The Cry of a Woman’s Heart — Marie Wiens
Some years ago, when I was living in Seattle, I spoke with a friend named Peter Sheenstra, who was the Director of a counseling service in the Seattle area. Curious about his work in this field, I asked him what the most common symptoms of breakdown were in the marriages that he got involved with as a counselor. His reply came quickly and pointedly. He reported that the most common symptom was that the wife, frustrated and unfulfilled in the marriage, would start to nag her husband. She would begin to say things like “If only you would take more spiritual leadership in our home, if only you would pay more attention to me, if only you would help more with the kids, if only you would. . . (fill in the blank), then our marriage would be better.” Please notice that these statements are symptomatic of the breakdown, not the cause of the breakdown. The answer is not merely for the woman to keep quiet; rather, other things must be set in place to prevent the frustration levels from becoming overwhelming. That is the point of this book, and we’ll address some solutions later.
Peter went on to say that invariably the husband would endure the nagging for awhile, and then respond by either silent withdrawal and isolation, or by rising up in anger and wounding the wife, either verbally, physically, or both. In either case, the fractures in the marriage relationship would be exposed, and the couple would eventually come to a crisis point.
I have for the most part enjoyed being a woman, but at the same time I have resented not being a man because of the privileges and honor that seem to go hand in hand with being male. As a business woman it seemed I was always struggling with being heard or being taken seriously. When I won the Women of Enterprise national entrepreneurial award in 1990 I found out that all of the other women who had won experienced the same difficulties. The issue of being a woman with leadership gifts in a man’s world has been an ongoing point of tension in my life. Let me share a simple story that illustrates my point.
My husband Gary and I recently had a day off from our schedule of traveling and teaching, and we decided to take the time to play a round of golf at a nice public course in Kansas City. After finding the best price at lastminutegolfer.com, we found ourselves paired with two businessmen who were partners in a rapidly emerging business based in the area. They were delightful guys, kind and genial, and we had an enjoyable and even hilarious time, even though our quality of golfing left much to be desired. One thing, however, prodded a sensitive spot in my heart—the lack of regard for the presence and well-being of women that is typical of men in our culture. This lack of regard was expressed in a harmless way—the two men simply but repeatedly forgot that I was playing, and when the three guys were finished with their tee shots, these men jumped in their cart and forged ahead, forgetting that I was preparing to hit from the women’s tees. More than half the time Gary had to whistle at them to wait for me to tee off, and they repeatedly apologized for their forgetfulness. Finally Gary remarked that they must not have many women working in their company, and they replied that they did indeed have lots of women employees. I could not help but wonder whether they regarded their female employees as valuable beyond the mere implications for the bottom line.
While the whole experience was certainly not damaging to me, it tweaked an issue in my heart that has been painful to me for some time. That issue is the place that women hold in the cultures of our day, and the negative attitudes in the hearts of men that are expressed in a variety of ways, ranging from simple indifference and disregard to outright rage and murderous hatred. For example, in much of the Church in America, it is rare to find a woman in leadership, or even to have a voice in what God might be saying to the Church. In addition, in the secular culture the plight of women is increasingly horrific. Sex trafficking, the molestation of girls, rape and the physical abuse of women is rampant, and on the rise. Another telling statistic is the rise in the number of single moms raising their children alone because of divorce.
During the summer of 2006 I was in the prayer room at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, crying out to the Lord regarding His women. I was in such a place of pain because the Holy Spirit was highlighting to me the abuse inflicted upon women and female children. I actually asked the Lord if He hated women, if He did not value the female gender as much as He did the male gender. I wondered about all the young girls that are being kidnapped and raped and those that are dying or being beaten at the hands of men, in many cases their own fathers. I wept when I heard the current news report of a father in India who took his six-day-old twin baby girls and buried them alive so that he would not have to pay their dowries when they reached marrying age. He had been upset because he wanted a son, and instead got two daughters. So, he killed them in an unimaginably brutal way.
I also began to ask the Lord why women have such difficulty in the work place and why, apart from a few notable exceptions, they do not have much of a voice in the institutional Church. What are the reasons behind the brokenness that we see? Why are women patronized, marginalized, and brutalized the way they are, and why are men so constantly involved in such negative behavior toward women? The gender war, smoldering for centuries, has exploded into a full-blown firestorm, and I was determined to find the root system of it.
The Lord gave me the most stunning answer to my cry. The root causes behind these problems trace all the way back to the fall of mankind into sin, as recorded in Genesis 3. As we have begun to study and teach the things that you will read in this book, we have been amazed at the amount of understanding and healing that is coming to couples as well as singles.
The issue of the physical abuse of women is not the only thing that bothers me. I am continually dismayed by today’s clothing styles that ignore any limits of modesty. Recently Gary and I were in Seattle teaching at a conference. We were having breakfast in a local restaurant when I noticed a teenaged girl in the booth ahead of us. Her clothing was so revealing that it was embarrassing for me. Later I noticed that many of the girls were dressed in tops that were startling even for my eyes. While watching the news in Seattle we noticed that much attention was being given to the new trend in drive-thru coffee kiosks where female attendants wear sexually provocative clothing. Sales have increased significantly, apparently justifying the decision to dehumanize these girls by making them fantasy objects rather than human beings with any dignity. We’ve also seen that so many young boys wear their pants so low that only their underwear covers them. We continually wonder at the current state of things.
During that same time period we were listening to Dr. James Dobson’s show on radio. His guests were the All-Star baseball player Albert Pujols and his wife Deidre. Deidre was explaining that she travels with her husband most of the time as a protection for both of them. She went on to talk about the sexually explicit emails she receives directed at her husband and the scantily-dressed girls that she sees at the baseball games. Dr. Dobson acknowledged the change that has taken place in women today, adding his observations on how they fight and curse like never before. Although the program served to highlight this very issue in a strong way, no practical solutions were offered to bring correction and resolution to the matter.
It seems to both Gary and me that women young and old are desperate to find a sense of their own identity and destiny, but are feeling an ever-increasing load of despair and heartsickness. The noisy and brazen sounds coming from broken people like Rosie O’Donnell are nothing more than cries from shattered little girls longing for significance and power. It is as if something inside them is saying, “Will someone notice me and think I am great and beautiful?” It seems that, even in the face of a long history of abuse and neglect, women are bent on getting man’s approval one way or the other even if it is destructive to their heart and soul. The purpose of this book is to explore the reasons behind these issues, and to propose some radical ideas that, if taken to heart, will profoundly change the hearts of both men and women, and affect the status of women everywhere. We believe that the truths stated here—if embraced and acted upon—will result in a restoration of what God had in mind when He started the whole thing in the first place.
Our prayer is that you will read this book with a heart that is tuned to the heartbeat of our Father God, and to the mind of the Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. The good news the Bible brings us is that there is a way for us to achieve greatness in our lives. The Lord will not leave us alone in these struggles, but will send His Holy Spirit to show us the right way to grow in self-esteem and authority. What does He have in store for us as His people, and particularly for His women in the days and years to come, as we prepare for His return to the earth? May the Lord bless you as you search for His heart.
The Urgency Of Intimacy With God — Gary Wiens
Many of us as believers in Jesus who have a growing desire to follow Him in a focused way find ourselves stymied by a fundamental issue. It’s an issue that, if unaddressed, will render us ineffective in prayer and frustrated by the circumstances and events of our lives. This issue is the need for deepened intimacy with God as our Father, and with Jesus as our Bridegroom-King, in the place of personal and corporate prayer.
Each of us has our own story of how Jesus laid hold of our lives, and most of those stories involve some sort of rescue process. Like the Biblical Esther, the refugee girl who became the Queen and ultimately the effective intercessor, we were held captive by the power of the enemy until the King summoned us. We were invited into the process of being prepared for His pleasure, and we found that the initial blessings of the King’s house were far superior to the depressing and defeating atmosphere of the refugee camp. We were rescued and brought out of darkness into the light of Jesus’ presence and power. We received healing for our spiritual and emotional wounds, perhaps for our physical bodies, and our hearts were restored to a measure of wholeness just by being in the King’s house.
This is the point at which many of our stories bog down, and we find ourselves in an increasingly stale position. We’ve been redeemed from death, snatched from the enemy’s fire, yet we have not laid hold of the compelling reality of our destiny. We have unrealized hopes, unfulfilled prophecies, and fading dreams, and we are not sure how to get past the spot we’re in. The faith that seemed so alive when we first encountered Jesus is now dormant and barely smoldering, and we live in the constant temptation to pretend that our lives are vibrant when in fact we know they are not.
How do we find help to get out of these spiritual ruts, to escape the spiritual boredom that opens the door for all sorts of wrong stuff? The answer is in the story of Esther, who used the pressure of a difficult circumstance to drive her to her appointed destiny as an intercessor, as a partner with her King in the salvation of her people.
In Esther’s story, she was quite content to live in the Queen’s quarters, and to have occasional access to the King at His bidding. Her needs were met, her circumstances were blessed, and she was infinitely better off than she had been in the refugee camp. However, she did not comprehend that her destiny was to hold a much higher position of authority. God had a design for her life that was far beyond her expectation, that involved a place of authority and influence that she could not imagine. In addition, she had a secret that would prove to be detrimental in her own self-perception. She was Jewish, a fact that had not been made known to the King, but that would play into her role as the intercessor for her people.
The key component to this story is the introduction of pressure in the person of an enemy of God’s people. A man named Haman emerges with great authority in the King’s house. He is an evil man who hates the Jews because of a heritage of war and animosity between his ancestors and the people of God. Haman uses his place of authority to contrive a strategy against the Jews, his goal being to exterminate them. In this story, Haman is a prophetic picture of the anti-Christ, a real man who is emerging at the end of the age, and who will personify evil beyond any character in history. God’s purpose with Haman and His purpose with the anti-Christ is the same: to drive the King’s Bride into her destiny of authority, and to bring judgment on evil in the world.
As Haman publishes his plan to annihilate the Jews, Esther is forced into the center of the drama. It becomes clear that she is the only one who can turn the King’s heart to change the situation in favor of the Jews. Esther’s problem is that she has this secret identity. She herself is Jewish, and that identity condemns her by law. She has a secret that by law and in her mind condemns her, that separates her from the King. She is being required to expose her secret, to test the King’s heart, and to risk everything she is and has in order to appeal to the King. Under any normal circumstance, she would not do this. However, the circumstances are no longer normal. There is a serious threat, a death sentence that will be carried out unless she comes forward and takes the authority she is meant to have. There is an urgency of intimacy that forces her into a place she would not go without the pressure.
This is what is happening to many of us as followers of Jesus. The pressures of life at the end of the age are increasing. It no longer seems possible to approach our lives in a “business as usual” kind of way. Drastic measures are required, and we are being driven into a level of intimacy and authority that none of us ever imagined. There is bad news and good news to this. The bad news is that the pressures are going to continue to increase until we respond and take our place of intimacy that leads to authority in prayer. The good news is that we will indeed respond and step into the identity and destiny God has prepared for us.
But it always boils down to personal choices that must be made in the crucible of daily life. Will I take the time to make intimate friendship with Jesus the top priority of my life? I mean this not merely in a theoretical sense, but in the real day-to-day choices of how I spend my time, energy, and money. Will I turn away from things that separate me from the King? Will I dress myself in righteousness and truth, and trust the King’s heart to love me in a way greater than His law?
Esther made these choices, and the result for her was that the King’s heart was powerfully moved by love to protect her and to rescue her people. Esther stepped into her rightful place of authority, and the enemy was completely defeated in the process. She became glorious in her maturity, a full partner in the King’s act of redemption. We can make these choices as well, and we must make them. There is an urgency to intimacy in our time that goes beyond our own comfort and drives us into our destiny. God is allowing the pressure to grow until we take our place, and He will not relent until we come to the glorious fulfillment that He designed us for.
Press into the Lord. Make your time with Him the first priority of your life. Disclose yourself fully to Him, for you will never know the ecstasy of unconditional love until you let Him know who you really are. Learn to listen to and obey His voice. Speak back to Him the things He shows you in His Word, and order your life around what He says. You will find that your intimacy with Him will increase, your joy will deepen, and your authority in prayer will expand. It is urgent that we do so, and we’ll be glad that we did.
The Persuasive Voice – Gary Wiens
The lifelong journey toward intimacy with Jesus, once we begin to taste His beauty and understand His passion for us, is a journey that is compelling and irresistible. Learning how to pray from a posture of intimacy may be the most important part of that journey. For until we as the Bride of Christ begin to understand His language of love, and begin to respond to Him in the language He prefers, we will be left with a stunted prayer life and unsatisfied hearts.
Why Do We Pray – Gary Wiens
This past weekend we celebrated Memorial Day, 2008 with a barbecue in our yard, to which we invited about forty friends and family members. A number of those who came are involved with us in the beginnings of the International House of Prayer Northwest, which is just beginning to be established in the city of Tacoma, Washington. A group of us was talking together about the emerging prayer movement around the world, and especially the little prayer groups that are popping up all over the greater Seattle area. There is an explosion of interest in night and day prayer, and the reality of that was the focus of our conversation. Read more
