Christian women are meant to lead extraordinary lives of purpose, calling and courage, the president of Baptist World Alliance Women told the virtual Global Conference of Baptist Women.
“It’s never just about us. It’s bigger than that, and your life is meant to touch the lives of others. You were born for great things,” Karen Wilson, CEO of the Global Leadership Network Australia, told the July 7 conference, scheduled in conjunction with the online Baptist World Congress.
Living extraordinary lives means accepting the calling to “be Jesus to all those we meet,” Wilson told the conference.
“God doesn’t waste a moment when his extraordinary purposes are lived out through us,” she said.
Each person has a unique calling from God, and as God mobilizes his people for action, each individual must do her part, Wilson emphasized.
“You are just right,” she said. “Don’t discount your age, your race, your gender, your circumstances in life. … [God] needs you just the way you are.”
God wants each of his children to have an extraordinary heart of mercy, compassion, integrity, courage and faith, she stressed.
“With our hand in his, his heart is now our heart. We are called to step out and walk the journey of faith,” Wilson said. “No matter what we will face, he will be with us. And his Spirit is within us to give us life—and life abundant.”
Jesus offers restoration, revival and renewal
Jesus offers restoration, revival and renewal, Asha Sanchu of Nagaland, India, an advocate for sexually exploited women and children, told the online global conference.
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Sanchu, executive director of the Miqlac Ministry of the Nagaland Baptist Church Council’s women’s department, pointed to Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman as recorded in John 4.
“Through the conversation, as the Samaritan woman opened herself to Jesus, the broken pieces of her life were knitted together one by one, even without her realizing it,” Sanchu said.
After Jesus spoke with the woman, offering the gift of Living Water, her life changed dramatically. A woman who had come to draw water from a well in the heat of the day to avoid contact with others ran into town, eager to invite people to meet Jesus, she noted.
“Her dignity was restored. She was no longer ashamed or afraid to meet people,” Sanchu said.
The Samaritan woman received the gift of new life in Christ, she said.
A woman who had been the “talk of the town, and who was trying to avoid being seen, became active, alive and joyful,” Sanchu said. “She was revived and became a new person. When she experienced this revival, she chose to share with others.”
Survivors of sexual exploitation who come to know Christ often feel burdened for their friends who still are on the streets, Sanchu said. They want to reach out to them, but they are fearful they won’t know how to share God’s word with them effectively.
“Just tell them what God has done in your life, and your life itself will be a testimony to them,” Sanchu counsels the women.
“When God revives, he uses every part of you to bless and encourage others.”
‘Fellow heirs of God’s promises’
Jesus came proclaiming “the reign of God and a theology of liberation,” Gina Stewart told participants in the virtual conference. And in God’s kingdom, any time is the right time to bring healing, deliverance and freedom, said Stewart, senior pastor of Christ Missionary Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn.
Stewart, who also is visiting professor of practical theology in the Samuel D. Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University and first vice president of the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention, preached from Luke 13:10-17.
The passage describes how Jesus healed a woman in the synagogue who had suffered with an infirmity for 18 years, drawing the scorn of the synagogue leader because Jesus healed on the Sabbath. Jesus denounced the hypocrisy of the religious leader and called the woman “a daughter of Abraham.”
“Everyone knew that women were not heirs of Abraham in the way that men were. But Jesus called this unnamed woman a daughter of Abraham,” Stewart said.
Jesus was delivering a revolutionary message about “how men and women ought to relate to each other as fellow heirs of God’s promises,” she said.
“To call her a daughter of Abraham is to make her a full-fledged member of the nation of Israel with equal standing before God, which bestows certain rights and privileges. What Jesus was really saying is that this woman who had been bent over for 18 years is entitled to be healed, delivered and set free because she is a daughter of Abraham,” Stewart said.
Like the woman who was healed on the Sabbath, every Christian woman finds her deliverance and freedom based on her status as a beloved child of God, she asserted.
“When Jesus called that woman a daughter of Abraham, he gave her an identity that was greater than her burdens. It’s that identity that gave her hope after those 18 years of suffering. It was the identity of being a child of her Father, … the identity of being the apple of God’s eye,” Stewart said.
“Our burdens do not have to define the limits of who we are. Our adversity is not our identity. Our condition is not our conclusion. Our situation is not our termination. And what we have been through is not necessarily who we are. We are children of God—daughters of Abraham empowered to stand up straight and live free to the glory of God.”
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