October is my favorite month, and no, it has nothing to do with pumpkin spice. October 31 is Reformation Day, and I get a little giddy about it. So this year, I’m doing something about it. Every Sunday this month, I’m going to walk through a piece of the Reformation story right here.
Here is what to expect:
October 4 (today): What was happening before Martin Luther ever picked up a quill
October 11: Luther, the 95 Theses, and what really happened in Wittenberg
October 18: The other reformers, including a few you may never have met
October 25: The five solas, and why they still matter
You should know two things about how I’ll approach this. First, I am going to do my best to get the history right. That includes what the Roman Catholic Church actually teaches, in its own words, because I have read plenty of Reformation posts that were a little off, and I don’t want to add to the pile. Second, I’m not here to be mean about anyone. I’m here to be accurate, and to show why what the Reformers recovered is worth celebrating.
Now, why does this matter so much to me? Because my entire Christian life rests on one thing: what Scripture says. I am not a “Calvinist” because Calvin told me to be. I’m not here because Luther said so, and I didn’t pick up my doctrine from Spurgeon, though I’m grateful for all three. If someone absolutely must put a label on me, I’ll accept “Reformed,” but I get my doctrine from the Bible. If I sound like them, maybe it’s because we read the same Bible. (They just did it a few centuries before me and wrote it down better.)
That is the heart of the Reformation. Ordinary people getting their hands on God’s Word and discovering what it says. I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s get into it.
For years I pictured the Reformation as one guy, one door, and one very dramatic hammer. It turns out I had the movie trailer and not the film. (This describes a surprising amount of my historical knowledge.) The real story is bigger, messier, and so much better, and it starts about two hundred years before Martin Luther picked up a quill.
Let’s start with what ordinary people had to work with. Scripture and church services were in Latin, which most people could not read. If you wanted to hear God’s Word, you heard it from a priest. In England it got tighter in 1409, when Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutions required a bishop’s approval for new English translations. Historians still debate how strictly that was enforced, but the direction is clear: Scripture in the language of the people was treated as a risk.
Then confidence in the church itself took a hit. From 1378 to 1417, there were rival popes, two at first and eventually three, each with his own cardinals and his own following. Even Catholic sources acknowledge that this schism forced the Church to spend decades sorting out who the true pope was. Imagine being a farmer in 1400 and being told your salvation runs through an office that nobody could agree on.
Into that stepped John Wycliffe, an Oxford theologian who argued that Scripture, not church tradition, was the final authority. He promoted the first complete English Bible, and his followers, the Lollards, carried his ideas across England. Decades after his death, his remains were dug up and burned. That is a lot of effort for a man who was already dead.
Wycliffe’s ideas traveled to Bohemia, where a priest named Jan Hus took them up and preached in the language of the people. Hus was summoned to the Council of Constance in 1415 under a promise of safe conduct. He was imprisoned instead, refused to recant unless shown his error from Scripture, and was burned at the stake. Here is a fair note worth including: in 1999, Pope John Paul II expressed deep regret for Hus’s cruel death. And here is the irony: the same council that burned Hus also ended the schism.
By 1516, the kindling was dry. The printing press was spreading books faster than any scribe could. And Erasmus, a Catholic scholar who never left Rome, published the first printed Greek New Testament. Luther would use it to translate the New Testament into German. Nobody lit the match on purpose. God had simply been stacking the wood for a long time.
Next Sunday: the monk, the theses, and what actually happened in Wittenberg.
Sanctification has a way of quietly changing what we enjoy. The things we did and said before the Lord softened our hearts toward Him slowly lose their appeal. Here’s how that happened for me, and a gentle challenge for you.
There I Lay
I can picture it clearly. Me, stretched out on the couch, remote in hand, halfway through a movie full of foul language and scenes I didn’t need in my head. And honestly? It wasn’t even a good movie.
As it played, a question kept nudging at me. What in the world am I doing? I could be reading my Bible. I could be writing, or sitting at my piano, or working on a craft. I could put on some worship music or pick up a good book. The list kept growing in my mind.
And yet, there I lay.
The Way I Used to Justify It
Before I was truly saved, and even in my early years as a Christian, I swore sometimes. I watched movies with crude language, graphic scenes, and plenty of violence. It didn’t bother me much.
I had my reasons ready, too. Just because I watch it doesn’t mean I’m going to act on it. And when a word slipped out that didn’t honor the Lord, I’d chuckle. Well, I’m still a sinner. I’m going to mess up. Thankfully, God has grace for me.
That last part is true. God’s grace is real, and it is deep. But I was using it like a hall pass. Paul saw that attitude coming a long way off:
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1-2, LSB)
Grace was never meant to make us comfortable with sin. It was meant to free us from it.
Sanctification: When the Old Things Lose Their Shine
Here’s what I’ve learned over the years. Sanctification doesn’t just change what we do. It changes what we want.
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17, LSB)
Nobody handed me a list of banned movies. No one scolded me into cleaning up my language. The Lord slowly softened my heart, and the things I used to enjoy started to feel out of place. Like wearing an old coat that doesn’t fit anymore.
That’s the renewing of the mind Paul talks about:
“And do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may approve what the will of God is, that which is good and well-pleasing and perfect.” (Romans 12:2, LSB)
It also showed up in my mouth. James says it plainly: “from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be this way” (James 3:10, LSB). It’s a strange thing to sing praises on Sunday and talk like the world on Monday. The longer I walked with the Lord, the stranger it felt.
This Isn’t About a Rulebook
Let me be clear. Is watching TV a sin? Not necessarily. I’m not here to tell you every movie is off limits or that you need a ratings chart taped to your fridge. That kind of legalism misses the heart of the gospel just as badly as license does.
But I think we ask the wrong question. We ask, “Is this a sin?” when we could be asking, “Does this honor the Lord?”
“All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things build up.” (1 Corinthians 10:23, LSB)
“Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31, LSB)
That shifts things. A book loaded with profanity, violence, and sexual content may not come with a commandment attached. But if sanctification is at work in me, why would I want to fill my mind with it? Wouldn’t I rather read something that points me back to the Word? Philippians 4:8 gives us a pretty good filter: whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and of good repute, dwell on these things.
I Haven’t Arrived: Sanctification Is a Lifelong Fight
Please don’t read this and think I’ve got it all figured out. I don’t. I’m still quick to judge. I still say things before I think. But here’s the difference now: when I do, I’m thrown straight into repentance. I don’t laugh it off anymore. I fight it, because I hate that sin.
That fight is part of sanctification, and it’s a sign of life. A heart that feels no conviction should worry us far more than a heart that’s wrestling.
So here’s my challenge, sister. Take an honest look at what you’re letting into your mind and what’s coming out of your mouth. Not to earn anything, and not to compare yourself to the woman next to you in the pew. Do it because you belong to Him, and He’s worth more than a mediocre movie on a Tuesday night.
If something stirs as you read this, don’t brush it aside. That might be the Lord. And His conviction is always a kindness.
A Few Questions to Sit With
What’s something I used to enjoy that has lost its appeal since coming to Christ? What does that tell me about how He’s working in me?
Where am I still using grace as an excuse instead of a reason to change?
When I choose a show, a book, or a playlist, do I ask “Is this okay?” or “Does this honor the Lord?”
Does my language at work or with friends sound different from my language at church? Why?
If I gave the Lord one evening this week that I’d normally spend on the couch, what would I do with it?
Can I confess something? My brain has tabs. Lots of them. I sit down to read my Bible, and within five minutes I’m wondering what the disciples ate for breakfast. Then I’m wondering whether Martha ever got a thank-you note. Before long, I’m wondering what Jesus was like at fifteen. Did He have chores? Did He roll His eyes at Joseph? (Okay, no. He was sinless. But you see where my mind goes.)
Squirrel!
If you’re a woman like me, you know this moment well. One minute you’re focused. Next, you’re three rabbit trails deep with no memory of how you got there. So is all that wondering a problem? Not necessarily. There’s such a thing as holy curiosity, and God made us curious on purpose. The real question is what we do with our curiosity and where we go looking for answers.
What God Left Out on Purpose
The Gospels leave some big gaps. We get Jesus’s birth and one scene at age twelve. After that, the story jumps to His public ministry around age thirty. In fact, those eighteen years are summed up in a single verse: “And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52).
That’s it. That’s the Holy Spirit’s own summary of Jesus’s teenage years.
It’s tempting to treat that silence like a missing puzzle piece. However, Scripture doesn’t leave things out by accident. Moses told Israel, “The secret things belong to Yahweh our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever” (Deuteronomy 29:29). Similarly, John says that Jesus did many other things that weren’t written down. Yet “these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31).
In other words, the Bible is edited. Carefully and purposefully, by God Himself. What’s there is what we need.
Two Women, Two Kinds of Curiosity
I keep coming back to two women in Scripture who both wondered.
The first is Eve. The serpent came to her with a question: “Indeed, has God said…?” (Genesis 3:1). He pointed her curiosity at the one thing God had withheld. Suddenly, everything she’d been given didn’t seem like enough. As a result, her wondering pulled her away from God’s word and toward what He had not given.
The second is Mary. Think about this for a moment. Mary is the one person who actually knew what Jesus was like as a boy. She changed His diapers and taught Him to walk. She lived with Him through all those silent years. So what does Scripture record about her? That she “treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19, and again in 2:51).
Mary had every detail we’re curious about. Even so, the Holy Spirit chose to record her pondering, not the details. Her wondering led her toward worship. She held what she knew with awe and was content to leave the rest with God.
That’s holy curiosity. Both women wondered, but one wondered her way into sin, while the other wondered her way into worship. I want to live like Mary.
When Curiosity Goes Looking
Here’s where the squirrel can get us into real trouble. When curiosity isn’t satisfied by what God gave, it goes looking elsewhere.
Church history shows us exactly what happens. In the centuries after the apostles, people wrote “gospels” to fill in the gaps of Jesus’s childhood. For example, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas has little boy Jesus striking other children dead when they annoy Him. Yikes. That’s what human imagination produced when it tried to improve on God’s silence. It’s also one reason the early church rejected those writings.
Today, we have our own versions. There are dramatized films and TV series. There are novels that give Bible women inner lives and romances. There are devotionals that tell us what Jesus “might have said.” Some of these can be enjoyable. Still, they all carry the same risk: the invented parts start to feel as real as the true parts.
I’ll be honest. When The Chosen first came out, I was drawn in. It was beautifully made, and I loved seeing the Gospels come alive. But the longer I watched, the more liberties I noticed. Eventually, I found myself more frustrated than blessed. Scenes and dialogue that aren’t in Scripture were shaping how I pictured the real ones.
I often hear the defense, “But it points people to Scripture!” I pray that it does. But that claim is worth testing, not just assuming. The Bereans in Acts 17 were commended because they were “examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11). So here’s the honest question. After watching, are we opening our Bibles to compare? Or is the show quietly becoming the version of the story we remember?
Everything We Need Is Already in the Word
What strikes me most is this: the deepest question behind our curiosity is usually already answered in Scripture.
Why do we want to know what Jesus was like as a teenager? Often, it’s because we want to know He understands us. We want to know He’s been there and that He gets it.
And He does. Hebrews 4:15 tells us we have a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses, “one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.” He knows every awkward, lonely, pressured, or confusing season you’ve walked through. We don’t need an invented scene to prove it, because God already told us.
That’s the pattern. When we bring our questions back to the Word, we usually find that God has already answered the question underneath the question.
How to Practice Holy Curiosity
So what do we do with our wandering minds? Here are a few thoughts.
Let wondering lead to worship. When your mind drifts toward something Scripture doesn’t say, ask what it does say. Then stop and ponder that, just as Mary did.
Take the thought captive. Paul calls us to take “every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). This doesn’t mean we stop thinking. Rather, it means our thoughts come home to Christ.
Be a Berean. Whatever you watch, read, or listen to, compare it to the text. If you can’t find it in Scripture, hold it loosely.
Trust the edit. God gave us exactly what we need for life and godliness. His silence isn’t a hole to fill. Instead, it’s an invitation to trust Him.
Pondering Like Mary
I don’t want to become so rigid that I never let myself wonder. After all, God gave us imaginations. There’s a holy kind of awe that comes from sitting with a passage and marveling at it. Holy curiosity is a gift when it leads us deeper into what God has said.
So I want my wondering to look like Mary’s, not Eve’s. I want to be content with what He’s revealed, treasure it, ponder it, and trust Him with the rest.
The next time your brain yells “Squirrel!” in the middle of your Bible reading, don’t beat yourself up. Just gently bring that squirrel back to the Word. Everything you truly need is already there.
What rabbit trails does your mind tend to wander down? How could you turn that curiosity back toward what God has already revealed?
Turning 50 as a Christian woman: Trusting God with the Age I Never Saw Coming
I am in the last year of my 40s.
I’ll pause so you can absorb that with me.
The big 5-0 is sitting at the end of this year like a toll booth I cannot avoid, and I am standing here patting my pockets going, how did I get here so fast and do I have exact change for this?
Listen, turning 30 and 40 had their moments, sure. I remember bracing for each one like you brace for a cold shower; a little dramatic, slightly unnecessary, over pretty quickly. But 50 feels different. 50 feels LOUD. Because 50 was the age I associated with other people. Specifically: grandparents. Older parents. My mom.
I am turning my mom’s age.
(Let that sink in. I’ll wait.)
It’s not that I think 50 is ancient or that the women around me who are 50 and beyond are somehow “less than”… absolutely not. It’s more that somewhere in my brain, 50 always meant grown up. Like, fully, undeniably, no-takebacks grown up. And I still feel like I’m waiting to feel that way. I still sometimes get to a situation and think, shouldn’t there be an actual adult here to handle this? And then I remember, oh. That’s me. I am the adult.
What I Expected Versus What Actually Happened
My senior year of high school, I had one of those little journal books. You know the kind—full of prompts like Where do you see yourself in 10, 15, 20 years? I filled that thing out with such confidence. Such vision. Such delightful naivety.
Here is a brief summary of how that went: almost none of it happened.
I did go to college. I was a teacher. So, partial credit, I suppose.
But the marriage I expected? Didn’t happen. The kids I longed for, genuinely longed for, not just as a checkbox but as something I truly wanted? Also didn’t happen. And I want to be honest here without throwing a pity party (nobody RSVPs to those anyway): if I let myself sit in what didn’t happen, I could spiral fast. The gap between what I wrote in that little journal and where I actually am is wide enough to drive a truck through.
There are days when the enemy of my soul would love nothing more than for me to set up permanent residency in that gap. To stare at the unmet expectations, marinate in the longing, and spend my remaining years grieving a life I didn’t get to live.
But here is what I keep coming back to:
God is sovereign over all of it.
Not just the good parts. All of it.
What God Did Instead (Spoiler: It’s Better)
In my early 20s, I called myself a Christian. I thought I was going to heaven. I had the vocabulary, the vague church attendance, the cultural Christianity that felt like enough.
Looking back, I was on a fast track to somewhere that was decidedly not heaven.
I did not know God. Not really. I knew about Him the way I know about quantum physics—I’ve heard of it, I couldn’t explain it, and I’m not living my life by it.
But the Lord, in His mercy and patience and relentless grace, did not leave me there. Over the years, and especially in the last six years, He has done something in my life that I never could have engineered on my own: actual, deep, sometimes uncomfortable sanctification. Real knowledge of His Word. A genuine fear of the Lord that has replaced the casual, culturally convenient faith I used to carry around in my back pocket.
And I’ll tell you—that changes everything about turning 50.
Not everything. My knees still sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies. That part hasn’t been sanctified away.
But when I think about all the years I have lived, and I hold them up to what God has done in and through them, even the hard years, even the years of unanswered prayers and unmet expectations—His goodness is not hard to find. It is everywhere. I just have to be willing to look.
My Body, My Betrayer
Can we talk about the physical stuff for a second? Because I feel like we have to.
I just got back from a camping trip. A genuinely wonderful, fun, memory-making camping trip. I drove home, unloaded the car, sat down, and was done. D-O-N-E. Finished. Depleted in a way that required horizontal recovery and probably an embarrassing amount of time staring at the ceiling.
Ten years ago, I would have bounced back the same day. Possibly gone out that night. Now? I need 48 hours and a very specific ratio of sleep to quiet.
This is the body at 49, ladies. It keeps the receipts and it is not shy about presenting them.
And I know it only continues from here. More aches. Slower recovery. The reading glasses that show up on every surface of your home because you’ve panic-bought twelve pairs. The moment you stand up from the couch and make a noise that you genuinely did not authorize. The way a full week of activity now requires a full weekend of doing approximately nothing.
It is humbling. I won’t pretend otherwise.
But here is what I keep reminding myself: my body was always going to do this. It was designed with an expiration date. Not because God made something faulty, but because this world is not our home. These bodies are temporary. They are, as James puts it, a vapor. Here for a moment, then gone.
“Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.” James 4:14 (LSB)
That’s not a morbid thought. It is an anchoring one. Because it means I’m not supposed to be holding onto this body, this life, this decade, this age with white knuckles. I am supposed to be holding onto the One who is eternal.
A Word to My Fellow Women (And It Is Not “Just You Wait”)
I want to say something directly, with love, to the women who are a few years ahead of me on this road:
Please, I am begging you, stop saying “Oh, just you wait.”
I know you mean well. I know it comes from a place of solidarity and hard-won experience. But when a woman is already white-knuckling her way toward a milestone birthday, “just you wait” is not the encouragement she needs. It is, in fact, the exact opposite of encouragement. It is a preview of coming horrors delivered with a knowing smile, and we have to stop doing it to each other.
What we can do instead is this: we can tell each other the truth about the hard parts and point each other to the God who is faithful in all of them.
We can say, “Yes, it’s hard sometimes. And God has been so good.”
We can reflect on His mercy. We can talk about what we’ve learned. We can share how our faith has deepened rather than how our joints have worsened… or at least, we can share both, in that order, with the right emphasis.
We are not here to scare the women behind us. We are here to encourage them. To walk alongside them. To say, “I’ve been on this road. It has hard stretches. But the One leading you is trustworthy.”
What I’m Learning to Do With 50
I am learning—slowly, imperfectly, sometimes mid-anxiety-spiral—to trust God with this.
To trust Him with the things that didn’t happen the way I planned. To trust Him with the years ahead that I cannot see. To trust Him with this body that is aging on its own schedule regardless of my feelings about it. To trust Him with the number on my birthday cake.
When Job had nothing left but questions and anguish, God didn’t give him a tidy explanation. He gave Job Himself. He showed Job who He was: the Creator of the cosmos, the One who laid the foundations of the earth, the One who commands the morning and sets the boundaries of the seas (Job 38-39). And Job’s response was not “ah, that clears everything up.” It was awe. Repentance. Worship.
That is where I want to live. In the awe and wonder of who He is—not in the grief of what I don’t have or the fear of what’s coming.
My last breath on this earth has already been appointed. I don’t know when it is. God does. And between now and then, I want to be faithful. Obedient. Grateful. Present.
Grateful for friends who make me laugh until I can’t breathe. For family. For a church that teaches me God’s Word. For a job that lets me serve people well. For a home, food, enough. For air in my lungs, however many years those lungs have left in them.
And someday—someday—this aging, aching, vapor of a body gets exchanged for something eternal. And I will worship the Lord forever, without the knee sounds and the recovery days and the reading glasses.
Oh, what a day that will be.
Until then? I’ll take the senior discount. I have earned it.
You’re talking about women in pastoral ministry—maybe you just shared an article, or maybe the topic came up at Bible study—and someone leans in and says it: “But what about Deborah?” She was a judge in Israel. She led men. Case closed, right?
If you’ve spent any time studying what the Bible says about women in leadership, you have run into this argument. It is one of the most common responses to a complementarian position, and honestly, it’s not a bad question. Deborah in the Bible is a remarkable figure and she deserves a real answer, not a dismissal.
So let’s give her one.
This post is not about diminishing Deborah. She was extraordinary. But “extraordinary” is not the same as “prescriptive,” and that distinction matters more than almost anything else when we’re reading scripture. Let’s dig in.
Who Was Deborah? (Let’s Actually Honor Her First)
Before we talk about what Deborah’s story does and doesn’t prove, it’s worth slowing down to actually look at who she was, because she is genuinely impressive.
Judges 4 introduces her like this:
Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment. (Judges 4:4-5, LSB)
She is called a prophetess. She is functioning as a judge; settling disputes among the people. She summons the military commander Barak and delivers to him a word from the Lord about the battle against Sisera. And then in Judges 5, she co-authors (with Barak) one of the most vivid songs in all of scripture. She calls herself “a mother in Israel” (Judges 5:7).
Deborah in the Bible was real, she was used by God, and she was clearly a woman of wisdom and faith. None of that is up for debate. She is not a made-up figure and her story is not embarrassing to complementarians. She’s in the canon for a reason.
But here is the question we have to ask: does her presence in the text mean her situation is the pattern God intends for his people? That is where we need to talk about something called descriptive versus prescriptive.
Descriptive vs. Prescriptive: Hermeneutics for Normal People
I know those words sound intimidating. Stick with me for just a minute because this concept is actually very simple and it will change how you read your Bible.
Descriptive means the text is telling us what happened. It’s a record of events.
Prescriptive means the text is telling us what should happen. It’s an instruction or a command.
Not everything recorded in scripture is endorsed by scripture. The Bible describes plenty of things that God never intended to be the norm and sometimes it records them in a matter-of-fact way without pausing to editorialize. That doesn’t mean we’re supposed to replicate them.
Here’s a quick example. In 1 Samuel 8, the people of Israel demand a king. They look at the nations around them and decide they want to be like everyone else. God tells Samuel, essentially, that they are rejecting him as their king by asking for a human one. And then God grants the request. He gives them Saul.
Was the kingship described? Yes. Was it God’s ideal for Israel? No. Did God work within it anyway? Absolutely. But nobody reads 1 Samuel 8 and concludes that every nation should demand a king because Israel did.
The same principle applies to polygamy in the Old Testament, to Samson’s relationships, to a lot of things in Judges, frankly. The book of Judges is not a highlight reel of godly behavior. It is a brutally honest account of what happens when “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). That context matters enormously when we sit down with Deborah’s story.
Deborah in the Bible is a description of what God did during a dark and chaotic period in Israel’s history. It is not a prescription for church leadership structure in the New Covenant age.
What the Text Actually Shows Us
Here’s where it gets really interesting. When we read Judges 4 closely, not just the parts people quote, but the whole thing, there are some details that actually cut against the egalitarian argument.
Deborah summons Barak and gives him God’s command: go, take ten thousand men, and fight Sisera. And Barak’s response?
“If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” (Judges 4:8, LSB)
He will not go without her. Now, you can read that a few different ways. Some commentators see it as a lack of faith. Others see it as Barak honoring the prophetess. But notice what Deborah says back:
“I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for Yahweh will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” (Judges 4:9, LSB)
The honor of the victory is going to go to a woman and the text frames that as a consequence of Barak’s hesitation. This is not presented as a celebration of female leadership over men. It is presented as a result of a man stepping back from the role he was called to.
The whole scene reads less like “look at this great model of women leading men” and more like “this is what happened when the man called to lead wouldn’t step up.” That is a meaningful distinction.
A Quiet but Interesting Detail from Hebrews 11
You may have heard of Hebrews 11—sometimes called the “hall of faith.” It’s the chapter where the author of Hebrews rehearses the great figures of faith from the Old Testament: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, and on and on.
And then in verse 32:
And what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets… (Hebrews 11:32, LSB)
Barak is there. Named specifically. Recognized for his faith despite his very public moment of hesitation in Judges 4. And Deborah in the Bible? She’s not listed.
Now, that is not an argument that Deborah lacked faith. The author of Hebrews was not writing a comprehensive list of every faithful person in Israel’s history. But it is worth noting: the New Testament, when it looks back at the Judges 4 account and identifies who to hold up as an example of faith, lands on Barak—not Deborah.
That’s a quiet detail. But it’s there.
And Then There’s Jael
Okay. We have to talk about Jael for a moment because she is something else entirely.
While Barak is chasing the retreating Canaanite army, Sisera the enemy commander, flees on foot and ends up at the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. She comes out to meet him, invites him in, covers him with a blanket, gives him milk when he asks for water, and tells him not to be afraid.
And then she drives a tent peg through his skull while he sleeps.
The text delivers this information with complete composure. Judges 4:21 just… tells you what happened. Matter of fact. And then Judges 5, the victory song, celebrates it:
Most blessed of women is Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite; most blessed of women in the tent. (Judges 5:24, LSB)
She is praised. She is celebrated. God used her to accomplish a decisive military victory.
But here is the thing: nobody reads this passage and concludes that all women should keep tent pegs nearby for defensive purposes, or that hospitality-followed-by-sudden-violence is a model for Christian living. We understand instinctively that this is a description of what happened in a specific, wild, brutal moment in Israel’s history.
God can and does use whomever He chooses to accomplish His purposes—a foreign woman with a tent peg, a donkey (Numbers 22), a burning bush. That is a testimony to His sovereignty. It is not a template for church order.
The same logic applies to Deborah.
What Deborah in the Bible Cannot Prove
So let’s put this together. Here is what Deborah’s story shows us:
• God is sovereign and works through whom He chooses, even in the messiest seasons of history.
• Deborah was a woman of genuine faith, wisdom, and prophetic gift.
• Israel in the period of the judges was in a state of spiritual and social chaos.
• When the man called to lead hesitated, the honor went elsewhere.
Here is what Deborah’s story cannot prove: that God’s design for leadership in the church includes women serving in the role of elder or pastor over men.
Why? Because Judges is a narrative. And a narrative exception, even an inspired one, does not override explicit apostolic instruction. When Paul writes to Timothy, he is not describing what happened in one chaotic moment. He is prescribing how the church is to be ordered:
But I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first formed, and then Eve. (1 Timothy 2:12-13, LSB)
Notice where Paul anchors this instruction: not in Greco-Roman culture, not in the peculiarities of the Ephesian church, but in creation order. Adam was formed first. That’s not a cultural argument. That’s a theological one, and it predates every culture that has ever existed.
Titus 1:5-6 reinforces the same thing, with qualifications for elders that include being “the husband of one wife.” The office itself is described in gendered terms.
You cannot use a descriptive narrative from the period of the judges—a period the Bible itself describes as anarchic—to override clear prescriptive instruction from the New Testament. The hermeneutics simply don’t work that way.
Honoring Deborah the Right Way
Here’s the thing I want to leave you with. Deborah does not need to be a proof text for egalitarianism to be worth celebrating. She was a mother in Israel. She judged with wisdom. She delivered God’s word faithfully. She sang.
Honor her for what she actually was, not for the argument people want her to make.
The Bible’s picture of godly womanhood is not small or limiting. Titus 2 describes women who teach, who model self-control and love and faithfulness, who pass the faith to the next generation. Proverbs 31 describes a woman whose husband trusts her completely, who runs a household and a business and is known at the city gates. These are not consolation prizes.
When someone throws Deborah at you in conversation, you don’t have to get defensive. You can say: “I love Deborah. She was remarkable. And I don’t think her story means what you think it means.” Then you can walk them through it.
Because Deborah in the Bible is not a trump card for egalitarianism. She is a testament to a God who works in and through and despite the chaos of human failure and who has, in his wisdom and care, given us clear instruction for how his church is to be ordered.
That instruction is worth standing on, even when it’s not the popular thing to do.
To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no dawn in them. (Isaiah 8:20, LSB)
