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Rachael Groll is a pastor, missionary and author. Her latest book, She Hears: Learning to Listen to Jesus, helps women learn how to hear from Jesus by taking a look at 6 women from the gospel of John.
Rachel also hosts a podcast called “The Hearing Jesus Podcast,” where she helps women learn how to hear the Lord more clearly in their lives.
As you know, God loves his children so much and that includes women of course, and He has a specific plan and purpose for every woman. He has a plan and purpose for you, sweet friends. He’s spoken to women throughout the Bible and throughout the ages and He still speaks to us today. So when Rachel reached out to me sharing about her devotional book, which takes a look at six women in the life of Jesus, and some of the interactions that happen between them, I knew that she’d be a great fit for the show, and that she’d have some wonderful wisdom to share with you.
Learning to Discern God’s Whispers
Rachel shares that as women, there seems to be a shared experience where there’s sometimes an insecurity around this where we doubt and say, “Okay, is this my own voice? Is this God’s voice? How can I tell the difference?” And she talks about a time when she was sitting at a table that was filled with men and she brought up a concern about something that the Lord was clearly putting on her heart. And at the time, her thoughts were just kind of disregarded. In that same conversation, within the same probably 10 minutes, one of her male counterparts literally verbatim said word for word exactly what she said. And his voice was heard and hers wasn’t. She said she remembers just feeling so confused because she was part of a church that valued women, at least it seemed to by the very fact that she was on staff. But yet when it came right down to it, the voices of the men weighed more than her own.
Rachael wrestled with that insecurity. And with one of her other books, she had an opportunity to travel around the country speaking at conferences and found that women seemed to have this shared experience of insecurity everywhere, either their own emotional insecurity or insecurity that the enemy threw at them, or it was circumstantial, depending on which tables they were sitting at. She was hearing this echoed from women all over the place and Rachael knew that she wanted to be able to answer this from a place of knowing, not just intellectually knowing but spiritually knowing because this felt like an echo that was really starting to have ramifications because it was keeping women from doing the things that God was calling them to do.
Rachael initially started off with a Bible study. And at the time, she had been writing for a while for a certain publisher and had gone to this publisher with this idea for a book. They were going through some transition at the time and said they weren’t quite ready to publish something like that. But yet Rachael felt so strongly about it that she just continued her own Bible study for her own understanding so that not only could she understand with confidence, but also so she could teach that to the women that were asking these questions. It was really a season of healing for her and a season of understanding and really listening to what Jesus had to say, instead of all the voices of the world and what they had to say. She really wanted to look through the lens of Christ on this subject.
I think that’s absolutely beautiful. And I love how God uses these situations and trials in our life and turns it into testimony and how He helps us just gently walk through those situations and uses it to help us draw closer to Him. And I just totally see that happening in Rachael’s story where she just wanted to dig in and get closer to the Lord and kind of hear directly from Him and then help other women learn to do the same thing.
Digging Deep into History and Culture
Rachael shares that she loves to look at the historical and cultural aspects of Scripture, because so many times we don’t understand that, coming from the timeframe that we’re in and the culture that we’re in, there are sometimes things that can lose a lot of value when you don’t have an understanding. In writing her book, Rachael dove into 6 women in the life of Jesus who are very familiar characters, yet, there are so many treasures in there that we can overlook if we’re not paying attention, or if we don’t have an understanding. And so she brought in a lot of the cultural and historical aspects but also tried to walk through different stages that a lot of women find themselves in. An example of that is with Mary, the mother of Jesus. Rachael mentions that we often understand her in terms of the Christmas story but we have not really studied her in depth. She looks at her through this idea of her as the mother to Jesus and when we look at that first miracle, we see this transference of her authority because in some ways, as a mother, we have authority over our children. And in that culture, women held the responsibility for the children until they became men. And so at least for a season of her life, this was a woman who had some authority in the life of Jesus. And I just think that example is powerful. The fact that we know that Jesus does everything with intention and he allowed himself to be under the authority of a woman, at least for a season in his life. And then what we see is this beautiful transference of authority where she recognizes the season for him to rise into the authority that God has given him.
Rachael shares her own relation to that experience as a mom of a teenager who is getting ready to go to college for the first time. She is now having to lay down this authority that she’s had over her daughter and the dynamic and relationship is changing with her. And so Rachael explores some of those emotions and the example that Mary had as a mother. She did that with faithfulness. And she was such a woman of example for us, when we’re going through those seasons and I think even with ministry, for those of us that have been involved in ministry, there are different seasons for that.
So what happens when God calls us to lay something down personally or in ministry or even in our careers when we no longer have the authority we once held? Rachel dives into the emotions behind that and the example that Mary had that we can follow to be a faithful example to those around us.
I love that different perspective and way of looking at that. And I think sometimes, we tend to just kind of skim over the Bible or skim over the stories that we know and I think Rachael hit the nail on the head that we think of Mary at Christmas time and the Christmas story only and so to dig in a little bit deeper and to reread and to partner with God and say, show me the details. What is the deeper wisdom in this? What do you want to speak to my heart through this story? I think it’s incredible that she took the time to do that and even more incredible that she wants to share it with other women.
6 Women in the Life of Jesus
I asked Rachael if we could go a bit deeper into the book and have her give us a little snippet of each of the 6 women she talks about. She mentions that one of the goals of the book is to give you some tools for when the book is finished. And so one of the things that she teaches is called the color method of study. It’s a very simplified method of Bible study that helps us to get a better understanding of what we’re learning. A lot of women would read a certain passage of scripture and yeah, you might be able to check off a box for your Bible plan that day, but do you understand really what it has to do with your life right now or what it’s revealing about God’s character? And how does that inform our understanding of who God is now in our lives today? Rachael mentions that she often would not come away with that kind of understanding and so really, the goal of the color method is to help you to sit with the scripture, to meditate on it, to understand it, because, you know, we live in this like, TikTok culture now where our attention spans are so small and even long-form reading is a thing of the past for a lot of people because they just don’t have the time or the attention. So this method is drawing on this skill set that’s teaching us to really comprehend and understand what we’re reading before we just move on to something else. Because it’s not about how much you can read, it’s really about how much it permeates your heart and changes things for how you interact with the world and how you get through your day.
The Samaritan Woman
We already mentioned Mary, the mother of Jesus so the next chapter in Rachael’s book is about the Samaritan woman at the well. We often have this idea or this image of her in our head and while we might not all connect with her as far as maybe the place of sin that she came out of or the place of brokenness, we’ve all been in places where we’ve made mistakes, or we’ve had some brokenness that has kept us from doing the things that God has called us to do, or even from seeing them clearly. And one of the things I love about the Samaritan woman is after her interaction with Jesus, she goes down into town and if you remember, the disciples had been there all day, they went down, they got food, they came back, and they had been in the town interacting with people. But it wasn’t until she went down into town and she shared from this authentic place of interacting with Jesus. That’s what drove people back to him and I have to think that our healing that comes from a sincere and authentic interaction with Jesus, our past brokenness, is the very thing within our circle of influence that will drive others to him in a different way. Like the disciples had a different way of interacting with them than she did because they knew her. They experienced her prior to meeting Jesus, and they experienced her after meeting Jesus and that was the very thing that drove people to him. And so the Samaritan woman is all about recognizing our brokenness and how God can redeem and restore things and do things because of that brokenness in our lives.
Isn’t that beautiful? That statement about our brokenness is what will drive other people to Jesus. I feel that deeply and I see that being true over and over again. And I think that’s one reason why it’s really important to share about our broken parts and share about where we’ve been and share not only about where we are today, but where we come from and how we’re here.
A Woman of Forgiveness
You would probably know exactly who this is talking about if I said a woman caught in adultery. But Rachael chose not to call her that because as she explains, she does not think that we as women should carry identity with our past or our sin. She says that identity comes from a place of interaction with Jesus. And so this woman, yes, maybe she started off as a woman that was caught in adultery, but after her actual interaction with Jesus, she becomes a woman that walks in forgiveness. In the book, Rachael walks through her choice to sin, and sometimes culturally, we don’t understand maybe how she was trapped in that or that it was intentional because it was more about trapping Jesus than it was about her. She definitely holds some responsibility there but that interaction with Jesus changes things for her and it changes her identity. She goes from a woman that is identified by her sin to a woman who is identified by being forgiven. And I think so many of us struggle with past sin or even current sin in our lives, that it’s a barrier to even coming to Jesus, but yet it’s that authentic moment with him that’s going to change things for us.
I just love that. And as women and those of us who follow Jesus, I think of us as daughters, daughters of the King, daughters of the King of Kings. And, you know, we all have some junk in our past and even when we’re saved, we’re still going to screw up sometimes. We’re still going to make mistakes because we are a sinful people. That is our very nature. The Holy Spirit works in our heart and convicts us to do better and to repent and to lay that thing down, but none of us I don’t think are ever going to be walking in perfection. However, we are still a daughter of the King. That is our identity.
Martha
Out of all of these women, Rachael mentions that though she identified with them on different levels, Martha was one that was the hardest for her to write because she is so much like her – hard-headed, strong-willed, and a doer. She gets frustrated when she’s doing things alone and everybody else can see her doing them. And the thing about Martha that was so freeing for Rachael was to understand that, as the owner of her home, she knew the religious customs of the time and this was a family that was very closely involved with Jesus, they had a relationship. And so part of the religious customs of the time was when you had a rabbi come to your home, hospitality and receiving the well was part of the religious custom. And so this wasn’t just an issue of her feeling the weight of all the things that she had to get done, but this was her earnestly trying to do what she thought was expected of her as the religious custom of the day. And Rachael mentions that it made so much sense because when she was working in a local church, she worked like 15 hours a day, just with this mentality of like every moment matters. And her intention was good, and Martha’s intention was good but the way that she executed that was faulty. And it took this moment with Jesus, where he’s saying to her, you’re not loved, for what you’re doing, you’re loved for who you are. And as women, as moms, we just kind of get scattered in all these places, thinking that we’re the ones that have to hold everything together. We have to do-do-do. And really, it’s about finding that moment of pause and realizing we’re not loved for what we’re doing, we’re loved for who we are. We’re daughters of the King. And Jesus says to her, just come here, and that’s really what he wants from us. And yes, it’s not that those things don’t matter and it’s not that her intention doesn’t matter. But the more important thing is that she finds herself being able to rest at the feet of Jesus and recognizing the reason that she’s loved is because of who she is and because of who he is in her life.
That’s so beautiful and I would guess that many, many women relate to this very much as doers and go-go-go and we’re always like, #allthethings almost like it’s this badge of honor to be busy all the time. So that one I find very relatable.
Mary (Martha’s Sister)
It’s hard to talk about Martha without talking about Mary. Rachael looks at Mary, in the context of not the story that we’re familiar with, but the context of the Lazarus story, and really looking at what it looks like to grieve and how Jesus comes alongside us in our sorrow and he meets us where we’re at. And just like Martha was busy doing the things that she needed to be doing, Mary really had the role of a disciple. And so in her role as a disciple of Jesus, the religious custom of the time was in grief, you would sit in Shiva for a whole week. You would sit in black and you’d sit on your knees and you would grieve. And Mary stayed in this place of grief, again, because of the religious custom of the time. And in the Lazarus story, what we see is Jesus coming to her in her grief. He sends Martha in to get her and Martha says to Mary, “The master has come and He calls for you.” That was such a beautiful picture of one sister sharing with another in her sorrow because sometimes we can’t see that when we are in sorrow, or when we’re grieving. And so it’s this beautiful picture of this role that we can play for each other. As we serve alongside somebody or as we love somebody who is grieving, we can be that voice saying, “Hey, Jesus is here, and he wants to be in this space with you.” Because when we’re grieving, we need somebody to come in and say that for us, and then we also need to rise up and say that to somebody when they’re in the midst of their sorrow.
I love every perspective that Rachael took on that story, everything from Jesus grieving beside us and the Lord being with us in every season, even during our grief, to the way that we can pour into our sisters with just community and support and discipleship.
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene has had a lot written about her over the years, but the story that Rachael looks at is really after the resurrection. The first person the resurrected Christ appeared to is Mary Magdalene. And in a culture where the testimony of a woman would not hold up in court, Jesus intentionally sends a woman with a testimony on his resurrection to the men. And that’s so powerful because it’s such an example of how Jesus values the word of women, Jesus values the testimony of women and I don’t think that’s by accident. Again, I keep saying everything that Jesus does is with intention. And when we start studying this, we understand it reveals his character and his nature, which then informs us on how we are to be empowered and equipped. And so if Jesus values the testimony of women, then I can rise up to this place of being confident and understanding that when God calls me to do something, it’s not just because it’s convenient, or because I’m there, but it’s with intention because he’s given me a word to share that perhaps other people wouldn’t hear or understand in quite the same way.
And so the whole goal of all of these narratives, as we study them, is to really gain a picture of how Jesus values women, and how he comes alongside us, and then he equips us to do the things that he has called us to do.
I love how Rachael talks about intentionality because we are all about intentional living here and I think we can learn a ton about that simply through the life of Jesus, but also through these women.
I’m excited to read Rachael’s book, “She Hears: Learning to Listen to Jesus”, to dig in and to learn more about each one of these women!
Connect with Rachael!
- Hang out on Instagram and Facebook
- Listen to The Hearing Jesus Podcast
- Check out her website
- Connect via email
