Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

#50Women

A FREE 50 Women Study Guide for You

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After I released 50 Women Every Christian Should Know, I received several inquiries via email and social media from readers wondering if there was a study guide to go along with the book. Unfortunately there was not. However, after teaching a five-week women’s study class based on the book at my church last fall, I found myself equipped with enough material (and then some!) to create a five-session Study Guide to accompany the book. The talented staff at Baker Books designed a beautiful layout and copyedited the text for me, and voila, my first official Study Guide was born.

And the best news yet? It’s free and available for download right here!

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This five-session study guide is perfect for small groups, women’s ministry/adult education classes or even for the individual who wants to dig a little deeper in this book.

Included in this Study Guide: 

Five Complete Study Sessions  – Each week is focused on a particular theme and highlights several women in the book.

  • Session One: When “No” Opens the Way to a Bigger “Yes”
  • Session Two: Obedience Isn’t Always Convenient or Comfortable
  • Session Three: God Calls Us to Serve Right Where We Are
  • Session Four: God Uses Imperfect People
  • Session Five: Share Your Story

Conversation Starter Questions  – A selection of questions related to the session’s theme and aimed at encouraging conversation and input from each participant.

Discussion Questions and Bible Study – A selection of questions related to the women highlighted in that particular session, prompting discussion of what we can learn today, as well as a discussion of select Bible verses that support the session’s theme.

Closing Prayer – A prayer based on the week’s theme that can be read aloud at the close of each session.

I hope and pray that you will find the Study Guide useful, inspiring and informative as you explore these 50 heroines of the faith who have walked before us!

Click HERE to download the 50 Women Every Christian Should Know
E-Study Guide.

 

 Click here to purchase 50 Women Every Christian Should Know on Amazon.

If you are a church staff member and would like to purchase 50 Women Every Christian Should Know in bulk quantities at a 20 percent discount, click here.

The Lens of Transforming Love {My Faith Heroine Series}

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I can’t think of a better way to finish out the My Faith Heroine series than with Laura Lynn Brown. She is one of the finest writers I know, and one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I’ve ever met. When you talk with Laura — either online or in person, it makes no matter — you know that she is entirely tuned into you, 100 percent. She listens, really listens – such an incredibly rare and precious gift — and then, when she does speak, it’s with wisdom, grace and gentleness. Please welcome Laura to the blog, and before you dash off to do whatever calls you today, please stop by her brand new website, Makes You Mom, for a bouquet of mom-related stories, gift ideas and reading suggestions. The gorgeous flower photos alone are worth the visit!

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Post by Laura Lynn Brown

If I could talk to Mom about this, the first thing she would do would be to assert, quietly but firmly, that she’s not a heroine.

(Actually, the first thing she’d do is listen to me carefully, and wait patiently until I got to a good stopping place. Then she’d stop and think before she spoke. And if she could look over my shoulder now, she might compliment my changing “protest” to “assert,” then wonder aloud whether there might be an even more precise verb.)

And I’d explain — both of us knowing it’s a lame  excuse — that, well, that’s the series. The assignment. “My faith heroine.”

Then she’d nod, affirming that it was, in the end, my decision. And she’d say, with that powder-dry wit that even her intimates could mistake as seriousness, that if she had to be one, she might just as well be a hero.

Laura and Mom

Mom died nearly 26 years ago, nearly half my life ago. There’s a danger of mythologizing the long gone; I think this is especially true for anyone who lost a parent too young. What I know of her is partly memory, partly what I’ve learned over the years, from my brother, our father, her best friend, and other people back home who still, when I see them, give me the gift of anecdotes I hadn’t heard before.

Some memories have been replayed many times, the images like a split screen — on one side, how it felt and seemed at the time; on the other, the more complex understanding and reframing (and, sometimes, greater unknowableness) that come with the perspectives of middle age.

I never heard Mom pray. But I know she did. She wasn’t one to announce she was praying for someone. She just did it, quietly, and I imagine fervently. Sometimes she let me know, usually gently, when she thought I was making poor choices. But she didn’t visibly fret or let her mother-worry herd me like a border collie. I believe she trusted in God’s patience, in the work of the Holy Spirit, in the loving pursuit of the hound of heaven.

I seldom saw her reading her Bible. But I know that she did. It’s worn, with a cracked and taped spine, and notes throughout in her small, neat script.

The summer I was 11, she sent me to church camp. The family hadn’t been to church in a few years — she’d had two small children, Dad worked on Sundays, we just had the one car and she didn’t drive.  So I went off for a week to the woods of western Pennsylvania, a shy kid, and had a great time, and made friends I wrote to throughout the year. I kept going back and was eventually baptized there. Then we returned to church.

I never, ever, doubted her love. My brother and I were secure in the knowledge that not only did she love us, she liked us.

When relatives were in need — the elderly, mentally challenged cousin who could no longer live in her farmhouse; the single niece with a new baby who needed a place to live for a while — she took care of them. She found the cousin assisted living a quarter mile from our house, and took in the niece.

When she was angry, she guarded her tongue.

To the friends who called her, and the people who worked with her and became her friends, she gave good counsel.

She saw the humor in things, and made people laugh. She was skilled at the loving tease, and knew when to stop.

I could go on. I could paint, in detail, some of the memories  and stories coming to mind. But what they all add up to, and boil down to, is this: She had a deep, quiet, faithful relationship with the Lord. And because of that, as much as anyone I have ever known, she saw people through that lens of transforming love.

I am so very far from being the woman she was. I’m grateful for the ways, through memory and story (and through my brother, who bears her image in so many ways), she is still with me.

If I could talk to Mom about this, I’d thank her for her quiet example. She’d accept my thanks and then probably reflect back something good she saw in me. We’d hug. And I’d tell her I love her and I like her.

LauraLynnBrownLaura Lynn Brown’s essay “Fifty Things About My Mother” was named a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2014. She is the author of Everything That Makes You Mom: A Bouquet of Memories, and the keeper of a new multi-author website, makesyoumom.com.

This post is part of the My Faith Heroine Series in conjunction with the release of 50 Women Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Heroines of the Faith. Click here to read other posts in the #MyFaithHeroine series. 

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Go Forth and Mark Up Your Bible {My Faith Heroine series}

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Sandra Heska King has the biggest heart of just about anyone I know – how blessed I am to have spent time with her in person! But even if your path never crosses with Sandy’s face-to-face, you can see and experience the light she shines in the words she pens so beautifully on her blog (my favorite is her Still Saturday series – don’t we all need a little more stillness in our lives?). Just last week Sandy returned from the Dominican Republic, where she traveled on behalf of Compassion International, an organization that sponsors children in need world-wide. Please take a few minutes today to read about her experiences and the beautiful people she met there. And perhaps consider sponsoring a Compassion child too? I am delighted to welcome Sandy to the blog today!

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Story and Photo by Sandra Heska King

I’m sitting in the balcony of the church in Marietta, Georgia, and I’m unrolling my “homework,” my butcher paper art–the entire book of Revelation, colored pictures on a scroll. And we stretch it out and down the row, and she looks up and nods and applauds. Nine months we live in that book, and she carries me from “In the beginning” to the last “Amen.”

That’s the last year she drives weekly from Chattanooga. So we gather friends and organize a Romans study in our church. And I can’t get enough.

We’re called to move to a new home in Tampa, and I fight it. But I find DeeDee, and she’s got me leading a Precept group there. Then I’m sitting in the airport hugging Kay.

I’m in Chattanooga at the “ranch” taking notes on Philippians and memorizing the humility verses. She’s describing the crucifixion, and a storm is blowing, and it seems like the lights go out for a moment, but I can’t remember for sure. Maybe everything goes dark just before the light blazes.

The air presses in on me, and I can’t breathe.

She teaches me how to uncover treasure for myself, to test what others tell me.

Once she shook her fist in God’s face and hissed, “To hell with you God.” Now she crams colored pencils in my fist and says (basically), “Go forth, and mark up your Bible. Get to know the God who went to hell for you.”

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The words become life to me. My home and my hope are here in these pages.

She teaches me about lists and comparisons and contrasts and color-coding and verb tenses and moods and voices and how to make my own chain references and how to study from a Bible without notes–because the Holy Spirit alone can teach me.

And my Bible falls apart.

She teaches me about God’s character and His sovereignty and oh, how that’s held me through so many questions and regrets.

She teaches me how to live, how to be silver refined, how to make the bitter sweet, how to battle disappointment, about tetelestai and tiqvah.

She’s a nurse, too, so I feel an extra special bond. She calls me a co-laborer, and she assures me that nothing I do in the Lord is in vain.

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. ~2 Corinthians 15:58

I dream of walking with her in the Holy Land, hearing her teach from the places Jesus walked and talked and prayed and rested–and died. And I pray for the miraculous provision of finances that will let me do this while she and I both can.

Kay Arthur, co-founder of Precept Ministries International, is my faith heroine, and I thank God for her and for the love of the Word she birthed in me, for how she’s helped me learn how to know God.

And one more thing. She’s 81 years old now and looks at least 20 years younger. I want to keep drinking the same water.

 

SandraHeskaKing2Sandra Heska King (AKA Snady AKA SHK) lives in Michigan and writes from a 150-plus-year-old family farmhouse set on 60-plus acres surrounded by corn or soybeans or sometimes wheat. She’s a camera-toting, recovering doer who’s learning to just. be. still.

Sandra blogs at sandraheskaking.com and sometimes spills words in other places across the Internet. She’s a “poetry barista” (AKA social media associate) at Tweetspeak Poetry and has been a featured writer at The High Calling. You can catch up with her on Facebook and Twitter.

This post is part of the My Faith Heroine Series in conjunction with the release of 50 Women Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Heroines of the Faith. Click here to read other posts in the #MyFaithHeroine series. 

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The Person Who Points You North {My Faith Heroine Series}

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Many of you already know Kris Camealy. Maybe you’ve already read the words she pens so brilliantly and passionately on her blog. Or you’ve read her Lent devotional book,Holey, Wholly, Holy. Or you’ve crossed paths with her on Facebook and knew immediately that she is someone special. That’s Kris. She’s been an incredible encouragement to me these last several months – a cheerleader, a prayer warrior and a good, good friend. Kris is in the Dominican Republic with Compassion this week, sharing her heart and hope, and I’d love for you to read what she’s written here and here about her experience so far. Thanks for helping me welcome Kris to the blog today – I just love this story about her Faith Heroine.

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 Post by Kris Camealy

When I met Lori, I met Jesus.

Lori is the wife of the youth pastor our church had hired, and imported to Virginia from the middle of Florida when I was 14. We loved her immediately for her spunky personality, her musical gifting, her sugar cookies which she frosted with vanilla frosting made from Columbian vanilla beans–that, and the fact that nothing we did or said shocked her.

In those days, we were full of ourselves, while Lori remained cool and calm in the face of some of the most outrageous teenage drama we could manufacture.

Drugs, promiscuity, gang activity, foul language spouted (purely for shock value), and teen pregnancy–our youth group had all of it amongst us. When we most expected to be turned away, we found instead, a haven in the home of our youth pastor and his wife Lori.

By the time I could drive, she invited me into a one-on-one discipleship relationship with her. Hungry as I was then for Jesus, I leapt at the chance to spend uninterrupted time with her.

After school I’d swing by her house to pick her up and she’d buy my value meal and feed me body and soul for 2 hours, once a week.

Together we walked slowly through the New Testament, where she introduced me to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We talked about boys and the bible, we talked about Jesus and what it means to live and love the Son of Man.  We talked about the beatitudes while confessions tumbled out of my convicted heart.

Week after week, Lori shined a light into my angst-wrought teenage life, forever changing me.

When I dated boys who weren’t interested in my heart, she told me as much. When I struggled with faithfulness, she held my hands and encouraged me to hold on. When my friends dumped me because of my growing joy in the Lord, she comforted me and spoke the kind of wisdom and peace over me that carried me back to the foot of the cross. She prayed faithfully with and for me. It was all of these things that tethered me tight to God even as I watched many of my other friends fling themselves wild into the merciless arms of the world.

It’s only now, as a mom myself, that I see how precious this time was. She had a family of her own; children, chores, a life–but still she made space for me, without complaint or hesitation.

I call her a saint, because she is. Lori stepped into my life and pointed me north time after time. No matter how lost I felt, I knew my way to her house, where she would lead me back to God’s Word.

I can’t look at my faith story without seeing her face. She is a gift still in my life, a woman I will always admire and honor for her unrelenting passion for bringing the Word of God into the hearts and lives of youth such as I was.

Mentor, surrogate mother, sister, friend, confidant, intercessor, friend. These are all words that describe Lori to me, which is why she is my faith heroine.

KrisCamealyAs a sequin-wearing, homeschooling mother of four, Kris is passionate about Jesus, people and words. Her heart beats to share the hard, but glorious truth about life in Christ. She’s been known to take gratuitous pictures of her culinary creations, causing mouths to water all across Instagram. Once upon a time, she ran 10 miles for Compassion International, a ministry for which she serves as an advocate. Kris is the author of, Holey, Wholly, Holy: A Lenten Journey of Refinement, and the follow up, Companion Workbook. You can read more from Kris at kriscamealy.com.

This post is part of the My Faith Heroine Series in conjunction with the release of 50 Women Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Heroines of the Faith. Click here to read other posts in the #MyFaithHeroine series. 

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When God’s Not in Your Plan A…Or Your Plan B

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Holmes Lake Ice

I’ve been thinking a lot about obedience lately. In the conclusion to 50 Women Every Christian Should Know I wrote that obedience is the thread that ties all fifty women together across diverse time periods, geography and personal circumstances. “Circumstances don’t matter nearly as much as obedience,” I wrote in the afterword of the book, “because God calls us to answer right where we are.”

Sounds like I have obedience all figured out, doesn’t it?

Oh yeah, I do. On paper.

As it turns out, obedience is a cinch to write about, but awfully hard to live out in real life.

I am walking through an uncertain period right now. Several publishers have turned down my current book proposal, my agent is asking me hard questions about what I want to do next, and I don’t have any clear answers. It feels a little wildernessy, and I’ll be honest: I don’t like the wilderness one bit.

And so I’ve been doing what I always do in the face of uncertainty and doubt. I’m racing ahead of God, bent on figuring everything out myself.

For the last two months or so I’ve concocted a number of plans and expectations of how I think all the pieces of my fragmented career will fall into place. When the tide seems to move in a certain direction, I run with it, confident that I know God’s plans for me.

“Aha!” I declare. “THIS is what God’s going to do. THIS is how it’s all going to work out!” Until, that is, it doesn’t work out that way at all. And then I find myself back at square one – still with no publisher, a lot of questions and no direction…in addition to being frustrated with and disappointed in God.

I cycled through this process of planning, expectations, hope and disappointment three times in the last two months before I realized something important:

God hasn’t failed me, and he hasn’t led me down these dead-end paths, because God isn’t the one who created any of these plans in the first place.

I did. I put my faith, hope and confidence in Plans A, B and C – plans of my own making – instead of in God himself.

Holmes Lake Bridge and verse

Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God. We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care. (Psalm 95:6-7)

When I recently read these two verses from Psalm 95 aloud to Brad, he said this in response: “Obedience has to begin with a position of humility.”

The more I thought about it, the more I realized Brad is right. Obedience starts with humility – with our honest acknowledgement that God is sovereign and that he alone is in control. God is the shepherd – the leader – and we are the people he watches over, the flock of sheep who follow under his care.

As my friend Shelly, who recently walked through her own wilderness, says: “Having a Plan A or a Plan B isn’t at all what God wants. He wants us to trust him with all the uncertainty and to put our hope in him, not in our best-case scenario.”

Obedience begins with humility, with kneeling before the God who “holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountain,” the seas and the dry lands. (Psalm 95: 4-5).

Let us kneel before the Lord our maker. Let us hand over our plans and all of our self-created best-case scenarios to him.