Transcript

Erin Davis: Welcome back to The Women of the Bible podcast. I’m Erin Davis. We’re walking through the study Esther: Trusting God’s Plan, and I have some friends with me and we’re walking through the book of Esther together.

I want you ladies to introduce yourselves to those who are listening, and what I’d love to know (because of what we’re talking about in this session) is how you’re interacting with women? I know that we have a shared heart for women to know and love the Word of God.

You’re impacting women’s lives in areas that I’m not, so just tell us your name and how you’re interacting with women. Venessa, we’ll start with you.

Dr. Venessa Ellen: I’m Dr. Venessa Ellen, and I have a couple of touchpoints where I get to really minister to women, and it’s exciting! One, I serve as a chair of a Women’s Ministry Degree program at the College of Biblical Studies in Houston, Texas.

So I get to mentor the ladies and take them through and watch them graduate with their degree—for some of them, their very first degree! So that’s really exciting!

Then on the other side, my husband is a pastor. So at our church, Community of Faith Bible Church in Houston, I’m the Women’s Ministry Director and church administrator.

So I get to really, really dig deep into the lives of women. Also, my husband and I spend a lot of time doing premarital and marital counseling. So we’re heavily into the biblical counseling movement and just really love it and enjoy it.

Erin: Wow!

Betsy Gómez: That’s great! I am Betsy Gomez. My family and I moved recently to Irving, Texas. My husband is one of the pastors there. We started First Irving in Español. So right now we are in the very beginning of this Spanish congregation within an English-speaking church, and I’m there serving women.

Erin: I love that. I’m Erin Davis. My interactions with women happen mostly on my back porch these days. I have four little boys, and so I’m just in a season of life where home is my ministry headquarters.

I have a sweet group of college girls who come every Friday. Right now we’re walking through the book of Hebrews, and they are my absolute delight! They’re never allowed to graduate or leave—I love them so much!

I love to teach in my own local church. I have great women friends that I hope would say that I point them to Jesus. I live in an all-boy household—one husband and four sons. I would just be adrift without women, and I’m so grateful for all the ways that I get to come alongside women and they come alongside me.

We’re going to talk in this session about some tough stuff. Our focus is going to be on the fact that God is at work in our difficult circumstances. It’s with those women in mind I thought we might like to start, because there are women listening . . . I think every woman listening faces something hard! You know, there’s some pocket of brokenness in her life.

But there are some walking a really hard, rocky road! She needs to hear . . . I’m going to say it here and I hope she hears us say it over and over that, “God is at work in your difficult circumstance!” He’s at work in your difficult circumstance! He’s at work in your difficult circumstances!

So I thought, as women who love women and women who interact with women, we’d just fire off some of the difficult circumstances we see in the lives of the women in our world.

Dr. Venessa: It could be the father of a young daughter walks away, and she grows up without her biological father . …