[Edited notes Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge] [Women] long for certain things because He does. Women love feeling wanted and fought for. Women wish to be desired, to be pursued by one who loves her, to be someone's priority. Most of our addictions as women flare up when we feel that we are not loved or sought after. Women want to believe there is something in them that is needed and needed desperately.
Women love adventure with their men. Diving ever more deeply into the heart of God, we were made to be part of a great adventure. And adventure that is shared. We do not want the adventure merely for adventure's sake but for what it requires of us for others.
Our lives were meant to be lived with others. As echoes of the Trinity, we remember something. We are made in the image of a perfect relationship to the core, Father, Son and Sprit. God is relational to his core. He has a heart for romance. He longs to share adventure with us--adventures we cannot accomplish without Him. God has beauty to unveil--a beauty that is captivating and powerfully redemptive. We long to be an irreplaceable part of a shared adventure.
Women don't fear a man's strength if he is a good man. In fact, passivity might make a man "safe," but it has done untold damager to women in the long run. It certainly did to Eve (more on that later).
Men also long for adventure. They also want to offer their strength on behalf of a woman.
The desires of a man's heart and the desires of a woman's' heart were meant to fit beautifully together. A woman in the presence of a good man, a real man, loves being a woman. His strength allows her feminine heart to flourish. His pursuit draws out her beauty. And a man in the presence of a real woman loves being a man. Her beauty arouses him to play the man; it draws out his strength. She inspires him to be a hero.
We know that many of those desired have gone unmet, or been assaulted, or simply so long neglected that most women end up living two lies. On the surface we are busy and efficient. We are getting by. The desires of a woman's' heart and the realities of a woman's life seem an ocean apart. We long for romance and beauty but that is not the life we have.
Paul wrote, man "is the image and glory of God; but the
woman is the glory of man" (1 Cor, 11:7). Not an afterthought. Not a nice
addition like an ornament on a tree. She is God's final touch, his piece de
resistance. She fills a place in the world nothing and no one else can
fill. "It is not good for the man to be alone" (
Women define themselves in terms of their relationships, and the quality they deem relationships to have. I am a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend. Or, I am alone. This is not a weakness in women--it is a glory. A glory that reflects the heart of God.
The vast desire and capacity a woman has for intimate relationships tells us of God's vast desire and capacity for intimate relationships. In fact, this may be the most important thing we will ever learn about God--that He yearns for a relationship with us.
14 Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me,
And my Lord has forgotten me.”
15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child,
And not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Surely they may forget,
Yet I will not forget you.[1]...
says the Lord,
7 Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.[2]
37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem...How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! [3]
What a comfort to know that this universe we live in is relational at its core, that our God is a tenderhearted God who years for relationship with us. If you have any doubt about that, simply look at the message He sent us in Woman.
"God waits to be wanted." ~ A.W. Tozer
God want us to love Him. To seek him with all our hearts. A woman longs to be sought after, too, with the whole heart of her pursuer. God longs to be desired. Just as a woman longs to be desired. This is not some weakness or insecurity on the part of a woman, that deep yearning to be desired. God feels the same way. Mary chose God, and Jesus said that that is what he wanted. "Mary has chosen what is better" (Luke 120:42). She chose Him. God has a passionate, romantic heart.
The Human Mission is to be all and do all God sent us here to do. And notice--the mission to be fruitful and conquer and hold sway is given both the Adam and to Eve. "And God said to them..." Eve is standing right there when God gives the world over to us. She has a vital role to play; she is a partner in this great adventure. All that human beings were intended to do here on earth--all the creativity and exploration, all the battle and rescue and nurture--we were intended to do together. In fact, not only is Eve needed, but she is desperately needed.
When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer denegdo. "It is
not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer denegdo] (
The longing in the heart of a woman is to share life together as a great adventure--that comes straight from the heart of God, who also longs for this.
A man's essence is strength in action. That is what he speaks to the world. He bears the image of God, who is a warrior (e.g. God is called The Lord of Hosts which is a leader of warriors).
On behalf of God, Adam said, "God will come through. God is on the move." That is why a passive man is so disturbing. His passivity defies his very essence. It violates the way he bears God's image. A passive man says, "God will not come through. He is not acting on your behalf."
Little boys want to know, Do I have what it takes? Nearly all a man does is fueled by his search for validation, that longing he carries for an answer to his Question.
Little girls want to know, Am I lovely? Nearly all a woman does in her adult life is fueled by her longing to be delighted in, her longing to be beautiful, to be irreplaceable, to have her Question answered, "Yes!"
Adam didn't ride to Eve's rescue.
Let me ask you a question: Where is Adam, while the
serpent is tempting Eve? He's standing right there: "She also gave some to her
husband, who was with her, and he ate it" (
You can see this play itself out every day. Men, just when we need them to come through for us--check out. They disappear, go silent and passive. "He won't talk to me," is many a woman's' lament. They won't fight for us.
And women? We tend to be grasping, reaching, controlling. We are often enchanted, like Eve, so easily falling prey to the lies of our Enemy. Having forfeited our confidence in God, we believe that in order to have the life we want, we must take matters into our own hands. And we ache with an emptiness nothing seems able to fill.
Man is cursed with futility and failure. Life is hard and failure is his worst fear.
In just the same way, the curse for Eve and all her daughters cannot be limited only to the pain of childbearing, for if that were true then every single woman without children gets to escape the curse. Not so. Woman is cursed with loneliness (relational heartache), with the urge to control (especially her man), and with the dominance of men (which is not how things were meant to be, and we are not saying it is a good thing--it is the fruit of the Fall and a sad fact of history). [I am so indebted to Dan Allender who first pointed out these insights to me.] There is an emptiness in us that we continually try to feed.
When a man goes bad, as every man has in some way gone bad after the Fall, what is most deeply marred is his strength. He either becomes a passive, weak man--strength surrendered--or he becomes a violent, driven man--strength unglued. When a woman falls from grace, what is mostly deeply marred is her tender vulnerability, beauty that invites to life. She becomes a dominating, controlling woman--or a desolate, needy, mousy woman. Or some odd combination of both, depending on her circumstances.
Fallen Eve controls her relationships. She refuses
to be vulnerable. And if she cannot secure her relationships, then she kills
her heart's longing for intimacy so that she will be safe and in control. But
beneath it all, behind it all, is a simple truth: women dominate and control
because they fear their vulnerability. Far from God and far from Eden, it seems
a perfectly reasonable way to live. But consider also this: "Whatever is not
from faith is sin" (
We find ourselves trying to fill the emptiness with our
little indulgences (we call them "bad habits"). Brent Curtis calls them our
"little affairs of the heart." God calls them "broken cisterns" (
When we camp our hearts in self-doubt, condemning thoughts, or even shame because those emotions have been familiar and comfortable, we are faithlessly indulging rather than allowing our deep ache to draw us to God.
Unfortunately, our indulgences make us feel better...for a while. They seem to "work," but really only increase our need to indulge again. This is the nightmare of addiction. But it goes far beyond "drugs." We give our hearts to all sorts of other "lovers" that demand our attention, demand we indulge again. When we taste something that we think is good, our longings cease to ache, for a minute, but later we find ourselves empty once more, needed to be filled again and again.
The ways we find to numb our aches, our longings, and our
pain are not benign. They are malignant. They entangle themselves in our souls
like a cancer and, once attached, become addictions that are both cruel and
relentless. Though we seek them our for a little relief from the sorrows of
life, addictions turn on us and imprison us in chains that separate us from the
heart of God and others as well. It is a lonely prison of our own making, each
chain forged in the fire of our indulgent choice. Yet, "Our lovers have so
intertwined themselves without identity that to give them up feels like personal
death...we wonder if it is possible to live without them" (The Sacred Romance).
Yes, we are, each of us to greater and lesser degrees, still in bondage. But
the good news is that "God has not deserted us into bondage" (
What we need to see is that our controlling and our hiding, all our indulging, actually serves to separate us from our hearts. We lose tough with those longings that make us women. And the substitutes never, ever resolve the deeper issues of our souls.
A woman's greatest fear is abandonment. Down in the depths of our hearts, our Question remains. Unanswered. Or rather, it remains answered in the way it was answered in our youth: Am I lovely? Do you see me? Do you wan to see me? Are you captivated by what you find in me? We live haunted by that Question, yet unaware that it still needs an answer.
When we were young, we know nothing about Eve and what she did and how it affected us all. We do not first bring our heart's Question to God, and too often, before we can, we are given answers in a very painful way. We are wounded into believing horrid things about ourselves. And so every woman comes into the world set up for a terrible heartbreak.
Women learn from their mothers what it means to be a woman, and from their fathers the value that a woman has--the value they have as a woman. How a father relates to his daughter has an enormous affect on her soul.
Debbie's father had an affair with she was young. He was not a violent man. There was nothing abusive about him. In fact, he was kind to her mother, as he was to Debbie and her sister. They shared Sunday dinners, went to church together. Only , he chose another woman. "I guess she wasn't enough to keep him," Debbie said about her mother. Then she paused and said, "I guess we weren't enough to keep him." Affairs and divorces strike at a woman's worst fear--abandonment. They wound, not just the mothers, but the daughters as well. The wound is sometimes hard to identify because the transgression seemed to be against his wife. But what does the girl learn?
Debbie's father had an affair. What made it confusing was that in many ways, he was a good man. The message that settled in her heart as a teenage girl was, "You'd better do more than she did you won't keep your man." After this came a young man who pursued Debbie, and then left for no apparent reason. We've known this beautiful young woman for several years now, and one thing has puzzled us--why is she always working on her life? Why is she always trying to "improve" herself? Debbie is always looking for something to work on. Prayer, exercise, financial responsibility, a new hair color, more discipline. Why is she trying so hard? Doesn't she know how amazing she is? What makes her search so frustrating is that she doesn't' know what is wrong with her. She simply fears that somehow she is not enough.
Many women feel that, by the way. We can't put words to it, but down deep we fear there is something terribly wrong with us. If we were the princess, then our prince would have come. If we were the daughter of a king, he would have fought for us. We can't help but believe that if we were different, if we were better, then we would have been loved as we so longed to be. It must be us.
Laurie's father divorced her mom when she was six. In her heart, she was being divorced too. "They tried to talk about it with us, make it all sound mature and like it's going to be okay. But he was leaving." Her father did come for visits, to take her on outings. But she learned to hide her heart from him. "I learned to cry underwater. When we'd go to the pool, I didn't want him to see my crying." So many girls learned something like this. Hide your vulnerability. Hide your heart. You aren't safe.
My (Stasi's) father was absent much of my youth. He was a man raised to be strong and good. In his era, the primary way a man showed his strength was in providing for his family. But like too many men, my dad worked long hours to provide for us financially and yet withheld the thing we needed most: himself. My father was a traveling salesman. He would be gone for three weeks at a time and then be home for a weekend before leaving again. An alcoholic, he often stopped off at the local bar or a neighbor's house to hoist a few before coming in our door. When he was present physically, he was absent emotionally, preferring the company of the television and a glass of scotch to his family. He did not know me. I guess he didn't want to.
The vows we make as children are very understandable--and very, very damaging. They shut our hearts down. They are essentially a deep-seated agreement with the messages of our wounds. They act as an agreement with the verdict on us. "Fine. If that's how it is, then that how it is. I'll live my life in a the following way..."
Our home was no longer a refuge but became a battleground. Meals together often ended with angry words and hot tears. My father's drinking increased, matched only by my mother's escalating pain and resentment. When they were together, barbs flew through the air like poison darts.
Going out to dinner with my father one night, he had too much to drink and began flirting with the waitress, asking for her phone number. It was all too much for my young, lonely heart. Back home, I went to the medicine cabinet and swallowed all the pills I thought necessary to end my life and my pain. I woke the next morning, grateful that I hadn't died, but keenly aware that my world was no longer safe.
And so, I made a vow. Somewhere in my young heart, without even knowing I was doing it or putting words to it, I vowed to protect myself by never causing pain, never requiring attention. My job in the family was to be invisible, to cause no waves. If I upset things at all, surely this ship would sink. So I began to hide. I hid my needs, my desires, my very heart. I hid my true self.
God longs for us to be, but instead of coming up for grace-filled air and asking God what He thinks of us, shame keeps us pinned down and gasping. We refuse to bring the weight of our lives, who God has made us to be, to bear on others out of a fear of being rejected.
We adopt strategies to protect ourselves from being hurt by those who are supposed to love us. A woman who is living out of a broken, wounded heart is a woman who is living a self-protective life. She may not be aware of it, but it is true. It's our way of trying to "save ourselves."
We'll just arrange for the life we want. We will control our world. But there is an ache deep within, an ache for intimacy and for life.
Wounds don't stop once we are grown up. Some of the most crippling and destructive wounds we receive come much later in our lives. Wounds you have received have come to you for a purpose from one who knows all you are meant to be and fears you.
If you listen to any woman's story, you will hear a theme: the assault on her heart. It might be obvious as in the stories of physical, verbal, or sexual abuse. Our it might be more subtle, the indifference of a world that cares nothing for her but uses her until she is of no more use. Our Question is answered again and again throughout our lives, the message is driven home into our hearts like a stake.
To enter the journey toward the healing of your feminine heart, all it requires is a, Yes. Okay. A simple turning in the heart. Like the Prodigal we walk one day to see that the life we've constructed is no life at all. We let desire speak to us again; we let our feminine hearts have a voice, and what the voice usually says is, This isn't working. My life is a disaster. Jesus--I'm sorry. Forgive me. Please come for me. So begin here, pray like this:
Jesus, I give myself to you. I give my life to you. I surrender me--totally and completely. Forgive all my sins, my hurtful ways. Forgive all my self-protecting and all my chasing after other comforts. Come for me now, dear Lord. Come and be my Savior, my Healer, my Love.
Women pretty much handle brokenness in the same way--we mishandle it. It hurts too much to go there. So we shut the door to that room in our hearts, and we throw away the key. But that does not bring healing. Not at all. It might bring relief--for a while. But never healing. The best thing we can do is to let Jesus come in; open that door and invite him in to find us in those hurting places. He knocks down sorrows. He knocks through painful events--a betrayal, a rejection, a spoken word, a relationship lost. He knocks through many things, waiting for us to give him permission to enter in. Give him permission. Give him access to your broken heart. Ask him to come to these places.
Yes, Jesus, yes. I do invite you in. Come to my heart in these shattered places. Come to me, my Savior. I open this door of my heart. I give you permission to heal my wounds. Come to me here. Come for me here.
Part of the reason women are so tired is because we are
spending so much energy trying to "keep it together." So much energy devoted to
suppressing the pain and keeping a good appearance. "I'm gonna harden my
heart," sang Rindy Ross. "I'm gonna swallow my tears." A terrible, costly way
to live your life. Part of this is driven by fear that the pain will overwhelm
us. That we will be consumed by our sorrow. It's an understandable fear--but
it is not more true than the fear we had of the dark as children. Grief is
good. Grief helps to heal our hearts. Why, Jesus himself was a "Man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief" (
Let the tears come. It is the only kind thing to do for
your woundedness. Allow yourself to feel again. And feel you will--many
things. Anger. That's okay. Anger's not a sin (
Grief is a form of validation; it says the wound mattered. It mattered. You mattered. That's not the way life was supposed to go. Life may have been hard and lonely--nothing close to your dreams.
It might help to remember that those who hurt you were also deeply wounded themselves. They were broken hearts, broken when they were young, and they fell captive to the Enemy. They were in fact pawns in his hands. This doesn't absolve them of the choices they made, the things they did. It just helps us to let them go--to realize that they were shattered souls themselves, used by our true Enemy in his War against the femininity and the family.
We've all tried so hard to find the fulfillment of love in other people, and it never, ever works. Let us give this treasure back to the One who can love us best.
Father, I need your love. Come to the core of my heart. Come and bring your love for me. Help me to know you for who your are. Reveal yourself to me. Reveal your love for me. Tell me what I mean to you. Come, and father me.
Take your heart's Question to Jesus. Ask him to show you your beauty. And then? Let him Romance you.
"How beautiful you are, my darling"
A woman becomes beautiful when she knows she's loved. We've seen this many times--you probably have too. Cut off from love, rejected, no one pursing her, something in a woman wilts like a flower no one waters anymore. She withers into resignation, duty, and shame. The radiance of her countenance goes out, as if a light has been turned off. But this same woman, whom everyone thought was rather plain and unengaging, becomes lovely and inviting when she is pursued. Her heart begins to come alive, come to the surface, and her countenance becomes radiant. We wonder, Where has she been all these years? Why, she really is captivating.
Women long for romance. God longs to bring men and women
into a relationship with Himself. He wants us to move beyond the childlike
"Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." He wants to heal us
through His love to become mature people who actually know Him. He wants
us to experience verses like, "Therefore I am now going to allure her [His
people]; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her" (
The Great Love Story the Scriptures are telling us reveal a Lover who longs for you. The story of your life is also the story of the long and passionate pursuit of your heart by the One who knows you best and loves you most.
God has written the Romance not only on our hearts but all over the world around us. What we need is for Him to open our eyes, to open our ears that we might recognize His voice calling to us, see His hand wooing us in the beauty that quickens our hearts.
God's version of flowers and chocolates and candlelight dinners comes in the form of sunsets and falling stars, moonlight on lakes and cricket symphonies; warm wind, swaying trees, lush gardens, and fierce devotion. This romancing is personal. It will be as if it has been scripted for your heart.
We must open our hearts and keep them open. We must choose to open our hearts again so that we might hear His whispers, receive His kisses.
God wants your obedience, but only when it flows out of a
heart filled with love for Him. "Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is
the one who loves Me." (
Reading George MacDonald several years ago, I came across an astounding thought. You've probably heard that there is in every human heart a place that God alone can fill. (Lord knows we've tried to fill it with everything else, to our utter dismay.) But what the old poet was saying was that there is also in God's heart a place that you alone can fill. "It follows that there is also a chamber in God Himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual." You. You are meant to fill a place in the heart of God no one and nothing else can fill. He longs for you.
You are the one that overwhelms His heart with just "one
glance of your eyes" (
God wants to live this life together with you, to share in your days and decisions, your desires and disappointments. He wants intimacy with you in the midst of the madness and mundane, the meetings and memos, the laundry and lists, the carpools and conversations and project and pain. He wants to pour His love into your heart, and He longs to have you pour yours into His. He wants your deep heart, that center place within that is the truest you--not with who you think you are supposed to be--He wants intimacy with the real you.
Here's how the flow goes in Hosea. First, God says that He will thwart our efforts to find life apart from Him.
Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will
wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers
but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them (
He does this, as we said, in order to wear us out, get us to turn back to Him in thirsty longing. Then he begins to woo us. He often takes us aside from every other source of comfort so that He alone can have our heart's attention.
Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her
into the desert and speak tenderly to her (
And it is here that we begin to experience Him not as the God-way-up-there, not the God-of-Sunday-mornings, but the pursuer of our hearts. Pictured in scripture like two lovers:
"In that day," declares the Lord, "you will call me 'my husband'; you will no longer call me 'my master...'
I will betroth you [Israel] to me forever; I will betroth
you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion."
God is not male or female, of course. God is spirit.
Those who worship Him must worship in Sprit and in truth (
In the spacious love of God, our souls can lie down and rest. This love from Him is not something we must struggle for, earn, or fear to lose. It is bestowed. He has bestowed it upon us. He has chosen us. And nothing can separate us from His love. Not even we, ourselves. All men are made for such a love. Our hearts yearn to be loved intimately, personally, and yes, romantically by the Lover of our soul. We are created to be the object of desire and affection of One who is totally and completely in love with us.
And we are.
An intimate relationship with Jesus is not only for others. It is for each and every one of us. God wants intimacy with you. In order to have it, you, too, must offer it to Him.
The one thing that is needed is a captivated, adoring heart, a heart that responds to the extravagant love of God with worship.
Mary recognized who Jesus was--the source of all Life. Love Incarnate. She did what you and I hope we, too, would have done. She dropped everything and sat at His feet, fixing the gaze of her eyes and the gaze of her heart upon Him.
Jesus says the first and greatest commandment is "Love the
Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all you mind" (
Women hold a special place in the heart of God. A woman's
worship brings Jesus immense pleasure and a deep ministry. You can minister to
the heart of God. You impact Him. You matter. Jesus desires you to pour out
your love on Him in extravagant worship that ministers to His heart (
To pursue intimacy with Christ, you will have to fight for it. You'll need to fight busyness (Martha's addiction). You'll need to fight accusations. You need to fight the Thief that would steal your Lover's gifts to you outright. That's okay. There is a fierceness in women that was given to us for a purpose. Getting time with the One who loves you is worth whatever it costs.
To experience the strength of a man is to have him speak on our behalf. For when men abuse with words, we are pierced. Their strength has wounded us. When they are silent, we are starved. They have offered no strength; they have abandoned us. But when they speak with us, hear us, offer their words to us and on our behalf, something in our hearts is able to rest. "How are you?" is one of the simplest and most loving questions John ever asks me.
We long for the protection masculine strength offers. To have them shield us from physical harm, yes. But also to have them shield us from emotional harm and spiritual attack.
The strength of a man is first a soulish strength--a strength of heart. And yes, as he lives it out, owns it, inhabits his strength, he does become more handsome. More attractive. It is the fruit of an inner reality.
The beauty of a woman is first a soulish beauty. And yes as we live it out, own it, inhabit our beauty, we do become more lovely.
You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride;
you have stolen my heart
with one glance of your eyes,
with one jewel of your necklace...
You are a garden fountain,
a well of flowing water
streaming down from Lebanon. (
Beauty is what the world longs to experience from a woman. We know that. Somewhere down deep, we know it to be true. Most of our shame comes from knowing and feeling that we have failed here. So listen to this: beauty is an essence that dwells in every woman. It was given to her by God.
Women are creatures of great mystery; not problems to be solved but mysteries to be enjoyed. And that, too, is part of her glory.
Women want to impact their world for good. As co-rulers with Adam, we are created to do so, and one of the key ways we influence our world is in making it a more beautiful place to live. We decorate our homes. We put flowers on the table. Pioneer women brought china teacups into the wilderness. Beauty is an essence every woman carries from the moment of her creation. The only things standing in the way of our beauty are our doubts and fears, and the hiding and striving we fall to as a result.
3 Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel—4 rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.[4]
To have a gentle and quiet spirit is to have a heart of faith, a heart that trusts in God, a spirit that has been quieted by His love and filled with His peace. Not a heart that is striving and restless. She knows in her quiet center where God dwells that He finds her beautiful, has deemed her worthy, and in Him, she is enough.
"He will quiet you with His love (
This is why we must keep asking. Ask Jesus to show you your beauty. Ask Him what he thinks of you as a woman. His words to us let us rest and unveil our beauty.
Beauty beckons us. Beauty invites us. Come, explore,
immerse yourself. God--Beauty Himself--invites us to know Him. "Taste and see
that the Lord is good" (
Proverbs speaks about two different women, two archetypes. One is Lady Folly; the other, Lady Wisdom. Both are lovely. Both set their tables with fine food and aged wine and dress in fine linens. Both call to the passerby to come in, taste, eat, linger. Lady Folly's door is the mouth of an open grave. Lady Wisdom's home is the passageway to discernment, holiness, and Life.
In the presence of a woman at rest you are free to be you. It is one of life's greatest gifts. She offers her beauty by asking good questions and by bringing something of her times with God--an insight, a glimpse into His heart--to bear. She entices others to the heart of God.
You see, ultimately, a woman invites us to know God. To experience through her that God is merciful. That He is tender and kind. That God longs for us--to be known by us and to know us. She invites us to experience that God is good, deep, lovely, alluring. Captivating.
We know many of you are feeling, But I'm not there. I'm
not that kind of woman. Here is where we "work out" our salvation as God
works in us (
Men need mercy, a kind word, a smile. Grace at the end of the day. Women must express their need and invite men's strength, their presence. To offer your heart is to offer your desire. Beauty offers desire.
The scariest thing for a man is to offer his strength in situations where he doesn't know if it will make any difference. Or worse, that he will fail. Remember, a man's deepest Question is, Do I have what it takes? Failure says, No. And that is why most men avoid any situation where they might fail. They fear exposure. They fear it will be discovered that they are not a man.
A man's basic sin is his choice to offer strength only in those situations where he knows things will go well. And so repentance for a man is entering into the very situations that he fears and offering his strength anyway.
If he fears intimacy, then offering strength means offering intimacy. If he fears failing in his career, offering his strength means taking a promotion or accepting a new and risky project. If he fears standing up for his children against an angry school principal, then standing up for them is what he must do. If he fears committing to the woman he's been dating for five years, then offering strength is buying her a ring. If he fears initiating sex with his wife, then offering strength means initiation sexual intimacy.
In the same way, the scariest things for women is to offer our beauty into situations where we don't know if it will make any difference. Or worse, that we will be rejected. For our Question is, Am I lovely? And to be rejected is to hear a resounding, No. A woman doesn't want to offer her beauty unless she is guaranteed that it will be well received. But life offers no such guarantees. We, too, must take risks.
Peter talks abut a quiet heart, he gives us what might be the secret to releasing a woman's heart and her beauty:
Do not give way to fear. (
Isn't that why we hide, why we strive, why we control, why we do anything but offer beauty? We are afraid. We have given way to fear.
That is why God says to us, "In repentance and rest is your
salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength" (
Women who are stunningly beautiful are women who have had
their hearts enlarged by suffering. By saying yes when the world says no. By
paying the high price of loving truly and honestly without demanding that they
be loved in return. And by refusing to numb their pain in the myriad of ways
available. They have come to know that when everyone and everything has left
them, God is there. They have learned, along with David, that those who go
through the desolate valley will find it a place of springs (
Contrary to what the world claims, Beauty does not diminish
with time; Beauty deepens and increases. Our latter glory will be greater than
our former (
They looked to Him and were radiant. (
We have all heard it said that a woman is most beautiful when she is in love. It's true. You've seen it yourself. When a woman knows that she is loved and loved deeply, she glows from the inside. This radiance stems from a heart that has had its deepest questions answered. Am I lovely? Am I worth fighting for? Have I been and will I continue to be romanced? When these questions are answered yes, a restful, quiet spirit settles in a woman's heart. We are romanced. We are loved. When we are at rest in that knowledge, we can offer our hearts to others and invite them to Life. Unveiling our beauty really just means unveiling our feminine hearts.
It is our greatest expression of faith, because we are going to have to trust Jesus--really trust Him. We'll have to trust Him that we have a beauty, that what He has said of us is true. And we'll have to trust Him with how it goes when we offer it, because that is out of our control. We'll have to trust Him when it hurts, and we'll have to trust Him when we are finally seen and enjoyed. That's why unveiling our beauty is how we live by faith. Our focus shift from self-protection to the hearts of others. We offer Beauty so that their hearts might come alive, be healed, know God. That is love.
True femininity arouses true masculinity. A man searches for validation. It is the driving force of his life. In Wild at Heart I warned men that the greatest obstacle to loving a woman was this: too many men take their Question to Eve. They look to her for the validation of their souls. It happens usually around adolescence, this fatal shift. The father has been silent or violent; his chance to redeem his son is nearly gone. The next window that opens in a boy's journey is his sexuality. Suddenly, he is aware of Eve. She looks like life itself to him. She looks like the answer to his Question.
It's a fatal shift. so much of the pornography addiction for men comes from this. It's not about sex--it's about validation. She makes him feel like a man. She offers him her beauty, and it makes him feel strong. This is also the root of most affairs. Some woman comes along and offers to answer his Question. His wife has been giving him an F, and she comes along and says, "You're an A to me," and he's history. If he hasn't found that deep validation he needs from God, he's a sitting duck.
I've tried in every way to help men understand that no woman can tell you who you are as a man. Masculinity is bestowed by masculinity. It cannot come from any other source. Yes--a woman can offer a man so much. She can be his ezer, his companion, his inspiration. But she cannot be the validation of his soul. As men, we have to take our Question to God, to our Father in heaven. Only he knows who we truly are. Only He can pronounce the verdict on us. A man goes to Eve to offer his strength. He does not go to her to get it. Only God can tell you who you are. Our core validation, our primary validation has to come from God. And until it does, until we look to Him for the healing of our souls, our relationships are really hurt by looking to each other for something only God can give.
Femininity is what arouses his masculinity. His strength is what makes a woman yearn to be beautiful. It's that simple, that beautiful, that mysterious, and incredibly profound.
There are all sorts of opportunities for her to be feminine and for him to be masculine. Truth be told, it will be unavoidable. As a man comes alive, the women in his world will experience and enjoy his strength, the power of his masculine presence. As a woman comes alive, the men in her would will experience and enjoy her beauty, the richness of her feminine presence. Yes--this exchange of strength and beauty will be a test of character. Should something awakened in us by another man or woman outside the relationship, we do have a choice in that moment. We choose to accept the awakening as an invitation to go find that with our man or our woman. Or to pray, if we are single, that this sort of man or woman will come to us from God's hand. We have to face this kind of test as we relation to members of the opposite sex. God needs to see you pass the test.
15 Drink water from your own cistern,
And running water from your own well..
Rejoice with the wife of your youth.
19 As a loving deer and a graceful doe,
Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;
And always be enraptured with her love.
20 For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman,
And be embraced in the arms of a seductress?
21 For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord,
And He ponders all his paths.
22 His own iniquities entrap the wicked man,
And he is caught in the cords of his sin.
23 He shall die for lack of instruction,
And in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.[5]
Be faithful.
Be not like a horse or a mule,
without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not
stay near you.
Honest communication in love is the only way to live and grow in friendship in your marriage. There are ebbs and flows. There may be real hurts and disappointments. In fact, it's inevitable in our broken word. But with the grace of God firmly holing us, reminding us that He is the source of our true happiness, it is possible to nurture and sustain deep friendship in marriage throughout our lives. We must be open with one another.
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it careful round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable...The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all dangers...of love is Hell. (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves)
You will disappoint others and they will disappoint you. That comes with the territory of being human. But it is not the truest thing.
Eve possesses a bottomless well of longing. Jesus alone,
our Truest Friend (
Women long to be fought for; loved enough to be courageously protected. But there is a mighty strength and fierceness set in the hearts of women by God.
Women are called to join in the Greatest Battle of all time--the battle being waged for the hearts of those around us. The human heart is the battlefield. The war is a deadly one; the results devastating or glorious, but always eternal. We are needed. There is much to be done. The hour is late.
A foul spirit of depression had its bloody claws in my life. It often works like that--the Enemy knows our weaknesses, and he preys upon them. Demons smell human brokenness like sharks smell blood in the water, and they move in to take advantage of the weakened soul. Paul warned about this in Ephesians when, writing to Christians, he warns us to "give the devil a foothold" in our lives through unhealed and mishandled emotions (4:26-27). God had me begin to stand against it.
We feel frustrated and irritated and ashamed that we feel that way. Our hearts often land in shame and isolation, or we go to resentment...and isolation. Our tendency is to withdraw in shame or anger.
Now, who do you supposed would have a vested interest in
ruining your relationships? This is exactly what Paul warned the Corinthians
about when he said, "For we are not unaware of his schemes" (
On night, after an unusually uncomfortable dinner, John wanted to know how he was failing me. He often felt, he said, that I was disappointed in him, that he couldn't do anything right, that I disapproved of how he lived and who he was.
What?!
This was unbelievable to me. I felt nothing of the sort toward him. I wanted to be more like him. I told him that I didn't feel that way toward him, but I certainly felt that from him--felt that I was a deep disappointment to him. He told me that was utterly untrue. He felt nothing of the sort. It was then that John and I realized we were not along in the room. We were being attacked by a spirit of accusation that had effectively worked between us for ten years, operating to isolate us from one another and ultimately destroy our marriage.
We got mad. Together, we took a stand against it and
commanded it to leave. This can feel a little weird at first, talking to the
air and saying stuff like, "I bring the cross of Christ against you. In Jesus'
name I command you to leave." Sometimes you have to be firm and pray several
times. As Peter said, "firm in the faith" (
What a relief. What a breakthrough for us. To be able to look into my husband's eyes now and not have mine clouded over by false accusation allowed me to see his love for me as true and real and deep. We could now believe that we liked each other, were for each other and that the truest thing in our marriage was commitment and love.
It changed everything.
God desires women to rise up in strength. Christianity is not a passive relation. It is an invasion of a Kingdom. God allows spiritual warfare and uses it in our lives for our good. It is how we learn to grow in exercising our God-given spiritual authority as women.
Women are not meant to be helpless creatures. God has given us a fierceness that is holy and is to be used on behalf of others. Women long to play an integral part of the adventure.
May this day be an offerings of love poured out before You on the alter of my life.
Eve is God's relational specialist given to the world to keep relationship a priority. Men have a way of letting these things slip. They'll go month without checking in on the health of their relationships. Years, even. And the World simply uses people, then spits them out when the are worn out and no longer "on the top of their game." Our Enemy despises relationship, hates love in any form, fears its redemptive power. This is why God sent Eve. Women are needed to protect relationships, bring them back to center state where they belong. You might at times feel like the only one who cares. But as women we must hand on to this--that because of the Trinity, relationship is the most important thing in the universe. Let us not give way or yield our intuitive sense of the importance of relationship for anything.
There are many things that God calls us to do, but loving well always comes first. And don't your godly relationships feel opposed? Of course. They must be fought for.
It follows that God would want to ensure that a woman
helping to advance his Kingdom would be offered the covering and protection of
good men. Christ has made man as his warrior, to offer his strength on behalf
of Eve so that she might flourish. Peter encouraged women to offer love to
others (
Jesus poured out his life as an offering for ours.
Pleasing and holy and acceptable. Jesus does this, he says, as "an example that
you should do as I have done for you" (
We need you. We need you to awaken to God more fully and to awaken to the desires of the heart that he placed within you so that you will come alive to Him and to the role that is yours to play. He will lead you in the world. He loves and needs you to love. Your heart's journey is the central mission of your life; everything else depends on your success here.
Men need women. Men will not receive the healing and the transformation God desires to give them without the presence of women in their lives offering their wisdom, strength, grace, and mercy. Not only from their wives but also from their sisters, daughters, friends, and co-laborers in Christ. Godly femininity is magnificent and beautiful and necessary.
Women need men. We will always need them. We need them as a godly covering over us to protect us from other men, from the world, and especially from the enemy. Mary had Joseph. Esther had Mordecai. Ruth had Boaz. We will not become the women God intends us to be without the guidance, counsel, wisdom, strength, and love of good men in our lives. Men are fabulous. Hooray for men. Godly masculinity is a glorious and magnificent thing. No man bashing going on here.
We need each other. Remember, God have the great
mandate to "rule and subdue" the earth to both mean an women together.
The Kingdom of God is advancing "and the gates of Hell will not overcome it" (
Choose to serve one another in love" (
[1]
The New King James Version. (1982). (
[2]
The New King James Version. (1982). (
[3]
The New King James Version. (1982). (
[4]
The New King James Version. (1982). (
[5]
The New King James Version. (1982). (