Returning Respect to the Women in My Life — Part 1

To the women in my life — and to the women in the Body of Christ — I owe you something.

A confession.

And a promise.

For too long, I lived in my head.

I treated faith like a set of ideas instead of a relationship. I thought respect was something I could agree with in theory but ignore in practice. I saw women staying seated when they were called to stand up, and I told myself it wasn’t my place to notice. I explained it away with culture, fear, or theology.

But the truth is this: when I stayed in my head, I missed God.

I missed intimacy with Him. I missed the Spirit’s nudges. I missed the chance to honor women the way Jesus honored them. And it cost me more than I realized.

Because when the head takes the lead, faith grows distant. You can explain God, but not feel close to Him. You can know the right words but fail to live them. You can protect systems instead of people. You can maintain polite but shallow relationships. You can cling to safety, but at the expense of courage.

That’s where I lived for too long.

But here’s what I’m learning: the head is not meant to be the master. It’s meant to be the servant. The heart — shaped by God’s Word and filled with His Spirit — is what brings faith to life. “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11).

When truth moves from the head into the heart, everything changes. Knowledge turns into action. Fear gives way to faith. Respect stops being a theory and becomes visible love. Women are no longer silenced or sidelined — they are seen and honored, just as Jesus saw and honored them.

So here’s my confession: I have failed the women in my life. And here’s my promise: I will not stay in my head any longer.

This is just the beginning.

Over the next few articles, I’ll be writing about what happens when men live in their heads instead of their hearts: how it robs us of intimacy with God, limits our faith, and damages our relationships. And I’ll be writing about what changes when the heart finally takes the lead — when the head becomes a servant, not a master.

My hope is simple: that by sharing my own repentance, other men might recognize the same struggle in themselves — and begin their own journey out of the head, into the heart, and back to God.

Because when we return respect to the women in our lives, we return to Him.