God is Spirit. He chooses to reveal himself in Scripture through language that is both masculine and feminine.

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them ‘Mankind’ when they were created. (Genesis 5:2)

We rarely hear messages on the “Mother heart of God,” although it says in Isaiah 66:13, “As a mother comforts her child, so I’ll comfort you.” In fact, God’s character and actions are revealed by feminine imagery in at least 26 places.

The grammatical gender of the word for “Spirit” is feminine in Hebrew (rūaḥ). In Greek the word for Spirit (pneuma) is grammatically neuter. There are some Christian churches who teach that the Holy Spirit is feminine based on the fact that both feminine nouns and verbs, as well as feminine analogies, are used by the Bible to describe the Spirit of God.

In the novel “The Shack,” God was portrayed as a woman. “I am neither male nor female,” Papa self-discloses in the novel, “even though both genders are derived from my nature. If I choose to appear to you as a man or woman, it’s because I love you. For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest you call me Papa is simply to mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning.”