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IRVING—It began with prayer and ended with prayer.
In between, the 170 women who gathered in the upstairs ballroom at the Irving Convention Center worshipped God and learned to embrace the “power of wonder” during the women’s session of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s annual Empower Conference.
Those expecting speaker and author Marian Jordan Ellis to immediately launch into her keynote topic may have been surprised by her opening request. Ellis, founder of This Redeemed Life and women’s ministry director at Mission City Church in San Antonio, asked the moms of prodigals in the rooms to raise their hands.
“There’s no shame in that … I was [a prodigal],” Ellis said. “We are in a safe room. It’s hard to have a sheep that’s not in the fold.” With her voice cracking with emotion, she then led the room in prayer, asking the Lord to restore the prodigals.
“I am a prodigal. I am a miracle of the grace of God,” she said, beginning her story by showing a photo of her family. Marriage at 38 made her an instant mom with two stepsons; a “little miracle,” the couple’s daughter, was born five years later.
Using Psalm 107 as her text, Ellis interwove exposition with autobiography.
Born and raised in a “typical small East Texas town,” she admitted to running “as hard and far from God as possible.” At age 25, in a bar in Houston, she finally prayed what she called her first real prayer: “God, if you are real, help.”
“My sin had so clouded my vision that I didn’t know what truth was anymore,” she recalled.
But God had not given up on her. She later discovered her mother and friends had been praying for her. A coworker invited her to a large Southern Baptist church where she heard and finally understood the gospel.
David in Psalm 107 reminded the people the Lord delivered them in their distress as they cried out to Him. Likewise, Ellis’s salvation came from the same God who heard her desperate cry.
“The God of redemption restores us to what He originally meant … to be a people who glorify His name,” Ellis said.
Following her salvation, Ellis was discipled by godly women, an experience which reinforced the importance of small group Bible study and the “spiritual surgery” of the transforming power of the Word of God.
“Our identify in Christ is so important,” Ellis said. “Satan has been discipling people a long time. …When we take the Word of God and start discipling people … it transforms their minds,” resulting in a biblical worldview where believers “see the world as God sees it.”
Younger generations today experience crippling anxiety, Ellis said. Scientists are recognizing the importance of focused meditation, she said, noting that 20 minutes a day spent focused and in awe and wonder of God can rewire our minds.
“His Word heals us and delivers us,” she said. “As women, we need to learn the power of wonder … of God.”
‘Hope is a choice’
Ellis opened the afternoon’s second session with a call for women with unmet desires to raise their hands for prayer. She recalled her own days of singleness when, after becoming a Christian at age 25, she longed to meet a godly man to marry. Instead, she “was in more weddings” than she could count.
“Depression isn’t a label any of us wants to wear. Sometimes it can be like a low-grade fever. Your unmet desire is how the enemy can lead you into despair,” she said. “I would have despaired unless I believed.”
Drawing from Psalm 33, which David intended to be read to the people of God on Yom Kippur—an expectant time of the new year—Ellis spoke of faith and hope, two related yet distinct concepts.
“Faith is what happens, the choice, the decision of the will to look back on what God has done,” whereas “hope is faith activated forward,” the “confident expectation of God” based on “His person, promises, and presence,” she said.
The reading of Psalm 33 centered the nation on hope in the Lord, Ellis said.
“Praise is the password into God’s presence,” she said. Worship “drives out our anxieties and calibrates our souls to the frequency of heaven,” aligning the soul with the character of the redeemer.
Focusing on God changes reality, Ellis said, encouraging the audience that “if God has not redeemed your story, He is not done with your story.”
“When God is big, everything else is small,” she reminded the crowd. “Your God and my God is sovereign. He doesn’t say, ‘Oops.’”
“Hope is a choice,” she continued. “It’s the choice to believe what is true about the Lord. It’s the choice to look to Him as your secure one, your provider, your strength.”
Before concluding the women’s session with more prayer, SBTC women’s ministry associate Laura Taylor challenged the crowd that included women from all stages of life—from grandmothers to young mothers with infants in tow—asking, “Do we believe that? God is good. God is faithful because that is His character.”
