My husband and I have five young adult children. Our “only begotten son” is a husband, father, worship leader, and entrepreneur. He is overflowing with purpose, calling and spiritual gifts. We adore our son and are so proud of his leadership.
However, we also have four daughters, all of whom have been called and spiritually gifted by God. Our daughters are each unique and amazing in their own ways, and each has so much purpose in the Kingdom of God.
That is precisely why I find myself wrestling with what I see when it comes to spiritual gifts. I love the Church, and I believe deeply in the authority of Scripture. Yet, when I look at the differences in how sons and daughters are permitted to serve, I notice a troubling inconsistency. In some contexts, women are restricted from using their voices or exercising certain gifts, not because of a lack of calling, character, or competence, but because of interpretations tied primarily to their gender.
If God creates, calls, and spiritually gifts His daughters, then silencing them in the very places He has gifted them should call for careful consideration. Burying gifts is not biblical faithfulness; it is a failure to steward what He has entrusted.
And that is a waste.
God Has Never Been Confused About Daughters
From the beginning, God created male and female in His image (Genesis 1:27). Shared imago Dei. Shared reflection of Him.
As human history unfolded—often diminishing women’s dignity—God consistently raised them up to speak, to see, to serve, and at times to lead. By the time the Old Testament bridges into the New, women were unmistakably woven into God’s plan—not as background figures, but as named participants in the story of redemption. Before Jesus ever came to this earth to seek and to save the lost, God had already embedded women into His very lineage.
As the Gospels unfold, Jesus’ view of women is unmistakable. He taught them, answered their theological questions, praised their faith and affirmed their obedience. Women were among His first followers. Women served. Women bore witness to what they had seen and heard. Women were at His cross.
Then, after His resurrection, women were the ones He entrusted with the first announcement. “Go tell My brothers,” Jesus told the women (Matthew 28:10), and “Go to my brethren, and say…” He instructed Mary Magdalene (John 20:17). When the men dismissed the women’s testimony as nonsense (Luke 24:11), Heaven did not.
God entrusted women with the first proclamation of the resurrection, and He used their voices to proclaim it.
As a woman, this matters to me a lot.
As a mom of daughters, it matters to me even more.
The Early Church
As the early Church grew and sought to order its life together, certain passages about silence came to carry more interpretive weight than the commissioning passages of the Gospels. Over time, discussions about order in worship sometimes overshadowed the example of Jesus entrusting women with proclamation. One cannot help but notice the tension: Jesus commissions women to speak, and the early Church records them doing so—while later instructions about order in worship are often read as universally restrictive. How these texts are held together has shaped how daughters serve in the Church ever since.
Paul gives strong and sober instructions concerning silence and order in the gathered church (1 Corinthians 14:34–35; 1 Timothy 2:11–12). Those passages cannot be ignored or dismissed. At the same time, in the very same Corinthian letter, Paul acknowledges women praying and prophesying publicly (1 Corinthians 11:5), and elsewhere commends women as co-laborers in ministry (Romans 16).
That should give us all a moment of silent pause. Whatever Paul means by silence, it must be understood in harmony with the full scope of his teaching—not in isolation from it. Especially when Jesus Himself told women to use their voices and when the Word shows women leading in God-honoring ways.
A New Testament Example
Paul’s traveling companion Luke recorded, “We reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven. He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied” (Acts 21:8–9). These daughters weren’t noted for silence or support roles; they were specifically recognized for speaking – using their voices to proclaim the truth of the Lord. But in this passage, there was no rebuke or correction. Just an honest account of four daughters doing ministry alongside their evangelist dad.
Their lives displayed the firstfruits of God’s promises. The prophet Joel wrote, “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” (Joel 2:28), and Peter re-asserts this promise in Acts 2:17a, “‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy.’”
Sons AND daughters. No caveats based on gender.
The Truth is that God gives spiritual gifts to all who follow Him. The Apostle Paul lists these gifts in Romans 12, Ephesians 4 and 1st Corinthians 12, concluding: “All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and He distributes them to each one, just as He determines” (1 Corinthians 12:11).
Notably, in the lists of gifts that the Spirit Himself distributes according to His desires, there is not a column for “male gifts” and “female gifts.” There are simply spiritual gifts and the sovereign God who gives them.
Spiritual gifts are never distributed along gender lines in Scripture, and Christ Himself explicitly told women to go, to speak, to carry His truth to the men who would become the Church’s leaders. Scripture provides examples of women exercising significant spiritual influence and responsibility.
Today, treating silence as a universal requirement for all women in church worship contexts risks diminishing gifts God has given.
And God does not waste His daughters’ voices.
Authority and Gifting Are Not the Same Thing
Now, please don’t get me wrong. Scripture is clear about authority structures. The husband is the head of his wife (Ephesians 5:23). The elders are entrusted with a church’s oversight. These are serious, God-given responsibilities.
However, spiritual gifting is not the same as spiritual authority.
When we confuse the two, we are not preserving biblical order; we are restricting biblical obedience.
I am deeply thankful for godly men, like my own amazing husband, who make space for women to use their gifts. For elders who are secure enough not to feel threatened by a woman using her gift of teaching or prophecy. For brothers in Christ who labor alongside sisters in the work of the Gospel. For women who encourage other women to use their spiritual gifts, even if they differ from their own.
Faithful Women; Faithful God
Women may not be given public platforms as often as men. We may not be recorded in history as frequently. We may not be followed, quoted, or remembered in the same ways as men.
But to be clear, this is not about women becoming famous; it is about godly women being faithful. Faithful to steward the spiritual gifts that the Spirit of God Himself entrusted to them.
That stewardship includes every spiritual gift the Spirit gives, even when those gifts involve publicly using our voices to pray, prophesy, teach, lead and proclaim the Word of God—within the bounds of biblical integrity and accountability.
Why is this so? Because God does not give gifts then tell His daughters to go bury some of them.
Stewardship Matters
I want each woman to confidently say, with Paul: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10 ESV).
I want my daughters, my granddaughter, and every woman of God to grow deep in the Word. To recognize God’s voice. To use the spiritual gifts He places in them. To walk through every door He opens.
And I want them to do this without having their gender put on trial, their voices ignored, or their spiritual gifts nullified when they are deemed too categorically “male.”
The truth is, God wants both His sons and His daughters to Meet with Him and Make Him Known. He wants every one of His people to use their spiritual gifts, talents, voices and lives to “Seek Him Speak Him.” To whomever, wherever, whenever and however He gives opportunity.
Because God does not waste daughters.
And the Church shouldn’t, either.
Be encouraged! ❤️
Tosha
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