Christina Fox, Author at Women.pcacdm.org

The Lord Set His Heart in Love on You

Editor’s Note: the following is an excerpt from Sarah Ivill’s new book, Heart Matters: Teaching with Purity and Purpose, used by permission. The book of Deuteronomy mentions the heart often. Perhaps most striking is the truth that “to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the LORD set his heart in love on . . . you” (Deut. 10:14-15). Ponder that for a moment. We are “a people holy to the LORD . . . his treasured possession” (Deut. 7:6). Such status is not because of anything good in us, but “because the LORD loves you” and is “the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments” (Deut. 7:8-9). This status with God is an important truth for us to hold to not only for ourselves, but also to share with others. There will be times when we are tempted to fall into the performance trap. We may think we have to be perfect to be approved, by God or by others. We may be tempted to envy another’s capabilities or opportunities. We might compete with or compare ourselves to others. So, it does our hearts good to return often to the truth that the Lord set His love upon us, even when we were His enemies (Rom. 5:10; Eph. 2:4-5). Even if we do not measure up to our own expectations—and we seldom do—or even the expectations of others, the Lord is faithful to love us...

The Lord Set His Heart in Love on YouChristina Fox2026-03-13T20:05:48+00:00

Honoring a Spiritual Mother

STEPHANIE HUBACH | CONTRIBUTOR March is International Women’s Month, so in honor of one of the most influential women in my life—Jane Patete—I’d like to share with you a letter I wrote to her son and daughter. For those who don’t know her, Jane was the Coordinator for Women’s Ministries in the PCA. I sent this several weeks after Jane’s memorial service. I hope you “meet her” in some small way through reading this. Actually, I hope you see Jesus by reading this. (That’s how Jane would want this to go.) Here is an excerpt of the letter I sent to Jane’s daughter Amy and her son Rob. Oh. My. Word. How she touched my life. Apart from my own mother, Jane was the most influential woman in my spiritual life. Ever. And I’ve been a Christian for a long time, and run in a lot of Christian circles. Words don’t do justice to the level at which she impacted my life, just by doing what she always did: connecting, praying and encouraging, and embodying her “fun factor.” Connecting Jane’s fingerprints—in one fashion or another—are all over every doorknob to every major ministry door that opened in my life in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). As Susan Hunt’s assistant, she was willing to engage in an email friendship with me 25 years ago. I had contacted the Women in the Church (WIC) office with the question, “Have you ever had an idea that just wouldn’t go away?” That was the early calling on my heart to make the gospel accessible to people with disabilities in the PCA. Your mom and I built a friendship over email. Then, she did what she did so well: she connected me to everyone she knew who could help advance the vision of disability ministry in the PCA....

Honoring a Spiritual MotherChristina Fox2026-03-11T12:29:27+00:00

God’s Faithful Sovereignty When Things Don’t go as Planned

HANNAH HAGARTY | GUEST My husband and I have two failed adoptions, chronic illness, and an unexpected mission field exodus to our names. Things not going as planned? I may be an unwilling expert on the subject. But it turns out, being an expert on disappointment can mean possessing a deep appreciation for the goodness of God’s sovereignty. We readily said yes when asked to adopt the two little sisters in our home. As foster parents for nearly half of our married lives, Mali had come to us at eighteen months old. When her sister Ziva was born, we picked her up from the hospital. Birthdays and holidays flew by with our biological children and the little girls until they had been with us nearly two years. And then, with one phone call, we were told the case plan had changed from adoption to reunification. The girls were to be handed over to a biological relative investigated for crimes against a child. It didn’t matter which way anyone turned that fact about - sense was found nowhere in it. Years later, my husband and I and seven of our children were living in West Asia, sent out by the church to do mission work, never intending to live in the States again. For thirteen months, we worked our assigned jobs, learned the culture, and did the difficult work of progressing in the local language. Our kids flourished. And then, with another phone call, devastating news from the States immediately put me on the thirty-one hour flight back....

God’s Faithful Sovereignty When Things Don’t go as PlannedChristina Fox2026-02-27T20:54:52+00:00

Weak at Work: How God Supplies Our Strength

JENNIFER WHITE |GUEST Editor’s Note: this article contains stories of infancy and pregnancy loss. My husband, a newly elected church elder, put the car in park. We locked eyes. “Wait,” I said. “Before we go in, let’s think through what we are going to say.” We agreed to tell the young couple that we loved them. We wanted to remind them of God’s great love for them. We planned to pray and offer various resources available through our church. As we entered the hospital room, we both froze. The mom sat in bed quietly crying. The teary father held their baby boy wrapped in a crinkly cooling blanket, protecting his body and skin so his siblings could meet him. He had died unexpectedly the day before in an emergency c-section. As we looked in the parents’ eyes, we crumbled, grieving and crying with this family. We prayed the truths of God’s word over their lives: that He is near to the brokenhearted, that He loves little children, that He is our shepherd and our rock. Even in the newness of grief and shock of pain, they rehearsed God’s truths along with us. Then, we left them to hold their baby boy, to grieve and cry together. As we exited, I felt overwhelmed and helpless. “Lord,” I prayed, “are you sure? Am I the right person for this job? Was I capable or strong enough? Did we say the right things? Did we stay long enough? Too long? Did our visit make things easier or harder for these grieving parents?” When We Are Inadequate This hospital visit happened during my third week serving as Women’s Ministry Director at my church....

Weak at Work: How God Supplies Our StrengthChristina Fox2026-02-27T20:49:31+00:00

Fences Don’t Make Healthy Churches

LAURA PATTERSON | GUEST I sat in her lap with tears in my eyes. I was four and she was in her 50s. I had mixed the play rice into the Play-Doh and Mrs. Cummings gently corrected me for my likely innocent but possibly mischievous mixture. As an anxious child, striving to earn affection through a good performance, this left an imprint. What was probably a mundane moment for Mrs. Cummings was a monumental one for me. I wouldn’t have put words to it at the time, but I was implicitly learning the value of gospel community through this relational experience. She clearly explained that the rice and Play-Doh were not meant to be mixed, and I understood the error in my “curiosity”. But redemption followed as she scooped me up and held me in my tears. Her love for me was undiminished....

Fences Don’t Make Healthy ChurchesChristina Fox2026-02-24T16:27:06+00:00

Weakness in Ministry

JULIANNE ATKINSON |GUEST It’s easy to proclaim the gospel with our words. It’s not as easy to follow Christ’s path, embodying the gospel as we inevitably fail, embracing our sins, frailties, weaknesses, and limits. Can you remember a time you felt weak as a ministry leader? I once talked with a prospective volunteer about her background and quickly found that I disagreed on biblical grounds with her father’s profession. It wasn’t a controversial field that he worked in, but an illegal one. Knowing her father wasn’t a Christian, I assumed that she agreed with me. I was wrong. I tried to convince her using Scripture to no avail. Unsurprisingly, this was not what she wanted to hear. It didn’t change her heart about her father’s profession. She couldn’t believe a ministry leader would speak out against how her father provided for her family. Needless to say, she decided not to volunteer with the ministry. This encounter was humbling for me as a ministry leader. It revealed to me the complexities of working with people with different life experiences than mine and my need to have patience as God works in people's lives. Weakness Before Strength We want to look like we have a glazed clay pot among the rest of the basic ones....

Weakness in MinistryChristina Fox2026-02-24T16:22:07+00:00

When You Want to Trade in Your Specific Clay-Like Conditions

ELLEN DYKAS | CONTRIBUTOR But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. (2 Corinthians 4:7) I recently told a friend that I’m willing to participate in the sufferings of Christ; but can it be on my terms and in the form, timing, and intensity of my choosing?! I see the irony and hypocrisy of such a statement yet the truth is, it’s how I feel and think sometimes, even if unconsciously. Maybe like me, you delight in being a clay jar filled with the treasure of Jesus, yet struggle when the clay feels extra fragile, sad, or worn out. In those conditions, I can be tempted to want to click a ‘return’ button as simply as it is to send back an unwanted Amazon package. In the past few years, certain aspects of my clay-ness have felt extra hard. The impact of menopause on my body and ongoing disrupted sleep. Health related anxiety and the physiological, emotional, and spiritual impact of that. I transitioned into a (mostly) full time equipping and content development role which has been truly such a gift to have a dedicated season to pour out what I’ve learned in the years I’ve served with Harvest USA. Yet, it’s also been unexpectedly lonely, as I’ve been at my desk more than face to face with women as I was for my first sixteen years. What’s a girl to do?...

When You Want to Trade in Your Specific Clay-Like ConditionsChristina Fox2026-02-15T14:32:53+00:00

A Testimony in Sorrow

JENNA BOGARD | GUEST As my dear pastor neared the end of his life in 2022, I wept by his hospital bed. All I could utter was, “Jim, you are going to be with Christ soon!” His face lit up; that was all he wanted. His intimacy with Christ was apparent to everyone who knew him. Prior to his death, he repeatedly urged me to dive into the Song of Solomon as it ministered to him greatly in his last few months of suffering with ALS. At the time, I dismissed his claim that the book had anything to do with Christ and the church and even teased him for holding such beliefs. I wish he was still here so I could humbly admit my error and thank him for pointing me to some of the most beautiful truths of Christ that I’ve only begun to uncover. A Reflection of the Heart Dr. David Murray’s exposition of Song of Solomon chapter five was particularly impactful as it so perfectly described my spiritual condition at the time: utterly weak, fearful, depressed, and desperate.[i] As the chapter opens, the groom is at the door, calling the bride to open the door (v. 2). However, the bride is apathetic to his call. “I had put off my garment; how could I put it on? I had bathed my feet; how could I soil them?” (v.3) The bride didn’t want to put in the effort, a situation we usually find ourselves in when we have temporarily satisfied ourselves with the lust of our idols...

A Testimony in SorrowChristina Fox2026-02-14T18:25:24+00:00

Celebrating Ten Years of EnCouragement

BARBARANNE KELLY | CONTRIBUTOR The passage of time is a funny thing. We mark anniversaries with amazement at how the years have flown by. The first time I attended the annual Leadership Training (LT) in 2017 seems like yesterday in some respects, and forever ago in others. That year, Karen Hodge and Christina Fox introduced us to a new resource for the women of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the enCourage Blog, which had launched the year before. I attended the writers’ workshop, where Christina told us more about enCourage, and that she was looking for more women to write for it. In our brave new digital world, there are so many offerings for women to read, many which are genuinely faith-feeding and many more which are discouraging, fear-feeding, or enticements away from true faith. The purpose of enCourage is to be a bi-weekly dose of truly biblical life-giving encouragement in a world that is often filled with bad news. A month after my first LT, I submitted my very first post for enCourage and have since become a regular contributor. When Christina asked for a post this month celebrating enCourage’s ten-year anniversary, my first thought was, “Wait—ten years already?” Yes, ten years of encouragement written by women of the PCA for the women of the PCA have flown by! In the nine years I’ve written for enCourage I have learned and grown as a writer, particularly in my confidence in my calling to write, in honing my skills as a writer, and in the mutual encouragement among my fellow writers and our readers...

Celebrating Ten Years of EnCouragementChristina Fox2026-02-14T18:22:42+00:00

What Seminary Meant to Me as a Mom

ALLYSON BRUCE | GUEST This past May, as I walked into my graduation ceremony at Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS) we sang, “How Firm a Foundation.” This hymn beautifully captures my journey through the Masters of Arts in Counseling program. This foundation wasn’t laid in ease or in ideal conditions; it was built in the midst of motherhood. When I began seminary, I was a mom with soon to be four children under the age of five. I didn’t enter with spare time or energy, but with a desire to know God deeply, believing it would shape my mothering. A Foundation in the Word The first stanza of the hymn declares, “How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent Word.” Through lectures, small groups, papers, and exams at Westminster, God laid a foundation rooted in His Word—shaping how I see people and view joy and sorrow through the lens of the gospel. I learned to see Christ in all of Scripture, in both the Old and New Testament. For example, we all face pain and suffering. I turn to Psalm 77 and remember the Israelites’ wilderness journey and their longing for the promised land. In that struggle I see God providing daily bread (Ex. 16), faithfully sustaining them. In John 10, I see Jesus healing and providing for His people, where He ultimately laid down His life for His sheep. We are still in the in-between period, waiting for the promised land, but He will provide. He is faithful. He is enough. As my kids face trials and difficulties, I am so thankful that this is the framework I meet them with—one of eternal hope in God’s faithfulness....

What Seminary Meant to Me as a MomChristina Fox2026-02-10T21:03:24+00:00

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