It’s 2016.
The scent of brewing coffee wafts through my home. The front door is open. My dining room table is ready with my favorite coffee mugs, sugar and cream, spoons, and extra chairs in case the numbers are better than I hoped.
I’d been longing for some kind of regular meeting with the women of my church. Unconvinced they’d want to dive into Scripture from the outset, I chose a book on the attributes of God with short chapters and discussion questions. I advertised at church and in our private Facebook group, bought the books, prepped discussion, and prayed for women to show up.
None did. The next week, one came. Then none.
Week after week, my table was empty. Week after week, I dumped an entire pot of coffee down the kitchen sink drain. Week after week, I scrapped the discussion I’d prepared. Week after week, I wondered if the problem was me. I’d prayed for a weekly study with other women—I hungered for it. God had been teaching me so much in my personal Bible study time, and I wanted to bring relationships into my study of Scripture. But as the weeks rolled into months, it seemed that the Lord was saying no. Disheartened, I stopped brewing coffee and stopped opening the door. I took some time to think about a different approach. I tried taking it online, creating a Facebook group for the women of our church. This was before live videos were what they are now, so I filmed videos discussing the chapters of the book and posted them with discussion questions. Crickets.
Finally, I quit. Forced to set aside my desires, I prayed that one day the Lord would change things or change me.
______
It’s 2017.
A friend from church sends me a text. “I’ve been meeting one on one with ______, and we’d like to start studying a book of the Bible together, but we don’t know where to start. Would you consider meeting with us?”
Excitement bubbles to the surface of my heart so quickly that my fingers tremble while I text back, “I’d love to!” We met at the local coffee shop and spent a few months studying some basic hermeneutics before diving into the book of James. For a long time, it was just the three of us, sometimes two, sometimes only me. The group ebbed and flowed over the next few years, and though it was greatly rewarding to walk through Scripture with other women, it bothered me that only one or two treated Bible study as a priority in their lives. Will this ever be more than just three or four women on a good week? I wondered if it was too important to me. Still, the weekly Bible study during the noon hour continued, the faces changing over the years but the goal always being simple inductive study through whole books of the Bible. I facilitated, sometimes very clumsily, but it got easier to field questions as the years passed.
______
It’s 2023.
We’ve got some new members at church, and they want to try the Tuesday Bible study. We’re meeting at my house these days, gathered around my dining room table. I brew the coffee, and people show up. Just four of five of them on a good week, but they are so hungry, so eager. They read the assigned chapters of Scripture and take pages and pages of notes. They come armed with questions. They invite their neighbors. They come from various backgrounds—Catholicism, prosperity churches, and churches like mine. I’m the youngest by ten years but somehow the de facto leader. We work through Hebrews, Proverbs, Acts, Exodus, John, Isaiah. This group is faithful. They rarely miss. Week after week, we meet and discuss Scripture. We become friends. We serve at outreach events together. Some of the neighbors start attending my church. This group is nothing like what I’d expected when I first opened my front door all those years ago. They want to study, to know Jesus, really know Him.
______
Yesterday.
They’re fifteen minutes early, three of them arriving while I’m finishing up some work on my laptop. I don’t bother with coffee or cups, instead pouring tall glasses of water for the women who feel at home enough to tell me the June heat has made them thirsty. I ask my son to get the desk chairs from the upstairs bedrooms. I pull up a piano bench to one end of the table. I grab a stool from the coat closet and perch on it, my hip aching with the awkward position of sitting higher than the table. There are ten women crammed around my table. Bibles open, questions ready, discussion for an hour about Isaiah 48. We laugh and talk and for some reason, they listen with their pens poised as I walk through a summary of the Old Testament prophet’s old words to an old group of rebels that we all identify with. A bright light is always pointed at the Savior, no matter what passage we study.
It’s been ten years since I first opened my door and no one walked through it. I thought that a good desire for a group Bible study would be met with the Lord’s favor right away. When it wasn’t, I didn’t realize that a no was really a not now. For reasons only God can know, He made me wait. And He taught me to persevere with what was in front of me no matter what. Week after week, in the company of just a couple of women, I was free to fail, fumbling my words and missing the mark of clearcut explanations of Scripture. But I learned to pivot, learned to study better, learned to articulate on the spot. Those years of waiting for what I enjoy today were good years of learning to lead when the stakes were really low.
All those years ago, I opened my front door to a dream that died almost as soon as it came to life. Today, the door is open and God answers my old prayers every single week. It took ten years to get here, but there’s no shame in waiting on the Lord’s timing.
Ten years ago I tried leading a women's Bible study in my home. No one came. Today, we're out of room. Here's a story of waiting. Share on X
Photo by Alexis Brown on Unsplash
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and is the mother of two sons. She and her husband serve at Grace Bible Fellowship in Sikeston, Missouri where they have served for over twenty years. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence, Everyday Faithfulness, Memorizing Scripture, Known & Loved, Bible Study, and Praying in Pain.
