Her Story
Her Story with Grace and Peace Joanne, LLC, seeks to retell the stories of women who were divinely called and empowered to do great things.
Many of them rose to the occasion, and a few very famously did not.
Often, the tragedies and triumphs in their lives are missed, their accounts sidelined, and their portrayals given from perspectives that dismiss the honor and dignity they deserve.
Excavating their narratives from millennia of obfuscation, we now meet the freshly restored, valiant, vivid, and sometimes villainous women of the Bible.
Her Story offers a deep appreciation for God’s work and call in and through women in the scriptures and encourages you and me to take practical steps towards recognition and support of women in all levels and varieties of ministry and spiritual leadership today.
Episodes
54 episodes
Season 7, Leaders in the Cause of Christ: Lydia
In thinking about Lydia’s story, five divisions seemed to emerge.Lydia’s destiny, Lydia’s career as a dye merchantLydia’s desire to establish her own householdThe dream God gave Paul to evangelize in MacedoniaAnd the di...
Season 7, Leaders in the Cause of Christ: Tabitha (Dorcas)
Tabitha’s story begins in Joppa, an ancient seaport along the Mediterranean. This is harbor city as the place Jonah fled to when he heard God’s call to Nineveh. Joppa’s international anchorage so well represented, Jonah knew he could board a sh...
Season 7, Leaders in the Cause of Christ: Mary of Bethany
Martha, Lazarus, and Mary were all disciples of Jesus, people who loved and followed Jesus, opened their home to Him, shared their table with Jesus in fellowship and enjoyed Jesus’ friendship as well as lived by Jesus’ teaching. Each had their ...
Season 7, Leaders in the Cause of Christ: Martha of Bethany
Years and years ago, when I was in a high school writing class, we were asked to write our own obituary. I remember us all laughing nervously, it sounded so macabre! But it was the teacher’s sideways device to get us to write about our hopes an...
Season 7, Leaders in the Cause of Christ: The Woman at the Well
The story of the woman at the well comes right after Jesus made a blockbuster statement to the Pharisee and Sanhedrin member Nicodemus: God loves not just Pharisees, not even just Judeans, but the whole world. And, to illustrate this very point...
Season 7, Leaders in the Cause of Christ: Women Disciples, the Conclusion
Matthew, Mark, and Luke acknowledge the women who traveled with Jesus. Matthew and Mark do not mention these female disciples until they are found at Jesus’s cross. Luke gives more details about them, describing them as ministering to Jesus, an...
Season 7, Leaders in the Cause of Christ: Mary of Magdala, a Disciple of Jesus
Though Mary of Magdala is a well-known figure in the gospels, she is not introduced by name until Jesus’s crucifixion in John’s Gospel (John 19:25). John doesn’t explain who she is, or what her relationship is to Jesus or his family, but there ...
Season 7, Leaders in the Cause of Christ: The Samaritan Woman, A Disciple of Jesus
This is a six-part series, and this is the fourth installment, exploring how the calling narrative found in the Gospel of John, chapter 1 is repeated in the story of the Samaritan Woman in John chapter 4, and in Mary of Magdala's story at the e...
Season 7, Leaders in the Cause of Christ: Twelve Marks of Jesus Call to Discipleship
We don’t often think of Jesus gathering disciples together as a rabbi starting a school, but the shape of what Jesus did very much is the shape of a school. Jesus did depart from the traditional rabbinical model of his day in a few significant ...
Season 7, Leaders in the Cause of Christ: Did Jesus Call Women to Discipleship?
Did Jesus call women into discipleship in the same way Jesus called men? Or did women simply start following Jesus of their own accord, with no formal call? Can we say, for instance, that Mary of Bethany was actually a disciple,...
Season 7, Leaders in the Cause of Christ: Women Disciples, an Introduction
The debate continues as to whether Scripture endorses, or at least permits, or rather forbids women from certain roles within the Body of Christ. May women be deacons? May women be elders? May women be pastors? May women be bishops? May women t...
Season 6, Christ's Ministry: Jairus's Daughter
The story of Jairus’s daughter and the woman who suffered from a bleeding disorder are told together in all three of the synoptic gospels—the gospels that more or less track with each other, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I am going to be tea...
Season 6, Christ's Ministry: Mary of Magdala
Throughout his ministry, Jesus gathered around him men and women who became a community of 120 people joined in their love for and faith in Jesus. And one of those women was Mary of Magdala. She is mentioned fourteen times, in all four Gospels,...
Season 6, Christ's Ministry: The Cross, Symbol of Victory
Is the cross a symbol about death or life? defeat or triumph? humiliation or glory? Or all those things?As I searched for answers, I became drawn to how Christians depicted crosses a thousand years ago and more, and that search became t...
Season 6, Christ's Ministry: The Wife of Pilate
Of the several influential women in the Bible who are not given names—Job’s wife, comes to mind—the wife of Pilate is perhaps the most shadowy. All that is known of her from the scriptures is her relationship to the Procurator Marcus Pontius Pi...
Season 6, Christ's Ministry: The Widow's Mite
In the passage just before this one, Mark talked about the scribe who had asked Jesus about the greatest commandment and was impressed with Jesus’ answer. Jesus was also pleased. He told the scribe he was very close to entering ...
Season 6, Christ's Ministry: The Sinful Woman
We don’t know this woman’s backstory at all, whether she was young or old, her culture or clan. Some in our Bible study thought perhaps she was the woman who had committed adultery and was forgiven privately by Jesus after everyone had left (Jo...
Season 6, Christ's Ministry: Woman Caught in Adultery
Most Bibles point out that the earliest manuscripts do not include this story, and sometimes it appears in Luke However, Jerome, in 383 AD, included it in his translation of the Gospel of John, right after chapter 7, where it is usually found t...
Season 6, Christ's Ministry: Herodias
Herodias’ story is introduced in both Matthew’s gospel and Mark’s with Herod Antipas hearing reports about Jesus’ astonishing miraculous powers."Some were saying, 'John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason...
Season 5, Kings and Queens: Esther
There is some debate as to whether the book of Esther is historical, or possibly written as a play or allegory. Haman’s seventy-five foot gallows, the difficulty in establishing which king—and more notably, which queen—Esther’s story describes,...
Season 5, Kings and Queens: Huldah
Have you ever even -heard- of Huldah? I bet not!Most timelines for the history of ancient Israel place prophets alongside the kings they advised. Even prophets without their own books, such as the prophet Nathan who counseled Ki...
Season 5, Kings and Queens: Jezebel
Just the word “jezebel” evokes a whole evil, erotic, seductive mystique, doesn’t it? I looked “jezebel” up in the dictionary, and here’s what Webster-Merriam has to say: “an impudent, shameless, or morally unrestrained woman.” According to othe...
Season 5, Kings and Queens: Bathsheba
Bathsheba had grown up admiring the handsome, charismatic king David. It had been an exhilarating time in Israel’s history, and her dad Eliam, one of David’s might men, had been all wrapped up in the thick of it, close with David ever since the...
Season 5, Kings and Queens: Abigail
Abigail’s story begins during a traditionally joyful time, the sheep shearing festival. Many guests had gathered, and there was much feasting. Abigail was well-known for her gracious hospitality, and all the tables were generously supplied....
Season 5, Kings and Queens: Michal
Embedded within the story of David, Israel’s most beloved king, and of whom the Lord said was a man after God’s own heart, is the tragic story of Michal, a Benjamite princess and daughter of king Saul.Her story begins in Late Bronze Age...
