I am a worship leader who quickly saw my time on the road was coming to an end when I got pregnant with my 2nd child. I left the road, started leading worship at my church and began really embracing this remarkable gift of mothering. I started attending a wonderful bible study devoted solely to moms called Mom2Mom. I was like a baby bird. I was so hungry to learn how to not only lead my kids hearts to Jesus, but to actively, day to day impart God to my kids. I stayed planted in this study for 4 years. Towards the end of that 4th year The Lord started telling me that he wanted me to get out of the boat and start a moms bible study in my area of town.

Matthew 14:29 – kept resonating with me. Peter wanted to go be with Jesus but he had to get out of the boat to do it.

I was determined. I too would get out of the boat.

I emailed a few other moms who had mentioned to me that they would be interested if I ever started a study; the total was about 12. All of them agreed and came to my house every Thursday morning and we walked through a few wonderful books together. After 3 sessions in my home we had almost doubled in size. We had even given ourselves a name. The Good Shepherd Moms. I quickly felt The Lord was going to expand our territory even further.

I am an active member of the Northwest YMCA and they got word about my study and asked if I’d be interested in doing it at their facility AND they would offer free childcare to my moms. I knew that was the way God would expand our territory. We began our first session at the Y and we had 27 moms sign up. We were all blown away. By the end of a couple of sessions at the Y, I felt The Lord wanted us to change our name. We would go from the Good Shepherd Moms to Moms With Swords.

We had a break for the summer and I began believing for greater kingdom impact to come from this simple moms bible study. I rallied with 2 dear friends that had been with me from the beginning. They were totally feeling the same thing as I was, so we got a game plan and started an online sign up. The number of sign ups kept going up and up. I had specifically asked God to double our numbers. We reached 50 moms and just couldn’t believe it. At the start of our session we had a total of 90 moms enlisted.

I go back often to the story in Mark 6:41-43. Amazed at what Jesus did with just those 5 loaves and 2 fish. That is exactly what he has done with this “small” moms bible study that now is a ministry that is not only affecting the lives of moms, but their children and we believe generations to come. I decided to step out of the boat and He has fed many.

1 Chronicles 4:10 Jabez prayed to the God of Israel, “Please bless me and give me more territory. May your power be with me and free me from evil so that I will not be in pain.” God gave him what he prayed for.

~Joy