The New Eve (8 page)

In Genesis, God set forth three specific directives that, with rare exceptions, apply to every woman's life. We could paraphrase these three feminine core callings as follows:

This is what God had in mind when He made you and all other women in His image. These core callings are to be at the center of your life. Any woman who embraces these core callings and pursues them as top priorities orders and manages her life in a way that is meaningful, satisfying, and, most important, eternally connected. Here a woman submits to her Creator's wishes for her life. And from here, from these roots, He richly blesses her.

It's important to note that these core callings represent only a
part of
your life—a crucial part, to be sure, but only a part. Please hear that. Much more than these callings makes you who you are. The relationship between your core callings and the other elements forming your unique identity can be diagrammed as follows:

Notice as you move outward from the core, you come first to
gifts and abilities.
This is where your life expands beyond the sameness that Genesis says covers all women. Here you encounter those first aspects of identity that make you unique. You may be an artist, an athlete, musical, extroverted, a high-capacity achiever, a leader, administrative, numbers oriented, people oriented, an encourager who relates to people deeply, a helper, or an entrepreneur.

On and on we could go, but the point is this: you are by God's design your own snowflake, etched in a pattern never to be repeated in the whole history of women.

Next comes the level where your
wants and desires
are found. Your autonomy as an individual and your personal choices come into play here and further separate you from that core sameness you share with other women. Here you decide what other things will define and shape your life as a woman, that is, what experiences you want to have, what people you want to be with, what things you want to do, and what dreams you want to pursue.

At this level, it's important to remember that the choices you make around your wants and desires have consequences—good and bad—when it comes to fulfilling God's core callings on your life. For instance, your choices and the pursuits that spring from them may complement these callings; they may create conflict or impose roadblocks in fulfilling them; or they may foster circumstances that keep one or more of these callings from ever happening. Whatever direction your life ultimately takes, much of its unique script is written here by the decisions you make.

The third level is where the
world's values
reside and where cultural forces seek to shape, manipulate, and form your life into certain prescribed patterns. This ring often unleashes godless values wrapped in stylish images, and it does so by relentlessly bombarding you through music, media, academia, and popular opinion to gain your allegiance.

Here you are told what you should look like; what standards you should embrace; how you need to arrange your personal, career, and domestic priorities; and what you should believe about womanhood. Here the world constantly presses to choose for you how you should think and live. Without a conscious effort to combat this pressure, it's amazingly easy to give in to it.

Although the diagram on page 49 can summarize your life, something else is needed to show how you actually live as a woman. Generally speaking, the life-shaping power of a woman's life flows in one of two directions—either from the outside in or from the inside out.

Let's first address outside-in living. Many women live primarily by the dictates of the world's power and influence. Maybe you live this way more than you know or would like to admit. As I said, it's a current that's hard to resist without conscious effort.

When you live from the outside in, the world's values and the cultural conformities that go with them will dominate almost everything about you. This outer ring will squeeze and reshape all the inner rings of your life into its mold. Your wants
and desires, personal choices, what you do with your gifts and abilities, and your beliefs about your core callings all shift onto the tracks set down by the world's priorities. From here you yield to cultural images and measure your life by the themes of your favorite movies; the ideas in the latest best-selling books; the images in magazines; or the opinions of your favorite educator, politician, or social trendsetter. You are driven by your senses—what you see, hear, and feel—not by well-defined spiritual convictions. When you live this way, your core soon bears the twisted influence of the outside world. And when the outside world changes its values, or presents new options and opportunities, you shift again, always working to make your inside fit the outside.

But this doesn't work. Instead, you experience problems and conflict. You may even experience lifelong regret. That's because by living from the outside in, God's core callings for your womanhood have been compromised, dumbed down, or choked out altogether by a new set of worldly outside callings (see Mark 4:18–19). Some Christian women live this way more than they know and wonder why life is so troubled and conflicted.

Outside-in living was never God's design. Romans 12:2 says it straight up: “Do not be conformed to this world.”
Do not!
For you as a Christian woman today, that's a tall order with so much being offered to you by our modern world. Besides, since the day Adam and Eve rebelled against God, humans have gravitated to this kind of living. It has become our nature to believe the world's ways are better than God's ways. Outside-in living is naturally our first choice.

But outside-in living exacts a heavy toll on women. It reshapes and molds life to fit values and attitudes that are not native to the true femininity God has placed within every woman's heart. To go against this divine grain is an invitation to heartache. Our
roots in Genesis shout this warning. Women who forsake their core and choose the forbidden fruit of this world find that in time it leaves them lonely or angry or childless or with angry children or with an angry husband or with no husband or empty or with everything but true happiness. Outside-in living looks delicious on the front end, but it has a deadly back side. Just ask Eve.

There is a better way, and a number of women are living it. It's found in heeding a courageous call to live from the inside out. Nothing is more spiritually fundamental to a woman's life or as powerful.

This is not a call to withdraw from the world. It is an appeal to you as a woman to let God's core callings be your starting point in every area and in every decision of your life. Remember, these callings are divine
commands
, not suggestions. They are meant to shape your world, not be shaped by the world. They are, from a biblical perspective, the sacred nonnegotiables of your life.
They are meant to be your guardrails for living in the modern world. As such, they are constantly in your mind to measure and direct the choices and pursuits of your life and in which direction you need to readjust if necessary. While you will certainly enjoy a wide variety of activities, interests, and opportunities that engage your gifts, abilities, wants, and desires, here's the point: never,
ever
make choices at the expense of being true to your core callings.

Over the years I have had the pleasure of observing many women who have embraced by faith these core callings of Genesis. They have made them their dominant reality and let them successfully guide the seasons of their lives. For example:

• The emergency-room physician who leveraged her considerable professional skills not for more money but for less work. A new mom, she negotiated a three-day work week that provided her a way to invest deeply in her daughter and her patients.
  
• The homemaker who as an empty nester retooled and surprised everyone by becoming an award-winning real estate developer. With a new, more public face, she is now making a Kingdom impact on her community both with her savvy business skills and with her witness for Christ.
  
• The businesswoman who altered her career to better balance her relationship with her husband. Her willingness to help him has made both of their lives better.
  
• The scores of working moms I know who, with their husbands' support, made the difficult choice of stepping away from their jobs to stay home with their children. For many, life from a material standpoint became leaner and more financially challenging. At times the budget shortfalls were downright painful, but these difficulties were
  outweighed by the joy of being a greater part of their children's lives.
  

All of these women chose to live from the inside out. Each, in her own way, is a New Eve.

Then there's the journey of my friend Rebecca Price. As an outgoing, lively new Christian in college, Rebecca expected she would someday have a husband and children. But instead of sitting on the sidelines until that happened, Rebecca rightly decided to follow her gifting and passions and do something to serve God's kingdom. So after college she began a career in Christian publishing. Gifted with a good sense of what it takes for a book to succeed, Rebecca quickly proved her value. Her career expanded, and with it came greater opportunity. “But all during that time I always thought that one day I would get married and have kids,” she said. “Career was never my driving force.”

But as time passed, the opportunity for marriage never materialized. Eventually Rebecca was faced with this question: Do I live freely as a single, or do I live waiting for a man? The answer from the Bible seemed clear: trust God and live freely as you are. Courageously, Rebecca embraced that answer and soon found herself being used in new and exciting ways. Doors for furthering the reach of Christianity through publishing opened on the West Coast, in the United Kingdom, and in Africa. Companies such as NavPress, Word, and Multnomah Publishing called on her expertise. And when Random House, the world's largest English-language trade-book publisher, wanted to develop a Christian imprint called WaterBrook Press, it looked to Rebecca to serve as the vice president of marketing.

Now fifty-five, Rebecca has begun daring new Kingdom adventures with her friend Lisa Bergren, such as their first book,
What Women Want: The Life You Crave and How God Satisfies
.
³
As for marriage and children, those are things God has not brought into her life.

“I think one of the first questions I'll have for God in eternity is, Why did You not choose for me to have kids? I have to admit that I really don't understand why it has turned out that way for me.”

But this doesn't mean Rebecca is living with bitterness or regret. Instead, she has focused her life and her gifts even more intensely on God's core calling of Kingdom building. “It was important to me to be content with what my sovereign God has called me to, and that is what I've done. And I feel blessed to see how God has used me and my singleness to further His purposes.” One thing Rebecca wants single Christian women of every age to hear is this: “Don't take the short view. Women tend to do that and feel despair over not being where they want to be. Be active instead of passively waiting for life to change. By ‘active’ I mean pursue God, pursue love, and pursue excellence. Figure out how God can use you
now.”