What if you truly believed—deep in your heart—that you are seen, heard, known, and deeply loved by God? What if you could stand firm in your identity as His daughter, free from fear and doubt?
This week on The Love Offering Podcast, I enjoyed talking with Amy Seiffert, author of Your Name Is Daughter. Amy reminds us that Jesus befriended, defended, healed, and depended upon women—and He still does the same for us today. In a world that often distorts our worth, she shares stories of unsung women in the Bible and empowers us to embrace our God-given dignity, value, and calling.
We discuss:
✨ How our identity as daughters of God has been contested
✨ Stories of women in Scripture who remind us of our worth
✨ How to exchange fear and doubt for confidence and faith
✨ Why YOU are essential in God’s Kingdom
Without you, the fullness of God’s image is incomplete. You belong. You have purpose. You are loved.
With love and encouragement,
Rachael
Summary
In this episode of the Love Offering Podcast, host Rachael Adams speaks with author Amy Seifert about her book Your Name is Daughter.’ They explore the significance of women’s identities as daughters of God, the role of women in scripture, and how Jesus affirmed and healed women. The conversation delves into overcoming fear and doubt, the importance of understanding God as a loving Father, and the freedom from embracing our identity in Christ. Amy shares personal insights and encourages listeners to recognize their worth and the completeness of God’s image through both men and women.
Takeaways
Jesus names the outcast woman as ‘daughter’, highlighting our identity.
Women in the Bible played significant roles that are often overlooked.
Martha’s story shows that women can have strong theological insights.
Jesus treated women with dignity and respect, affirming their worth.
The Hebrew word for ‘helper’ signifies strength and support, not subservience.
Women were integral to Jesus’ ministry, funding and supporting it.
Understanding our identity as daughters of God brings healing and confidence.
God’s love is unconditional and always available to us.
Fear and doubt can hinder our understanding of our identity in Christ.
We are called to reflect God’s image together, male and female.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Love Offering Podcast
01:32 Exploring Identity as Daughters of God
03:32 The Role of Women in Scripture
05:14 The Story of Martha: A Deeper Look
07:51 Jesus: Befriending and Healing Women
09:31 The Importance of Women in God’s Image
11:23 Overcoming Fear and Doubt
12:32 Healing Through Daughtership
13:44 God as a Loving Father
15:26 Living in Freedom as God’s Daughters
17:03 The Concept of Love in the Bible
18:12 Amy’s Journey in Seminary
19:06 Closing Prayer and Reflections
Transcript
Rachael Adams (00:00.266)Welcome to the Love Offering Podcast. I’m your host, Rachel Adams, author of Everyday Prayers for Love: Learning to Love God, Others, and Even Yourself. Each week, we dive into meaningful conversations about how to live out the greatest commandment: loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Whether through inspiring stories, practical tips, or biblical truths, I hope to encourage you to love boldly, live faithfully, and reflect God’s love in your everyday life. My guest today is Amy Seiffert. Amy is a speaker, Bible teacher, and author. Her latest book, Your Name Is Daughter, is a powerful reminder that Jesus befriended, defended, healed, and depended upon women, and He will do the same for us today. Through the stories of unsung women in the Bible, Amy empowers us to stand firm in our identity as daughters of the King, exchanging fear and doubt for confidence and faith.
Hello, Amy, and welcome back to the Love Offering Podcast. It’s been too long.
Amy Seiffert (01:07.709)
Thanks for having me back. It has been too long, but I’m happy to be here.
Rachael Adams (01:11.51)
Yeah. The last time you were on, we talked about how Grace looks amazing on you. It still does, by the way.
Amy Seiffert (01:14.939)
Yes. Boy, thank you. We try, man. That’s all we get to wear, right? All day, every day.
Rachael Adams (01:23.023)
Every day. So, your new book that we’re talking about, your name is Daughter. So tell us about the backstory, and why do you believe this message is so important for women today?
Amy Seiffert (01:32.643)
Yeah. Well, it’s from a couple of angles. One, I have been teaching and leading in a variety of ministry spaces over the years, and I wanted to see Genesis to Revelation from front to back. Where are the women? What are they doing? How does God feel about them? I was getting asked different questions about using my gifts in different spaces and what it looked like for women to be doing the things. That’s one angle. And then another angle as I was so enamored with the story of the woman, formally called the Bleeding Woman, who in Luke 8 approaches Jesus and he names her daughter. And she’s the only one in all scriptures called a daughter. And I think it’s monumental, and I couldn’t get over the story. And I was like, what does this look like if the most outcast, penniless in every way, emotionally, financially, was brought in close and restored to God the Father? What does that mean for everybody else in between? And being called named living out our daughter ship. So I was digging in a book. The book was coming out.
Rachael Adams (02:55.982)
I cannot wait to dig in. I’m hooked already, but we will take a brief break and hear a word from today’s sponsor. When we come back, we’ll talk all about how Jesus affirmed the dignity and worth of women and how that truth impacts us today.
Rachael Adams (03:13.846)
Welcome back. I’m talking with Amy Seifert, the author of her new book, Your Name is Daughter. Amy, you write about how our identity as daughters of God has been contested. How have you seen the struggle play out both inside and outside of the church?
Amy Seiffert (03:32.359)
Yes. Man, we’re seeing this all over our culture. Women kind of wondering where they fit, where they can be, and what this looks like. And I thought, well, I’m going to start in Genesis and start digging into where we see women. And I was so overwhelmed by gathering all the different stories of all the different women. They are there. They are doing things, even unearthing the original word for helper in Genesis and how the Hebrew word for helper is azer, which is a defending ally with strength, which is fun because often we can take that word helper. It can feel like a nice little pat on the head. You know, and just really redeeming that, looking at that and saying, wait, the original and putting some of those things back together and so seeing a lot of these things in scripture, even through my seminary studies, through the Old Testament, women, prophets, Deborah, Halda, different women I hadn’t seen before, and then looking at Jesus and how he treats women and just the overwhelming beauty. Looking at Paul, how much Paul loves women. I’ve had a complicated relationship with Paul. Just, yeah, digging in and exploring and seeing, my gosh, the dignity and worth of women everywhere.
Rachael Adams (05:03.744)
Yeah. I know you highlight lots of different stories of these unsung women in the Bible. Can you pick one of those stories for today and share it with us? What can we learn from her?
Amy Seiffert (05:14.925)
Yeah, I think I’m going with Martha. There is the well-known story of Mary and Martha, in which Martha is very anxious and overwhelmed and goes to Jesus and tells my sister to help me. And she’s often been typecast one-sided as anxious and overwhelmed, a busybody, not theologically astute, not thinking about these things. Mary is sitting there listening and learning. She’s actually with the disciples. She’s crossed some gender lines here. She’s sitting there with them. Now, that’s usually the picture we get of Martha. But the other angle I want to look at in In Your Name is Daughter is how Martha in John 11, when her brother Lazarus dies, Mary stays put. She doesn’t move. She’s grieving. But when she hears Jesus is finally on his way because he didn’t come and Lazarus dies, and she’s so overwhelmed, she goes straight to Jesus. She’s like, if you had been here, our brother wouldn’t have died. Like, I know who you are.” Then, she has this intimate conversation that has been quoted for centuries since, but we forget that this is a one-on-one conversation with a woman. And it’s a theological moment where Jesus looks at Martha and says, I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this? And she says, Yes, I think you are the Messiah, the one we’ve been waiting for, the one to come, which is Peter’s confession. I think you are the Christ, the Messiah. And from there, everything shifts. And so I’m like, goodness, we need Martha’s confession just as much as Peter’s. And her thoughts and theology about God are so strong. And so I want women to know we don’t have to stay one-sided or typecast. Or if we’re like, I’m just anxious like Martha. Well, Martha was a lot of things. And she approaches Jesus and has a conversation that we hold on to when Jesus says, I’m the resurrection and the life. So yeah, just looking at some different sides to restore some stories that have gotten a little lopsided, I think.
Rachael Adams (07:23.628)
Yeah, which restores our stories. We’re not just defined by one moment. Thank goodness. Well, so I love to. You say that Jesus befriended, defended, healed, and depended upon women. Can you share examples from scripture that maybe illustrate these truths?
Amy Seiffert (07:59.687)
Yes, I am fascinated by Luke 8, verses 1 through 3, which talk about the different people who were the different disciples and just kind of posse that was traveling with Jesus. And women are named who are funding his ministry: Susanna, a couple of others, Joanna, and then it says, and many other women. And I just stopped at that and I thought, how many other women? Five, 10, 30? Who else was traveling with Jesus, with his disciples, learning what they were learning, setting up camp, cooking, funding the ministry, laughing, probably hurting each other, and having to practice forgiveness, just with Jesus in his ministry and seeing many other women? I could see myself. I was like, yes, I am among these who are following along in the footsteps of the rabbi as his apprentices, many other women, which means us too.
Rachael Adams (09:00.014)
I love the thought of that. So, we will take another brief break to hear from today’s sponsor. When we return, we’ll talk about what it looks like to fully embrace our identity as daughters of the King and live in confidence and faith.
Rachael Adams (09:17.31)
Welcome back. Amy has been talking about her new book, Your Name is Daughter. In your book, you remind us that without women, the fullness of God’s image is incomplete. So, what does that mean for us practically in our homes, workplaces, and churches?
Amy Seiffert (09:31.813)
Yeah, so this is from Genesis 1-28, where we see God creates humanity in His image, male and female He makes them. And it’s to look at this and say, okay, we are both image bearers together, side by side. In Genesis 1 and 2, before the fall and everything unraveled and things got wonky, we were created together to reflect His image. And so this is not to say that, like a human, one human person, we have dignity, value, and worth in and of ourselves. But when men and women were working together side by side, they were commissioned to go, and they were blessed to, you know, push back evil with Eden, like that was the call. When we do this together, I think it seems more like we are offering more glory to God. We are doing this together. If women are missing really in any situation, I think we’re missing out on glorifying God more because two of us together are imaging God. And that’s exciting to me. And it seems like the beautiful call in the beginning, that was the design of Things Unraveled in three. But if we’re trying to get back to Eden in that design, let’s do this. Let’s be side by side and have women in as many places as possible because that brings the most glory to God.
Rachael Adams (11:00.686)
That is exciting and so true, and something that I’ve never, you know, talked about. We always talk about being created in his image, but I’d never put that together. So I will have to dig closer or dig more into that. Let’s talk about fear and doubt. How do fear and doubt keep us from fully embracing our identity as daughters of God? How can we exchange those for confidence and faith?
Amy Seiffert (11:23.345)
Yes, my hope is as we slide on the sandals of these different women in the Old Testament, and we are in Hannah’s world, we’re in Halda’s world, and we’re in Deborah’s world, and Martha and Phoebe, that even seeing how they interact in their culture would help us with our stories. Seeing their stories would make our stories courageous. That was when five men knocked on Halda’s door from King Josiah’s palace and said, Hey, we found the book of the law. Can you speak to this? And she does boldly. I’m like, OK. She has a voice. She doesn’t hide it. She has confidence. And she speaks boldly into this situation. So my hope is that simply by seeing these stories, we are emboldened to be able to have courage in our own story.
Rachael Adams (12:20.984)
Hmm. Has there ever been a time that you needed this truth, that you felt like I needed to know that I’m your daughter, God? Has this been a deeply personal experience for you?
Amy Seiffert (12:32.859)
Yes, absolutely. There’s been a lot of healing that I have needed through a variety of hurt and pain through the years. My favorite, let’s see, moment of being with God is when I sit with Him, close my eyes, and picture Him telling me and calling me daughter. Something is healing and restoring to me about this, about that name. And it’s also the one name that cannot be taken from me. My position might change, single married widow, divorce could change, all kinds of things. But being God’s daughter, that cannot change. And I can stake my claim in that. And it’s a very grounding name that I cling to pretty often.
Rachael Adams (13:30.446)
I am just being mindful of the woman who maybe has a complicated relationship with her earthly father. Talk to that woman today about this heavenly father who calls her daughter.
Amy Seiffert (13:44.081)
Yeah, I am absolutely mindful of how often we can have a hard time seeing God as Father because our fathers have not; they’ve really fallen short. And my hope, even in this book, is to restore and redeem and see that our Heavenly Father has an entirely different posture toward us. His face shines upon us and is turned toward us. When Jesus is called beloved, we also can adopt that as sons and daughters, which means we get to be loved. We don’t have to earn or keep this name. But yes, to the woman who struggles with that idea of God as Father, I want to invite you, sweet sister, to open yourself up to a God who is chasing after you even in Luke 15, the story of the Father and how He’s waiting for the prodigal son. And there’s five verbs there where He sees, He is filled with compassion for His son, He chases, embraces, and kisses His son. And that is God the Father’s heart posture toward us in Luke 15-20. That’s a verse I’ve memorized to remember those verbs toward us.
Rachael Adams (15:13.87)
When we start to understand how loved we are as God’s daughters and sons, how do you think that changes the way we live and the way we treat others?
Amy Seiffert (15:26.675)
I think that brings incredible freedom. I find a lot of freedom in being God’s daughter because that means you always have a place at Sunday dinner. Know, if you’re always there and you can, you come downstairs with your top knot and your sweats and you haven’t, you know, washed your hair and 40. Yes, you know, if you’re living in your father’s house who loves you fiercely. You show up any way you want, and you are welcome. There is a hot breakfast for you. There is new mercy every morning for you. I find a lot of freedom to come however you are with your failures, flounderings, and foibles. God says there is grace upon grace for you. And there’s always a seat at my table for your daughter because you’re mine. And it comes from a place of his love for us, not our performance toward him.
Rachael Adams (16:20.174)
I’m so thankful for that. As you’re talking, I’m thinking about how in heaven, Jesus is talking about me going away. My father is preparing a place for you in my father’s house, you know, and there are many rooms. And so I love that example that you just gave. Like, he’s accepting us now, but he’s preparing a place for us. And there’s room for his daughters there, too. Yeah. So, at the close of each episode, I’ve been asking all of my guests if there is a biblical concept of love that they think applies to this topic. And not to put words in your mouth, but you talk about how we’re commissioned to bring God’s redeeming love and truth to the world. So, I don’t know if there’s anything that you want to talk about or something completely different.
Amy Seiffert (17:03.695)
Man, yes to that. Also, we should remember that we love because God first loved us. That first love isn’t just like a one-time love; it is a love that is repeatedly facing toward us, initiating love toward us, a posture of love always. And we respond from His love. I think that is grounding and freeing. This is God’s love toward us. Yeah.
Rachael Adams (17:36.494)
Yeah, absolutely. Me too. And then as you’re talking, I’m thinking about it, and it talks about in Revelation to keep him as our first love, you know, and not get lost in having to achieve and do all of these things to earn it. Like it talks about in Revelation, I know your good deeds. I know you’ve done all these things, but you have forsaken your first love. So, we all need to be mindful of keeping that intimate connection with our heavenly father.
Rachael Adams (18:06.028)
So, is there something Amy you are loving right now?
Amy Seiffert (18:11.315)
I love seminary. I’m in my second year. It is hard, like the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I love it as a lifelong learner. It is also the most fun and challenging, but I like it in my brain. So, I’m having a lot of fun at the seminary.
Rachael Adams (18:31.458)
Well, I shared with you that there’s this part of me that’s like, I will do some seminary someday. Hearing that encourages my heart as well. So, I know I want to stay connected with you. I know listeners are going to want to grab a copy of your new book. Your Name is Daughter. So please tell us how we can do all those things.
Amy Seiffert (18:52.263)
Yes, I love hanging out at the Gram. I’m at AmyCyfert on Instagram and amyseiffert.com. You can find all the things there.
Rachael Adams (19:02.05)
Yeah, well, we’ll include that in the show notes. But would you pray for us as we close today?
Amy Seiffert (19:06.893)
Absolutely. God, thank you for each listener today. You know exactly where they are in their car, washing dishes, on a walk, wherever. You know the weights that they are carrying on their backs. And so I ask for freedom, a lighter load. I ask that you release the heavy burdens and that they sit with you and receive their daughters and sit with you and receive your love, which is the primary first coming for us every morning. God, thank you for this time. I ask that you bless Rachel and her family and her ministry, God. Thank you. Amen.
Rachael Adams (19:52.212)
Amen. Thank you so much, Amy, for joining us.
Amy Seiffert (19:54.995)
Thanks for having me.
Rachael Adams (19:57.368)
Thank you for tuning in today to the Love Offering Podcast. I hope today’s conversation encouraged you and inspired you to love God, love others, and even love yourself a little bit more. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and leave a review. It helps others find the show and spreads the message of love even further. To connect with me, visit my website at rachaelkadams.com. While there, download the Love Offering Calendar, a free resource filled with simple daily ways to love those around you.
Don’t forget to pick up a copy of my new book, Everyday Prayers for Love, Learning to Love God, Others and Even Yourself, and Amy’s book, Your Name is Daughter. They are available wherever books are sold, and we pray they are meaningful resources for your faith journey. A special thank you to Life Audio for supporting this podcast and making it possible. To find more great podcasts, visit lifeaudio.com. Thanks again for joining us today. Until next time, let’s make our lives an offering of love.
Connect with Amy:
https://www.amyseiffert.com/
