Episode 6: The Stressed Side of Jesus

Erin Davis: “Americans Are Besieged by Stress!” That’s the headline.

Erika VanHaitsma: This is Erin Davis.

Erin: It sums up the results of a recent poll by the American Psychology Association. They do a poll each year studying stress in America. Here’s what they found. (This probably won’t surprise you.) Seventy-six percent of the Americans they surveyed are showing chronic, physical signs of stress. We’re talking about things like constant headaches, joint pain, high blood pressure. Here’s the number that did surprise me: twenty-seven percent of the people they surveyed said that they spend days so stressed that they cannot function. 

Just hearing those numbers is probably causing you some stress. It’s causing me some stress! I have loved looking at the other side of Jesus with you. In a previous episode, Erika taught us that Jewish rabbis see Scripture as a multi-faceted diamond. And we’ve certainly seen some beautiful sides of Jesus during our time together. 

In this final episode, we’re going to pick up our Bibles again and look at them from a slightly different angle. We’re going to see Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Erika: This is The Deep Well with Erin Davis. 

What stress are you feeling today? Your pressures could be coming from worry about money or worry over relationships with your kids, your grandkids, your spouse. There could be physical pain or a hundred other pressures. I know the stress is real and serious. But we want to invite you to pause and realize Jesus knows what it’s like to feel stress. 

Erin’s in a season called “The Other Side of Jesus.” On this episode she’s taking us into the stressed side of Jesus.

Erin: All four gospels record that Jesus prayed in a garden immediately before His arrest. For this episode we’re going to take a peek at the way each of the gospel writers tell about that event. We’re looking for the stressed side of Jesus. Let’s jump in.

The first account of Jesus in the garden is Matthew 26:36–46. I’m going to walk us through it. I’m not going to read every verse, but we’re going to walk through that account in Matthew 26:36–46.

Verse 37 tells us that He began to be sorrowful and troubled. Several years ago I circled that verse and I wrote beside it in green ink, “Stressed!” Sorrowful and troubled. Those aren’t necessarily words that we throw around a lot, but we certainly say, “I’m stressed” a lot. I think as we look at the garden, and we look at the way the gospel writers wrote about the garden, in saying Jesus was sorrowful and troubled, I think that’s kind of a nice, churchy way of saying Jesus was stressed.

In verse 38 Jesus himself said, “My soul is very sorrowful even to death.” That’s an interesting verse because Jesus knew He was going to die. So what was He saying there when He said that My soul, My insides, are so sad or so stressed, sorrowful, even to death? This is how I always described the valley of the shadow of death. I think it’s that place where we think, If I have to stay here one more minute, I’m going to die. And that’s what Jesus was describing. He was describing that I know I’m going to physically die, but in this moment, the weight of what I’m carrying is so intense it feels like the pressure’s going to kill me. 

Verse 39 tells us, “And going a little further, he fell on his face and prayed saying, ‘My father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless,’”—one of the most beautiful words in Scripture—“‘Nevertheless, not as I will but as you will.’”

Take Jesus’ words, take the ways you’ve heard them in church, and lay them over your own experiences. Stressed is when you’re like, “I can’t do this. I can’t face this. I don’t want to do this anymore.” And ultimately, we usually do. 

And Jesus in this moment of stress and anguish and sorrow cries out to His Father incredibly honestly. Of course, Jesus was always honest with His Father because He and the Father are one. He says, “Ah, I don’t want to do this! If possible . . .” even though He knew! He knew He was going to go to the cross. He knew He was going to die on the cross. He knew He was going to rise from the dead. But still, in this moment of pure, unfiltered humanity, he says, “Dad, if it’s possible, Father, if it’s possible, don’t make Me face this.” But He immediately says, “But I’ll do it. I’ll do it if that’s what you want.”

Listen to these verses like you’ve never heard them before. Try to see Jesus as human Jesus here. The weight of what He faced was so heavy He couldn’t stay on His feet. The gospel writer tells us He fell on his face. And though Jesus was always willing to submit to the will of the Father, He never wavered in that. He did not want to face what was ahead. 

Sovereign Jesus knew how many times He would be whipped. Sovereign Jesus knew how many thorns would be pressed into His skull. Sovereign Jesus knew that He would have to drink vinegar from the end of a pole that someone stuck up there. Sovereign Jesus knew the humiliation. And here in the garden, Jesus is stressed. 

Mark’s description of these events are found in Mark 14:32–42. In verse 33, Mark uses the words “greatly distressed and troubled.” And then he repeated Jesus’ words, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” 

Luke was a physician and so Luke, being a physician, gives us the most clinical version of Jesus’ stress-filled moments. You can find them in Luke 22:44:

And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. 

That’s not a metaphor. Something physical is happening in Jesus' body as a result of the stress that He’s feeling. Something physical happens in your body as a result of the stress that you’re feeling. Luke also records the detail about the disciples that the other gospels do not. Look at Luke 22:45.

And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow. 

I think we’ve pegged the disciples wrong in a few too many sermons. They weren’t sleeping because they were indifferent to what was happening. They weren’t sleeping because they were simply selfish, although all humans are selfish. Luke says they were sleeping for sorrow. They were sleeping as a response to the stress in their own bodies about what was happening.

They were watching Jesus, their friend, their Messiah. They were watching Him crumple before their very eyes. They must’ve been realizing on some level that He meant the things He’d been telling them all along, that things were not going to end the way they hoped. They hoped Jesus was going to usher in a human kingdom in their day and that they were going to be able to sit, flank Him, in His throne room. And here as these events are unfolding, they’re realizing, “Oh, when He told us when He’s going to die, He’s going to die! Oh, when He told us when His body is going to be broken, His body is going to be broken.” 

Imagine the stress! I would take hard in my life a million times before I would take hard in the life of my husband and children. Not a question. Don't have to think about it. So, they are watching Jesus fall to the ground under the weight of what is happening to Him. They’re probably within earshot because the gospels tell us He went a stone’s throw away from them, so they’re probably within earshot where He’s saying, “Father, take this away from me!” And so, they’re asleep.

You ever been so stressed you conk out and take a nap? You ever been so sad all you want to do is sleep? So have the disciples. As those disciples slept, Jesus sweat blood. 

The capillaries under our Savior’s skin burst from the pressure He was under. I happen to be someone with a heart condition, and when you’re stressed, your heart responds. And it starts pumping blood to the extremities of your body in such a way that can cause a lot of damage. Jesus’ capillaries are bursting under His skin and blood mixed with sweat is coming through His pores. 

I want you to listen to how one pastor described it,

In Gethsemane Jesus engaged spiritually the forsakenness on the cross before he was actually arrested and crucified. "My soul is very sorrowful even to death," [he’s quoting Matthew 26:38 there] Jesus knew He would lose His life on the cross, but first, He would lose what was more precious, the sense of His Father’s good pleasure. [We talked about that in the last episode.]

Prior to his capture, Jesus envisioned what was to come up as a cup he would have to drink.” [That’s Matthew 26:39 and 42.] The goblet was filled with the wrath of God [we talked about that in this season] against sin and all its destructive and distorting power. [That's Isaiah 51:17.] 

[Listen to this:] As Jesus pressed forward into the events of His passion, He would perceive His Father as moving backward, away from Him. In His prayers in Gethsemane, He engaged the final temptation to turn from that horror and let the world perish instead of Himself.

You ever face a totally overwhelming day or a totally overwhelming child or a totally overwhelming assignment, and instead of running to Jesus with the weight of all you are carrying, you convince yourself that Jesus couldn’t possibly understand this? Well, until you’ve sweat drops of blood in response to your stress and sorrow, Jesus has the jump on you. 

He does understand stress. He felt it at a level that, by His grace, most of us never will. He knows what it feels to be stressed. He knows what it feels to be filled with sorrow. And He knows what it looks like to take your circumstances and wish that God would give you a workaround. 

John also records Jesus praying in the moments before His arrest. It’s a beautiful passage in Scripture. John 17 we often call the high priestly prayer. It’s where all the gospel writers record that He prayed, and all the gospel writers record some of the words that He prayed. I don’t know, John must’ve been listening incredibly well, because He gives us this high priestly prayer. 

And yes, Jesus did pray for the cup to pass, but Jesus also prayed for you! Jesus also prayed for me. 

In that moment of such tremendous stress, don’t miss the simple fact that Jesus prayed! And don’t miss the simple fact that you were on His heart. You were on His mind. He could’ve said a word and it all would’ve been over. He didn’t. Why did He endure the stress for you? 

Here’s just a glimpse of that prayer in John 17:17–19. This is what He prayed for you, for me:

“Sanctify them in truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they might also may be sanctified in truth.”

Jesus went into the garden for you. Jesus sweat drops of blood for you. Jesus endured more stress than you ever will for you. Jesus prayed for you. And then He got up from that prayer, and He went to the cross for you.

Don’t miss those four little words I just read in verse 19. The reason He endured all of that was, “and for their sake.” He did it for you. He did it for me. 

I want you to know as we wrap up this series that I didn’t teach the other side of Jesus because I have Jesus all figured out. I don’t. And that amazes me. I’ve been walking with the Lord twenty-five years. Some of you have been walking with the Lord twice that or longer than that. And you’re still discovering things about Jesus you didn’t know. And that’s the great adventure of our lives! We get to know Him more and more and more. 

It’s probably a pale example, but it’s an example. Jason and I have been married twenty-two years. I find out new things about that boy every day! I thought I knew him when we were twenty-one and twenty-three and got married barefoot on the beach, but I didn’t! And he would say the same thing about me. 

Loving Jesus is that same kind of relationship. Now, He knows you fully. And someday when we see Him face to face, we are going to know Him fully even as we’ve been fully known. But the quest of my life is that when that moment happens, I’ll look him in the eye and say, “Oh! It’s you! I know you!”

Job 26:14 tells us this, “Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him!” So, I hope that you know that the Bible’s a deep well. I hope you spend every day of your life reading it. I hope you don’t ever open it looking for you. I hope you look at it looking for Jesus. And in rightly seeing Jesus, you rightly see everything else. 

But even if you do that, even if I do that, even if we could memorize the Bible cover to cover, even if we could hear thousands of sermons on Jesus, we’d still just be hearing a whisper. We’d just be touching the outsides of who He is. There’s more of Him to discover!

I taught the other side of Jesus because I want to know the other side of Jesus. I taught the other side of Jesus because I want you to know the Bible’s anything but boring. It’s the map to your Savior, and you will discover Him. And the more you will discover Him, the more you will love Him. And the more you love Him, the more you will live your life for Him. 

I’ve taught six other sides of Jesus in this series. I could’ve taught six thousand! And that’s where you come in. You get to spend the rest of your life reading God’s Word and understanding Jesus. 

But how should we respond? Scripture gives us a really good question and the question is this, “How then should we live?” 

So if Jesus is in the Old Testament, and He is; if there’s an angry side of Jesus, and there is, and it’s rightly directed at sin; if there’s a day coming when Jesus is going to pour out the wrath of God on those who don’t bow the knee to Him, and He will; if Jesus is a happy God, and He is and He’s happy with you; if Jesus has endured loneliness so that you don’t have to, and He has; if Jesus endured stress for your sake, how then should we live?

How should we respond to this multifaceted Jesus, the one who refuses to fit inside our neat little boxes that we like to make for Him? The one who is capable of profound love and righteous anger? The one who is both a source of tremendous grace and of wrath? A God who is happy but somehow still racked with sorrow and stress in the garden? There’s only one way to respond to this Jesus. We give Him our lives because He’s worthy.

I’m not just talking about the moment that you walked the aisle or the moment when you maybe in the quietness of your own bedroom said, “Okay Jesus, I give You my life.” I’m talking about over and over and over again. 

If our hearts aren’t turned toward worship, it is a sure sign that we aren’t seeing Jesus for who He really is. We’ve somehow minimized Him. When you consider all He endured for you, friend, and all He has promised to bring you, it’s like a prism. He’s a multifaceted Jesus. And when you look into God’s Word for Him . . . Prisms bend light. They take one thing we thought we knew about Him and it shifts it. And worshiping Jesus for how He really is, it doesn’t just shift your view of Jesus, it shifts your view of everything else.

It’s true, you know, those words we’ve been singing all these years. When we turn our eyes upon Jesus, when we look full on His wonderful face, the things of earth really do grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. Amen.

Erika: I know you’re feeling some sort of stress today. Can I be honest with you? I am as well. Now, maybe it’s just a little bit of stress, but maybe you are having a lot of stress. You can know Jesus understands your stress! He carried the weight of the world. 

In the middle of your stress, it is so important to fill your mind with truth. That’s what we want to provide through the Revive Our Hearts podcast family.

Erin: In case you don’t know about the Revive Our Hearts podcast family, there is probably a podcast for you! There’s the Revive Our Hearts podcast where you can hear Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth teach from God’s Word every week day. There’s Expect Something Beautiful where Laura Booz will tell you a story and then point you to the Bible. Then there’s True Girl for the tween girl in your life. It’s equal parts fun and faith.

Erika: And then there’s the podcast I’ve been enjoying, The Deep Well with Erin Davis. And Erin, your desire is to get women to know their whole Bible, which I think is wonderful.

Erin: Genesis to Revelation. Let’s look at it all!

Erika: Amen, yep. And you can find out more about the Revive Our Hearts podcast family at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Erin Unscripted

Today, Erin, you gave us a great example of digging into our Bible and what we can learn from it. One of the things you taught us was that when we’re in the midst of that stressful season, we can find hope in Jesus. But practically, when our feet hit that road, what do we do when that stressful feeling arises? That’s what you’re going to answer next in “Erin Unscripted.”

Erin: This is going to sound very spiritual, but it’s my honest answer: take a walk. 

Erika: I have started doing that, actually!

Erin: Yep, it’s what I do. Now, I live on a beautiful farm, and I have beautiful things to look at. But you can almost walk anywhere you are. Stress has physical consequences, so it is hard to deal with the emotional level of stress or the spiritual level of stress or the relational level of stress when your body, your physical body, is probably in fight or flight mode and having those stressful reactions. So, I do take walks.

Jesus took walks. Now, it’s before the advent of travel, so it might not be an apple to apples comparison, but He did take walks. I would find something to respond to the physical things that are happening inside of your body. You’ve probably got to calm down those cells a little bit. It’s walks for me. It might be shooting hoops for you. It might be singing. 

Also I feel like I said this earlier in the series, I’ve said it often, I believe it. I think Christians would be much less stressed and much more joyful if we just went outside. That’s the Romans 1 thing again. You can perceive the nature of God by being in nature. 

Actually in our modern culture, we don’t get enough sunlight. We don’t get enough movement. All of those things are very real. I think we forget that God created our bodies and our spirits, and so we need to be attentive to both. Maybe not the answer anyone was thinking, but take a walk. Listen to a bird sing. That’s what I say.

Erika: I started walking during the pandemic. It was like, “I am done, Lord! I need something.” It is amazing how sweet those times of walks have become. I have five kids, so there are times when Mama needs a moment, otherwise someone’s going to die. Just that break. “I’ll be back. Y'all will survive.” It’s been amazing. I would totally echo a walk.

What if it’s not you, but it’s a spouse or a friend, a sibling, a parent who’s stressed? How do you come alongside and say, “Hey, go take a walk”?

Erin: Yeah, that’s pretty good. My husband will occasionally say to me, “You need to go write.” Which is code for, “You’re stressed, girl! Go to the coffee shop and write. We got it!” It’s really hard for me not to take on my husband’s stress. I don’t want him to be stressed. I want his life to be easy breezy. But it kind of goes back to what we talked about in a previous episode. If I'm always trying to counter my loved one’s negative emotions, what reason would they have to cry out to God? What reason would they have to take care of their own bodies? 

So, we can be mirrors for each other. Sometimes we don’t even recognize when we’re stressed. Ultimately, I’m always grateful. Maybe in the moment I’m not grateful, if I’m honest. But when someone acknowledges, “You seem really stressed,” because a lot of times I’m oblivious to that. I think you can lovingly call it out, but I would resist the urge to fix it because that’s not your job. The Lord works in those moments to reveal Himself. Certainly, there are things that we do that cause people stress, and we should try to minimize that, but I guess I’m saying don’t take it on, and don’t try to fix it all.

Woman 1: Can I just add to that? It’s hard when you’re a mom to adult kids. I feel like that’s one of the hardest seasons of parenting. You see them going things, and you don’t want them to have trouble or suffer or just have a hard time. You just so badly want to fix it and say things. So that’s been a journey for me is to learn to pray for them and not try to fix it. 

Erin: Yeah. You have a little mantra that I love.

Woman 1: “Pray, don’t say.”

Erin: Pray, don’t say.

Woman 1: I did not come up with it though. You’ll have to give the credit to somebody else on that one. 

Erin: I think “Pray, don’t say” can probably apply to anybody you know and love that’s dealing with stress and you want to intervene. It’s probably not “pray and don’t ever say,” but certainly pray first.

Woman 2: First I just want to say thank you for your teaching. I love how the Lord has given you this gift to open up the Scripture, to get into the nitty gritty and see our lives through the lens of Scripture. That is such a gift. 

The thing that I want to pick up on that you talked about as well is the indicator light. When I’m feeling stressed, the indicator light that’s going off for me is usually pride. It’s, “This depends on me,” and I deal with that a lot. This forgetting who my God is and the fact that He is just calling me to do the next right thing. So just humbling myself to do the next right thing. 

We’ve had some stress with my team at work, and this lady right next to me and I will get on before we jump into what we need to do, and we’ll pray. For me it’s an act of humbling myself and saying, “God, I’m not you. I am finite, and I trust you.” 

When I was going through my recovery from surgery as well, I didn’t want my husband to have to pick up, come home from nine hours of working and have to do the dishes and play with the dog and heat up my heating pad and all of the things he needed to do to care for me, and then pass out exhausted on the couch at o'clock at night. But I had a mentor, a very wise woman, who said to me, “Amanda, you cannot rescue your husband out of that.”

She shared with me from Jeremiah 17 that we all have heat. When we’re trusting in the Lord, I need to allow God to work in my husband’s heart, because he needs to grow to be more like Christ. When I rescue or try to, then I'm circumventing God's work in his life, and I don’t want to do that. So just that perspective change helped me to stay back, even though you love people and you want to help. Having that wisdom, like what you said, is to stand back and allow the Lord to be who He is in their life.

Erin: That’s good, Amanda. When you’re saying that sometimes our stress is rooted in pride and the false sense that everything depends on us, it made me think of Jesus in the garden and the reality that everything did depend on Him. He was the only one who could make the sacrifice because He lived a sinless life.

If you know your whole bible, and I hope you do, you know that the lamb had to be perfect without blemish. So the stress He was feeling, he didn’t have a messiah complex. He was the Messiah! So how dare us take that on when He bore it. 

Erika: Following up on that, one thing that blessed me was learning how the Jewish people view the sabbath. It’s a way to be reminded that they’re not in control, that it’s one day a week that God has put into this cycle of life to remind yourself to rest, to stop, and say, “The world doesn’t depend on me. I can stop, and it will keep spinning. 

I have yet to figure out how to incorporate a sabbath into my own life, I’ll be honest with you. I’m a hypocritical person because I believe it’s important, but I don’t know how to do it. Those who I talk to who do keep a sabbath talk about the rest and the refreshment that it brings to have a twenty-four-hour period where you have nothing to accomplish. You get to focus on God. You get to just acknowledge, “You’re in control. I’m not.” And that’s such a beautiful thing. It’s amazing what it carries through the rest of the week. I wonder how much of our stress is because we refuse to stop.

Erin: A lot of it.

Erika: And just go, it’s You, God. It’s all on You. And when I have my six days, I will work hard. But on that seventh day, Lord, hey, You’re King and I’m not.

Erin: Yeah. He’s King on all seven days, but it’s us living like it’s true. You’re pointing to how Scripture defines sabbath, which is that it’s a gift that God gives us. It’s not something He needs, but it’s something He’s given us because He knows we need it. 

Woman 3: I know for a lot of us it’s hard not to rescue someone that’s in stress. But what do you do in the situation where someone’s coming to you stressed and they expect you to carry that with them? They expect you to be stressed with them?

Erin: What does it show them about your faith in Jesus if you won’t? You can’t make me feel stressed. You can’t make me take on things that God doesn’t want me to carry. Because my trust is not in you, and I don’t live my life for you. You don’t have to say that. I’m a pretty direct communicator, so maybe you shouldn't. But I think it does show. I’ve often been quieted by . . . My mom comes to mind as an example when I’m tornadic and worked up and she won’t take it on. She loves me, but I can’t rob her peace from her, as much as I might even try or subconsciously want her to, because, of course, I want her to feel what I’m feeling. She is unmoved. Not that her heart’s not moved toward me. She loves me tremendously. But her standing in life, her peace, doesn’t come from my stress or hers. 

And so, I think just stand firm in posture more than anything else in the way that you’re living your life more than anything else. But if you have to, if they press you on it and say, “Why isn’t this bothering you?” Then you have an opportunity to share some of the things we’ve talked about on this episode even, but also, “I love you, and I’m so sorry you’re walking through this. And I am praying for you.”

Now, mean it when you say it, because I don’t say it unless I am. But, “I’m praying for you, but I’m not going to take this on because your happiness or well-being is not where my peace comes from.” That is a mature posture that takes a lot of years of walking with the Lord. But I do think it speaks to others when we don’t absorb their stress.

There’s empathy, and then there’s unhealthy empathy. And unfortunately, we don’t get a checklist for healthy and a checklist for unhealthy. I personally learned that I’ve done an unhealthy when I’m out over my skis and I realize that my peace has been robbed of me, or I’ve given it away, rather. I think we should have empathetic responses to others but not in the ultimate sense. 

You know, my kids are my best alarm system. They’re the best indicator that something’s off in our family. When they’re all melting down and whining, I can either get frustrated at that, or I can say, “Something’s off here.” My kids don’t normally behave this way. Or, we’re overscheduled. Or, we’re hungry. That kind of thing. It’s good to be attentive. 

But in the ultimate sense, somebody else being sad doesn’t have to throw me into an existential crisis. I can grieve with them, but I don’t have to take on their grief, but Jesus takes it on. There’s a line I say a lot. It’s not Scripture—it is in theory, but not word for word. Trust them to Jesus. That’s the safest place for them to be.

So, I can go to somebody’s funeral and weep, and then I can trust those other mourners to Jesus. That’s the safest place for them to be. I can be someone that carries other people’s burdens in a way that they come to me with those burdens, but ultimately, I can trust them to Jesus. That’s the safest place for them to be. He’s the burden bearer, not me. I think it’s surrender, probably.

Woman 3: I think it’s when someone comes . . . It kind of sounds like they’re looking for you to be Jesus in their life. You never want someone to do that because you can’t be what Jesus is supposed to be in their life. Being able to compassionately share that with them and keep pointing them to Jesus and asking the Lord for wisdom in how to do that is important.

Erin: Yeah. As you were talking about work stress, I was reminded of a conversation I had with my good friend Dannah. Revive Our Hearts listeners, you’ll recognize that name. I was work stressed. She listened and then just said, “Oh, I didn’t realize you worked for man.” I was like, “Okay . . .” That’s all she said! It was like, remember? You work for God. You work all things to give him glory. You’re spinning out over a bunch of things that are totally irrelevant.

She can talk into my life like that and does frequently, but that was exactly what I needed to hear. She didn’t try to bash me over the head. She didn’t say, “Erin, you’re being crazy.” She just said, “Oh, I didn’t realize you worked for man.” So, I think we can say those loving things to each other.

Erika, part of the reason that I wanted you to be a part of this series for The Deep Well is because you have a podcast called, “The Context and Color of the Bible.” I knew you had a podcast. I’m a listener. I know you love your Scripture. But it wasn’t until we were together for this that I learned kind of where that came from. You want to take us back to your time in the Middle East?

Erika: I first got interested in Israel when I fell in love with, honestly, the Old Testament and the stories that it contained. I always decided, “Okay, I want to learn more, so I might as well go to the land where it came from.”

Erin: Yeah.

Erika: Before I went to Israel, I always pictured the Bible as in a dark room with just a flashlight. The Bible was lit, but nothing else. It was just kind of contextless. But then in studying in Israel, it was like someone turned up the flashlight, and all of a sudden I saw the Bible on a land. It was filled with people, and it was on every page. I could smell it. I could hear it. I could taste it. I could see it. And the Bible just came to life! It was amazing. 

I was like, “Okay Lord, now I want to do this for other people! I want people to open this book up and go, “Oh my word, it’s a real, living, breathing book! It’s amazing!”And so, my desire has always been to bring color to the black and white pages of the text because there’s so much in this Book. As my sister and I were talking about what we were learning in Scripture, we thought that we would love to share this with others and get them excited about what is in the Word of God and how big this Book is!

Erin: You heard it right here on The Deep Well. After you listen to this season of The DeepWell, head on over and listen to “The Context and Color of the Bible.”

Erika: The Deep Well is a production of Revive Our Hearts, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. 

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.