February 2025 Women's Devotional Blog

Our women's ministry blog is up and running again for the 2024-2025 ministry year! If you are interested in being a contributing author, we would love to talk with you about that. Please reach out at women@gracecomm.org.

Our God and Father is the same faithful God that He ever was--
as willing as ever to prove Himself the living God, in our day as formerly,
to all who put their trust in Him.
-George Muller

Every time the Women's Ministry Leadership Team organizes an event or retreat, God very noticeably has worked within and guided our planning. Well before anyone ever even arrives, we have already been privileged to watch God's handiwork as the event itself came together. I always find myself wishing that instead of engaging with the planned materials, we could just sit down and tell you the stories of how God brought each event together! I thought I would take the opportunity this blogpost presents to relate some of those stories to you, so you too can marvel at His steadfast devotion to guiding His daughters as they seek to serve Him.

The first clear evidence we saw that God was at work in our ministry was the way He brought it into being in the first place! Shauna Scofield mentioned in a Bible study session one evening that she felt God was nudging her to start a women's ministry, and I immediately got excited: "I feel like he's nudging me to start a women's ministry, too!" Shauna and I scheduled coffee together the following Saturday, meeting up at 9:00am. In our conversation, it was very clear that Shauna and I are very different people, but were developing deep appreciation for one another based on the most important thing we have in common: commitment to following Christ. After a delightful chat about our faith journeys, vision for what a women's ministry could be, and bouncing event ideas off one another, we realized we were beginning to feel hungry. We looked at our watches, and it was 1:00pm - we had been talking for four hours! Both of us marveled at how much excitement and momentum God was building into the ministry from the get-go.  

About a year later, the evening before one event, one of our Women's Leadership Team members suddenly tested positive for Covid, which meant that all the goodies she had spent the previous couple of days baking for the occasion were quarantined alongside her. The rest of us scurried off to Sam's Club to find acceptable alternatives, praying that there would be enough time and money to fill in the tables with the yummy treats that had been promised in the event advertising. We stumbled upon the most beautiful cupcakes (cue an angelic chorus as light shone down upon exactly what we needed...) at a price point that was much less than we were anticipating. After filling the cart with enough for everyone and hustling back to the church, we then proceeded to drop cupcake containers on the floor, one after another, threatening to smash up our beautiful last-minute, divine-intervention confectionary delights. The Leadership Team looked at one another, and just burst out laughing. After each subsequent container tumble, the situation just got funnier and funnier! We laughed until we cried, and the peals of gaiety melted away our stress. God was placing lightness in our hearts and gifting us with the ability to see beyond the problems to find the humor in the situation. What could have been a disaster of frantic panic wound up being one of the sweetest and most treasured memories of our Leadership Team.

In the lead up to one retreat, we struggled to find a teacher for the third main session we were planning to hold. We asked half a dozen women, and all were unable to commit for one reason or another. Other names came to mind as we thought of who else to consider, but we kept feeling uncertain and unsettled about each one. With each person the Leadership Team considered, there was always one or more of us who felt undecided, often for reasons we could not articulate clearly. We began to become confused and frustrated. I remember praying, "God, do you realize we only have three weeks left until this retreat? Someone needs to take this role on! Who are you going to send us, God?" Then suddenly a woman from the church staff texted me and related that in her morning prayer, she felt God telling her to suggest that we leave the third main session open for prayer, instead of filling it with more teaching and discussion. Though I had become increasingly concerned we would be left high and dry, it turned out God had wanted to send us Himself all along, and that ended up being one of the best received main sessions we've ever had.

Some of you may remember a couple years ago, when the Women's Leadership Team sang at the Christmas event. Though our Repentance Parody Christmas Carol medley was planned and rehearsed (complete with fabulous hats and giant, glittery candy canes), us leading worship was most certainly unplanned.

We had intended for a vocal group to come perform at our event, and unfortunately they double booked and had to drop our event. (Don't worry, we rescheduled and they did a fabulous job at our Christmas event the next year!) This left us with no one to lead worship. Despite having little confidence in our own vocal prowess, the Women's Leadership Team took a huge leap of faith and followed God's prompting to lead worship on our own. We invited everyone to join us in putting aside self-consciousness and sing just for an audience of one--our God and Father. To this day, the worship that followed remains one of the most beautiful, authentic, and meaningful in which I have ever had the privilege of participating.

These are just a few of myriad stories that form the "behind the scenes" work that God accomplishes, guiding us as our women's events come together. Some were small reminders of Him, some were bittersweet, and some required stepping wildly outside of comfort zones, but every one has brought members of our Women's Leadership Team into deeper trust of God's steadfastness. I personally have grown more in my trust of God through serving on the leadership team than I ever imagined I would. He is always working on my heart through the twists and turns of the planning process, and the evidence that He always shows up is overwhelming. The more often I watch Him prove Himself to be steadfast, the easier it becomes to trust He will do it again in the future. Thus, in preparation for another women's retreat in one month's time, as a reminder to myself and to everyone planning to attend, let us join enthusiastically with the chorus of Psalm 100:

Psalm 100

A psalm. For giving grateful praise.

¹ Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
² Worship the Lord with gladness;
    come before him with joyful songs.
³ Know that the Lord is God.
    It is he who made us, and we are his;
    we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
⁴ Enter his gates with thanksgiving
    and his courts with praise;
    give thanks to him and praise his name.
⁵ For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
    his faithfulness continues through all generations.