Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, April 24th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. If a woman wants to live a fulfilling life, she needs to understand what God's assignment for her is in every season of her life. Stay tuned.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us. I've said this before, and I think I can get away with saying it because I think it's true. I think one of the reasons that women in the '60s and the '70s got frustrated and said, "We want things to be different" was because men, for a long time, had not been treating women with the dignity and the honor that you've called men to.
Dennis: Right.
Bob: You talked already this week about challenging men at a Promise Keeper's rally to do that, but the problem is that a lot of those women said we want the right to be just as selfish as men have been able to be for a long time. And so the Women's Liberation Movement was really a movement born fundamentally out of selfishness.
I think one of the missteps of the liberation movement was if you just take away all the boundaries, then there will be freedom. But the reality is if you take away boundaries, it just creates anxiety.
Dennis: Yeah, and I think ultimately what women were looking for in the feminist movement was purpose and meaning and ultimately they wanted to be powerful, and we've been talking about that all this week on FamilyLife Today, really discussing how women can be powerful according to God's design, and we've asked Dr. Robert Lewis to come join us, which he has graciously done. Robert, welcome back.
Robert: It's great to be back.
Dennis: And a very powerful woman in my life, Barbara Rainey, my bride of 35 years who, fortunately, did not march to the drumbeat of the culture but has marched to the drumbeat of a different book, the Bible.
Barbara: That's right, that was my goal.
Dennis: That was, and it is still your goal …
Barbara: That's correct.
Dennis: … and I'm a grateful husband because of it. And, Robert, we've talked about how women today are being seduced by this culture to run after power and seek it. You really believe the Scriptures provide a blueprint for women to be able to achieve what God designed them to be, but perhaps taking a different route than what Bob referred to as selfishness.
Robert: Yes.
Dennis: How would you help a woman begin to design the blueprints for her life so she truly is powerful according to God's design?
Robert: Well, that's the whole purpose of the new Eve. It's not to force women into some cookie cutter sameness, especially a Christian woman, and I think in many ways, especially when a man speaks on this subject, there is an immediate fear that that's where you're taking me. It's like you're going to put me in a box, and you're going to keep me from having what you have, or you're going to create me in some kind of biblical sameness where I have to follow this prescribed path that's going to be really onerous to me in the long run.
Dennis: Barbara, is that what women think when they hear a group of men talking about this?
Barbara: Yeah, I think women do feel a sense of fear. I mean, I think it goes back to the Garden, and it goes back to the fall and the fear that we felt initially when Adam and Eve sinned, and we're afraid of each other now instead of trusting one another. So, yeah, I think fear is the common response.
Bob: And the fear is you're going to try to control me, you're going to try to use me, you're not going to value me.
Robert: Well, and they've got plenty of evidence for that, too, Bob.
[laughter]
So not only do they fear it, but they've got proof.
Barbara: The fear is valid.
Robert: This is a true, legitimate fear.
Dennis: And they really want to know that a man has his wife's best interest or if she's a woman and not his wife that they really are looking out for her good, and there really are benefits to this, right, Robert?
Robert: Absolutely, and my stake in the game is not just because I would like to make some small contribution to women. I've got three women in my life that God has charged me with helping them to be all that they should be – my wife and my two daughters, and I feel like part of this journey has been to help clarify my position in regards to them but also give them, in what small way I could, some wisdom to help them better manage their life, and they've had experiences along the way as adult daughters where they have encountered some of these forks in the road where this information has actually helped them.
I think of my oldest daughter, Elizabeth, with a young man who it wasn't a healthy relationship, and she was on the other side of the ocean in England and trying to make a decision about what to do with her life, and some of this very information actually served to help balance her life to make a good choice that has ultimately left to a life of reward rather than a life of regret.
I love the way, when you asked Barbara about choosing the other book, the Bible, you know, I wanted to kind of follow that up and say, "Well, Barbara, have you had any regrets with that?" But I don't need to ask her that because I can look at her face and know that she doesn't. I mean, it hasn't been easy.
Barbara: Right, right.
Dennis: Well, I think it still is fair to ask her, though. Looking back – any regrets?
Barbara: No, my only regret is that I didn't understand all that I understand now then. I mean, it's a growing process, and so a lot of what I know now I wish I had known earlier because I was such a new Christian and knew so little about the Bible when I started out on this marriage and parenting journey, but, no, I don't have any regrets. And I think that's the real risk in the culture today is that women are willing to risk the old patterns, so to speak, the biblical pattern, and try something new, not knowing whether or not it's going to be a good ending.
Robert: See, I've asked my wife that just point blank. I've said, "You know, if you look at your life, look back at the choices you made and what you decided to do, are there regrets?" She'll say immediately, "I have no regrets. There were parts where it was hard and sometimes I had doubts, and sometimes you needed to do better," but having said all that, the overall course she doesn't have any regrets.
And yet I've talked to many women who have chosen the more modern path who have achieved some significant things from the eyes of the world, but yet have significant loss in the midst of that. And I would hope that the listener would hear me speaking from trying to make a contribution to a greater life with greater reward, not trying to put you in some kind of box, some kind of ancient throwback that's going to keep you from life. That's not why I spent over a year working on this at the encouragement of other women. I worked on it to help unleash you the way I hope that it's unleashed my daughters and even in regards to my wife – unleashed her to a happier life.
Bob: Well, it goes back to what I said just a few minute ago, and that is that you look at guardrails or boundaries or counsel and sometimes you can think, well, that feels restrictive, but the reality is when you put boundaries around something, it helps give substance and definition …
Barbara: And safety, it really does.
Bob: And yet a woman can feel like I don't want to be confined. I want to know that there is a gate I can go through in that guardrail if I want to escape this and in some of these cases God Himself is saying, "You've got to keep that gate shut because what's on the other side isn't good for you."
Robert: That's right, and these guardrails are just to provide a channel to lead you to life, and what I can see with women who maybe wouldn't say it the way I've said it in the book but yet have lived out the wisdom of these principles, I consistently see that they have a better life, and that gives me encouragement to want to share those ideas with them because, again, these are not the decisions for your life. These are helps to make good decisions.
Dennis: Well, it's like a coach.
Robert: Exactly.
Dennis: You're coaching and encouraging and wanting people to make the right choice on the journey. Let's take them with a high flyby down the road. You give five bold moves as they are making this journey staying within the stripes, so to speak, using the guardrails to keep them on the right journey. Run by those five bold moves, then let's talk about what the benefit is to women today.
Robert: Okay, those five bold moves are these – first, just the statement "live from the inside out," and we mind that, as we talked in a previous session out of Genesis what those core callings are and understanding those core callings in light of kind of my priorities in life, it should be my dashboard to making all other decisions.
Unfortunately, women oftentimes jump to the fringes of their life where the world is impacting them and let that shape the course of their life rather than those core callings. And so the goal is always live from the inside out, always approach life from the inside out. We discuss that in detail in the book.
Secondly, a second bold move is adopt a biblical definition of womanhood, because you can't become what you can't define. And so what I've tried to do is set forth a definition that women can look at and say, "This is a helpful definition to guide me in my pursuit of biblical womanhood off of which I can look at other things."
Bob: And review that definition with us one more time. We've talked about it but just so we've got it. What is it?
Robert: Okay, we just say a real woman is one who embraces God's core callings, those things from the inside out, who then chooses wisely in light of those things, lives courageously when those things are attacked or you're being tempted away from those things always believing that in doing so you are going to get over a lifetime God's greater reward – a life of reward rather than a life of regret.
But the first thing is to live from the inside out; secondly, to adopt a biblical perspective of womenhood; thirdly, to embrace a big-picture perspective on life. It's kind of going back to Solomon's wisdom in Ecclesiastes "to everything there is a season," and what I tried to do in the book is to break down 10 seasons of life and wisdom moves in each one of those seasons to have a full, rich, and meaningful life but not try to compact, as we do today, everything in the now. Because when we don't see life from a big-picture perspective, we try to do too much too soon, and what happens is that we always undo those things in that season because we can't pack it all in. So something always breaks down, something always gets left out, and for a woman, especially a young woman entering into life in a marriage with children or the workplace, if they try to do too much too soon somebody always gets hurt.
Bob: But, you know, the challenge that we face, as you talk about seasons of life for a woman, the same challenge that guys face, I think, the culture is telling us that the power years are, what, 20 to 40, maybe.
Dennis: Yeah, the childbearing years.
Bob: Everything on the early side of that is just kind of a buildup, and everything on the far side of 40 …
Robert: … is a letdown.
Bob: Yeah, and so you do feel like I've got to cram all I can into 20 to 40.
Robert: And women, in particular, are being seduced that way far more, I believe, than men. And the book, "The New Eve," introduces women to those seasons of life but all of this just simply reminds me of the wisdom of the Scripture in Titus 2 where it says older women are to encourage the younger women and then it says "to be sensible." That's one of the first statements it makes – to be sensible. And what does that mean? It means older women are to be helping the younger women get the big-picture perspective of life not try to cram everything into one season, make mistakes, jump for things that are premature. They are the best ones to inject that, what I call, "sensibility" in a world that oftentimes is living senseless. So that's really the third bold move.
The fourth bold move is one called live with the end in mind and, of course, the Scriptures, in Ephesians 5 tells us to not be foolish in the way we spend our days but to spend them as wise people not unwise people, and what this particular bold move is intended to do is to help people, help young Christian women and middle-aged Christian women, even older Christian women, is to set their sights on – if I were finishing life what would it look like? And that is a very daunting task, but it is so helpful to get to the end. That's why I think Solomon said it's better to go to a funeral than a wedding, because a funeral just naturally draws you to the end and says, "How do I want to finish?"
I think one of the greatest things, and it's not going to happen overnight, but for women to be constantly thinking, "If I were finishing the day what would I want to have been, done, who have I wanted to have helped, to have given – those kinds of things expressed but start becoming like a north star to draw me forward, and that becomes a tremendous guardrail on the choices I make now.
And then, of course, the last thing is probably where women feel the most angst in this convoluted culture and that's just successfully engaging a man, and so part of "The New Eve" is designed to help women use better wisdom with men – that's the guardrail. Use wisdom with a man, don't just foolishly engage a man or foolishly use a man as some women are now beginning to do for their own ends but use that wisdom.
So those are the five bold moves that a new Eve enters into with faith, with bold faith, and they establish those things in discussions with other women, they flesh those bold moves out into the fabric of their own life, and then they live by those guardrails, and what those guardrails actually do is they create a channel for them to move in a direction that, in the long run, will produce a life of reward, of a sense of satisfaction, of, "Man, I'm glad I didn't make that mistake back then," and a life that avoids regret over against so many women who are trying to grab it all, do it all, think they can have it all right now – those women end up on the rocks of life looking across the channel to these new Eves saying, "I wish I'd have listened to what you listened to. I wish I'd have done what you did. I wish I'd have had the wisdom that you employed, and I wish I'd have gathered around me the counselors that you gathered around you to live this life of reward."
Bob: You're talking about living intentionally and strategically and purposefully rather than just randomly, and a lot of people are living randomly today.
Robert: That's exactly – they're living in the now, they have that now perspective, and yet every social survey says the happiest people are people who live intentionally.
Bob: Barbara, it's hard to live strategically and intentionally and with a long-term view when today keeps calling you to whatever the random issue of the day is. You kind of feel like the events are ordering your life rather than you ordering the events of your life.
Barbara: Exactly, and it's really difficult, I think, for women because of all the distractions to keep that center, to keep that sense of direction and purpose and intentionality.
Bob: So how do you do that? If your daughter calls you today and says, "I'm drowning in the randomness of today." How do you point her back to that center?
Barbara: I pull her back to the big picture and remind her what life is all about and encourage her that where she is investing her time is where she needs to be investing her time. For those of my daughters who are married and have children, that's what I would say to them, because you do feel lost in the choices, and I think that's one of the down sides of all the choices we do have in our culture is it complicates life enormously to have so many choices, and I think that's part of the frustration that a lot of women feel.
Robert: And, Bob, if I could add to that, what I would love to, in some small way, empower women with is a language that they could use with each other in the random chaos of life that pulls them back – "Oh, yeah, I need to have the big picture perspective; oh, yeah, I need to live from the inside out; or, oh, yeah, I need to live with the end in mind, which I worked with on this lady, and it doesn't necessarily alleviate all the pressure at the moment or the pain, but it just gives enough perspective to keep walking boldly by faith towards that great reward.
Bob: And if that's going to happen, it's going to mean that women do have to live in community with some commonality to a community, and I think one of the things that helps women veer off course these days is that they are living in isolation apart from other women, apart from the godly influence of mentor women.
Dennis: Yeah, they're not only living in isolation, they are also having confusing signals sent. I mean, you think about some of the shows on television, I mean, I don't know who is watching "The View," but, man, if I was a woman – I caught that the other day in an airport just walking by and listening to some of the interaction there – what we're talking about, that's not being supported by the views that are "The View," I promise you.
Bob: It's a different view, isn't it?
Dennis: It is a different view, and the reason is they are looking at it from a different perspective. It's not the same big picture.
Robert: Well, and that's why I want to continue is, I think one of the great needs for men and women – in this case for women – is to have that guiding center, that guiding center has to have language attached to it, and it's got to have a sense of principle to it, and some kind of understanding that can be reinforced between women that allow them to live this life of wisdom and to be the new Eve rather than what so many women are doing is replaying the story of the old Eve.
Dennis: As you were talking, I couldn't help but think of one of the most famous women in all the Bible, the Proverbs 31 woman, and, you know, she's a little bit of a myth, in a way, but it sounds so perfect here, but it really embodies the benefits that you're talking about by a woman who has lived with these bold moves of faith, who has stepped out and trusted God's blueprints and is not according to the views of their culture, and I was specifically thinking of Proverbs 31:25 – "strength and dignity are her clothing."
I mean, she's growing old but she's no weak.
Robert: She's getting stronger.
Dennis: She's got nobility about her life. And then it says, "And she laughs at the time to come." Another translation reads, "She smiles at the future." Well, that's the exact opposite of fear. There's a picture of hope there. And I know, from experience, having looked at your book here and your own heart over the past 30 years of ministry, you're really wanting to equip women.
Robert: Absolutely.
Dennis: To be able to have hope for the future and not be shrunk down into a small, tiny box.
Robert: And not be finishing up life with a lot of successes around her of material things or of power structures and yet her deepest part of her soul aching for what she didn't do and for what she left out and now she won't go out and say it but deep within she feels this deep sense of regret because she missed her primary callings as a woman.
Dennis: And Proverbs 31 woman …
Robert: Has just the opposite.
Dennis: You don't see any regret in here. You see lots of – well, frankly, lots of satisfaction.
Robert: That's right.
Dennis: Lots of fulfillment, and I know that's what "The New Eve" is all about.
Bob: Yeah, and I know one of the things you're hoping for, Robert, is that women will not simply read this book and embrace it on their own but that they'll get together with other women – in the back of the book there is a DVD that offers some discussion starters. In fact, this would be a great book for an older woman to use as a part of her mentoring of a younger woman.
We've got copies of the book in our FamilyLife Resource Center. You can go to our website at FamilyLife.com to get more information or to order a copy of the book from us online. Our website is FamilyLife.com, and when you get to the home page, on the right side of the screen, you'll see a box that says "Today's Broadcast." If you click that box, it will take you to an area of the site where there is more information about how you can get a copy of Robert's book, about some of the other resources that are available from us here at FamilyLife as well, including Pat Ennis and Lisa Tatlock's book "Becoming a Woman Who Pleases God," and if our listeners are interested in getting a copy of both of these books together, we'll be happy to send along at no additional cost the CD audio of our conversation all this week with Dr. Robert Lewis and with Barbara Rainey.
Again, all the details are on our website at FamilyLife.com, click the box on the right side of the screen that says "Today's Broadcast," and that will take you where you need to go so you can get these resources, or call us at 1-800-FLTODAY, 1-800-358-6329, that's 1-800-F-as-in-family, L-as-in-life, and then the word TODAY, and someone on our team will make the necessary arrangements to have the resources you need sent directly to you.
You know, we are encouraged here this week at FamilyLife. Earlier in the week I mentioned the fact that we have a matching gift opportunity that has been extended to us between now and May 31st. Any donation we receive at FamilyLife is going to be matched on a dollar-for-dollar basis up to a total of $635,000, which is a very generous offer. This has come from some friends of the ministry so that whenever anybody makes a donation now of $25 or $50 or $100, whatever it is, that donation is effectively doubled. We get not only your donation but a matching donation from these friends.
And I mentioned that we are encouraged. We've already heard from folks who have either gone online or who have called us and said we want to help you take advantage of this and make sure that you can get the full matching funds. So they've made a donation already this week for the ministry of FamilyLife, and we've been able to see those funds be doubled, and it's very encouraging, very exciting.
But we still have a long way to go – $635,000 is a lot of money, and if we're going to be able to take full advantage of that matching gift, we need to hear from as many listeners as possible. That's why we want to encourage you. If you can make a donation right now to the ministry of FamilyLife Today, either online or by calling 1-800-FLTODAY, you'll not only be helping us continue this program on this station and other stations all across the country, you'll also be helping us take full advantage of this matching gift opportunity, which expires at the end of May.
So can we encourage you today to go online at FamilyLife.com or to call 1-800-FLTODAY, make a donation of any amount, and let me just say thanks in advance for your partnership with us. We appreciate you listening, we appreciate your financial support, and we appreciate your help in being able to take advantage of this special matching gift opportunity.
Now, tomorrow we want to talk about how a woman who embraces her assignment as God's woman, how she relates to the men in her life, particularly her husband. We'll talk about that tomorrow with our guest, Dr. Robert Lewis and with Barbara Rainey. I hope you can be back with us for that as well.
I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.
FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas – help for today; hope for tomorrow.
