Renee describes her conversion as Christ “faithfully seeking her” when she “wasn’t looking for Him”; how does that framing of God’s pursuit shape the way she later interprets God’s persistence in pressing “uncomfortable” commands like head covering?

**Direct Answer** Renee’s conversion story makes her see God as the initiator who patiently pursues, so later “uncomfortable” commands feel like the same faithful God slowly, graciously leading her into deeper obedience rather than forcing her. **Support from Transcript:** • She was “raised without any religion or faith,” “wasn’t seeking,” yet Christ “came to her unexpectedly…faithfully seeking her.” • She says she met the Lord in a “powerful way” and “couldn’t deny His existence,” then “gave my entire life to the Lord.” • When head covering first came up, she “brushed it off and ignored that scripture,” showing her resistance, not God’s absence. • She later emphasizes God’s method: “slowly and graciously moved me…a very slow one,” with “a book here and a word there and a prayer answered.” • She is “so glad nobody was there forcing it,” framing change as God’s patient pursuit rather than pressure. **Discussion Follow-ups** How does viewing God as patient and persistent affect the way you respond when Scripture confronts your preferences? What’s the difference between God’s “slow leading” and procrastinating obedience?

Renee says her church warned her that the woman who embraced head covering was “really strange” and advised separation; what does that reveal about how modern churches define “acceptable” obedience, and how might early Christians have responded to believers who took Paul’s practices literally?

**Direct Answer** The transcript suggests Renee’s church treated literal obedience to a neglected text as “strange,” implying that “acceptable” obedience is often defined by group comfort, not by Scripture’s plain meaning; she also argues early church voices treated veiling as normal, not fringe. **Support from Transcript:** • She says the woman “left the church because she followed those truths,” including “modesty and head covering.” • Renee reports: “Our church actually advised us to stay away, that that’s a real strange thing she’s after.” • That advice functioned as a boundary marker: it kept Renee aligned with the community’s norms rather than reexamining 1 Corinthians 11. • Renee later argues the practice was historically widespread: “Up until 150 years ago, this was a no-brainer.” • She cites early/older authorities approving it (e.g., “Tertullian,” “Clement,” “Augustine”) and mentions Linus teaching “by direction of the blessed Peter…a woman must veil her head to come into the church.” **Discussion Follow-ups** How do we tell the difference between true biblical “strangeness” and mere cultural discomfort? When a believer obeys a neglected command, do we evaluate the frui

In arguing against “this is just for Corinth,” Renee leans heavily on 1 Corinthians 1:2 (“all that in every place call upon the name…”) and Paul’s claims to teach “everywhere in every church” and “ordain…in all churches”; what would change in your Bible reading if you refused to use “original audience” as a way to quietly neutralize instructions you dislike?

**Direct Answer** Based on Renee’s reasoning, refusing to “neutralize” commands by limiting them to the original audience would push you to read apostolic instructions as broadly binding unless the text itself clearly restricts them. **Support from Transcript:** • She reports her pastor said, “That portion of scripture, that’s just for the Corinthian church,” tied to local problems. • Her counter begins with 1 Corinthians 1:2, where Paul addresses Corinth “and with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ.” • She notes Paul claims his teaching is for all churches: 1 Corinthians 4:17, “as I teach everywhere in every church,” and 7:17, “so ordain I in all churches.” • She raises a consistency challenge: many NT letters are addressed to specific people/churches; if “specific audience” cancels commands, then we start to “cherry-pick out of the Bible.” • She also appeals to 1 Corinthians 11:16 as widening the scope: “neither the churches of God…we don’t argue this custom.” **Discussion Follow-ups** What guidelines should govern when we apply “original audience” and when we don’t? Are there commands you instinctively try to localize because they threaten your comfort

Renee challenges the “Bible times” dismissal by appealing to God’s word that “shall stand forever” and by noting Paul grounds the practice in headship order, creation order, and nature; which of those three foundations feels most confrontational to modern assumptions about identity and equality, and why?

**Direct Answer** The transcript most strongly frames “headship order” as confrontational because it directly asserts a hierarchy (God–Christ–man–woman) and demands visible acknowledgment of submission—something Renee says clashed with her feminist assumptions. **Support from Transcript:** • She rejects “Bible times” by quoting Isaiah 40:8, “the word of God shall stand forever,” and 1 Peter 1, “Word of the Lord endureth forever.” • She says Paul grounds the passage in “three universal orders” that “transcend time, culture, and place.” • First is “the governmental order of headship…God, then Christ, then man, then woman,” which she calls established “forever.” • Second is “the creation order” (man created first; woman created of man), which she treats as universal. • Third is “the natural order,” pointing to sex distinction through hair patterns across cultures. • She personally identifies headship as her hardest fight: “Being from my feminist background…this was one of the big fights for me.” **Discussion Follow-ups** Which foundation do you find easiest to dismiss as “cultural,” and why? How does modern talk of equality collide with Renee’s claim that hierarchy can exist without

Renee argues it would have been counterproductive for Paul to spend time teaching Greek men to be uncovered (since Greeks already were) unless something bigger than local culture was happening; how persuasive do you find that reasoning, and what alternative explanation would you offer that still takes Paul’s details seriously?

**Direct Answer** Renee’s reasoning is meant to show Paul is not merely addressing a local Greek custom, because his instructions deliberately cut across both Greek and Jewish expectations; the transcript doesn’t develop a full alternative explanation beyond her “universal order” argument. **Support from Transcript:** • She states, “no Greeks covered their heads before conversion…Male Greeks didn’t…female Greeks didn’t,” so teaching Greek men to be uncovered wouldn’t fix a Greek cultural problem. • She argues the Jewish situation was opposite: Jewish men “would have…been taught that they need to uncover,” a “huge cultural transition,” while Jewish women “would have always been veiled.” • She frames Paul’s teaching as addressing both groups: Greeks would struggle with women covering; Jews would struggle with men uncovering. • This supports her claim it “crossed everybody” and wasn’t “just one group.” • She repeatedly concludes: “This isn’t culture…time…age,” because Paul appeals to headship, creation, and nature. **Discussion Follow-ups** If you disagreed with Renee’s conclusion, what reading of Paul could still explain why he carefully addresses both male and female practice? How

Renee says she fought hardest against the headship order because of her feminist upbringing, and she compares biblical hierarchy to workplace hierarchy (CEO/accountant) as “not inferior/superior” but roles for “stability” and “order”; where does that analogy clarify things for you, and where does it feel inadequate or even dangerous?

**Direct Answer** Her analogy clarifies that hierarchy can function as role-based order rather than personal worth, but it may feel limited because family and spiritual headship involve relational, moral, and covenant dimensions that a workplace chart doesn’t fully capture (the transcript doesn’t address those risks directly). **Support from Transcript:** • She identifies her resistance: “Being from my feminist background…to be told to be in submission was already hard.” • She says God taught her headship is “for stability…order…to make things flow,” and “not inferior and superior.” • She uses everyday structures: “in a government, in a workplace, in a school, we have that hierarchy…this is what makes it work.” • Personal example: “I worked in an accounting office…an accountant here…a CEO up here,” with different tasks, not different humanity. • She applies it to home: “That’s how it works in the home…you all are in your spots, and it makes the house just click.” • She contrasts disorder with examples like “children ruling the parents” and “women trying to rule over their husbands,” calling them “out of order.” **Discussion Follow-ups** What does the CEO/accountant analogy help y

Renee’s word study on “dishonor” (citing a Strong’s definition “to curse vehemently”) jolted her into reading 1 Corinthians 11 as spiritually weighty—“cursing vehemently my husband” and, by extension, Christ; what do you think is at stake in Paul’s language of honor/shame, and how should Christians handle strong lexical claims without using them as emotional leverage?

**Direct Answer** Renee treats Paul’s honor/shame language as spiritually serious because it connects visible practice to how one relates to one’s “head” (husband, and ultimately Christ); she models handling strong lexical claims by checking definitions and then letting the weight of the text correct her casual attitude. **Support from Transcript:** • She admits she minimized the term: dishonor sounded like a “little sass-off word,” not something major. • She consults Strong’s and says the verb means “to curse vehemently,” then rereads the verse: uncovered praying means “curses vehemently her head.” • She notes the parallel for men: a man praying covered would be “cursing vehemently Christ,” which made the issue feel symmetrical and grave. • She applies it morally: “Do I want to be the kind of person that walks around and curses vehemently people? And especially my…husband?” • She ties the chain of headship together: dishonoring her husband implicates “ultimately…Christ who’s above him.” • She urges listeners to verify: “Somebody else can look it up, read it for yourself…Look in your concordance.” **Discussion Follow-ups** What does Renee’s approach teach about not staying at sur

S2S Sisters: "God’s Design for Headcovering: My Search for Answers" by Renee Miles

10,325 views • Jul 15, 2024

Description

July 6, 2024
Strength to Strength Sisters welcomed Renee Miles to discuss how God’s instruction for sisters’ headcovering compliments His design for womanhood.

There is an agreement among Christians that the verses in 1 Corinthians 11 are talking about a head covering, but this is where the agreement ends. Beyond that there is much debate and differences of opinion:

Is it a practice for today?
Is it an actual item to wear?
Do we wear it all the time?
What should a head covering look like?
The journey to discovering solid answers to the many questions and arguments in this area was a long one but worth the effort. Renee will share the experience of what she and her husband learned that led to their conviction.

An interactive question-and-answer period follows.

Resource: More-detailed testimony by Renee Mills, 2023 (audio MP3). https://strengthtostrength.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Renee-Miles-testimony-about-headcovering.mp3

https://strengthtostrength.org/gods-design-for-headcovering-my-search-for-answers/

🎧 Audio Player with Transcript

🎧 S2S Sisters: "God’s Design for Headcovering: My Search for Answers" by Renee Miles

Our prayer is that you will be filled with the knowledge of His will, strengthened with all might according to His glorious power. Hello everyone, welcome to Straight the Straight Sisters. Our vision is to encourage women to be catalysts in advancing the kingdom through biblical teaching, testimonies of faithful women, and thought-provoking discussions.

I'm excited to announce our speaker today. Her name is Renee Miles, and she's going to be talking about the head covering. Just a few announcements first. There will be a question and answer period at the end of the talk, so think of questions or comments that you may have and jot them down as the talk is going on.

You can also submit questions to the chat box if you want, but we do love to see people's faces, so if you do ask a question, we just ask that you turn on your video so that we can see your face. This talk is recorded, but you will only be seen if you do ask a question.

And this talk is for sisters by sisters as well. So with that said, I will tell you a little bit about Renee. Renee was raised without any religion or faith. Christ came to her unexpectedly at 27 years old. She was looking for Him—sorry, she wasn't looking for Him, but He was faithfully seeking her. She came face to face with Christ on September 13, 2002, when she reluctantly attended a Friday night church service while living in Detroit, Michigan. She has been in love with her Savior ever since that day. Renee has been married to her best friend, Chad, for 31 years. They have eight children: six boys and two girls, ranging in the age from 28 to 6 years old.

They also have three grandchildren. They are five, two, and one this August. Their family currently lives in Holmes County, Ohio. Since meeting Christ in 2002, Renee has walked many walks of the Christian faith, from charismatic, Pentecostal, to independent, fundamental Baptist, to a conservative Bible-believing Christian embracing many anti-Baptist values. She delights in God's word and desires to see it lived out to the fullest in her life and in the lives of her brother and sisters. Sharing her testimony and exhortation are ways Renee can share with others God's love and His word and the effect of both of these on her life, and also share the hope and promise others can have for their lives.

So before we begin, Renee, I would like to pray for you. So if we could spell our heads in prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for this day, Father. I thank you for your love. I thank you for the guidelines that you set out for us as women so that you can protect us and that you can just guide us in this life. Father, I thank you for this technology that we have today so we can have this meeting. I pray, Father, that you'd be with Renee. I pray that your word would be spoken through her, that she can share her testimony of her head covering, and that it'd be very impactful. I pray that this video, when it's recorded, would go out to many ears and that it would touch the lives of many.

I know how important it is to you for us to obey your laws, and I just pray, Heavenly Father, that you would open women's eyes and their hearts while they listen to Renee's talk. And I pray that you would bless her and protect her. And I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

All right, Renee, go ahead. Okay, thank you. So yeah, I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to share. I think my biggest struggle is how to give you a preview of who I was before I even go into my testimony of the head covering. It's kind of the biggest thing I think I even struggled with is condensing this down to being within a reasonable time frame and giving you a real picture of where I came from and why. It's just such the Lord that He could bring me to a place where I'm wearing a veil and a dress, and I'm at home and I'm keeping my house. So as my biography or whatever you said, yeah, I was born again in '02 at 27, completely out of the world, never been to church, never had a Bible, didn't have a desire for God, wasn't seeking, wasn't trying to attend church services, wasn't asking any questions.

Someone asked me to come to a church service. They repeatedly asked. And to get them kind of off my case, I went on a Friday night and in a powerful way met the Lord. The Lord had me just in a place where I couldn't deny His existence. And I was on my knees and gave my entire life to the Lord and have never regretted it. I have loved my Savior since.

Served Him the best way I could in my Pentecostal Charismatic Church. It was a very easy transition in the sense that there were not a lot of requirements of you. There weren't commandments or ordinances being passed on. You just came to church and you rocked and rolled and you loved the Lord.

But I felt the forgiveness of my sins and I felt the transformation in my spirit. And He was so gracious. During that time, I had a prayer partner in the church, and she and I would pray on a daily basis. And about in '04, two years into my conversion, she came to me very excited about this scripture she read in 1 Corinthians 11, and she wanted to show it to me and she wanted to see what I thought. And I remember when she laid it before me that I was like, "What? I don't see anything. What's the big deal?" And she was like, "No, don't you see this head covering?" And I'm like, "Well, nobody teaches that.

We don't do it. Obviously, this isn't happening. I'm sure it's nothing." And I kind of just brushed it off. I mean, just proof that if the Holy Spirit isn't in it, that man's words cannot do anything. And it didn't affect me. It didn't change me. It didn't alter me at all. And I brushed it off and ignored that scripture. And we went on. She actually followed that and left the church because she followed those truths. And she went ahead of me in that sense, following modesty and head covering. And we were separated. Our church actually advised us to stay away, that that's a real strange thing she's after. So I stayed where I was at.

And the Lord just slowly and graciously moved me and walked me through this path. It was a very slow one. Just to briefly touch on a few points, we kind of were fine being there until about '05. Someone presented a King James Bible to us. And that King James Bible was a real game changer in our walk with the Lord. We had many different translations with the Charismatic Church. We used many of them. And I'm not here to do a, "You should use this translation or that translation." But for our house, the King James opened up the scriptures immensely to us. We began to see things in the church that didn't look right: men's roles versus women's roles, modesty, working outside of the house, keepers versus keepers at home.

And that really sent us on this journey. Like, "Wait a minute. Whoa, things are starting to look really different." I was raised by a feminist single mom, and I was raised very feminist. I was a working woman. I handled the money. I did the bills. I drove the car. It was just—I was no problem being the feminist wife of the time. And we renewed our vows while we were in that church. And I remember the Lord—the Lord moved on me the first time to show me I was out of order. The pastor turned as we renewed our vows. He turned to present us to the church. And he says, "I now present to you, Mr. and Mrs.

Renee Miles." And I was like, "No, no, no." And he quickly, "Oh, I'm sorry. I mean, Mr. and Mrs. Chad Miles. Oh, I'm so sorry." And I remember the voice of the Lord just pricking my heart that, "Your house is out of order." And I still didn't know what to do with that, but it was the first time that I can remember strongly feeling like something is wrong in my life. Something is out of order here.

And he began to slowly put things in my life that made me have to wrestle the scriptures and wrestle my flesh. I had to look at my life and look at the scriptures. And I'm reading this Bible, and things aren't lining up. And I realized that I need more teaching. I need more truth. I need more.

At that time, someone—the same woman, actually, that pointed out the head covering scripture was still kind of in the background of my life. And she actually brought me the Help Meat—created me as Help Meat book by Debbie Pearl. And that was the first time I read a book that taught me about submission. I mean, it didn't teach me about a lot of some of the other things, but the idea of being a Help Meat and submissive and a wife and a godly woman, it was a shocking thought for me.

So the Lord kept bringing these things, and we kept asking questions in our church. And they kind of weren't liking the direction we were going. We realized we kind of have to leave. We were searching for the women's roles to be more defined and more in place with what we were seeing in scripture. So we also began to wonder about the head covering, wonder about modesty, wonder about femininity. This is a really—like, I'm trying to pack it all in there as quick as I can. It was a very long birthing process. From the first time I saw the scripture on head covering, it was in '04. And we didn't start veiling until 2010. So it was not an overnight decision.

It was a lot of laboring and birth pains before it ever came out. But God was faithful. He was just faithfully—I'm so glad nobody was there forcing it because it was a faithful, slow dropping of the information and the knowledge and a book here and a word there and a prayer answered.

A person spoke. And so in '06, '07, we had to leave the Charismatic Church. We were now wearing skirts and shirts, and we were seeking more truth. And we ended up in an independent fundamental Baptist church. And we stayed there, and we gleaned what we could from them as much as we could. And in the middle of that, the Lord sent a covering family into our midst. They churched about two hours from us, and we began transitioning back and forth between the Baptist church one weekend and their church another weekend and trying to figure out and learn and glean everywhere we could from these people who just seemed to have the answers to some of the things we were looking for.

That is such a condensed version. That brought us to '08 is kind of where my notes and my talk today pick up. Born again '02, this is now '08. And that's where the wrestling began. We had had this knowledge of the scripture brought up, and it was kind of suppressed and stuffed. The Lord worked on a lot of other things. But we came back to having to figure out what are we doing with this chapter, this half a chapter in 1 Corinthians 11.

It was brought to our attention. We've ignored it. But now we're coming back. We're understanding submission. We're understanding femininity. We're understanding modesty. We're trying to embrace these things. But what do we do with this chapter? And we're now churching sometimes with women with veils. And here I am without my veil. And they were very gracious. That church was very gracious. Never pushed the issue with me. But I would watch them, and I would wonder. And we decided we had to address these issues.

So we came up with a list of arguments. We came up with a list of—I say arguments because I really didn't want to wear a veil. And so I was arguing against the scripture as much as I could, wrestling in my flesh, but also at the same time drawn to the veil, looking at these women, being drawn to something about them that just seemed right. Not that they all had it worked out and they were perfect. But we decided to sit down and write all the reasons that we wonder about this and how do we find the answers.

So these are six points. There are no specific order that we studied them. Some of them kind of morphed together. Some of them were birthed out of other ones or they overlap. But for the sake of presentation, I have it down into six points, six arguments, or six issues that we had to tackle. And so the first one was kind of the obvious one. It was the one that it just seems like it was kind of the obvious argument was, "Is this just for the Corinthian church? Is this just the Corinthian church? This is a letter to the Corinthians." And we went to our pastor at the time of the church we were in, and he was like, "Oh, that portion of scripture, that's just for the Corinthian church."

They were having a lot of issues. They dressed differently there. Their prostitutes wore their hair down, so they wanted their women to look different than the prostitutes. And they had some unruly and out-of-order women in the church, and they had to kind of suppress them and get them into order. So we don't need to worry about that because that was just for the Corinthian church.

And it was like, "Okay, well, that would be nice to think because I'm fighting against it." But really, this portion, this 16 verses, is just for the Corinthian church. And so we studied the letter to the Corinthian church. And in looking at the letter to the church at Corinth, we quickly see the Lord starts the chapter or the book out, the letter out in 1 Corinthians 1:2. He addresses to the church at Corinth, "And with all that in every place call upon the name of the Jesus our Lord." And we're like, "Well, that is pretty all-inclusive. I mean, this isn't just to our brothers and sisters at Corinth.

He's specifically going to start this out by saying, 'All that are in every place call upon the name of the Lord.'" And we looked at all the books of the New Testament then. Well, what do the other books of the New Testament say? How do they start out? Well, 12 of the 27 books of the New Testament are kind of all-inclusive. I mean, we'd say the four Gospels aren't specifically to someone: Acts, Ephesians, Jude, 2 Peter, Hebrews, 1 John, the Corinthian letters. Those, I think we could see, are pretty general. They include all. But what about the other 15 books of the New Testament? They would specify a specific church, a specific person, a specific house, a specific people.

And we had to wonder, "Do we discount those because those are just for this house?" 2 John, "To the elect lady and her children." Or if he wrote to Colossians, he said, "Just to the saints which are at Colossi." That was very specific. He never even said, "And to all." So do we assume that's just for that church? Do we start to cherry-pick out of the Bible what we don't think pertains to us?

And why did 1 Corinthians include everyone? So in addition to that, in this whole letter to Corinth, Paul states twice that what he's teaching in this entire letter are for all churches. He says in 1 Corinthians 4:17, "As I teach everywhere in every church." He says in 1 Corinthians 7:17, "And so ordain I in all churches." So we could see this letter is a pretty all-inclusive letter. He ends with verse 16. He ends with saying, "We have no such custom, neither the churches of God.

No one anywhere argues this practice. We, the apostles, we, the Christians, and all the churches of God don't argue this custom." So we see this is going outside of Corinth. This isn't like, "Hey, Corinth, I need to deal with you on this issue. Some of us have a problem with you because you've got these prostitutes or you have these unruly women." He's saying, "Our whole group, all of us, disciples, apostles, all the Christians, all the churches, we don't argue this custom. This is the way the church is." And we looked at a lot of commentaries. We looked at Matthew Henry. We looked at Gils. We looked at all these different lexicons. And we saw that it was pretty standard across the board.

This is what is taught. And we felt like it was a pretty easy argument to quickly put on the side, like, "No, I just can't see that this is just the Corinthian church. I can't see that we have this whole letter." And he just took this little portion out and specifically addressed it. But yet, he didn't say he was specifically addressing it. So it was a quick argument that we could kind of put aside. And our second argument is a continuation of that forethought. And it was kind of one of those ones I said wasn't really two separates, but it had a lot of different scripture. And that is argument number two. Is this just for a specific time, era, age?

We often refer to the Bible times. We say, "Oh, that was Bible times. That was how they did it. That was a people wore this or people did that." And so maybe this is just for Bible times. And maybe it was for more than just the Corinthian church, but it's not for us now because we're not in those times.

And we went and looked in my husband's study Bible, his NIV study Bible. And it said that this was just needs to be read in the context of the Corinth church, which kind of goes with that first argument. And Paul is really using specific instructions that are cultural.

And so we kind of like, "Oh, well, his NIV Bible is saying this thing." But our KJV Bible wasn't a commentary. But when we read it, we see it's just so obvious. And we just looked at the Bible. Isaiah 40:8 says, "The word of God shall stand forever." 1 Peter 1, "Word of the Lord endureth forever." How would it just be? This is the word of God. 1 Corinthians is in the word of God. How does that stop just at Bible times? How does it not endure forever that this word stands, that this custom stands, that this practice stands?

We almost felt like we could just stop there. The word of the Lord endures forever. That's it. This is keeping going. This is not in the times. But that's not our way. We had to dig it apart. We had to study it. And one of the first things we notice is God through Paul, he kind of immediately appeals to three universal orders that just kind of transcend time, culture, and place and made this a universal issue instead of making it specific. He could have looked and just said, "I'm dealing with you sisters, and I'm dealing with this issue you're having." But no, he first starts in verse 3, and he appeals to the governmental order of headship.

The governmental order of headship is right out the gate he brings up. It's God, then Christ, then man, then woman. This is above all time and space. This is from the beginning. This is established in heaven forever that this is the order of how we're going to go.

And he goes next, and he goes into verse 9, and he appeals to the creation order. And he immediately distinguishes the genders, the sexes. Laws of creation transcend anything. Everywhere you go, there's man and there's woman. I mean, despite how they want to morph it and twist it, it is what it is. There's no in-between at birth. There's man, there's woman. And he uses that creation. Man was created first. Woman's created of the man. Man is in the image of God. Woman is created of the man. And he uses that. There's no arguing. This isn't a current thing. He wasn't saying, "Hey, in Corinth, there's man and woman, but somewhere else, there's this." Or at some other time, there's a different headship.

No, these are things he could use as examples. Closing the chapter with, he appeals to the natural order. He again establishes the genders. He's got man with his hair and woman with her hair. And men just across the world, across cultures, men's hair just grows slower than a woman's. Men's hair grows shorter than a woman's. A woman's hair grows longer.

Men's hair, they tend to develop baldness. Women don't tend to develop it. I mean, for the most part, we have exceptions or diseases or sickness. But this is a cross-cultural, cross-time. This has been the way it's been all the ages. Men just have this different hair. And so Paul uses this to say, "No, this isn't culture. This isn't time. This isn't age."

It's interesting to note that if he was addressing the Corinthian church, no Greeks covered their heads before conversion. Male Greeks didn't cover their head, and female Greeks didn't cover their head. So, okay, we need to teach our women Greeks how to cover. But what would be the purpose if this was just for the Corinthian church? What would be the purpose of spending time talking about how the men should pray? They wouldn't have come becoming uncovered. The Jewish men would have becoming uncovered. They would have had been taught that they need to uncover. They would have had to have a huge cultural transition. They would have had to really—I mean, you go to synagogue your whole life, and you're covering, and suddenly they're like, "Take it off."

Whereas the Jewish women would have always been veiled, and it wouldn't have been such a big issue. So the Lord, it's like he says, "Listen, I'm going to make sure everyone who reads this understands the men are uncovered. So you Jews, you're going to have a hard time with this. And the women are covered. So you Gentiles, you Greeks, you're going to have a little bit of a hard time with this."

It wasn't just one group. It crossed everybody. Everybody is in the right headship, and everybody was created the same way. And everyone is a man or a woman, and everyone's got all these same characteristics, and everyone's going to follow this order, this custom.

So this would have been kind of—it was kind of simple for us to see it. This wasn't one of the ones I had to really wrestle my flesh in. Actually, we didn't have to fight it too hard. But we did go and look at history. We did go and look at what did they do in times past. Our internet, as much as it has so much terrible things in it, it's a wealth of information. And you can go, and it doesn't take you long to look up quotes from the forefathers, to look up pictures, paintings, writings.

You don't have to type very much in to see this. You can look at the catacombs. They have the paintings in the catacombs that shows that this has just gone across time. This is carried through. Up until 150 years ago, this was a no-brainer. This is the way it has been. And we were able to use—just no debate here. We were able to use this information like, "Oh, she has a veil. She has a veil. She has a head covering. She's got her head covered." Queens down to peasants, paintings, and issues.

It even carried through the dark ages. We have this dark age, 900 years from 5th century to 10th century, where we don't really have any record of anything. But in the 4th century, we have writings and paintings of women in veils. And in the 11th century, we have writings and paintings of women in veils. It carried through. It was being taught. It was being practiced that it stood firm in time.

I mean, I'm going to say, everybody, for time's sake, all the quotes. I have 20 men just on my paper in front of me that are men that we revere, that we respect. John Bunyan, Charles Spurgeon, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley, Augustine.

These are men that we all hear the names. These are forefathers: Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria. These are people that we trust, and they all would endorse or teach the head covering. So we saw across different—I lost the word. I want to say not religions, but the faith that they have, whether they're Methodist or Baptist, we saw that they carried the same teaching across. One that is worthy, I think, of noting is the disciple of Peter was Linus. He would have been right under Peter, taught from the mouth of Peter.

And he's actually listed in the Bible in 2 Timothy. Paul writes, "Bring Claudia and Linus with you." And that Linus taught in his biography is written that by direction of the blessed Peter, no woman must—I'm sorry, decreed—a woman must veil her head to come into the church.

So Peter was teaching it that she must be veiled to come into the church. And here is a first disciple under Peter that is teaching that principle. So it was pretty easy to say, "Okay, there's got to be some kind of a covering going on here. There's got to be something that's happening."

At this point, we weren't sure if it was hair or a veil. We weren't sure what it was supposed to look like or be like. But it didn't take very long to put the culture, time, place, specific church argument away. I couldn't cut up my Bible that way and snip out a whole section of my Bible.

So the next argument we brought forth was the headship order. We didn't understand why this was in here. I referred to it in that Paul used it to appeal, and we believe that God is above. But we didn't really understand its use in the scripture. And this was one of—out of the six points, I had two that I fought. And I had four that I could—like those first two. Yeah, I can do this. But there was two that I fought. And the two that I struggled with the hardest was the headship order and whether it was the hair or the veil. So this was one of the big fights for me. Being from my feminist background, being from my very powerfully strong woman that I was, to being told to be in submission was already hard.

I had been wrestling with it. I thought I really found my place. But I had to figure out what does this veil have to do with it. And I really had to research. This was not about my husband. This wasn't about the men's portion of being uncovered because that was already being practiced. He didn't wear a hat in church. He didn't wear a hat to pray. This was really about me and my responsibility here or my duty here.

It was really hard for me to swallow being a submissive wife and being in subjection. It was really hard for me to even think about having to dress differently to show I'm in subjection or I'm in submission. The whole idea was hard. And this is maybe a little side teaching, sharing because not that I'm teaching, but sharing about my own thing. And maybe other women have had this. But having to change my role and having to redefine myself, maybe not redefine, but kind of recreate myself maybe was really, really challenging.

And God had to teach me these roles and how this headship order is here for stability. It is here for order. It is here to make things flow and move and work. It is not inferior and superior. It is your job's this, and your job is this. And it happens to be that I'm higher up here, and you're here, but that's where you're going to be happy, and that's where you're going to be comfortable. And he showed me that we just had different roles. And he showed me in a government, in a workplace, in a school, we have that hierarchy in place. And we're all okay with it. We're like, "Yes, this is what makes it work."

I worked in an accounting office. I was in a corporate office. I was an accountant here. And there was a CEO up here. He wasn't above me, or I wasn't inferior. I was just in my role here doing the accounting part of the business. And he was up here, and he's doing his CEO thing. And I wouldn't even know how to do that. So I wasn't trying to fight for it. And he was happy with where I was here doing the accounting for the office. It works. And it just made the business work. We all had different positions. And some were maybe a higher pay or a higher, more prestige. But we all worked in our spots.

And God said, "That's how it works in the home. You all are in your spots, and it makes the house just click." And I was like, "Okay, submission, headship, woman's under the man. I'm created. Okay, I can do this." Well, let's look at our word study now. And let's see, what does this have to do though? I'm like, "It says I dishonor my head." Well, I'm still kind of a snotty feminist sometimes. And I sometimes like, "Well, maybe it's okay if I dishonor my head sometimes. Is that a big deal to dishonor?" I mean, maybe we're in a fight today. And I'm just like, "Well, do I have to honor him today? Or maybe he deserves it.

Maybe he was wrong." It was not good thinking. I don't justify that thinking at all. But I was struggling in it. Like, "Why do I always have to be honoring him? And what is dishonor?" It didn't seem like a really bad word.

It just seemed kind of like a small thing. And why a whole section on it? And so I looked up that word dishonor. And I do not pronounce Greek well. So somebody else can look it up, read it for yourself. But the word, as I would pronounce it, is cataschino or cataschino.

Look in your concordance. But it's a verb. It's an action word. And my Strong's Concordance actually has this spot where it gives the short definition that covers the meaning of the word. And it means to curse vehemently. And I was like, "Wait, let me insert this into my scripture here. Every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered curses vehemently her head."

And suddenly I was like, "Wait, that's a serious word. I mean, that's a serious definition." And if you look down, it's the same—or look up, excuse me, it's the same word, same definition for when the man prays with his head covered, that he is cursing vehemently Christ.

Now it was a little different game. Like, "Wait a minute. If I'm praying uncovered, I am cursing vehemently my husband. Is that the kind of person I want to be? Do I want to be the kind of person that walks around and curses vehemently people? And especially my head, my husband, who I'm trying to learn to be submissive and loving. And I think I'm learning to be a helpmate, and I'm a keeper at home. And I'm just cursing him vehemently?

And do I want the kind of—would I want my pastor to walk into the church and say, 'I'm going to preach, prophesy, and pray today, and I'm going to wear my hat all day'?" I'd be like, "No, because you're cursing vehemently Christ.

Would I want my husband to do that? No. Why can't I do that?" We're not even researching, Chad, because we already said, "Yeah, we already know you don't wear a hat." We don't know why we know, but we already know. Everyone knows you go to a ball game, and you take off your hat for the moment of silence. You walk into a restaurant, they take off their hat. You go into a church.

We already knew that. He wasn't doing it.

Why would I be okay to do it? Dishonoring sounded like that little sass-off word. Your children are like, "They dishonored me." When you say they curse vehemently, like if my children were to curse me vehemently, that would be so shocking. What would I do? And here I'm doing it to my head and ultimately to Christ who's above him. If my children dishonor me and they sass me off, they're kind of dishonoring the one that watches over us. They're dishonoring their Father to dishonor me. And in turn, aren't I doing the same thing to my Lord and Savior who I've pledged I love, who I said I'd jump off a bridge for him if he didn't require it?

But covering when I'm praying? I don't know, Lord. And so seeing that word was huge to me. And seeing the blessing of being in my role and in my place and being given instructions for how to do it and where I fall and being put into my order and being happy in my role, this was a huge game changer for me to study. Like I said, it's almost a separate sharing because I wasn't even veiling at that time. I'm just learning where to get.

There's a guy that shares and teaches body bulking from Focus on the Family. And he did a teaching one time. And he said, "That woman was made of the man, made for the man, brought to the man, and named by the man." And he was teaching what a gift women are to the men and how we are a blessing. We are not inferior. He was kind of helping to balance out that idea of inferiority or being this down thing. We're actually this blessing. And I remember getting this picture, this beautiful picture of you have your child, and you give them a puppy. And you're like, "Here's the puppy." You bring it to them, and you've picked it out for them.

And they're so excited. And the first thing we say to them is, "What are you going to name it?" And then we wait to hear what the name's going to be. And God just gave me this beautiful picture. He's looking at Adam, and he's like, "You need something. And I'm going to really, really think hard about what you need. And I see it. I know what you need. I'm going to take some of you to create it so that you're one. And I'm going to bring it to you and present it to you. And the first thing I'm going to do is say, 'What are you going to name it?'" And we all know that you're not supposed to name something if you don't want to get attached to it.

They say, "Don't name your livestock. You might get attached to it, and you won't be able to slaughter it or whatever." And I just think God just knew he's going to name her, and they'll be attached. It would just be that heart bond. And I just think, how huge is this relationship between man and woman and what a gift it is that we are where we are at? And now I'm cursing vehemently, my husband. Now I'm like, "Oh, this is so beautiful. And I love my place. And I'm under you. And I'm serving you. And I'm honoring you. And I'm cursing you vehemently at the same time. I'm shaming you. I'm putting you to shame, even though you might not even realize it.

But many people do realize it. And now I realized it. And if I dishonor my husband, if I'm shaming him, if I'm cursing him, I am so out of God's order and design." And we look at homosexuals, and we say, "That is out of God's order and design. That is not right." And we look at women in leadership and pastors, and we say, "That is not right. That is out of God's order and design." And we look at children. You might be in the store, and you see this child, and they're commanding their parents, and they're bossing them. And the parents are like, "Yes, yeah. Okay. Just be quiet. Just be quiet." And we're like, "Oh, children ruling the parents.

That's so out of order." In order, love of animals, we have people want to marry their animals. And we say, "That's so wrong. But women trying to rule over their husbands or trying to be above them, it's so wrong." And he gave us such a beautiful, a beautiful place to be.

I get sidetracked because I get on that submission and the helpmate. And it's such a huge part of my testimony because of who I was was so feminist. And I just think God is so merciful and gracious that he would teach it and then give us this beautiful—I'll jump ahead. I'll just say this beautiful ornament to wear that we can be under and be able to proclaim who we love, that we serve the Lord. That's jumping ahead.

I'm off my notes now. I'm going to get in trouble. But again, I mean, I'm looking at time, and I'm like, "I don't want to go through the quotes." There's so many quotes we have of referring to the headship and the veiling and the connection between them.

So I look at all the headship. And to close up this argument, I had to look at it, and I had to think about, "Well, in light of the headship, what is this covering? And how are they connected? And how does this go together?" And it wasn't hard to figure out that this is a physical symbol of a spiritual reality.

There are so many physical symbols in scripture that God uses.

He has communion. We have the bread and the juice, and it's representing the body and the blood of Christ. And where Jesus said, "Eat my body and drink my blood," he gave us some physical symbols to hold up, tokens to hold up and remember that. And the Passover lamb, it was this symbol, this token that God's people were here so that the death angel knew where to go. Nope, those are God's people there. And people wear crosses to let everyone know they're Christians. It's this token, this physical symbol. When I was in high school, I was dating my husband, and he was in the military, and he had dog tags that he wore. And they had his name, his social security number, I think his blood type on there.

I think even his religious preference was on there. But when we were dating, he gave me his dog tags. He's like, "Here, you can have my dog tags. Wear them. Everyone will know you're mine." And so I wear them all over high school. I was so proud of my dog tag. Tell everybody, "Chad Meadows, A positive blood." I was like, "This is who I'm with." I was so proud to have that token to wear and to be able to just tell everybody. And we have so many in the world. I mean, we have wedding rings to tell people I'm married. And we have sports logos to let everybody know what team we like. We have police uniforms.

We're so happy if we see a police officer, we can see the uniform. There's that token. We know who you are. We're on the plane, and the man walks in with the wings. We're like, "Oh, that's the guy that's going to fly us. We know who you stand for." And the head covered is the token of subjection. The head covered is the submission acknowledgment. The head covered is the outward sign of the inward heart and attitude. And I was like, "Whoa." I still wasn't ready to think I had to wear a veil on my head. But I knew at this time, by the time we had gotten here, I had stopped cutting my hair. I had stopped coloring it.

I accepted that God didn't make mistakes with my color. God didn't make mistakes with my hair that I had to hide or cut or transform. I didn't have to conform to the world. I was wearing a long braid or ponytail. I was clipping my bangs off to try to make it look like I didn't have them anymore and not be styled.

So I wasn't sure yet, but I was at least knowing that there had to be something that set me apart that was a token. I had to have something that said, "I'm God's. I'm my husband's. And I'm under them. And I'm in subjection. And I want to be in God's order."

And I for sure didn't want to be looking like a man, acting like a man. I say that in reference to the scripture. It says, "Let her be shaven or shorn." I was like, "I worked so hard to get away from manly life and feminist living. I sure didn't want to be uncovered and even be compared to being a feminist again."

So that was a very hard and long. My notes are even longer. I'm going to cut that one short a little bit. But that was a really hard, long journey to accept the head covering and the headship order going together. And we were leaning toward that it was a covering, which is my next point on my notes.

We were leaning toward we knew that this just was too big of an issue. And there was too much fighting and wrestling going on. We knew there was some deep spiritual thing happening. So point number four, my last big wrestle was, if I acknowledge that there is a covering that sets me apart and is a token of subjection, is it the hair? Or is it an additional covering on top of the hair?

As I said, by this time, I wasn't cutting my hair. I wasn't styling it. I wasn't coloring it. I was wearing, yeah, as modest a clothes as I could find in Detroit at the Goodwills and what I could learn about modesty and femininity.

But was my hair as long as it was at this time because it was growing? I had been cutting it. Is that long hair enough? Is that the covering? I really wanted it to be enough. I really wanted that to be my covering. I did not. I'd given up so much, Lord. Can you just leave me a little something? Can you just leave me some hair?

I was still struggling in vanity. I was still struggling in my identity being in the way I look. So much world is programmed into me. At the time, we were going back and forth between the Baptist church and the conservatives that we had met, for lack of a better word. And we went to the Baptist preacher. And none of his women are covering. And so we asked him. We thought, "We'll get this Baptist input, and we're going to get this deep answer." And we're like, "So what is it? What is it that he's referring to here?" And he was like, "Oh, it's feminine hair. Feminine hair is all you're okay. You just need feminine." And I was like, "Feminine hair?

What is feminine hair?" And I realized he really couldn't say long hair because his own wife had the short curled up tight like rollers, set her hair in rollers or perm. And I was like, "Oh, she looks like a woman. There's no doubt. It's very girly and puffy and sprayed and moose or whatever. But it's not long." And then when we questioned him a little more, he flippantly, defensively answered, "Who wants to wear a doily on their head?" And we're like, "Oh, really? That's it? That's your depth of your answer? No scripture?" Not even he didn't even bring up the culture of Corinth. I mean, he was like, "Look like a woman and don't wear a doily."

So we went over to the other church that we were meeting with sometimes, splitting our time with. And this pastor of this church came kind of from our similar path. He'd walked it. They came into the head covering, and we asked him.

And that's, I think I said in the beginning, he brought my husband pages of notes. He brought my husband's scripture, Old Testament and New. He brought forefathers' quotes. He brought testimonies. He brought writings. He brought teachings. And we're like, "Whoa. I mean, this guy wins just on the basis of evidence and research over the Baptist."

And so a lot of what I have here—and there's so much more than I can fit into an hour—but a lot of what I have in all these notes is things that he had shared with us. They either gave us a springboard or maybe it's some of his specific things, quotes of forefathers, a lot of quotes. And he pointed us to a lot of teachings. And so we went and we decided, "Okay. We're going to do what we do. We're going to look up words. We're going to look up what are the definitions of these words mean? What did God use here?" He used these words for a reason. And we like to know what the meanings are.

We like to look up the Greek in the New Testament. And so we have three words he uses. He uses covered, covering, and uncovered. And if you look those words up, covered in verse 6, covered in verse 7, both referring to the woman and the man, those are both the same word, 26:19 in your concordance. And they mean to veil, to hide, to cover holy. If you look up the word uncovered, used in verse 5 and verse 13, they are both from number 177, which means not covered or unveiled.

And in verse 4, 25:96 is the word that's used there. And that means a veil hanging down from the head. So you really get a picture that this is a real item because it's referring to the man in that one. And then finally, in the end, when it was talking with the hair, we have the word covering, which is 40:18. And that's a veil, a mantle, or something thrown around. So these all kind of mean the same thing. We're getting this picture. It's veiling. It's hiding. It's covering holy.

So how can we change the definitions? How can it be an actual item for a man, which is the common practice for people to say? They take your hat off in church, take your hat off at prayer, take your hat off in a building. But then we say it's the hair for the woman. But the word is the same word all throughout.

And we asked kind of the naive, simple elementary questions. How do you take your hair off? How do you put your hair on? What if you don't have any hair? What if you have a disease or you've had chemotherapy or you have something that's made you lose your hair as a woman?

What if your hair's thin? I lost my thyroid a couple of years ago to a sickness. And I was like, "My hair got thin." I mean, I was like, "I'm not going to have any hair left the way this is going." And so am I just suddenly not covered? Am I suddenly cursing my husband vehemently if my hair is all falling out?

And how can a man be uncovered? Is he going to be bald? Is he going to shave his head? We don't have any practice of Christians shaving their head, men getting converted, and then going and shaving their heads right away. We don't have any testimonies of that being the common practice in the church.

So what is it? Everyone agrees it's a physical covering with men. But when it's women, we want to change it. We don't want to be in subjection. We don't want to admit it. We don't want to cover our hair. We don't want to cover our looks. I remember a preacher who said, "We embrace that a man shouldn't wear it, and we hate that a woman should." And we fight against one, and we embrace the other. We would all be at my point in time, I would have been appalled if you wore a hat into church, sir. But I would be appalled if you tell me I have to put a veil on in church, sir.

So we're fighting against this.

We looked at the forefathers. We looked at what they did. We saw clearly in the scriptures that in verse 15, that was kind of the snare. People like to use that one when it talks about if a woman had long hair, it is a glory to her for her hair is given her for a covering. And it made it wonder like, "Okay. Well, that's the hair." Everybody wants to kind of take all 16 verses and grab that one and be like, "It's the hair. Oh, good. I was really worried when I kept seeing the word veil, veil, covered, mantle hanging down. It's the hair." But no, that was the appeal to nature that he's using there to show us this truth.

The long hair is marking you out distinctly as a woman, blessed by God. And your covering on top of that is marking you out distinctly as in subjection and blessed by God. And there's a beautiful quote by—and I'm going to probably mar this name—but it's John Chrysostom.

And he was a 4th-century Christian. And he was answering the question. Someone was challenging him. "Is it the hair?" asking, "Is it the hair?" And he said, "If it be given her for a covering," meaning the hair, "wherefore need she add another covering, you ask?

It's so that not nature only, but also her own will may have part in her acknowledgment of subjection. For that thou oughtest to be covered nature herself by anticipation in act of the law." This is a free will choice. It's not for submission. You will submit your own will to this order. That is what God is asking you to do. Would you just submit your own will to what is already evident in nature? Men uncovered, women covered.

We've gone all these thousands of years, thousands of years. We've gone with women covered. We've gone with women being in the paintings and in the catacombs and in the historical documents and in the word of mouth teaching and past through the dark ages. And it was gone and gone and gone and gone and gone.

And when we see women's suffrage move in, when we see women's rights move in about 150 years ago, we see this sudden shift. Like, "Oh, wait. The veil starts to turn into an ornate bonnet. It starts to turn into a fashionable hat. It starts to turn into—" if you again look up on the internet, you can find—and I think there's a link to a sermon that really helped us as we traveled through this. And he has a lot of pictures. He does the slideshow thing going on. And he's showing the different ways the veil changed, the covering changed. We see it change into the fashion statement, what we think of the big plumey hats or bonnets of different kinds.

And pretty soon, it gets weeded out. By mid-20th century, the veiling in churches is almost gone. You have a few older ladies. You have some of the Southern Baptists. You have some Catholics. You have some—but the rise of feminism brought that kickback against the veil.

Kind of when Adam and Eve talk about submission and headship, when the fall of man came, God gave Eve a curse, spoke over her that, "You will have pain in childbirth, and your desire will always be for your husband. You'll be in subjection. You'll be the help meet."

He kind of established those roles. And I don't want to say it's a curse because I said it's a blessing. But he did make that claim there. "You will be under him. You're not going to rise up like this." And it's interesting because with the rise of feminism came the fight against those two things. Now, you can have a baby with no pain at all. They're like, "Hey, pain in childbirth? Ah, no problem. You can have an epidural, and we just take that right away from you." God didn't curse you like that. And what? Subjection to your husband? No. Feminism, equality of women, power to the woman, women in the workforce.

And by the way, cut your hair and be free. And I just marvel at this because I'm not saying there's not people through the ages that we don't know about. There's always those exceptions and those wave makers who probably rose up and had something to say. But through the ages, this carried. And through the churches and through the countries, this carried. This practice of covering carried. And then all of a sudden, we hear the very famous expression, "Freedom in Christ. I have freedom in Christ. You're under bondage. I have freedom in Christ." And they say, "We're released from it all." And that's what we were taught in our church. I mean, I heard this—this is first, especially when we started asking questions.

This is word of mouth. I was told, "You have freedom in Christ. You don't have to be under bondage. No more rules and laws apply. It's all under grace." And I just sat there and thought, "So wait. Christ was here 2,000 years ago. He brought his freedom 2,000 years ago for us. He suffered and died for my freedom 2,000 years ago. Did God forget until the 20th century to tell us we were supposed to take the veil off? Did he forget for 2,000 years to tell us it's only for the Corinthians or it was only for the Bible times or it was only—did he forget to release us from our rightful roles and to rise us up to be working women and pastors and church leaders?

And did he forget? No, he didn't forget. This is not the true doctrine that has been taught for 2,000 years. The freedom in Christ came when I was out of the bondage of hair and dyeing it and cutting it and following all the styles and constantly stressed out and always, "Oh, my hair doesn't look right. My hair doesn't look right. I don't have this hair. And those models have that hair. And my hair's thinner. My hair's this color." The freedom came when the Lord said, "Just put it away.

It's there. You are free now to not serve the world and its bondage." One last point I have—oh, I have so many quotes I could share with you. But I'm looking at the clock. Like, no, I still have to get through two more quick points.

I have a young girl here that has a wonderful testimony. She was raised in a Mennonite—well, she was Amish and raised in kind of a Mennonite conservative home. And she had no really reason why she wore it except that's what they did. She had no convictions about it. She had no love of it. She had no desire for it. It was just what you did. And she was kind of going with the common thing where she might wear a baseball cap and call it a head covering. She might have on a bandana tied kind of fashionable, maybe with braids sticking out. And it was a head covering. She was kind of doing that. And her parents were upset, but they were hoping she would come to a place where she would develop the desire to be covered rightfully.

And she was alone, away from mom and dad who had all the answers. And she was stopped by a couple. She was in an area where there wasn't a lot of conservatives or Anabaptists. And they asked her about her head covering. And she started to explain about it. And they said, "Well, wouldn't that be your hair?" They must have known enough because they challenged her. "It could be your hair." And she said, "Well," she said, "it says that when I pray or prophesy, I must have it on. That means I must be able to take it off if I have to put it on." And it was just so cute. I mean, it wasn't a deep scriptural answer, but it was like the light bulb went on. "Oh, it is something in the scriptures.

This is truth. And it says I put it on." And it became more important to her. And then she did her research and now wears a lovely veil and appreciates it and understands it. So what does it got to be? I mean, everybody has different ones. I'm not here to teach that. We all have what the Lord is showing us. We have lots of quotes you can find. Tertullian was a big one. He gave very interesting specific guidelines to the veil that I kind of laugh. I think we would all be ashamed what our veils look like if we would read what they were wearing in the early church.

It's interesting to read those. I don't read them because I think we have to do it that way. I read it to say we can see there is an actual item that they're placing on the heads. Hippolytus would have been an early forefather, 2nd-century Christian. And his commandment was, "Let all women have their heads covered with an opaque cloth, not with a veil of thin linen, for this is not a true covering." So again, I'm not here to say what is or isn't. But what my point was in that is it is a cloth. It was for the early church. And that was kind of the cementer to us that I needed something. I wanted that token of subjection.

So the last two points didn't take us long to work through. The first one was, "Is it only for public worship?" And I couldn't argue anymore that the headship is there and that I need to submit in some way.

And I've discovered that it is a head covering, that that is scriptural to be veiled, that we see many scriptures in the Old Testament that refer to the women being veiled. So I knew this was God's heart. But when is it for? When do I wear it? I lived in Detroit. I lived in a predominantly Muslim area. It would have been really nice if God would have said, "You only need to wear this when you walk in the church. Just drive to church and go to the store, and you'll look like you always do. And then once you're in the safety of the church, you can pin on your veil, and you'll be fine."

That would have been the answer I would have been looking for. But when we began to research it and uncover it and look again at the letters and look again at the scripture and look again at the forefathers, it became very clear that this wasn't something I was going to put on and take off lightly or easily. I wasn't going to walk around.

The first 10 chapters of 1 Corinthians, nowhere does it say that this is only for the gathering of the believers. Nowhere in the first 10 chapters of Corinthians does it talk about, "This is just for the assembly. This is just when you come together."

And the Bible does use wording like that. But in the first 10, it's teaching us about fornication, marriage, meat offered to idols, idolatry, widowhood, sin within the brothers, when you're in the market, when you're eating at the feast of the unbeliever, he's teaching about. This is clearly life practical teachings going on. Here are the ordinances going on. Here's the teaching, the handing down of traditions. And we don't see anything that says that in chapter 11, in that first 16 verses, nowhere does it say, "And when you come together, make sure your women pray and prophesy veiled."

He does switch in verse 17 when he switches to communion. Paul switches the wording. He changes it up a little bit for us. He says, "I praise you not that you come together not for the better." He says, "When you come together in the church." Verse 20, he says, "When you come together into one place."

Again, through 11, 12, 13, 14, he's discussing church ordinances or church practices. He's discussing the gifts of the Spirit being operating in the church and the gifts that he gives to people to be teachers and pastors operating in the church. He's discussing communion. He discusses women's place in the church. And he clarifies it's for the gathering of the saints over and over with wording such as, "When you come together, when you come together in the church, when you're gathered in one place, when the whole church becomes together."

I think that's all the same there. Never in the head covering teaching. And for the 10 chapters before there, does he discuss that this is for the church gathering? It is life practical teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching. Then we switch at communion. We switch how we word it.

In 1 Corinthians 14, verse 34 and 35, he begins to teach about when you're gathered together. And it says, "Let your women keep silent in the churches, for this is not permitted unto them to speak. They are commanded to be under obedience, as saith the law. And if they learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for women to speak in the church." If you look up the Thayer's Greek lexicon, it defines the church here as an assembly of Christians gathered for worship or a religious meeting. So again, I'm not here to talk about anybody else. I'm going to talk about our home. In our home, my husband is very staunch.

I don't talk in church. I don't say a word in church. We recite the Lord's Prayer. I will even recite it under my breath. I won't even use my voice. Do I tell everybody else to do that? No, I don't because I'm not a man. I don't need to tell anybody what to do. And I don't want to teach anybody. But in our house, that scripture stands firm. We don't want to—it's a shame. That's a powerful word for us. So we were sitting there. We'd already been practicing silence in the churches. Now we're sitting here like, "Wait." So he told me in chapter 11, verse 5, that I can pray or prophesy with my head covered.

But then he tells me in chapter 14, verse 34 and 35, that I have to stay silent. So if I'm only covering in public worship and I'm not allowed to pray or prophesy out loud, it contradicted itself to me. I was like, "Wait.

When you pray or—" it says, "I can't pray or prophesy in public worship." We know prophecy is for public. We know that prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14 says, "He that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification and exhortation cover." This is for the men. Prayer is when you're talking to God. Prophecy is when you're talking for God. And I'm like, "But I'm not allowed to do those in the church. So I must be doing them somewhere else." And if I'm doing them somewhere else, then 1 Corinthians 11 is telling me to put on a veil when I do it.

I'm kind of trying to hurry this up. I'm trying to speed through this. So I must be covering and prophesying elsewhere. My husband's like, "You can't speak in the church. You can't usurp authority. You're not going to give words of wisdom, words of knowledge, words of prophecy." So this must be for when you're with your sisters, when you're having a sisters meeting, when you're having a sisters talk, when you're meeting with sisters privately, when someone comes to you for prayer.

Prayer is more private. Prophecy is public. Prayer is more private. Usually, yes, I'm praying in church and there's prayer going on and I'm in the Spirit with them and I'm in agreement with them. But am I only going to cover when I'm in church? Why only cover for prayer in church? Veiling is concealing my glory. Veiling is when I'm entering into the presence of God and I'm covered in his power. I don't want my glory out when I'm praying. Even the seraphims in Isaiah 6 knew to cover themselves when they're praying. The angels in Revelation 7 know to fall on their faces, hide their faces before God. Why would I uncover at home?

It kind of goes back into that. Is it the hair? Is it the covering? These are all kind of morphed together. But I live in a constant state of prayer, right? I'm in daily living, what I call my living whisper prayers that are just under my breath as I'm going along. I have my heartfelt crying prayers on my knees. I have Thanksgiving and worship prayers. I have someone calls me quick for a prayer. I'm out and someone asks me to pray. I have all these times I need to pray. If I walked around without a veil on, I would feel stuck. I would feel like I can't pray because I know the Lord said I have to pray or prophesy with my head covered.

And I'm not doing that in church. So I need to do it at other times. And here I am. Am I going to carry one in my back pocket? Am I going to hold on? I'll pray for you. Pull it up. Am I around the house and I keep pulling it up and up and up and up? It didn't even seem practical at that point. We talk about life practical teaching. Let's just have it on.

Let's have a picture of it. Let's be in order and decent at all times. And then there's times where my hair is down. There's times where I just showered. I'm in bed. I just got up. I'm walking around the house. And I've grabbed some funny things to be veils on the spot.

I've been in the kitchen and grabbed a dish towel because my children want me to pray or someone called or I remembered something or—but in the most part, I'm going to be veiled all the time and be ready in season and out of season and just be constant in prayer.

I remember a story. A woman I knew that they were in bed. She didn't wear a veil to bed. I don't wear a veil to bed. But her and her husband were discussing something in the bed and they became burdened and they wanted to pray. And she said, "Wait, I don't have anything on my head." And it was so beautiful. She was crying. She told me the story. He reaches over and he puts his hands on her head and he said, "I'll cover you and we'll pray." And I just remember thinking like, "Whoa, that's the ultimate covering." I'm talking about literally being under your husband and covered because it was that important to cover. I want to pray.

I want to be able to pray anytime. We had the FedEx man came to our door and I went out to get the package and all of a sudden he just turns and looks at me out of the blue and he's like, "Can you pray for me?" I don't even know the man. And I'm like, "Oh, well, sure." What if I would have been like, "No, I can't, but I'll get back with you or just tell me and I'll talk to you later."

And people do that when you're out in public, especially if you're sharing anything about the Lord or you ask them, "Can I pray for you?" I want to be covered. I spent a long time seeking this token of subjection. I spent a long time seeking and learning and wanting to know. And now it's here and I don't want to take it off. I want to have it on. I want to have it on and I want to be covered. And when I pray covered, it totally transcends all the years that I prayed without a veil.

There's quotes here. There's quotes of proof of walking in the street, forefathers, how to handle in the street, to be covered, to veil yourself, to hide yourself. I'm about out of time. The last argument was quick. I mean, it's like half a page of notes. It didn't take us that long. But that was, "What do the angels have to do with anything?" Wondering what is this for me, it was like, "What is this weird spot about angels coming in?" But very quickly, the peace of God and the wisdom of God comes over and just says, "This is just another place where I'm going to cancel all arguments that it's culture, time, place, a people. I'm going to go to the spiritual realm.

And I'm going to appeal to the spiritual realm and say, 'Because of the angels, you ought to have power on your head.'" And we all would agree there are angels everywhere. We all would agree the scriptures are filled with the accounts how angels are here, that the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, that we entertain angels unaware when we are entertaining strangers. We all agree that the angels are ministering spirits sent forth to minister to us, the heirs of salvation. We agree that our children have angels that behold the face of the Father in heaven. We agree that Elisha prayed for God to reveal the eyes of his servant, that he could see the angels around ready to war for him.

We agree that the angels desire to look into the spiritual things and they desire to look into the gospel being acted out and played out. We also agree that there's demons and there's devils and there's darkness. We know that we wrestle against flesh and blood, not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and the powers. We know that Satan's prowling around like a roaring lion. We know that in Genesis 6, the sons of God came down and saw the daughters of men and took them, the fallen angels. We know they're here. We know we're in a mighty battlefield within the church and without the church. And for me, this was a no-brainer. I didn't just spend all this time learning this.

I want everyone to know who I serve and where I stand. I want my token of subjection there. It was so hard to put on for me. It was such a flag and such like an elephant in the room. And suddenly I'm like, "Yes, I want this flag. I want this notice." I want not only the people around me, all of the people around me to know that's something that belongs to Christ. That's something that belongs to Christ. But I also want the demons to know. I want the angels to know. Our angels are not all-knowing like our Heavenly Father is. I sometimes think I know God sent them and God is all-knowing. But just in case, Lord, just in case one forgets who he's after or who he forgets who he's to protect, I want to be like, "Over here.

I'm God's. I'm Christ's. Come, help me out and camp around about me." And if the demons are out here, I'm not afraid to say, "I belong to Christ. You better be careful. You better watch out if you're going to come after me. You're going to try to take me. If God lets you take my life, I'll join him in glory. But if you are going to try to touch me, you better know who I belong to. I'm the Lord's." I was so excited of the idea of these angels. They're in the assembly with us. They're around Christ. And if I believe Christ is in my midst, his angels are here too. I wanted to be sure that everyone knew that I belonged to the Lord.

So we took all that and to sum this up, and I'm so sorry, ladies, I'm talking your ear off, but to sum this up, we had to take all this information and decide what to do with it. My son was in a car accident in 2010. And not a car accident, a bike accident, but he was hit with a car. And he was in a bike accident and he had to have surgery. And here we had all this information we were storing up. Here we had all these things going on about the head covering. And I was pouring out my heart to the Lord because I knew my son's heart wasn't right with God and I wasn't sure how the surgery was going to go.

And I remember just we were kind of searching. My husband hadn't told me to veil yet. And I was waiting. I wanted to be under his authority. What would be the point if I didn't wait for him to give me the okay? And this surgery came and we were sitting down and I just looked at my husband and I said, "I want to be veiled for this. I feel the desire to be veiled. And where do you stand?" And he just immediately was like, "Yes, I want you veiled." And I remember tying that veil on. And I just had a handkerchief that I had kind of been looking at like I could put this on.

And I just tied that veil on and I knelt down. And the power and the rest and the peace that fell upon me, just I was like, "Why did I just fight?" Two years. The six arguments I just gave you were two years. And all I would have had to do was tie this on the beginning and submit. And the peace that came, the joy that came, the freedom that came.

And I was so afraid that what my husband would actually say, "My hair was everything." Even when it was styled, it was still done just enough. I had a pretty clip. I might have had wispies hanging down. I might have had my braid hanging down, whatever. And I was so worried. All he's going to be left with is this face. There's just not much to offer. I'm not one of those really beautiful women. I'm not one of those striking faces. And I was like, "What is he going to think when he comes in?" I've tied this on. And all he's got left is there's nothing. There's nothing left. And God is so merciful and gracious.

My husband walked in the room and I turned around and I was so nervous. And he said, "You look so beautiful." And I was like, "Oh, no, I'm not." And he was like, "You are." He was like, "I don't know what it is." And he said there was a peace, a beauty that came over. And he's not a sweet talker. So it was very out of character for him. But there was a peace and a beauty that came with it. And I believe he was seeing a spiritual truth there when he saw me submit to that. And I knew at that point that God took all my love of my hair away. He took all of the cares away.

He took all of the worries away. And we walked from that point forward in full faith that we were doing God's will. We suffered a lot of persecution for it. My neighborhood pharmacist was an Arab. He was a Muslim. He used to open up his store for me in the middle of the night. If I came out of the ER, I could go and get a prescription anytime in the night. And when I started to veil, he quit offering his services to me.

A lot of our friends cut us off. In my neighborhood, they started naming me. We would walk our children around the block and they started calling me Mother Teresa or Mother Mary or you think you're so holy. I got laughed at. I went to a funeral for my grandmother. And it was the first time I wore my veil to a family event. And my cousin walked up as loud as can be and just yelled, "Why do you wear that thing to your grandmother's funeral? You're a disgrace." And I was just like, "Wow, really?" It was like a blue. I was very subdued. It was like this blue thing tied around my neck. And I was like, "Wow."

At the same time, my cousin's over here and she's nine months pregnant wearing a bodysuit and had grandma's name tattooed back here and her nose rings. And everybody's like, "Oh, you look so pretty. You look so trim and fit. You got grandma's name tattooed on you." And I was called out as this disgrace in the church. And I was like, "Wow, Lord. I know I'm not suffering martyrdom. I know I'm not suffering at the stake. But I am suffering.

This is my family." And my husband made this amazing discovery or idea came to him that he was like, "It must be right. It must be true because all these powers want to fight against it." I mean, if you live in an Anabaptist community, just go visit somewhere else for a few days with your veil on and get questioned. You will get questioned. Go to Detroit.

They will stop you. They will ask you, "What are you doing? What's that thing on your head? Are you this? Are you that?" And it really helps. If you haven't ever had to wrestle with it, I encourage everyone to get in there, dig in, and find out why you do it. I feel so bad if you haven't come to a place where you really know what this is because it is a beautiful thing. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing. And I wouldn't go back to the world. I wouldn't go back. God, help me. I wouldn't go back to the world and back to the vanities and back to the vanity fairs and back to the bondages and back to being blurred with the world and not standing out for Christ.

I wouldn't go back to it. I don't think I could. I don't see how I could deny what God has brought us to. That would be my exhortation to dig in. I know I've missed a lot of things, but I don't want to bore anybody else with my talking. And maybe there's people with comments or questions, or maybe they can correct me, or maybe I talk too fast. But I want to be able to just say, "Yeah, study it and learn it and dig into God's word and his people."

Thank you so much, Renee. That's just wonderful. What a wonderful testimony. I also wasn't growing up in a religious home or anything like that. So first started going to the Baptist church and everything was a lot of fun, band on the stage kind of stuff. And then I came to the point where I needed to wrestle with the head covering too. And it was a hard journey. And like you said at the beginning, God is just so gracious and he doesn't condemn us. He just slowly showed us his truth. And if we obey it, it's so wonderful. Use the word freedom when you finally submit it and put it on. And that is what I felt as well.

And again, it was a journey. Some days I would wear it. Some days I wouldn't. I wished it was only for church, but it wasn't. And the freedom I felt when I finally just gave into it, it's so backwards for what the world thinks. They think you're free when you can do your hair whatever you want and wear makeup and struggle and stress about keeping up with the fashions and spending money on it. That's not freedom.

God has our best interests in mind. And I love what you said about it's like a token that we can put on.

You had a longer testimony that I listened to. And I was wearing a head covering when I listened to that. And I was happy to wear my head covering. But it just gave me more excitement to wear it after you said that.

I am God's. I submit to Christ, my husband, of course. And I love how you bring it to the spiritual realm. I would like to show the angels and the demons that I am God's. And I also want to show the world that I am God's.

The scriptures are riddled with, "You are my people. I am your God." Old Testament, New Testament, he wants a people. And if I can show the world that I am his people because I cover my head, hallelujah. That's so wonderful.

Set me apart. Yeah. Praise the Lord. Set me apart. Exactly. Yeah. We'll open up for a time of Q&A now. So if anyone has any questions, just turn on your video and ask away. Or you can submit a question through that chat box as well.

Oh, yes. Is there a link up there for I had sent one that the testimony you're talking about. We put a link to be able to listen to that one. Yes. It's on our website, so strengthtosstrengthsisters.org. And I'll also post it on the Telegram group when the recording is available so I can include that there. But yes, if you go to our website, that link is on there.

There's also a video to another man. I can't remember his name speaking about the head covering as well.

One thing I'm going to ask Renee, I believe the answer is yes, but I would like to ask you this. Does this pertain to people that are widowed or divorced or separated or single? Right. That's a good question. And I had it in my notes and I turned the page because I'm watching this clock over my computer. There are many, many commentaries and forefathers who teach on the virgins being covered.

They would teach on the virgins should be covered as much as the married women. The King James, the Geneva Bible, they would use the word woman in this passage. We are not users of newer translations, but some, I believe, maybe it's the ESV. Someone can quote me, change that. I mean, if I'm wrong. But they would use the word wives in this passage, which is often an interchanging word that is used between the translations.

But the early forefathers gave clear instruction, especially Tertullian. He wrote a whole—I don't want to say paper, but a commentary on the covering of virgins and the necessity. And we also have another forefather who referred to the widows who would cut their hair off in their widowhood, but they would then veil their heads in the proper way that Christ called them to. So it made a reference to widows there. And if anybody—I think my email is available. If anybody wants any quotes, I've got pages and pages of forefathers that I can't sit here. But it does reference widows and virgins as well as the women.

Renee, do you have those quotes in a document on your computer at all? Is there some way that we can maybe post those quotes? I could easily assemble them into something. I also have links to websites that have just all it is is listing of quotes of forefathers on the head covering.

So I'll make a note for myself, but I can gather that website names or quote names. There are so many. I mean, having them in a document would almost just be pages and pages. But I can put together something because I find it very interesting to see what the church has done. And in the video of that pastor, he does also give a lot of quotes and pictures from history as well.

Yeah. That'd be wonderful if you can compile a list of, I don't know, just maybe your favorite quotes. There's been many times throughout your talk that you referred to pages of quotes. That would be really great and helpful, I think. Thank you.

With regards to what we were just talking about, someone says, "Please specify practically how a woman without a church community or living husband could find her place in this whole issue and head covering." So a widowed woman here. A widowed woman without a church community.

Yeah. I would say the church community wouldn't even have to—your thought is your place with God and Christ being over you.

I would see that you don't have a physical head. He's been removed. He's now with Christ, hopefully, or he's maybe removed. I don't know if he was a Christian or not, but he's removed. So therefore, you are completely under Christ now. There's actually no barrier between you where you had a physical earthly head. You are now—I think of the widow Anna in the Bible. She spent her days and nights in the temple worshiping God. And I'm not a theologian, and I'm also not here to tell anybody what to do. But I would see a widow would have just as much power and glory on her like the singles, like the virgins, the young ladies, and the old ladies.

This is for the women of God's church. This is for his people. And like we said, we're all under somebody. I mean, the most highest of high in our world, we're all under somebody. And so if your head has been removed, your earthly head has been removed, you have Christ right above you. And I would be under all the power of Christ I could be.

Okay. I have some other questions here in the chat.

Sorry, just a moment here. This was an absolute blessing for me. I have started to veil at church and work, but have been lax at home. Hearing you speak about the way that the angels look at you really challenged me. Thank you so much for your vulnerability and sharing. I love the Straight Mystery so much. I found so much comfort and edification through these monthly talks. I'm on a journey. It was a comfort to hear that your journey took some time as well. Blessings to you.

Someone says, "You mentioned a veil being a symbol. Would you view a doily on the back of your head as sufficient?"

Is that for me personally? I am not here to judge or tell anybody. The relationship with God is so important. The Holy Spirit is such a better teacher than I am or anybody else. We went to the Lord, and we went to the forefathers.

Tertullian has a great commentary on what the women were wearing at the time. Maybe I'll go to it really quick. I know we can't compare because at the time, they would have had very long. And his head covering that he describes is very large. But he says, "How severe a chastisement will they likewise deserve who during the Psalms or any mention of God remain uncovered? Even when about to spend time in prayer itself," which, by the way, gives us the picture. It's like an alone prayer time. "With the utmost readiness, they place a fringe, a tuft, or a thread on the crown of their heads and suppose themselves to be covered." So he goes on to even say, "Some with their turbans and bands do not actually veil their head, but they bind it up and perhaps protect the front, but the back of the head lies bare."

That really for us, the Miles family, nobody else, for us was like, "Okay, the church really viewed it important to have that head covered." If the Bible says, "Cover my body," I'm going to cover my body. I'm going to cover it fully. And I'm going to view my head the same way. I'm going to cover my head fully. I mean, I have a friend who actually, she doesn't even want to show any hair. She wears her veil way up here. She's a blessing. I think that's great. I think that we ought to be as gracious to everyone else as God was to us. As I walked around in my jeans and my hair and my makeup, then I walked around in my goodwill skirts and shirts and my hair down.

And then I moved into trying to play with different things I found to cover my head. I just think we ought to be as gracious with everyone else who journeys and trusts their relationship with the Lord. So whether that black—was it—did they say a doily? I don't remember the word they used. If they feel like the Lord has led them there, maybe that's their stepping stone, or maybe that's where their comfort is. I will not tell anybody. God did not give us a pattern or a size or a color. So that's where we are.

With regarding that, someone's asking if you have any good resources that you can recommend or good sources, I mean, of where to buy a covering or get coverings. Yeah. I don't have that before me. But yeah, we used a lot of online places to buy coverings when we started and looked at a lot of pictures and laughed at some and embraced others. There's such a variety. The way all of us look different, there's such a variety. But yes, I can write that down. And probably some other sisters have that too. But there are resources for ordering them.

One of my favorite ones just went out of—I stopped selling them, but. Do you know any on the top of your head that we could just mention here?

Oh, you caught me off guard. I only can think of the one that's out of business.

Maybe give me two seconds and I can think of one. I know a couple. There's Joyce Sale. Oh, okay. And these are US-based companies. I have purchased some from Grace and Garland as well. That was kind of more at the beginning of my journey when you could have them really pretty and maybe have your hair hanging down. So not all of those. I have a collection of head coverings that a lot of them don't work for me anymore. I've also bought scarves from the secondhand store, just things that are triangle—sorry, I mean rectangle or squares that I can wrap up. So sometimes it is just a scarf that you can tie to your head.

Amazon is another place.

And Etsy, actually. Some of my favorite ones are from Etsy that are scarfs. There's a lot of people selling them. Yeah.

Okay. I have another question here or comment, I think, from Chimamanda or Amanda, she says. She says, "Thanks for allowing me on here. I'm definitely blessed by Renee's message. Thank God. I'm 21 and have been going back and forth with full-time head covering or part-time. But I'm very insecure and often don't feel very beautiful or feminine with my head covered. I want to honor God and cover my head as often as I should, and I like head covering, but I feel insecure. I feel like my hair is my only beauty. What advice does Renee have for me? Thanks."

Oh, wow. I can so relate because, like I said, I so struggled with how I would look with it on. We just have to pray and ask for God's grace and ask for God's love to fill us, how He views us, how He sees us. And even, yeah, just putting yourself in that vulnerable place to have to get rid of the world.

I walked it. I lived it. My hair was my idol. I served my hair for so many years. As you said, Christina, how it was to struggle with it. But yeah, all I can say is it's a supernatural peace that comes when it's on. And I would just pray for you that you would just embrace it and just trust God. Just fall into His ever-loving, merciful arms in this and trust Him. It will be so worth it. The sacrifice is worth it.

Someone says, "When you mentioned that the covering is a physical symbol of a spiritual something," she was wondering if you could just repeat that. Oh, I said I'll pull it back up if I need to. But I wanted to be able to say it exactly. I did. It's a physical symbol of a spiritual reality is how I worded it.

That token of subjection is a physical token of a spiritual reality, which is we are under our husbands or our fathers, our men, and under Christ and in subjection and in our place.

So I have a couple of things that came directly to me in the chat.

Someone shared, "Amazing, Renee. What a wonderful testimony. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. I would love to hear more of your story and what you have to say another time." You spoke of the headship order a number of times from the renewal of your vows when you said you felt God was telling you your house was out of order. Then you asked and answered how the veil and the headship order was connected. I just wanted to add to that, I would like to recommend a series preached by Matthew Milioni from Followers of the Way Boston that is the most helpful and thorough explanation of this order. You can find it on their website or YouTube.

It helped me, even after wearing the veil for about eight years, to finally appreciate the massive spiritual significance of it, something I'd never fully understood, but now find to be an empowering identity to embrace being a woman and how much value God gives me in this place.

And then I'll just keep reading. There's a few more messages here. Another one is, "Once a friend told me you wear a head covering, but what would you do if you would be praying in the shower or something? And I wasn't sure what to say. Also, how can you deal with criticism or feeling out of place in a group of Christians feeling out of place? Thank you so much for the talk. I loved it. It was a blessing." Oh, that is so funny that you bring up the shower because in my longer testimony, which the link is on there, I actually told you I just pray all the time. I have a nonstop conversation with God.

And I did admit I even pray in the shower. I prayed for years uncovered when God was gracious and hadn't taught me. And I always laughed and thought, "Am I going to get to heaven one day and He's going to say, 'I actually never listened to those prayers in the shower, okay? Those weren't covered.'" I do have a continually ongoing, and I just feel the merciful Lord. He just knows I'm a talker, and I talk all the time. So I don't know. I would say keep talking to God, and He can filter out what He wants to filter out.

But as for feeling scrutinized, yes, I was covering in a church that didn't cover. And they will give you this impression sometimes. Maybe other people had this, that, "Oh, you think you're holier than us, or you think you're better than us, or you think" and I'm always very quick to let people know I don't tell anybody what to do. That's why I don't even want to call it a teaching. I call it a sharing because here's what God did in my life. And if it can help anybody else, if it can at all minister to somebody, or if it can even provoke someone to challenge me more, maybe I have something mistaken.

But I would say just keep pursuing Christ. That's what we have to do. All who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. And sometimes it's the little ones, the little agitations or friction. We lost a lot of friends. We lost so many. And people who love the Lord, people who love the Lord, but when we veiled, it was, "You're too weird for us," or, "You're just too off," or, "You're" so yeah, I wish I could make a way to make it easier. But there's some wounds that come with it that are worth it for Christ.

There's another question here. It says, "I'd love to know thoughts as to when a girl and woman should start covering." Well, if you're already considering it, I would say you're pricked by the Holy Spirit. If you're a mother, that's a different story. We ran into that with our daughters of how to know. There are commentaries. There are forefathers discussing the virgins covering. And a lot of the argument for the very early church, like Tertullian and some of them that preached on the virgins, they would give the argument when they're old enough to draw lust in a man, when they're old enough to tempt a man. They were referring a lot to the sons of God and the daughters of man.

And I mean, now in our day and age, I mean, I don't know. What do you call the age where you tempt a man for a young woman? For us, we made the decision when we saw my daughter's hair becoming vanity, when there was more time being spent on styling it, looking at it, maybe pulling some tendrils. Then we began to talk to her about it. We didn't wait until she was born again. I don't know if that's right or wrong. I only have two daughters of my eight children, so I'm learning. I only have one that is in a head covering. But we waited until we saw a vanity issue. And we decided not to wait just until she's born again because in the community we live with, there's a lot of people that cover just because they got baptized into the church.

And we didn't want it to become like, "Oh, everybody's starting to get baptized and wear it, and I'm not. So am I going to get a fake baptism so I can put it on?" I mean, these were just different issues we were kind of surfing through. We're around a lot of former Amish and Anabaptist raised people who maybe don't always have the answer of when because they put it on their little girls real small. So we didn't get a lot of teaching. We had to kind of wade through it ourselves. But I would say if you're a young woman and you're pricked, then I would think the Holy Spirit is drawing you. If you're a mother, then yeah, go to that father and trust him that he looks at his daughter.

Or if you see the vanity or if she's at the age to tempt, maybe those are things you can pray about and put before the Lord. And maybe somebody else has a better idea because I've only done it once with one daughter.

I like that explanation. That's kind of some of the conclusions that we came to as well when covering daughters. Okay. So I also wanted to say thank you for this. I grew up in conservative Mennonites, and we would have covered when we joined the church, when we got baptized, when we actually became a Christian.

But there was definitely that pressure of putting it on just because your friends did. And it was cool to put your hair up type of thing. But anyway, I came through such a journey on that and feel like I would definitely agree with the sermons that Matthew Milioni shares, the headship order, how helpful they were in just teaching me the beauty of it and just the—oh, it was so exciting to me. I felt like—and that's another thing I appreciate is I love your excitement. I feel like so many of us, when we grow up with this, and it's just the normal thing, it's just you get so used to it. There's just nothing unusual about this that you lose so much of the beauty of it that I just feel like that passion and excitement should still be taught, even to girls growing up in those settings because if they do get out on their own, they might just take it off because they don't really care.

It was just a thing of they had to. But I also have a question. What words did you say meant cursing Christ vehemently? I can't remember what words you said. That's the word dishonorif. Okay. I wondered. In the verse five and four of that chapter. And I don't know how this is like in the Strong's Concordance I'm looking at, there is the word, and it gives like whether it's a verb, and then it gives what they call the short definition because the Strong's has like this definition, but then it's used—it might have eight different definitions in the Strong's. It might be it means this, this, this. But you really don't know which one is it using.

And that's where we kind of go to like the lexicon or something to sort that out. But it gives a short definition that encompasses the word in general. And that's where you can find it, say, to curse vehemently.

Thank you.

I also received another question, but I think we kind of covered this. Do I dishonor my head if I spontaneously pray uncovered like in the shower? Yeah.

Yeah. I guess that's between the Lord and—I think the Lord is a very merciful and gracious God.

So I have a couple more questions. I'm going to put them together. The one says, "How would you encourage those of us at churches where we are alone in covering?" And another woman says, "I also often feel out of place wearing my head covering. Any advice on that?" Right. Yeah. I would say this is where the sacrifice is worth the cost.

No. The reward is worth the sacrifice. The reward is worth the cost. It's so small. You are leaving a very big testimony where you don't realize it. We would go to—when I was an early Christian, we would go to some homeschool book fairs. I was a young mom, and we would be at these book fairs, and there was like maybe Robin Staff was there or CLE was there. And we would kind of laugh like, "Oh, they look so silly," or, "They look so whatever." And we'd be like, "Oh, we had the judgments. We did it."

Between me and my girlfriend, particularly one that I'm thinking of, she actually cut me off when I did start covering. But we would be like—but yet we would also say, "But why are we so drawn to them? Why are we so drawn to want to go over there?" And I don't know what their spiritual state was. This was a physical judgment call I was making, but there was something drawing about these women. And I have had people who stop me at the store, and they give me this kind of snotty like, "So what are you? And what is this?" And when I lived in Detroit especially, and I would get stopped, and I would just say, "Hey, I'm just a Christian."

They're like, "Well, I'm a Christian too." I'm like, "Great. Praise the Lord. A sister in Christ." And I'm just trying to obey the Bible. I just love God's word, and I see this head covering, and hey, I want to do it. And you make an impact. You have a chance to make a statement. You have a chance here to really show love and mercy to those who are treating you bad if it's within your church. It's also a time to practice suffering that we're going to suffer for just being Christians in a world that is losing Christians and becoming less and less Christians. We are going to stand alone. We're going to stand alone more and more.

It'd be great if we were in just one big happy congregation. We could all hide in there sometimes and just all be comfortable together. But the truth is, that's not where we're at. And so praise the Lord if you're getting some of your tough skin now and if you're getting some of your taste now. And if God has given you even one other person or a community like this one where you can go to for that reassurance and that comfort and that reminder that we're all together in this just scattered abroad.

All right. I have another one, Renee. Is the head covering a salvation issue? Should I be concerned about the eternal destiny of someone who has cut hair? Okay. No. Nowhere in the scriptures. Do we see it's a salvation issue?

We know that this—I will say this. The Bible says, "To him that knows to do right and does not do it, to him it is sin." I think if you've been taught and you have the foundations and you have the principles and you're like, "Eh, I'm not doing it." I think we have an issue of obedience. I think we have an issue of rebellion against God's word and maybe a distaste for it. I wasn't rebelling against it. I was scared of it. And I was—yeah, it was foreign to me. We fear the things we don't know and we don't understand. Is it a salvation issue? I would say no because I know I love the Lord Jesus, and I gave up so much in my life, drinking and foul language and the worldly things we were involved in, which I'll leave unspoken.

We gave them up for Christ. My life was sold out for Christ. And he just hadn't brought me there yet. There are going to be women in heaven that had cut hair and no veil. I'm convinced of it because I am sure I'm not the Lord, but I am sure had I died in 20—what year was it? No, it was before 2010. 2008, I think I would have gone to heaven because I'd love the Lord, and I was covered in the blood of Jesus. The blood is the salvation. Now we're walking out our practical life with Christ. And where are you today? God was so merciful and gracious. I mean, you said it, Christina. Think how he waited and taught us.

So what if he would have told me the day I got saved, "Put on a veil. Hurry." I would have been like, "Nope, I'm out. Check me out." But he didn't. He walked us. And we need to show that same grace to others. You see a woman with cut hair, and she's a Christian. Praise the Lord. She accepted the blood. That's where the salvation is.

That's right. Praise the Lord. Again, when you were saying that he is slow and gracious and it wasn't forced, and you were happy it wasn't forced on you. And I was very happy it wasn't forced on me. Had a head covering and modest dress and forced at the beginning of my journey, I probably wouldn't be a Christian.

It's so important to me that we understand why we do these things and not use it as an excuse to not do them. But it is important. And I need to remember that when my daughter comes of age of why we cover ourselves. And I need to teach her these things and tell her to teach her daughter these things. Don't just do it because we do it. There needs to be a reason behind it. And because God is like that, slow and gracious with us, we need to remember to be that to others as well.

Don't be judgmental of people and just pray for them and walk with them and be kind and be loving because that's what Christ is to us.

I've had people ask me this question just throughout the years, and I'm wondering what your answer is. So if a woman would like to cover her head or she's thinking about covering, but her husband doesn't want her to or isn't there yet, what's your advice there?

I was specifically given the advice by an older woman to wait until he blessed it. In our case, she did know my husband was searching as well. He was a little more reluctant. He wasn't—I think I got ready before him. I know I did because I actually asked him at the surgery time. But I saw the blessing in being in the proper headship because headship was such a big thing I had to learn, and I really had to get under him. I saw the blessing in being under him, and I could have pushed it months before I did. The surgery happened. I knew he was already talking about it. And so I did approach him with, "May I cover for the surgery?"

That was the only thing I was asking for. And he poured out that I was going to ask you to cover all the time anyway. I was almost afraid to tell you. And so it was a blessing that God worked in our marriage in that way. But I was advised to wait because I was ready a few months earlier. And she said the whole point—I mean, the major point of this is headship and for you to step out from him when he's not ready and say, "I'm doing it anyway because I'm enlightened and I'm full of truth or I have knowledge." Or even though you're probably completely right, then I think it kind of just slipped you out a little bit out of your proper place.

I did veil a little bit in my prayer closet. I was trying to veil on. And maybe you have a similar testimony out there, just kind of slipping it on once in a while. What does it look like? What does it feel like?

But knowing that it wasn't right without my husband's blessing on it. That's my personal testimony. Thank you for that. I actually had someone ask that question coming on the chat as well, but it was a question I had written down.

I'm going to put some—or we will put some links on our website as well to men teaching about headship and head covering as well. So maybe when the timing is right, you can listen to these things with your husband as well. And maybe that would be helpful for your journey.

Yeah. Is there any other questions or comments?

There's another question—or wasn't actually a question, just a comment here. With praying in the shower, I think we are obviously unclothed. And so I think that is an exception that is still consistent. Same sort of thing as if we are being intimate and letting our hair glory be seen by our husband. Naked was often called in all one's glory. So I think there's something there for when we are unclothed, we can be unveiled.

So yeah, I like that. I think that's interesting. That's interesting. There was one thing I had forgotten that that comment reminded me of. If I could add it really quick. At the very end here, I was kind of skipping my notes and trying to hurry. But on the bio page or whatever on Strength to Strength, I know Doreen or somebody had put up a song I had written, which I'm not going to sing for everybody. But it is a song the Lord gave me. He often gives me a song when he really wants to cement something into me. And it reminded me that one of the real big arguments that the Lord presented before me was with regards to the glory.

When God tells man that his glory ought to be uncovered, the glory of God ought to be uncovered and God's majesty shown. And then he instructed that man's glory, the woman ought to be covered because God's glory is what ought to be showing here. And I really questioned if it was the hair. This was in the section on arguing if it was the hair. And for I really had trouble understanding if God's glory is what's supposed to show, man's glory, the woman needs to be covered. Why would my glory, the hair, get to show? I was like, "Am I equal to God that God's glory can show and my glory can show? And just man has to have a woman with long hair here?"

It didn't make any sense to me.

If God's glory is what I'm seeking, why would I put my own glory out there for everyone to see? And so the comment you read from that listener just kind of made me remember that about our glory being out. I don't want to take from the glory of God at all.

Regardless of what your hair looks like, whether you have luscious locks or whether you have short, frizzy hair, it's still what God would call your glory. And I want to make sure the only thing that is shown in my life is the glory of God.

So that's verse three of my song.

Yeah, that's a really great song. I love it.

Someone asked about cutting your hair. What are your thoughts on cutting your hair and covering it?

Again, not the Lord. I've had a lot of people argue with me that we are allowed to cut our hair now. They weren't allowed to cut their hair back then. Back there, it was a symbol, and cutting the hair was a little biblical law. They would chop off the hair to show the disgrace. But now we're allowed to cut.

It's culturally acceptable for women to have cut hair. And I remember just looking at them, and I was like, "When do we ever use 21st or 20th century culture to decide what's acceptable? I wouldn't use this culture to decide what's acceptable to save my life. Our culture is so out of whack. Just throw the Bible out at that point." So to argue that cutting your hair is culturally acceptable and it's okay now, I would say, "No, I'm going to go back to the heart of God." The heart of God, I'm not going to say you can't—I'm not here to say you can't trim your hair. If you want to cut your hair, if you got it veiled, I won't know anyway.

That's between you and the Lord. But I would say that the heart of God says that the woman's hair is her glory. He had it grow out for a reason. Whatever your length is that God predetermined for your body, your hair, your person, just embrace what he gave you.

Another question here. Is there any sheet music to the song so we can sing along with it? I don't write sheet music. The Lord does give me the music. And I actually said to my husband, "Do you think I should sing it on there?" I was like, "I don't think I could."

Actually, my husband has a sound—I'm in his office. He has sound recording equipment. He records videos and things. And he has all this nice equipment. And I actually fancied the idea that maybe I would get in with his equipment and record myself, and we could put a link somewhere that it wouldn't be just me raw singing this and destroying everyone's ears.

But I don't have sheet music. Okay.

Okay. Well, thank you so much, Renee. Thank you for joining us, everyone. I hope this was a blessing to you.

Next—sorry, I just need to—so next month, we'll have another talk, of course. That's going to be on August 3rd at 3:00 PM Eastern Time. God's Design for a Healthy Marriage: A Wise Woman Builds Her House. And that's by Margie Wagler.

So hoping that you can all join for that one as well. Renee, can we close this time in prayer, please? Yes. Yes, I will. Thank you. Heavenly Father, we just thank you for your word, God. We thank you for your loving heart that poured out into the pages of this book for us, Lord. We thank you that you left no stone unturned and no questions unanswered to us, Lord. We thank you for the Holy Spirit that is provided to us as a comforter and a teacher and a promise to just remind us of the things that have been taught to us and bring it to our remembrance, instructing us in godliness, Lord, and being the thing we need to keep us on this narrow way.

Father, we thank you for Jesus and his blood, Lord, that was shed, the salvation issue, Lord. We thank you for it. And then we thank you that you have given us a way to live out our walk with you in a practical and easy way, Lord. It is not complicated to walk with you. Father, it's a narrow way because the flesh wants to complicate it. But there's such simplicity in Christ and following you. Father, I pray for the listeners today, Lord. I pray that the words that came out of my mouth were from you and that it would reach down into their hearts and it would edify them and just exhort them in your word.

I pray you'd strengthen the sisters who have been challenged, Lord, to cover, who have not yet come to the place where they're ready. I pray for husbands that are on the fence, Lord, to release themselves to you, Lord, and to let their wives be in place. Father, I pray for those who are being persecuted, Lord, that you would just strengthen them in their convictions today. I pray for the young ladies, Lord, who want to just cover themselves in modesty and in chastity and just, Lord, I pray that you would just work in hearts today. Father, thank you for this time. Thank you for this way. Thank you for this group of sisters who wants to come and offer a way for all of us to be edified.

Lord, we just give ourselves to you, Lord. We want to wholly submit our hearts, our lives, and our wills to yours. Lord, have your way in us and anywhere that we're holding back. And Lord, we just pray today in the name of our blessed Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen.

Thank you so much, Renee. I hope to meet you in person one day. I would love to just sit and talk with you more about this. I love it. I see on your clock behind you that you're far away from me.

You're the one in Canada. Yeah, Calgary, Alberta. Okay. Yeah, I would love to meet you. Blessings to you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Bye. Walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, being fruitful in every good work.

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S2S Sisters: "God’s Design for Headcovering: My Search for Answers" by Renee Miles

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