When Hearts Align With Heaven's Design

I'll never forget that moment in my prayer room when everything I thought I knew about God's design for relationships came crashing down around me. I was sitting on my little couch, reading Joanne Krupp's book Woman, God's Plan, Not Man's Tradition, when a revelation hit me like a lightning bolt.

For the first time, I saw clearly that in First Corinthians 11, Paul wasn't endorsing male authority and female submission—he was actually refuting false teachers who promoted these ideas. All this time, we'd been taking Paul's corrections of wrong thinking and treating them as Paul's teachings. We were doing the exact opposite of what Paul wanted.

The Meltdown

When that light bulb went on, I literally threw the book across the room. Not because Joanne was wrong—she was absolutely right. I was furious with God.

I stood up in that prayer room, tears streaming down my face, and let Him have it. "Lord, for millennia, women have been abused, placed in secondary roles, treated like domestic slaves! If this dominance-based hierarchy was never Your design, how could You let it happen? How could You even let it begin?"

My theology of God's sovereignty was crashing into my understanding of His goodness, and something had to give. If He was all-powerful and all-good, how could He allow such widespread oppression? If He allowed it on purpose, then He wasn't good. If He couldn't stop it, then He wasn't God.

I was caught in what felt like an impossible contradiction, and I was angry. Really angry.

"The Hearts of Men Are Now Ready"

In the middle of my emotional storm, I heard the voice of the Lord. Sometimes when God speaks, His words don't just come with information—they come with His presence. Peace settles over you even before you fully understand what He's saying.

"The hearts of men are now ready," He said. "The hearts of men are now ready."

I'll be honest—I didn't immediately understand what He meant. I was still processing my anger about centuries of oppression, and here He was talking about men's hearts being ready. Ready for what?

But with His voice came an overwhelming sense of peace. In that moment, I knew He wasn't asking me to dwell on the past, to rehearse the injustices, or to build a case for why women deserved better treatment. He was calling me to focus on the present and have hope for the future.

A Partnership Invitation

What I began to understand was that God was inviting me into partnership with Him. He wasn't dismissing the pain of the past, but He was saying that now—in this moment in history—hearts were prepared to receive truth they couldn't have received before.

This wasn't about getting even or demanding rights. It wasn't about women finally getting their turn to be in charge. It was about something much more beautiful: the unification of the body of Christ, which means the liberation of women and men together.

Because here's what I was beginning to discover: when women are truly free to be who God created them to be, men are liberated too. It's not a zero-sum game where one person's gain is another's loss. In God's Kingdom, everyone wins when everyone is free.

Understanding His Sovereignty Differently

That word—"the hearts of men are now ready"—became a seed that completely transformed my understanding of how God works in the world. I had believed that because God is sovereign, whatever happens must be His will. But I was starting to see that God's sovereignty doesn't mean He controls everything that happens.

Instead, He works through willing hearts. He partners with people who are ready to receive His truth and live it out. And apparently, after centuries of patriarchal thinking, hearts were finally prepared to embrace the radical equality that Jesus had modeled from the beginning.

This wasn't about God finally deciding to fix things. This was about humanity finally being ready to receive what He'd been offering all along.

The Call to Partnership

Looking back, I can see that moment in my prayer room as the beginning of my calling to this message. God wasn't just comforting me or explaining history—He was inviting me to be part of the solution.

He was saying, "Susan, instead of being angry about what was, partner with Me in what can be. The hearts of men are now ready to understand that true strength isn't found in dominance but in service. They're ready to see that real leadership looks like Jesus washing feet, not demanding to be served."

This message isn't about tearing men down or getting revenge for past wrongs. It's about restoration—helping everyone discover the beauty of relationships built on mutual honor, mutual submission, and mutual love.

A Message of Hope

If you've been wounded by dominance-based hierarchy in your church, your marriage, or your family, I want you to know: the hearts of men are now ready. Not all of them, and not all at once, but something is shifting in our generation.

I've seen it in my own marriage with Gregory, where mutual submission has created a partnership more beautiful than anything I experienced under the old model. I've seen it in churches that are discovering the gifts of women they've overlooked for years. I've seen it in men who are finding freedom from the crushing pressure to always be "in charge."

The Kingdom of God is breaking in, and it's transforming hearts. The question isn't whether God is powerful enough to change things—it's whether we're ready to partner with Him in that change.

And increasingly, the answer is yes. The hearts of men—and women—are now ready.

This is part of my ongoing series about discovering God's heart for relationships built on mutual honor rather than hierarchy. If this resonates with you, I'd love to hear your story. The conversation is just beginning.

Blessings,
Susan 😊