Real women are rare and do not accept the world's messages to them. Powerful is a key message and is displayed in two forms—1) Powerful and Sexy or 2) Powerful, not Sexy.

Culture Promotes Fake Women

REAL women are rare because they listen to God’s Word not the world. Without a doubt, the same is true of REAL men.

Even though research proves the relational design of women – a wonderful, God-given, estrogen-progesterone design, it is downplayed or ignored. You seldom hear about that beautiful, relational design because it does not fit the “acceptable” message that women need to be powerful, equivalent to, or better than men. It is unlikely that most women believe the lies and deception at first, but the constant repetition from media and even Christian organizations often wins. That is especially true as you see the even more harmful sex education agendas taught even to elementary school children.

Those who promote the non-design, powerful woman message often fight against the same thing that GR8 Relationships and numerous other Christians oppose – the abuse of women. Fear of abuse by men is the most prominent strategy promoted to women. In other words, men cannot be trusted so you need to become powerful in order to protect yourself. That claim is therefore applied to all men when that is obviously not true.

There are trustworthy men, and my speculation is that might even be a majority. And, yes, there are many untrustworthy men, so view a man’s actions, not his words, as evidence of his trustworthiness.

Most of Satan’s strategies blatantly oppose anything that looks like God-designed womanhood. Instead, he pushes for women move away from their design and be more like a man in demeanor, attitude, and action. Or he mixes in some of the God-given design of woman but gets them to use their design for power and control. No matter the strategy, if it does not completely match how God designed a woman and how God asks women to act, it will ultimately hurt you.

Overall, there seems to be two strategy categories. One is the “Powerful AND Sexy” strategy, and the other is “Powerful NOT Sexy”. But note, “powerful” is common to both, because a woman must be powerful to protect herself against being taken advantage of by men. Also, remember the primary need of a woman – safety and security. This theme works not only because of your primary need, but also because of the judgment for women that will be discussed in the next chapter.

Powerful AND Sexy Strategy

Powerful and sexy is appealing because it uses the relational design of a woman. But it distorts that design into using the innate attractiveness of a woman and sexuality as a means to control.

Hollywood, as well as computer games, almost exclusively portray the “powerful and sexy” image. Why? Because it is such a contrast, but appealing. Primarily because it is based on but distorts the image of God. Powerful and relational is a very appealing image for both men and women. Unfortunately, too few men or women understand how to use the right proportion of each for any situation. And too many men are developed to be relational (testosterone is considered scary!) and too many women are developed to be powerful (better take care of yourself, because he certainly will not!).

Consider that “powerful and sexy” image. A beautiful, fighting woman as the heroine. It can make an entertaining and fun story, but it will rarely occur in reality. Why? Because women do not have enough testosterone – thank God for that! More testosterone would reduce their marvelous relational abilities and beauty. The “powerful and sexy” strategy is built on being powerful through beauty and sexuality and that is an extremely effective strategy for you when you need to overcome the brute force of testosterone.

But the strategy works against itself. It encourages testosterone to abuse and take advantage of you, since the strategy focuses on beauty and sexuality. At some point, testosterone will likely win a battle if the primary element is power.

Is that really what you want to be? I understand the appeal to be beautiful and sexy, but is beating someone in a physical battle really the desire of your estrogen-progesterone? That does not make sense to me or most women I talk to. And, for me, a powerful woman is still only as attractive as her outward beauty. Beauty is very appealing to testosterone, but a woman focused on power becomes competition to testosterone and it reduces her beauty.

But God’s way, outward beauty combined with inward beauty, not power, is very appealing to men. That is why God asks you to appeal to a man not only with “outward adornment” or physical beauty, but MORE IMPORTANTLY, God asks you to have an inward beauty which is “precious in His sight” (I Peter 3:4). Outward beauty is good, but inward beauty is precious!

The REAL heroine influences others through her God given design, like the Proverbs 31 woman – Godly women living in their design are the real heroines in life!

Powerful NOT Sexy Strategy

Powerful NOT sexy is less appealing to most women, but it is a prominent strategy of many strident feminists. The feminists are largely accurate to state that the use of beauty and sex is demeaning to women because it makes women into objects. The difficulty they face is how to be powerful without using their relational design. Their answer is to downplay the attributes of estrogen-progesterone, their God-given design and lean into assertiveness and control – most often through domination, but control can be achieved through manipulation also.

The judgment or curse imposed by God on women in Genesis 3:16 is the primary reason this strategy works. It is a natural energy source for both strategies, but this one for sure. As you will see in the “Divine Judgments” chapter, the judgment for women fuels the sin nature and encourages you to control (manipulate or dominate), especially a wife to her husband, and also, to her kids.

It can be difficult to see, but the strategy still involves your relational design, because the focus is to make relationships work the way you want. That fits the protection or fear motif again. The strategy tries to compete directly against testosterone or at minimum tries to negate testosterone. If you do it through manipulation, you tend to be deceptive – if through domination, you tend to be demeaning, shaming, and blaming, which is clearly part of the “toxic masculinity” agenda.

Obviously, the strategy is built on being less relational and more powerful in order to protect yourself. So, the strategies hurt, not help, women!

The more the world tries to neutralize or eliminate the God-designed differences between men and women, the more both are hurt. Unfortunately, even the church is participating in the confusion, from gender-neutral Bibles to placing women into leadership positions in the church. The world’s message to women is alerting the Biblical mandates for the church.

It works even better as men continue to operate in their judgment (focused on work and activities) and abdicate the roles God assigned to them in the church and home.

While the world proclaims how wonderful this is, the strategies hurt women; they do not help them. Which is no surprise because the world is controlled by Satan. He is gleeful when he sees the judgment on women having its full impact. He knows when you operate in your judgment; you do not operate in your image of God design. You are designed to nurture and help, not control and dominate.

But the impact on women is actually multiplied because these strategies actually encourage irresponsibility in men.

A prime example is how the feminist movement promotes sexual liberation for women. When promiscuity is promoted for women, it does not help women. It just encourages men to be less responsible in their relationships with women.

Picture this conversation.

• Man: “Did you just say that you want to have a sexual relationship without any long-term commitment?”
• Woman: “That’s right because I’m a liberated woman – hear me roar.”
• Man: “Well, okay, sounds great to me. What’s the catch?”
• Woman: “No catch.”
• Man: “When can we start!”

There is no challenge here for a man to have great values and constructively provide, protect, and preserve, especially women. But it does encourage depravity, submitting to the sin nature and the judgments for both the man and the woman. The end result – women are hurt, used, and must now protect themselves. Their primary need for safety and relationship is left unfulfilled, even if that is what they thought they were achieving.

And for those women who reject those worldly, satanic strategies, there is consistent, even intense, pressure to accept those harmful strategies. Some of the most prominent feminists show no tolerance to stay-at-home moms. Consider the following from

Gloria Steinem: “[Housewives] are dependent creatures who are still children…parasites.”

Simone de Beauvoir: “No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.”

Betty Friedan: “[Housewives] are mindless and thing-hungry…not people. [Housework] is peculiarly suited to the capacities of feeble-minded girls. [It] arrests their development at an infantile level, short of personal identity with an inevitably weak core of self…. [Housewives] are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps. [The] conditions which destroyed the human identity of so many prisoners were not the torture and brutality, but conditions similar to those which destroy the identity of the American housewife.”

Steinem has never been a fan of women who didn’t think like her or buy into her radical feminist political agenda. “Having someone who looks like us but thinks like them (meaning men) is worse than having no one at all.”

RedState: “Fonda, Steinem, Feminists Beclown and Expose Themselves While Putting Out For Obama, the Left Subjugates Women,” by Lori Ziganto, March 12, 2014.

You can either trust the world or God about what is right. Your “who said so” will be evident when people see your actions.