By the time most moms get their
children ready for school, go to work, then come home and cook and
clean, they’re too drained to pay attention to their own needs. But
single mom Danette Crawford wants to help mothers feel appreciated—and
pampered.

During her annual Mother’s Day
Celebration, Crawford and her team bus in some 2,000 women from
Hampton, Va., and surrounding cities, and shower them with love.
Military wives whose husbands are deployed, widows, single moms, women
from homeless shelters and assisted-living facilities all attend the
event.

“When they first arrive, we give them
the red carpet treatment,” says Crawford, who will sponsor her 10th
celebration on May 9. “We give them a red rose or carnation, and a
five-star meal. They have dinner with their children, and we just
pamper them.”

The author of Don’t Quit in the Pit: Power to Turn Any Situation Around, Crawford provides activities for the children and shares the message of Jesus and teachings from her book with the women.

“When there’s no dad in the picture,
these women go without honoring,” she says. “Our message is, ‘Don’t
give up. You are loved.’”

How did you respond when you heard
about the magnitude 7 earthquake that rocked Haiti in January? For
Maribel Landis, simply offering a prayer wasn’t enough. A registered
nurse, Landis grabbed her scrubs, medical kit and Bible, and boarded a
plane bound for the impoverished country.

It didn’t take long for her to join in
with other volunteer doctors and nurses treating wounded people at the
Harvard Humanitarian Relief Initiative/Love a Child field hospital in
Parisien, Haiti.

“It was painful to hear the screams of
burn victims who had undergone skin grafts to get their wounds
cleaned,” Landis says. “But I tried to show them God’s love by treating
them and praying for them.” She says she left the country “humbled” by
the resolve of the Haitian people.

Landis, wife of pastor Randy Landis of
Lifechurch in Allentown, Penn., is no stranger to Haiti. Lifechurch
operates Rescue Children Orphanage in Port-au-Prince, where the
majority of the estimated 230,000 earthquake-related deaths occurred.
Fortunately, all 11 of the ministry’s orphans made it out alive as
their home crumbled around them.

These women aren’t letting their gender stop them from being powerful preachers of the gospel.

Lisa Bevere

Twenty years ago, Lisa Bevere was a relatively unknown minister, preaching mainly to women. Today she reaches mixed audiences in both the U.S. and abroad.

In this season of her life, Bevere sees her role as a new grandmother as a reflection of her current assignment. “I see myself as a mother in ministry,” she says. “God wants me to tell His daughters to live their lives now. Don’t wait.”

Lisa and her husband, John, founded Messenger International, based near Colorado Springs, Colo., in 1990 to spread the gospel. Both are itinerant preachers as well as authors and hosts of their own television program, The Messenger.

In her book Fight Like a Girl, Lisa shatters the myths associated with women in ministry. “We’ve been taught to be feminine, but that does not mean don’t be confident.”

Christine Caine

When Christine Caine was born, her birth certificate read “2508 of 1966.” She had no name because she was abandoned by her birth mother. No other relative claimed her.

Thirty-three years passed before Caine’s adoptive mother told her the truth. But the family secret didn’t shake Caine’s faith in God; it strengthened it.

“I was unnamed and unwanted, but what’s most important is God wants me,” she tells audiences.

Growing up in a staunch Greek Orthodox family in Sydney, Australia, Caine had no examples of women ministers. But when she joined Hillsong United Church at age 21, the Word came alive to her, and she discovered God wanted to use her in His service.

“I was in a life-giving church at Hillsong. The anointing is there, and it became apparent to me that the Holy Spirit is not gender-biased,” she says.

After a long season of training with pastors Brian and Bobbie Houston, Caine and her husband, Nick, started ministering in churches and conferences, equipping pastors in leadership and preaching the gospel.

Sharon Seay-Eiland

Sharon Seay-Eiland has been singing since age 3. Her passion gave way to opportunities for her to preach the gospel, and today her ministry takes her throughout the U.S. and other countries.

“I was a singer, but my pastor saw the gift of God on my life, and he allowed me to preach,” Seay-Eiland says.

Though it was not customary for women to preach ahead of elders in her church except during special women’s functions, the pastor pushed tradition aside to give the aspiring evangelist opportunities.

Seay-Eiland attends Revival Center Family Church in Tullahoma, Tenn., near Chattanooga. She has two sons and is a single parent—but this soccer mom is determined to raise well-rounded boys. 

Her advice to rising female ministers is to strike a balance between family life and ministry.

“Women in ministry must be careful not to sacrifice their families for one more speaking engagement,” she says. 

Tamara Graff

Tamara Graff’s late father, John Osteen, started Lakewood Church 51 years ago in a converted feed store. Her brother Joel became the pastor of the Houston church in 1999, when their father unexpectedly passed away. And with more than 32,000 members and a worldwide TV ministry, Lakewood is the largest church in the country.

But Graff is leaving her mark on the world in her own unique way. She is an associate pastor at Faith Family Church in Victoria, Texas, working alongside her husband, senior pastor Jim Graff.

She oversees the women’s ministry at her church, speaks occasionally at events and assists her husband in his work as founder of Significant Church, a network of churches located in small towns.

Graff told Charisma that growing up in a pastor’s home with her siblings was a good experience that instilled in her a love for ministry.

“My parents did a great job living what they taught,” she says. “My five siblings and I saw a real God at work in their lives, and that was something we wanted in our lives.”

Because two of the Graffs’ four children are young, Tamara balances her life as a mother and a ministry worker. She tells other women to also be true to their callings.

“I would say to any woman: ‘Just be yourself. Don’t try to be anybody else,’” she says. “Embrace who God made you to be, and be the best.”

Chené Tucker

A full-time instructor of clinical social work at Oral Roberts University, Chené Tucker is using her education and ministry calling to help educate a generation of believers and help others find freedom in Christ.

Tucker says she sensed the call of God on her life when she was 14 and chose the social work route to bring unbelievers to Jesus. 

“People whose lives are in turmoil find it hard to connect with a God who loves them. I am called to reach people and make His love for them tangible and practical,” she says. 

Tucker is the founder of Polished Arrows International, based in Tulsa, Okla., and travels the U.S. and abroad preaching the gospel. She says women must develop an intimate relationship with God before launching into ministry. 

“Women have to wait on the Lord and cultivate a secret life with Jesus so that when He opens doors for them, they can minister out of intimacy with Him and not head knowledge,” she says. 

Rebecca Greenwood

For more than 18 years, Rebecca Greenwood has led people to Christ by preaching about spiritual warfare, deliverance, intercession and more. Her itinerant ministry has opened doors for her to minister in Egypt, Nepal, Italy, Turkey, Ukraine and Russia.

With regard to being a woman in ministry, Greenwood says women face fewer challenges today.

“We are being received in the body of Christ, and now is the time for the Deborahs to come forward,” she says.

Greenwood believes a woman must first develop a relationship with God, pray about His plans for her life and then wait for His leading.

“Without godly direction, a woman will always be unsure of herself,” she says.

Greenwood and her husband have a bent for prayer and intercession and spent six years at Eddie and Alice Smith’s U.S. Prayer Center in Houston. Now they train teams in intercession, deliverance and prophetic ministry.

Greenwood is the author of Authority to Tread: An Intercessor’s Guide to Strategic-Level Spiritual Warfare and Breaking the Bonds of Evil: How to Set People Free from Demonic Oppression.

The discussion I had with the late Yasser Arafat during my first visit with him in Ramallah in 2002 was almost entirely theological. I stressed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He died on the cross for our sins. Arafat reached for his Quran to show me something he thought would impress me. Pointing to a certain passage (as if I could read Arabic), he said, “Did you know that the only woman mentioned in the Quran is the Virgin Mary?”

“Well, how interesting, Rais [Arabic for president],” I replied, “it sounds as if the Quran is proving that Jesus had no earthly father and therefore must be the Son of God.”

Do you believe that Jesus of Nazareth was born of a virgin and had no earthly father? Muslims do. In fact, one of the most successful evangelistic approaches when talking to Muslims is to focus on the virgin birth of Jesus. They are committed to the Quran, which teaches this truth.

And yet Muslims say they do not believe Jesus is the Son of God. Noting the contradiction in their beliefs, you can lovingly point out to them that if Jesus had no earthly father, it can mean only one thing—that God Himself is His father, and Jesus is therefore God’s Son.

The virgin birth of Jesus is one of the clearest teachings in the New Testament. The accounts in Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 1:26-38 are unambiguous and leave no doubt that Jesus of Nazareth had no earthly father but was born of Mary, who had never known a man.

Why is this fact significant? Primarily because it is in the Bible. But there are other reasons for exploring the truth of the virgin birth.

First, it shows the stigma, or offense, Christians must bear in upholding this truth. The word stigma is a Greek word. It refers to a mark or tattoo on the body, often used on a runaway slave in the ancient world so he would be easily identified. Paul used the word to show he was unashamed of being a slave of Jesus: “I bear in my body the marks [stigmata] of the Lord Jesus” (Gal. 6:17, NKJV).

The stigma of the virgin birth is made clear in the New Testament. Consider what an offense it was for Joseph to accept Mary after she disclosed to him that she was pregnant. It was a horrible moment for him—and for her.

Why should he believe her when she assured him that she had been faithful to him, knowing he had never slept with her? They were engaged, but “before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1:18). Joseph’s immediate reaction was to break their engagement quietly.

To have remained engaged would have demanded that he bear a stigma of incalculable proportions. Being pregnant out of wedlock is no big deal today. But in Joseph and Mary’s day, having sex before marriage was possibly the worst thing a couple could do. Everyone would assume this is what Joseph and Mary had done. The couple knew they hadn’t, but who would believe them? And why should Joseph believe Mary?

This is the reason God graciously stepped in on Mary’s behalf. “An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit’” (Matt.1:20). That was news to Joseph, but it made sense in the light of what Mary had claimed. It meant she had certainly not been unfaithful to him.

But it also meant that he had a major decision to make—namely, whether to leave her entirely and let her bear the stigma of being a single parent, or to stay with her and be seen for the rest of his life as the man who got Mary pregnant out wedlock. If he stayed with her, they would bear the offense together. They alone would know the truth and would be able to comfort each other in this sublime knowledge—that it was a miracle of God.

Could they tell anyone? No. For one thing, nobody would believe them. But also they would not tell because they had to be willing to suffer for the glory of God.

This unseemly situation meant the loss of their reputations, a stigma for which they suffered the rest of their lives. They would never outgrow it.

As a matter of fact, more than 30 years later, people were still talking about it. As long as Jesus was performing miracles and feeding thousands with the loaves and fishes, the people appeared to be willing to overlook the rumor that He had been born an illegitimate child.

But the moment Jesus said things such as, “‘I am the bread which came down from heaven,’” they resorted to the gossip of the day: “‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?’” (John 6:41-42). This comment shows that the followers of Jesus probably suspected Jesus was illegitimate but let their suspicions surface only when His message became a stigma too.

In any case, Joseph made the hardest decision of his life. When he woke up from the dream, he “did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took to him his wife, and did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son” (Matt.1:24-25). Joseph determined to live with his decision and became the unsung hero of the Christmas story.

An Untold Mystery 

There is another reason the virgin birth of Jesus is relevant; it shows the importance of being able to keep God’s secrets. Consider this comment by Luke: “But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). There is reason to believe that Mary never told the miracle of Jesus’ birth until years after He had died and ascended to heaven. At that point she apparently broke her silence and told Luke what had happened.

In the very first chapter of his Gospel, Luke records the occasion when the angel Gabriel came to Mary unexpectedly and said, “‘Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you’” (Luke 1:28). Mary was puzzled by the angel’s greeting, but the angel said to her, “‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus’” (v. 31).

Mary questioned the angel: “‘How can this be, since I do not know a man?’ [The NIV translates the last part of Mary’s question, “since I am a virgin?”] And the angel answered and said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God’” (vv. 34-35).

Imagine having an experience with God like this and keeping quiet about it for many years! Yes, she did stay during her pregnancy with her cousin Elizabeth, who discerned Mary’s condition by the Holy Spirit (see Luke 1:39-45). But there is no indication that anybody else knew, not even the disciples of Jesus.

Mary must have been tempted to reveal this extraordinary secret a thousand times, but she didn’t. Why? First, she would have been doing so largely to clear her own name. She chose instead to bear the stigma. Second, it might have been like casting a pearl before swine (see Matt. 7:6). The enemies of Jesus would not have believed her, and the news could have been counterproductive. So Mary did not tell it until she revealed it to Luke before she died.

There’s a good possibility that the followers of Jesus were willing to follow Him not knowing what Mary knew and very possibly assuming that Jesus really was an illegitimate child, as implied in John 6:42. What would have been their thinking in following Jesus if indeed they believed He was born out of wedlock?

Peter could answer: “‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God’” (John 6:68-69). And yet it must have been a sweet consolation to their souls to have the word spread among the church many years later that Mary was in fact a virgin when Jesus was born, showing that He was truly the Son of God.

The virgin birth of Jesus reveals our helplessness in the face of God’s commands and our need for His power to fulfill them. When Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her what God wanted, she had a significant question: “How can I have a child since I am a virgin?” (see Luke 1:34).

“‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you,’” the angel replied, and added, “‘For with God nothing will be impossible’” (vv. 35,37).

An Essential Truth 

The virgin birth lays the foundation for the most essential truth of all—that Jesus was and is the God-man; He was man as though He were not God, and God as though He were not man. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father” the apostle John tells us (John 1:1,14, emphasis added).

Only God could have performed the miracle of His Son’s conception. He caused the Word to enter the womb of Mary and become a seed. At that moment, the Word became flesh. Even as an embryo, He was fully human as well as fully God. The God-man lived in Mary’s womb for nine months and then was born.

God chose a virgin from the tribe of Judah living in Nazareth to be the mother of our Lord. She had the genealogical credentials to qualify, being in the line of David. God chose a virgin to prove that only He could have been Jesus’ father.

The virgin birth of Jesus further demonstrates that salvation is ultimately the work of God. It was His idea alone and was brought about solely by His initiative. God had promised that the seed of the woman would ultimately destroy the serpent’s head (see Gen. 3:15).

The virgin birth of Christ shows that salvation can never come through human effort; it must be by the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. In His perfect timing “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4-5). The purpose of Jesus’ coming was for Him to save His people from their sins (see Matt. 1:21). He was born to die.

If God had made Jesus a complete human being in heaven and then sent Him to earth without any human parent, it would have been impossible for Him to be human as we are. If, on the other hand, God had brought Jesus into the world with two human parents, both a father and a mother, it would have been impossible for Him to be fully God.

Besides the supernatural component of God’s sending His Son to earth, there was a natural one that was essential for Jesus to be born: Mary had to agree to God’s plan! She might have said “No,” or perhaps, “Let me think about it.” I fancy that all heaven waited with baited breath for Mary’s consent.

That consent came immediately. “‘Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word,’” was her reply to the angel (Luke 1:38). In that moment the eternal Word left His glory with the Father and the Spirit and became flesh, to be the God-man forever and ever. It was the greatest moment in heaven and earth since creation.

Do you believe in the virgin birth? Will you accept the stigma of being a follower of Jesus, especially in this day of pluralism when His words, “‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me’” (John 14:6) are a tremendous offense?

Will you bear this stigma? Joseph did. Mary did. Let us follow in their steps and be willing to let our vindication come long after we are gone, in order to prove to the world that Jesus, born of a woman, was indeed the Son of God.

R.T. Kendall was the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London for 25 years. He is well-known internationally as a speaker and teacher and is the author of more than 50 books.

IS CHRISTMAS BAD?

Tired of people bashing “Christ’s-mass”? Go to christmas.charismamag.com to find out the rich meanings behind the symbols of the season.

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