Embracing God’s Perspective

Dannah Gresh: I have a friend—Laura Perry Smalts—who spent nine years of her life going by a different name: Jake. She says that the desire to change your identity is nothing new. In the Old Testament, we see it in Ruth’s mother-in-law.

Laura Perry Smalts: She says, “Don’t call me Naomi.” Naomi means pleasant. She says, “Call me Mara,” which means bitter. She’s angry with the Lord, and she says, “I went out full, but I’ve come back empty.” But did you know that the Bible never acknowledges her as Mara? 

Dannah: Oh, just wait til you hear what she said next!

Today we’re gonna talk about things like names and identity and what really amounts to a spiritual war that’s raging in our land. Yep, we’re gonna go there.

It’s Revive Our Hearts Weekend, and I’m so glad you’re with me. I’m Dannah Gresh. 

I was watching a children’s cartoon recently, one with a robot. And the robot said, “My pronouns are they/them.” My mouth dropped wide open. But that was only the half of it. This children’s program actually went on to introduce the word "non-binary." (Which of course means to not identify as male or female.) When the robot heard the word, it replied, “I always knew my pronouns felt right, but what a wonderful word for a wonderful experience!”

Let me say this again: this was a children’s cartoon.

Pronouns and labels. It’s a bigtime debate! And even our children are invited to the conversation. Are we prepared to talk about this subject with truth and compassion?

One of my friends, Mary Kassian, does a fair amount of speaking and writing about the topics of gender and sexuality. In fact, earlier this week on our daily program, we heard her say this . . .

Mary Kassian: God created male and female to tell the story of the gospel. And that's the main point, that is the main point that we need to grasp if we're going to understand anything about male and female, if we're going to understand anything about gender and sexuality, if we're going to understand anything about marriage, and about our moral imperative as created beings.

If we don't understand this point, we're going to struggle with it, because we're going to think it's about us when it isn't. It's actually about God. It's about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Dannah: Sounds pretty bold, huh? Well, a few hours before she delivered that message, she admitted something to the production team. Even though she’s spoken about gender and sexuality for decades, her approach to them includes some fear and trepidation. 

Mary: It's becoming more and more difficult to address these issues in a way that holds truth and grace together and in a way where people perceive what we say as being full of grace, because grace or love or acceptance nowadays is seen as endorsement. So, if you don't endorse with what I'm saying, if you don't agree with the political narrative, the politically correct narrative, then you're being hateful. And so that line of attack is certain to come.

There's a sense of it being more difficult, because it requires boldness, because nobody likes to be attacked. Nobody likes to be in a position where they're called hateful and misogynistic and racist and every other negative term that is currently in our books. Nobody likes to be that. It's just not fun.

On the other hand, it’s just that truly isn't in your heart. You're doing your very best to just go, “Listen, this isn't even about me. This is not me saying I'm right. This is just me saying that this is what God says in His Word. I am broken. I am fallible. I don't understand everything. I don't have all the answers. I often throw up my hands and just go, ‘I just don't know. I am just so weak when it comes to having the answers.’ All I'm doing is trying to be faithful to saying this is what the Bible says and just putting truth out there. It's truth that I've anchored my heart in and I have found a great deal of freedom and joy. I have found myself in it, you know that I have. Mary has become more Mary, by anchoring herself in truth of God's Word. I have found such freedom and joy.”

I want others to experience that. But I know that in this particular message, when it comes to human sexuality and gender, there's such vitriol aimed at anyone who doesn't follow the political narrative. It's difficult for you to present truth in a public forum with fear and trepidation. And yet at the same time, how can we if we truly love people deny them what brings life and what brings identity and what brings wholeness? The very things that give us such freedom and joy? How can I withhold that? Like, how can I keep that to myself?

How can I not share that with someone who is hurting or someone who is struggling with identity or someone who is going through the torture, internal torture, of just of just wrestling with questions and trying to find the answer that will satisfy their soul? How can I not share what has satisfied my soul? And what the Word of God says is a combination of going into a conference on gender and sexuality, a combination of just a weightiness in terms of, I don't know if I would call it fear, but I would call it an awareness of the battle that I'm walking into.

It's like that battle is fierce and that battle is bloody. It's what we call, as Germans, the schwerpunkt, which means the very tip of the arrow. It's the it's the very tip of the attack of Satan's attack on us as people. I think in terms of our gender and sexuality, it is fierce attack.

So, I'm walking into a battle. I'm not naive to that. And I'm not naive to think that I will leave unscathed in terms of people attacking me or people saying things about the message. But at the same time, there's a great hope and expectation, because the Word of God does not return void.

I have seen story after story after story of women's lives who have been transformed, and who have walked from darkness into light, who've had prison bars opened, who've had what they perceived as chains around their souls being cut off as they enter in to what God says about who they are and how precious they are and His amazing design for who He created them to be.

Dannah: That’s Mary Kassian, getting right down to the crux of the matter. In so much of life, it really does boil down to entering into—embracing—what God says about who He created us to be. 

Another friend of mine, Laura Perry Smalts, spoke at that same conference (True Woman '22) with Mary and with me. She understands the desire to develop a new identity. She even underwent surgeries, changed her name, and lived as Jake for nine years. And then she realized, I’m not any happier as a man. Maybe the problem was something else. Eventually, she found comfort and hope in the truth of God’s Word and began to surrender to it, slowly. 

Today she’s married to a godly man, and she speaks to audiences about the freedom to be found in following God’s design. There was something she said at a recent conference that made all of us go, “WHOA! Say that again!” 

Let’s listen. Here’s Laura. 

Laura: I want to examine quickly four people in the Bible who did not understand who they were and what they can teach us about our identity. The first one is Gideon.

Gideon was hiding from the Midianites. The Midianites had been ransacking the land for seven years, and he's down in this hole hiding wheat from them. The angel of the Lord came to him and said, “The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior.”

And he says, “Pardon me, Lord, but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened? Where are His wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, “Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?” But now the Lord has abandoned us and given into us into the hands of Midian. The Lord turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand, am I not sending you?”

He had no experience as far as we're told. He didn't think of himself as a warrior, and God's telling him to go save the people. “Pardon me, my lord, but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I'm the least in my family.” And the Lord answered, “I will be with you and you will strike down all the Midianites leaving none alive.”

Gideon didn't see how he could possibly do what God called him to do, because he saw himself as the least able. But God called Gideon, not who he was at that moment, or who he even wanted to be. God did not even tell Gideon, “This is who I need you to make yourself into so that I can use you.” God didn't expect him to figure it out. God called him who he was going to become, who God was going to make him into be. It was God that was going to accomplish the work in him. Gideon didn't need a greater revelation of Himself. He wasn't the warrior that God was calling him . . . yet.

Peter had much the same experience. Jesus called him Peter. His name was Simon, which means “to hear.” Jesus changed his name to Peter, which means “rock.” Now Simon had heard and responded to Jesus and desired to follow him. But Simon often trusted in his own reasoning and understanding such as when he cut off the ear of the soldier when they came to arrest Jesus.

Peter would one day become the man with rock solid faith in Jesus Christ, and be one of the first leaders of the church. But Jesus called him Peter long before he became the rock that God was forming him to be. He was in fear. He denied Jesus three times long after Jesus changed his name. But God was calling Peter who He created him to be.

So, our identities also not in our feelings. Another person in the Bible who had a misunderstanding of their identity was Naomi.

I was praying years ago when people kept asking me about whether they should call the person the name that they desire. I knew in my own experience that I did not think it was good to affirm someone's name that is not true of them. And the Lord led me to something I never noticed.

In the story of Naomi, her husband and her sons have died, and she comes back with Ruth. They said, “Is this Naomi?” She had been gone from her home for many years. And she says, “Don't call me Naomi.” Well, Naomi means “pleasant.” She says, “Call me Mara, which means ‘bitter.’”

She’s angry with the Lord. She says, “I went out full, but I've come back empty.”

But did you know that the Bible never acknowledges her as Mara? Almost immediately it calls her Naomi. It goes on another eleven times for twelve times total, after she says, “Call me Mara.” The Bible calls her Naomi. The Bible never acknowledges this fact that she's trying to take on this new identity. But God restored her life and brought her back full and with joy once again.

And our identity is also found in a greater revelation of who God is.

I was amazed when I when I was looking at the story of Moses. He goes through this over and over saying, “God, I'm not the man you're looking for. I'm a man of faltering lips. I can't go save the people.” Well, he wasn't supposed to do it in his own strength. It’s actually funny, in Acts 7:22 it says, “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He was powerful in speech and action.” His training had prepared him to be a good speaker when he was very young, but he went out and tended sheep for forty years, and he lost all his confidence.

I think that's often what the Lord does because we're never going to be successful for the Lord in our own flesh.

But he has no confidence in himself. He keeps saying, “Lord, you have the wrong man.”

But what amazed me (and I got some of this information from a blog that I read), I had never realized that when Moses says,” Who am I that you have asked me to do this?” And God doesn't respond with a greater revelation of who Moses is, but with a greater revelation of who He is. God said to Moses, “I AM who I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites, I AM has sent me to you.” God doesn't stop there. He builds no confidence in Moses’ ability to speak. God reveals more of Himself, and He continues to do this.

The name that God gave Moses should have rooted his confidence in God. But what more did he need to know other than God, the self-existent One, the sovereign God would be with him?

What do you need to know more about yourself other than that God is with you that He will never leave you nor forsake you.

If we have a true understanding of God and who He is, and if we believe His Word, we will believe the things that He says about us. We believe that those things are true. But I think sometimes we have to come to a point where we start to believe God, and we can keep believing the lies.

I remember before I got married, my husband kept telling me things that he liked about me or that he desired me and things like this. It took me a long time to believe him. I kept saying, “Yes, but I've had all this past experience. I've been so used and abused by men.” I thought it was trusting him, but I said, “I have trouble trusting because of all these things.” And he said, “Have I not shown you that I desire you? Have I not shown you that I love you?” And I finally realized that I had to let go of all the lies that I believed I had to choose to trust him. He had earned my trust.

I had to stop looking at him through the lens of my past. We've got to stop looking at God through the ways that people have failed us, because a lot of people have failed us, and we have been hurt.

Dannah: So, let’s review what we just heard from Laura Perry Smalts. 

• Gideon had to trust that God really could use him to deliver Israel from the Midianites. 
• Peter had to learn to live up to the name “Rock” that Jesus had given him.
• Naomi wanted to change her name from “pleasant” to “bitter,” but the author of the book of Ruth—writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit—never referred to her as Mara.
• And Moses felt inadequate, but God helped him overcome that insecurity by giving Moses a better revelation of Himself.

The point is that it’s normal to have conceptions of our identity that are wa-a-ay off from God’s view of us. What we need to do is adjust our thinking, our perspective, to line up with what God says. You know what that takes? Humility. Teachability. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says confronting the lies we believe about ourselves requires some self-examination.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: The Scripture tells us that the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Now, I don't like evil. But one of the things God’s been asking me as I've been preparing for this series is, "Do you really hate evil? Do you have a holy hatred toward anything that is not consistent with God's holiness?"

In Romans chapter 12 the apostle Paul says that we are to "cling to that which is good," but we are to "abhor that which is evil." Our culture doesn't exactly encourage this, does it? When you look at entertainment today and the way we view sin, sin is trivialized. Think about what entertains people today and things that are pure and holy become laughing matters. And by contrast, things that are virtuous and chaste are scorned and scoffed at. But the Scripture says that we are to abhor that which is evil—to have an intense hatred and aversion to everything that is evil.

I'll tell you the place I want to come to in my life and that is that I will dread sinning against God's holiness more than I would dread some terminal illness, some contagious disease or handling a wild, deadly snake. Now that's not something I’d want to do. I don't want to play with that snake. I don't want a terminal illness. But I want to come to the place where I hate the thought of grieving the heart of God more than I hate being destroyed in my earthly body by some wild animal or some deadly disease.

It's interesting in the Scripture that there are several lists of sins. There are some in the New Testament, some are in the Old. I went back to some of those lists in recent days, and something stood out to me. For example in Proverbs chapter 6, there's a list of seven things that God hates—seven abominations. These are things that God hates. In that list are things like hands that shed innocent blood. That's a pretty serious sin—hands that just strangle the life out of an innocent person. And yet, in that same list God puts this sin—a proud look!

Now it’s hard for me to think of a proud look—just a proud attitude . . . You know how we do it. We don't even have to say anything. It’s just a superior attitude or thought about ourselves. God puts that proud look in the category of these other sins that He hates—that are an abomination to Him—sins like shedding innocent blood!

In Matthew chapter 15, Jesus talks about sins of murder and adultery and sexual immorality and theft. And there right in that same list He includes sins that I’m a little more comfortable with than those others—sins like evil thoughts and slander, using my tongue to express things about people that are not true or are not edifying.

Why would He include my sins—those kinds of sins that I’m a little more at ease with along with sins that I don’t think I would be at ease with—things like murder and adultery and sexual immorality and theft—right in the same list?

I find that when I compare my life to other sinners I know, I can think I'm doing okay. But when I get into the presence of God and look into His holiness, my life looks different. God has given us a light to see our lives in His Word. When I open this Book it’s a mirror that exposes; it shows me. It’s a light; it’s a search light, and it penetrates into the darkest corners of my heart and shows me things that I might not otherwise see. 

I was looking back this past weekend into some journal entries from a couple of years ago. I came across one where God was dealing with my heart in some of these very specific issues that He had exposed. At the time, I was reading in Daniel chapter 3.

You remember the story about how Nebuchadnezzar erected this ninety-foot tall image of himself? When the three Hebrew young men refused to bow down to that image, the king was furious. He was enraged, and he threw those Hebrew young men into the fiery furnace.

I remember thinking and writing at the time as God was surfacing some of this stuff—this junk—these attitudes in my own heart. And I wrote in my journal, and it's actually in the margin of my Bible. I made this note. "Oh God, King Nebuchadnezzar lives in me. It's not just proud, arrogant King Nebuchadnezzar. That spirit of anti-Christ, that spirit of wanting to be God, it lives in me."

In that light I found myself crying out to God and saying, "Please have mercy on me." I found out that I was making a god of myself and expecting everyone to fall down and worship that image. When they didn't, I was enraged. "Oh God, King Nebuchadnezzar lives in me."

Dannah: Wow, that’s a great line to remember the next time we might be tempted to think or speak harshly about someone else: “King Nebuchadnezzar lives in me!”

It’s not enough just to become more sensitive to my own sin. What’s the solution? It’s trusting that Jesus, God’s only Son, died on the cross to take the punishment for my sin and to give me His goodness, and then He came back to life conquering sin and death forever. We sometimes call it “the gospel” for short.

Believe in Him, Friend. Trust Him. You’ll never be able to stop sinning by just trying harder. It’s actually a release, a letting go of all the self-effort. Once you give yourself to Jesus, His Spirit starts re-shaping your thinking in all aspects of your life. That could well include your sexuality.

Our main offer this month is the excellent book by Dr. Juli Slattery, Rethinking Sexuality. She helps you set aside wrong thinking about gender and sexuality and view things from God’s perspective, as He presents it to us in the Bible. 

This month, Rethinking Sexuality is our gift to you in appreciation of your donation to Revive Our Hearts. There’s more information at our website. Just go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode. It’s called “Embracing God’s Perspective.” 

So, how many of the podcasts in the Revive Our Hearts family of podcasts can you name? I’ll bet you can name at least one. But next time on Revive Our Hearts Weekend, we’ll hear a little from each of our podcasts. You might actually be surprised, and I know you’ll be blessed. 

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Revive Our Hearts Weekend is calling you to embrace God’s perspective and find freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.