Sacred Friendships Video Book Trailer 

Sacred Friendships: Celebrating the Legacy of Women Heroes of the Faith narrates the amazing stories of the lives and ministries of over fifty women in church history.

Learn more about Sacred Friendships as you enjoy the video book trailer where I share about:

• Co-authoring Sacred Friendships with Susan Ellis

• Why we need to learn about and from women in church history

• Who is the target audience for Sacred Friendships (Hint—women and men!)

• My favorite story from Sacred Friendships

Watch the video on our RPM Ministries YouTube Channel.

Visit our Sacred Friendships page to read a free sample chapter and learn how you can order an autographed copy of Sacred Friendships at 40% off.

Tags: Book Video Trailer, Church History, Sacred Friendships, Women's History, Women's Studies

Under the Power of Melting Grief: Margaret Baxter—Part 3

The Big Idea: By celebrating the legacy of women heroes of the faith, we learn how to speak Gospel truth in love. To learn life lessons from 52 women heroes of the faith, read Sacred Friendships, which is the source for today’s blog post. To read Part 1 of this mini-series, click here. To read Part 2, click here.

A Puritan Love Story

We learn not only from Margaret’s life, but also from her death. Most of what we know of her we glean from her husband’s memorial to her, written one month after her death. Baxter published it as A Breviate of the Life of Margaret, The Daughter of Francis Charlton, and Wife of Richard Baxter. Later, John T. Wilkinson reprinted it with the beautiful title Richard Baxter and Margaret Charlton: A Puritan Love Story.

Baxter prefaces his memorializing with the candid admission that it was, “. . . written, I confess, under the power of melting grief.” Knowing the likely criticism for such openness, Baxter continues, “. . . and therefore perhaps with the less prudent judgment; but not with the less, but the more truth; for passionate weakness poureth out all, which greater prudence may conceal.” According to Baxter, Christians, of all people, should be the most honest about pain. In our grieving, we should not conceal the truth of tears this side of heaven.

It was not simply the shock and nearness of Margaret’s death that left her husband so frank. Years later in his autobiography, Baxter expresses how his wife’s death left him “in depth of grief.” Interestingly, the original editor of Baxter’s autobiography suppressed this phrase. Fortunately, truer historians have uncovered it—for the benefit of all who dare speak the truth about sorrow.

Richard Baxter understood the truth that it’s normal to hurt—even for “full-time Christian workers.” His entire biography of dear Margaret is a tear-stained tribute to the affection they shared and the sadness he endured.

Mingled Hurt and Hope

Of course, Baxter also understood the truth that it’s possible to hope—for all Christians. Listen to his mingled hurt and hope.

“She is gone after many of my choice friends, who within this one year are gone to Christ, and I am following even at the door. Had I been to enjoy them only here, it would have been but a short comfort, mixed with the many troubles which all our failings and sins, and some degree of unsuitableness between the nearest and dearest, cause. But I am going after them to that blessed society where life, light, and love, and therefore, harmony, concord, and joy, are perfect and everlasting.”

Perhaps one reason why we practice denial is our fear that entering our grief might so consume us that we will be overwhelmed with worldly sorrow. Baxter’s Christian experience reminds us that this doesn’t have to be the case. We can look fallen life squarely in the eyes, admit the truth that it is a quagmire of pain and problems, and still live hopefully now if we also look toward life in our heavenly world to come.

In the last paragraph of his tribute to Margaret, Baxter succinctly combines these two realities. “Therefore in our greatest straits and sufferings, let us comfort one another with these words: That we shall for ever be with the Lord.” Shakespeare’s Romeo said, “He jests at scars, that never felt a wound.” Baxter might have added, “He fears facing scars who never embraces the truth that by Christ’s wounds we are healed.”

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Like Richard Baxter, are you courageous enough and do you trust Christ enough to grieve greatly?

Tags: Margaret Baxter, Richard Baxter, Sacred Friendships, Women's Studies

Margaret Baxter: Part 2—The Freshness of God’s Goodness and Grace

The Big Idea: By celebrating the legacy of women heroes of the faith, we learn how to speak Gospel truth in love. To learn life lessons from 52 women heroes of the faith, read Sacred Friendships, which is the source for today’s blog post. To read Part 1 of this mini-series, click here.

The Freshness of God’s Goodness and Grace

Having received God’s healing physically, Margaret cooperates with God’s Spirit in finding ongoing spiritual healing (forgiveness) and growth. Consider this covenant with God that she wrote upon her healing.

“. . . I here now renew my covenant with almighty God and resolve by his grace to endeavor to get and keep a fresh sense of his mercy on my soul, and a greater sense yet of my sin; I resolve to set myself against my sin with all my might, and not to take its part or extenuate it or keep the devil’s counsel, as I have done, to the wronging of God and the wounding of my own soul.”

Margaret perceives the horrors of her sins—they wrong God and wound her soul. She also recognizes the wonders of God’s grace—it is her fresh sense of goodness that motivates her to eschew evil.

Margaret is a master in the art of “devil craft” (using biblical principles to defeat the devil). “Though the tempter be busy to make me think diminutively of this great mercy, yet I must not, but must acknowledge the greatness of it” What a concise, precise account of the Devil’s grand scheme—to con us into thinking diminutively of God’s colossal grace.

Fixed on Christ

To her self-reconciling, Margaret adds self-guiding. She applies her theological understanding of her personal relationship to the Trinity to the issue of progressive sanctification. “. . . I am already engaged by the baptismal covenant to God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and to the Father as my God and chief good and only happiness; and to the Son as my Redeemer, Head, and Husband; and to the Holy Ghost as my Sanctifier and Comforter . . .”

What difference does this intimate relationship with the Trinity make as she battles besetting sins?

“All creatures . . . had nothing that could satisfy my soul . . . which should teach me to keep my heart loose from the creature and not over-love anything on this side heaven. Why should my heart be fixed where my home is not? Heaven is my home, God in Christ is all my happiness, and where my treasure is, there my heart should be. Come away, O my heart, from vanity; mount heavenward, and be not dead or dull if you would be free from trouble, and taste of real joy and pleasure. . . . O my carnal heart! Retire to God, the only satisfying object. There may you love without all danger of excess!”

Here we see a sample of the enduring Puritan tradition of avoiding over-much-love of the creature by passionately pursuing ever-increasing-love for the Creator, our only Satisfier, and the Lover of our soul.

An Artful Soul Physician

No wonder the master pastor, Richard Baxter, praised his wife as an artful soul physician.

“Yes, I will say that . . . she was better at resolving a case of conscience than most divines that ever I knew in all my life. I often put cases to her which she suddenly resolved as to convince me of some degree of oversight in my own resolution. Insomuch that of late years, I confess, that I was used to put all, save secret cases, to her and hear what she could say. Abundance of difficulties were brought me, some about restitution, some about injuries, some about references, some about vows, some about marriage promises, and many such like; and she would lay all the circumstances presently together, compare them, and give me a more exact resolution than I could do”

The Rest of the Story

Return tomorrow to learn from Richard Baxter about the death of his beloved wife Margaret: Under the Power of Melting Grief.

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In facing sin in your life, what can you learn and apply from Margaret Baxter’s life?

Tags: Margaret Baxter, Puritans, Richard Baxter, Sacred Friendships, Women's Studies

Margaret Baxter: An Artful Soul Physician, Part 1

The Big Idea: By celebrating the legacy of women heroes of the faith, we learn how to speak Gospel truth in love. To learn life lessons from 52 women heroes of the faith, read Sacred Friendships, which is the source for today’s blog post.

Margaret Charlton Baxter: Christ-Centered Living

We know the name Richard Baxter, the Puritan pastor and author, but we are much less familiar with the spiritual writings of his wife, Margaret Baxter. Yet, when we uncover the rich buried treasure of her soul care and spiritual direction ministry, we have to wonder why in the world the world has not told her amazing stories sooner.

Margaret Charlton Baxter’s (1631-1681) father, Francis, was a leading justice of the peace and a wealthy man. Growing up as part of England’s aristocracy, “Margaret was a frivolous, worldly minded teenager” when she arrived in Kidderminister to live with her godly widowed mother and to benefit from Richard Baxter’s ministry. A sermon series on conversion which Baxter preached in 1657 led her to a total commitment to Christ-centered worship and service. Richard, who was twenty years older than Margaret, was often in the home she shared with her mother and provided Margaret with ongoing spiritual direction.

Baxter omitted from his memoir of Margaret “the occasion and inducements of our marriage,” so we only know that they wed after her mother passed away on September 10, 1662. There followed nineteen years of happy life together, till Margaret’s death.

Comfort in My Suffering: The Scourge of Scrupulosity and Melancholy

According to Richard, Margaret was obsessive about her physical and spiritual health, spending much of her adult life in fear of mental collapse, and starving herself for years for fear that overeating would precipitate cancer. While today we might “diagnose” her with various psychological maladies such as “anxiety disorder,” “eating disorder,” and/or “obsessive compulsive disorder,” Richard used the historically current category of “scrupulosity.” She was overly conscientious about her spiritual state. As he puts it:

“Her understanding was higher and clearer than other people’s, but, like the treble strings of a lute, strained up to the highest, sweet, but in continual danger.” She “proved her sincerity by her costliest obedience. It cost her . . . somewhat of her trouble of body and mind; for her knife was too keen and cut the sheath. Her desires were more earnestly set on doing good than her tender mind and head could well bear.”

Baxter also uses the common term of the day, “melancholy” to further describe her emotional struggles, and to depict her victory over them. “When we were married, her sadness and melancholy vanished: counsel did something to it, and contentment something; and being taken up with our household affairs did somewhat. And we lived in inviolated love and mutual complacency sensible of the benefit of mutual help.” His prescription for overcoming “depression” is fascinating, especially given the trend today toward either/or thinking and one-size-fits-all therapy. Yes, counseling was part of her “treatment plan,” but so was the spiritual discipline of learning contentment, the ministry practice of serving God and others in day-to-day life, and the benefit of a marriage of mutual love and affection.

Margaret adds her own assessment of God’s healing powers. Speaking of her physical recovery from a serious illness and her commensurate spiritual peace, she explains, “And now I desire to acknowledge his mercy in delivering me from this death-threatening disease, and that in answer to prayers I am here now in competent health to speak of the goodness of the Lord.”

She then provides her biblical sufferology that defines how God in His goodness uses sickness.

“I desire to acknowledge it a mercy that God should afflict me; and though I cannot with the Psalmist say, but now I keep thy statutes; I can say, Before I was afflicted I went astray. And how many great sins God has prevented by this affliction, I cannot tell; but I am sure that God has dealt very graciously with me; and I have had many comforts in my sufferings, which God has not given to many of his beloved ones.” Rather than grow bitter at God for her ongoing physical and emotional battles, she blesses God for using them to prune her so she could blossom for His glory.

But “sanctification today” does not alone summarize Margaret’s sufferology. She also includes in her healing narrative her future heavenly hope.

“If I belong to God, though I suffer while I am in the body, they will be but light afflictions and but for a moment; but the everlasting Kingdom will be my inheritance. And when this life is ended, I shall reign with Christ; I shall be freed from sin and suffering and for ever rejoice with saints and angels.” In this Margaret follows the grand church history tradition of remembering the future.

Yes, of course salvation has daily implications now. But this is not all there is. God finalizes the results of our salvation in a future day, in the future heaven. That hope allows us to face life realistically now, as Margaret does.

“However it fareth with his children in this house (or howling wilderness), the time will come, and is at hand, when all the children shall be separate from rebels, and be called home to dwell with their Father, their Head and Husband; and the elect shall be gathered into one. Then farewell sorrow, farewell hard heart! Farewell tears and sad repentance!”

Some today tell us that highlighting salvation as heaven later is irrelevant to life today. Not only is that historically naïve, it is theologically and practically ignorant. As the Apostle Peter says after discussing our future rewards and judgments, “what kind of people ought you to be?”

The Rest of the Story

Return tomorrow to learn from Margaret Baxter about the freshness of God’s goodness and grace.

Join the Conversation

In facing suffering in your life, what can you learn and apply from Margaret Baxter’s life?

Tags: Margaret Baxter, Puritans, Richard Baxter, Sacred Friendships

Women of the Reformation, Part 4: Katherine von Bora Luther: Living the Truth in Love

The Big Idea: By celebrating the legacy of women heroes of the Reformation, we learn how to speak Gospel truth in love.

More Faith Stories: Read Part 1 Don’t Bury Your Talent. Read Part 2 Speaking Truth to Power. Read Part 3 Unfading Beauty. To learn life lessons from 52 women heroes of the faith, read Sacred Friendships, which is the source for today’s blog post. 

Katherine von Bora Luther: Living the Truth in Love

Katherine von Bora is the best known of all the women of the Reformation because she was Martin Luther’s wife. However, she was much more than that. Katherine was born in January 1499 in a little village near Leipzig. Her parents enjoyed a degree of financial security and unlike most girls her age she received an education, studying at a Benedictine school beginning at age six. At age ten, when her mother died and her father remarried, they sent Katherine to a Cistercian convent to prepare for solemn vows, eventually taking them when she was sixteen.

A Wagon Load of Vestal Virgins

In the early 1520s, Luther’s writings began to infiltrate monastic houses. “The sisters at Nimschen, nine of them, disquieted in conscience, sought his counsel. Luther advised escape and undertook to make the arrangements.”

Luther turned to a highly trusted layman, Leonard Kopp, who delivered barrels of smoked herrings to the nuns. Hidden in the covered wagon, they rumbled into Wittenberg. A student there wrote to a friend, “A wagon load of vestal virgins has just come to town all more eager for marriage than for life. May God give them husbands lest worse befall.”

Luther felt responsible that worse should not befall. All were placed either in teaching posts, in homes, or in matrimony. Katherine spent two years working in a home while Luther sought a husband for her. Finding no match, and at her initial suggestion, Luther agreed to marry Katherine because his marriage “would please his father, rile the pope, make the angels laugh and the devils weep, and would seal his testimony.” She was twenty-six; he was forty-two.

Though initially a marriage of convenience, they grew to love and depend upon each other profoundly. In fact, Luther would say of her, “In domestic affairs, I defer to Katie. Otherwise I am led by the Holy Ghost.” When he thought her at the point of death, he pleaded, “Don’t die and leave me.” Thirteen years after their marriage, Martin would say of Katherine, “If I should lose my Katie I would not take another wife through I were offered a queen.”

A Physician of the Soul

What was it about Katherine’s character and ministry that so endeared her to Luther? She “ministered to her husband’s diseases, depressions, and eccentricities.” Her son, later a physician, praised her as half a doctor. He could not have survived his depression, which he interpreted as satanic temptations to doubt God’s forgiveness, without her sustaining and healing ministry. At night he would turn over and plead with Katherine, “Forbid me to have such temptations.” Based upon Luther’s own methods of soul care for such depression, we can surmise that Katherine responded by ministering sustaining empathy and healing encouragement through spiritual conversations and scriptural explorations.

Luther’s own testimony further describes Katherine’s empathic care. Speaking from the experience of their marriage and parenting he writes:

“Marriage offers the greatest sphere for good works, because it rest on love—love between the husband and the wife, love of the parents for the children, whom they nourish, clothe, rear, and nurse. If a child is sick, the parents are sick with worry. If the husband is sick, the wife is as concerned as if it were herself. If it be said that marriage entails concern, worry, and trouble, that is all true, but these the Christian is not to shun.”

Undoubtedly, Martin frequently experienced Katherine’s as if compassion numerous times in his battles with depression.

Katherine was unafraid to lovingly rebuke Martin. When his language was too foul, she would say, “Oh come now, that’s too raw.” Luther’s Table Talks also disclose that Katherine at times prodded her husband to respond forcefully to unfair attacks and doctrinal error.

A Hospital for the Hurting

As with Idelette Calvin, Katherine’s ministry was not exclusively to her family. The Augustinian Cloister where Luther had lived as a monk was first loaned and then given to the couple by the Elector. It had on the first floor forty rooms with cells above. Eventually not a single room was unoccupied. A friend described the scene. “The home of Luther is occupied by a motley crowd of boys, students, girls, widows, old women, and youngsters.” Katherine “came to be a mistress of a household, a hostel, and a hospital.”

Luther recognized and appreciated her versatility and creativity. “To my dear wife Katherine von Bora, preacher, brewer, gardener, and whatsoever else she may be.” On other occasions he referred to her as “my kind and dear lord and master, Katy, Lutheress, doctoress, and priestess of Wittenberg.” Yet again, ten years after they married, he had this description. “My lord Kate drives a team, farms, pastures, and sells cows . . . and between times reads the Bible.”

Sticking to Christ

But for Katherine, reading the Bible was insufficient. She longed to apply it. “I’ve read enough. I’ve heard enough. I know enough. Would to God I lived it.”

Such was her testimony to her dying day. Ill for three months after an accident landed her on her back in a ditch filled with icy water, Katherine died on December 20, 1550, at age fifty-one. The final words from her lips depict how she lived her entire life. “I will stick to Christ as a burr to a top coat.” The last words of Idelette Calvin and Katherine von Bora Luther each communicate that they were not simply wives of Reformers, but more so daughters of the King of King.

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Which aspect of Katherine’s life most powerfully impacts you?

Tags: Katherine von Bora Luther, Martin Luther, Reformation, Sacred Friendships, Women of the Reformation

The Road to Hope: Perpetua’s Story

Note: The following post originally appeared in Sacred Friendships: Celebrating the Legacy of Women Heroes of the Faith which tells the story of over fifty remarkable Christian women. For Part One of this two-part post, read Not Your Father’s Church History.

“As If” Empathy

On the day of Perpetua’s final hearing before being martyred for her faith in 203 AD, the guards rushed Perpetua to the prisoners’ platform. Her father appeared with her infant son, trying to guilt her by imploring her to “have pity on your son!” He caused such an uproar, that the Governor ordered him thrown out, and he was beaten with a rod.

Perpetua writes of this horrible incident. “My father’s injury hurt me as much as if I myself had been beaten. And I grieved because of his pathetic old age.” Perpetua provides a classic portrait of biblical empathy. Her as if experience of her father’s pain is the essence of sustaining soul care—making the agony of others our very own.

Words of Life While Facing Death

Perpetua not only finds in Christ the strength to empathize with her father, she also summons Christ’s power to console and encourage her family and her fellow martyrs.

“In my anxiety for the infant I spoke to my mother about him, tried to console my brother and asked that they care for my son. I suffered intensely because I sensed their agony on my account. These were the trials I had to endure for many days.”

Incredibly, Perpetua’s greatest pain was her ache for others who hurt for her!

A few days passed after the hearing and before the battle in the arena commenced. During this interval, Perpetua witnessed to her persecutors and ministered to other detainees.

“Pudens, the official in charge of the prison (the official who had gradually come to admire us for our persistence), admitted many prisoners to our cell so that we might mutually encourage each other.”

Facing death, Perpetua shared words of life with all who would listen.

Maintaining Perpetual Persistence

Felicitas (Perpetua’s friend and fellow prisoner) was in her eighth month of pregnancy. As the day of the contest approached, she became very distressed that her martyrdom might be delayed, since the law forbade the execution of a pregnant woman. An eyewitness to their eventual death shares his account of their journey together.

“Her friends in martyrdom were equally sad at the thought of abandoning such a good friend to travel alone on the same road to hope. And so, two days before the contest, united in grief they prayed to the Lord.” Immediately after their prayers, her labor pains began and Felicitas gave birth to a girl whom one of her sisters reared as her own.

This eyewitness records their witness for Christ to the very end.

“On the day before the public games, as they were eating the last meal commonly called the free meal, they tried as much as possible to make it instead an agape. In the same spirit they were exhorting the people, warning them to remember the judgment of God, asking them to be witnesses of the prisoners’ joy in suffering, and ridiculing the curiosity of the crowd. . . . Then they all left the prison amazed, and many of them began to believe.”

To the very end, Perpetua maintains her perpetual persistence.

“The day of their victory dawned, and with joyful countenances they marched from the prison to the arena as though on their way to heaven. If there was any trembling, it was from joy, not fear. Perpetua followed with a quick step as a true spouse of Christ, the darling of God, her brightly flashing eyes quelling the gaze of the crowd.”

Stubbornly Resisting to the End

As they were led through the gates, they were ordered to put on different clothes; the men, those of the priests of Saturn, the women, those of the priestesses of Ceres. Of Perpetua we are told:

“But that noble woman stubbornly resisted even to the end. She said, ‘We’ve come this far voluntarily in order to protect our rights, and we’ve pledged our lives not to recapitulate on any such matter as this. We made this agreement with you.’ Injustice bowed to justice and the guard conceded that they could enter the arena in their ordinary dress. Perpetua was singing victory psalms as if already crushing the head of the Egyptian.”

Here we witness not only Perpetua’s courageous example of persistence, but also her model of biblical confrontation. She provides riveting testimony to Christ’s power at work in the inner life of a Christian woman whose spirit could never be overpowered.

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Why is Perpetua’s willingness to sacrifice all for God so seldom seen in modern Christianity?

The Martyrdom of Perpetua

Tags: Church History, Martrydom, Perpetua, Sacred Friendships, Women's Soul Care