannah: I am so glad that you said that.

Mary: Are we extra soft?

Dannah: We are! We are extra special.

Mary: We are definitely extra special.

Dannah: What makes you say they’re extra soft?

Abigail: Well, I just mean, I think with age comes a certain kind of softness. Our bodies are getting softer often as we age. And anyone who’s been hugged by their grandma knows why that’s a wonderful thing.

Mary: Well, my sons would say I am way softer on my grandkids than I was on them. (laughter)

Nancy: As you think about how God created you, are you willing to receive that as a gift? Abigail Dodds asked that question today in her conversation with Dannah Gresh and Mary Kassian, and I hope you’ll let that question linger in your heart.

I love thinking about how God created us as women with such intentionality. I can relate to a number of things we heard in this conversation today. It was not until I was in my thirties, probably, that I began to see the fact that God created us as women as being an intentional thing, a good thing, and a gift from the Lord.

That’s why here at Revive Our Hearts we’re so passionate about helping women embrace their God-created design. We want to help you and others experience what it means to thrive in Christ as a woman of God. As believers, whether male or female, we need God’s truth. And day after day, we have the privilege of hearing how the Lord is using Revive Our Hearts to transform the lives of women around the world.

Here’s a sweet example we received recently. This woman said, 

I could never begin to tell you what a blessing Revive Our Hearts has been to me over the years. More than once, when my marriage was hanging by a thread, God would use someone or something in an episode at the exact right moment to fill me with the conviction and hope that I needed to hold on.

Wow! I just picture that woman and her marriage hanging by a thread, and the Lord sending her, because of friends like who’ve supported this ministry, just what she needed at that moment to keep holding on. Thank You, Lord. And if you’ve donated to Revive Our Hearts or prayed for this ministry, that woman is the fruit of your investment and so many more like her.

Well, this is what God is doing day after day around the world in the hearts of women. We’re trusting the Lord this month to provide the funds that we need to finish this budget year strong. Our budget year ends on May 31, and we’re asking the Lord to provide $750,000 this month. That’s a lot more than our average month’s budget, but that’s where we need to be to finish this financial year in the black and then to be able to move into the twelve months of ministry ahead.

As you give to help meet that need, you’ll be bringing the message of biblical womanhood, the hope of the gospel, and foundational, life-saving, biblical truth to women who are maybe hanging by a thread but hungry for Jesus. Your gift is what makes this ministry possible.

So if the Lord is stirring in your heart to be a part of this mission helping women experience freedom and fullness and fruitfulness in Christ, would you take a moment to visit our website: ReviveOurHearts.com and make a donation there? Or you can call us to make that gift at 1–800–569–5959.

Now, just a reminder that today is the National Day of Prayer here in the United States. And if you haven’t already done so, I want to encourage you to spend some time today lifting up our nation to the Lord in prayer.

We have sinned against Him so grievously as a nation, and I believe we’re experiencing today a measure of the wrath and the judgment of God. But God is a God who longs to show mercy and compassion to those who will repent, to those who will repent and believe the gospel.

So would you pray that throughout this day and throughout every sector of our culture and our society that the Lord would show mercy and would bring people to repentance and faith?

Well, tomorrow Abigail Dodds will share her experience with caring for a special-needs child. It’s a hard but a sweet story. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts wants you to see how God designed you with purpose. It’s an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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