Jesus Turned Toward Her

What if the label you've worn the longest isn't the one God uses to name you? What if the shame you've guarded like a secret is the very thing Jesus wants to turn toward — and rewrite?

In this episode, Andrea sits down with Teresa Whiting in Chicago to talk about her Bible study *Graced* and the six women in Scripture — Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba, the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, and the sinful woman at Simon's house — whose stories of brokenness became stories of rescue. Teresa shares her own journey out of hiding, and how studying these women loosened shame's grip on her heart.

You'll hear why identity is God's word to speak, why grace and truth always travel together, and how Jesus still turns toward the woman at His feet. You are not alone — and there's a cohort starting January 13 to walk this out with other women.

What is The Ministry Wives and Women Podcast with Andrea Griffith?

Ministry Wives & Women is a podcast for ministry wives and women seeking encouragement, spiritual depth, and honest conversation for the journey of faith. everyday life, and the challenges of church leadership. Hosted by Andrea Griffith, each episode offers thoughtful wisdom, real stories, and gospel-centered hope to help women live with greater resilience, authenticity, and grace in every season.

[00:00] [Teresa Whiting] No matter what labels we've worn, what that have been placed on us by ourselves or others, like, God is like, no, no, I have a new identity for you. When you are in Christ, you are a woman of grace, you are a daughter, you are mine. And there's so many beautiful things that we can claim as our identities.

[00:17] [Andrea Griffith ] Welcome to the Ministry Wives& Women podcast. This is a place where we openly address the challenging realities of ministry and point one another to Jesus and the gospel. Whether you're thriving, barely holding on, or somewhere in between, You are not alone. I'm Andrea Griffith, and each episode brings honest conversations, biblical encouragement, and stories from women who understand this calling. This podcast is part of The Church Hub, where we're committed to strengthening ministry leaders and the families who walk with them. We're so glad you're here.

[00:52] [Andrea Griffith] Today, I have my great friend Teresa Whiting with me, and Teresa and I are here at The Church Hub Conference in Chicago. So how's it been for you?

[01:06] [Teresa Whiting] It has been amazing. I have gotten to meet a lot of the team with the Church Hub, and I just think it's an amazing group of people. So I've enjoyed it a lot.

[01:14] [Andrea Griffith] Yeah, yeah. And I've loved having you here. So Theresa and I were able to do a couple breakouts together, which I loved getting to share the time with you and hearing your view and your points and all the things. But I'd love to talk a little more about you and what you do. So, tell us a little bit about yourself.

[01:36] [Teresa Whiting] Well, I am a mom of 5 children. I have 5 adult kids and 3 grandsons. We live in St. Pete, Florida. So, my husband and I are now pretty recent empty nesters, and he's the pastor at Fifth Avenue Baptist Church in St. Petersburg. And so, we're kind of learning a new rhythm to life with our kids moving on, and it's been really Transitioning into empty nest is hard, but I feel like it's given me an opportunity to step into the calling that I have felt for so many years, but really kind of put on hold while my kids were growing. And it's been really sweet to get to do some writing and speaking and coaching with women. So that's been something I've absolutely loved.

[02:23] [Andrea Griffith] Yeah. And I have benefited from that writing and from Theresa not only writes, she's also a podcaster, a pastor's wife, coach of women. And her book that she wrote that was such a blessing to me is actually right here, and it's called Graced. Could you tell us a little bit about Graced?

[02:43] [Teresa Whiting] What is it? So it is an in-depth Bible study, and it's based on the lives of 6 women in scripture that God rescued, redeemed, and restored from sexual brokenness. So it's Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba, the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, and the sinful woman at Simon's house. And for each woman, we pull out themes from her story. And my passion is to make the Bible come alive for women.

[03:10] [Andrea Griffith] Yeah.

[03:10] [Teresa Whiting] I want women to go back and be like, wow, I never saw that, and I wanna read the scripture, I wanna dig in deep. And so the— really, The study is to get women in the Word for themselves and to get them having those aha moments, to get them reading scripture and just digging in and seeing God with fresh eyes. That's kind of the passion behind the study.

[03:34] [Andrea Griffith] Well, it definitely was that for me. Each week, is it 6 weeks?

[03:41] [Teresa Whiting] It's 6, yeah, 6 women. And so I always encourage people to to take 2 weeks because it's so meaty.

[03:48] [Andrea Griffith] I remember that.

[03:49] [Teresa Whiting] There's also an introduction, and I might say this too, at the end of every chapter, there is a link, a QR code with a link to 3 podcast episodes and a video teaching. So like, if you wanted to do it with a group of women, you could, you could do it. And there's a video teaching at the end of every week. Yeah.

[04:06] [Andrea Griffith] Yeah. Well, I loved it. I was telling Teresa before we got on this podcast today that my favorite part though is actually the Psalms. She puts a Psalm in each chapter and just asks you the question, how would this woman that we studied this week relate to this Psalm? And I had never seen the things that I saw in there before, and I saw how it related to the women, but I also saw how it related to me, and it kind of— it came alive for me. It totally did. So in writing this, Tell us a little bit about your story. Like, how did God lead you to write a book on healing from sexual brokenness?

[04:48] [Teresa Whiting] Yeah, so I like to say I never wanted to be the sexual brokenness lady. That was kind of the thing. I was like, yeah, let's keep my story out of the teaching. But God was so gracious to me in that what I have found for myself, for my own healing journey, because I have a past of sexual abuse in my childhood and then promiscuity and just lots of foolish choices. And God just reached down when I was pretty young and rescued me out of that. But even though that happened in my life, for years, Andrea, I carried shame.

[05:26] [Andrea Griffith] Yeah.

[05:27] [Teresa Whiting] And I carried that. I guarded that like a secret. Like, nobody can know this part about my story. And I just kind of felt like no one can know this. Until I started studying scripture and getting to know the family line of Jesus. And I was like, oh my goodness, woman after woman after woman has the same story.

[05:48] [Andrea Griffith] Yeah.

[05:48] [Teresa Whiting] Not exactly the same as mine, but so many women in scripture have a story of sexual brokenness or other types of brokenness, of all kinds of loss, of infertility, of grief, you know, So many different forms of brokenness.

[06:04] [Andrea Griffith] Yeah.

[06:04] [Teresa Whiting] And it was really through their stories that I feel like God began to heal my heart.

[06:09] [Andrea Griffith ] Yeah.

[06:09] [Teresa Whiting] And eventually, when it was time for me to write a study, I really and truly was just gonna write a pretty generic study on the women in the line of Jesus. And I was doing what they call comps. You know, you have to compare your book to all the other books that are written out there. And there were so many studies on women in the line of Jesus. And God kept repeating this little phrase to me, no one else can tell your story. And I felt like he was saying, make this study specific for those women, because in, in our churches and in our communities, it's 1 in 3. It's 1 in 3 that's admitting it. It's probably 1 in 2 or 1 in 1.5.

[06:51] [Andrea Griffith] You are very brave to write this book, and you are very brave just the way you keep sharing your story so vulnerably, and so thank you for doing that. So we see courage and helper as the first theme.

[07:03] [Teresa Whiting] What's the second theme? Yes, so the second one is Rahab. And, you know, just to give a little recap of Rahab's story, she is known by anyone who has studied the Bible for any length of time as Rahab the prostitute. And even in the New Testament, when you come to the New Testament, Hebrews 11, She's still called Rahab the prostitute. And I love that God does not record the Facebook version of her story. I mean, he gives the whole story. He talks about the label that she wears throughout her entire life, throughout history. She wears the label of prostitute. And yet, when you read in Hebrews 11, when you read in James 4, she is identified as a woman of faith.

[07:46] [Andrea Griffith] Yes.

[07:46] [Teresa Whiting] And so we talk about what are the labels that we wear, that other people have put on us, that we put on ourselves, these labels of not good enough, the labels of, you know, inferior and too small and not this and not that, all the things that we put on ourselves. And I think Rahab is a model of the fact that the labels that we wear don't define us, that God proclaims our identity.

[08:10] [Andrea Griffith] Yeah.

[08:10] [Teresa Whiting] And He looks at this Rahab the prostitute, and he calls her a woman of faith.

[08:15] [Andrea Griffith ] Yeah.

[08:16] [Teresa Whiting] And what a beautiful thing to know that no matter what labels we've worn, what have been placed on us by ourselves or others, like, God is like, no, no, I have a new identity for you. When you are in Christ, you are a woman of grace, you are a daughter, you are mine. And there's so many beautiful things that we can claim as our identity. So that's kind of the second theme that we go through.

[08:38] [Andrea Griffith] I love that. But you know, it's easy to just keep wearing those labels. It's really hard to take the labels off and say, no, what does God say? And I'm gonna move from what I've always believed to believing what God says. Like, there's a whole nother level of faith, you know? And I know that you're gonna do a cohort based on this book. And I'm sure as you're doing that cohort, that's one of the things that the Church Hub is offering to pastors' wives and to women is a cohort.

[09:08] [Andrea Griffith ] Yes.

[09:08] [Andrea Griffith] And Teresa's actually gonna do a cohort Based on this book. And I found that as I was going through this and doing the identity, the book gave me time to remove some old labels and time to walk in the new, the new labels of identity. So tell us, um, the other things kind of quickly here.

[09:27] [Teresa Whiting] Okay, so we have Bathsheba and her story. We really pull out the theme of forgiveness and lament. You know, the things that she walked through, the wounds that she had, And the forgiveness she must have needed to extend from all the things that were done to her. Then we talked about the woman at the well and the shame that she carried and how to live free from shame, how to walk in freedom from shame. And we kind of go through a process, and it's not an easy 6 steps to freedom from shame, but it— but there is a process that we see in her life that I've seen in my life that we see.

[10:02] [Andrea Griffith] Yeah.

[10:03] [Teresa Whiting] Is a really clear way for us to remove the shame and to walk in freedom and to walk in grace.

[10:08] [Andrea Griffith] Shame's so sticky. I feel like shame is so sticky. We got it in the garden, and so we're still fighting it today.

[10:16] [Teresa Whiting] Yes.

[10:16] [Andrea Griffith] Yeah, yeah.

[10:17] [Teresa Whiting] Yes.

[10:17] [Andrea Griffith] So, okay, and then the last 2?

[10:19] [Teresa Whiting] Even as believers, we still hold on to that sometimes. We still hold on to that shame, and we, we have such a hard time setting it aside.

[10:26] [Andrea Griffith] Well, we've gotten the ruts in our brain now. Because we've lived in shame so long, those neurons are just jumping the synapses automatically before we even think about it.

[10:35] [Teresa Whiting] Yes.

[10:36] [Andrea Griffith] And so it's like, I have to— I name the shame, I have to notice it, I have to name it, and now I've got to replace it with something.

[10:42] [Teresa Whiting] Yes.

[10:43] [Andrea Griffith] And your book and doing the cohort actually gives you time to walk in that and to walk beside other women who are also fighting to put off shame and wear the righteousness of Christ that we've been given in Christ from the foundation of the world.

[10:59] [Teresa Whiting] Yes. It's just very hard to walk in it. What I love about the cohort is you have other women that are speaking into your life and who you're speaking into. So you've got not just you and Jesus, which is awesome, but now you have a community, a safe place where women can identify with you and say, oh, you feel that too?

[11:20] [Andrea Griffith] Yes.

[11:20] [Teresa Whiting] Me too. Like, we didn't realize how many, how common this is.

[11:25] [Andrea Griffith] We all carry around our own form of shame and we think we're the only ones we have to hide.

[11:30] [Teresa Whiting] And yet, There's all of us. Everybody around us is carrying it in some form or another. And so, what I love about the cohort is that sense of community, of sisterhood, not just with one another, but then there's this sisterhood of us with these women in Scripture. We realize, wait, this has been going on since Genesis 1, Genesis 3, basically. We have this whole lineage of women.

[11:56] [Andrea Griffith] Yeah.

[11:57] [Teresa Whiting] And it just becomes to— it comes to lose its grip a little bit, that stickiness, when we realize we're not alone and we have people to walk with us and walk beside us. It really makes such a difference.

[12:10] [Andrea Griffith] There's 2 more.

[12:10] [Teresa Whiting] Yes, 2 more. The woman caught in adultery. And so in her story, we kind of go over just the grace and truth that Jesus is, because I love how he says to her, You know, neither do I condemn you.

[12:25] [Andrea Griffith] Grace.

[12:26] [Teresa Whiting] Go and sin no more. Truth. So there's this combination of Jesus coming into our lives with so much grace, just pouring grace on us, and then saying, now walk in the truth. And now change, turn, go a different direction.

[12:42] [Andrea Griffith] You had asked me if I remembered what my favorite week was. And when you just said that, that was my favorite week. Because that's such a hard passage to deal with, because you know you're writing and speaking to women who are just living in their shame from their own personal bad choices. And yet, you know the truth that God calls us to, to righteousness, to walk differently, to live differently.

[13:08] [Teresa Whiting] It's a rescue.

[13:09] [Andrea Griffith] He's rescuing us from ourselves. And that was my favorite week.

[13:13] [Teresa Whiting] Mm.

[13:14] [Andrea Griffith] I felt like you threaded the needle beautifully. And I felt like it brought healing to my own life for my own wrong choices, bad choices, and Jesus just pouring out, I paid for that sin in full on the cross.

[13:30] [Teresa Whiting] Mm-hmm.

[13:30] [Andrea Griffith] It's why I had to come. I had to come. I lived out your perfection for you, and I died on the cross to pay for every sin that you've committed. You're free now. Now there's grace. Now you can go and live a different life. And that was my favorite week. I didn't remember until you just said it.

[13:50] [Teresa Whiting] But yeah.

[13:50] [Andrea Griffith] And tell us about the very last thing, the very last week.

[13:53] [Teresa Whiting] The very last woman is the sinful woman at Simon's house. And she's the woman who comes in and breaks the alabaster jar and anoints Jesus. And she's in this room with all these uppity men who are, you know, giving her the eye and Criticizing her inwardly, and they're thinking all their condemning thoughts about her. And what I love about that story is it says Jesus turned toward her.

[14:19] [Andrea Griffith] Yes.

[14:20] [Teresa Whiting] The posture of the woman on her face, like just at Jesus' feet in worship, and then the posture of the men of condemnation, and the posture of Jesus of turning toward and Seeing her, and He says to Simon, do you see this woman? I get, like, I get chills just thinking about her story. But we talk about worship, like, what is the posture of our hearts and the posture of our bodies when we worship? And I felt like that was such a sweet way to end the study, because you've been soaking in grace the whole time.

[14:53] [Andrea Griffith ] Yeah.

[14:53] [Teresa Whiting] And then you end on your face, just worshiping Jesus and thanking Him for the grace He's poured out. in our lives. And it's— I loved her story. She was the one I was least familiar with when I started the study, and so I felt like I learned a lot about her story. Yeah.

[15:11] [Andrea Griffith] If I'm remembering right, in the scripture, it says Jesus turned toward the woman while He was speaking to Simon. So Jesus's eyes are all on this woman who's broken at His feet. And that ties in for me another one of my favorite names of God.

[15:32] [Teresa Whiting] He's the God who sees. Yes.

[15:33] [Andrea Griffith] He's the God who sees. He sees us wherever we are. He sees us in our brokenness. He sees us trying and failing. He sees us crying out for help. He sees us worshiping. And He's reading the room of every heart in the room. And He's able to look at me and be speaking to all the hearts in the room. You know, He turns, it says He turns and He looks at the woman while He says to Simon, Do you see this woman?

[16:00] [Teresa Whiting] Yes.

[16:00] [Andrea Griffith] Implication, no. He may have seen the outside, but Jesus was able to see all the way to the heart and call out that beauty and call her to himself. And I loved the entire study, but honestly, for me, it got better and better as I went on. The last 2 weeks, I think, were my favorite. And so one of the things that we are wanting to offer you at the Church Hub is Teresa. It's Theresa's book. It's Theresa's heart. It's Theresa's wisdom, as she wants to offer you this book, this cohort, to come alongside other women. So tell us when your cohort starts. I know it's January. Do you remember the date?

[16:41] [Teresa Whiting] I think it's January 13th, and we're gonna meet for 6 months. So we'll meet the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays from 10 AM to noon. And we're gonna do that for 6 months. I think meeting every other week will provide some consistency, will provide a pretty quick opportunity for the women to get that sisterhood, to feel connected to one another. And so I am so excited to offer this. And it's not just going through the study. I just wanna make that clear. It's beyond just going through a Bible study. It's really creating a community.

[17:16] [Andrea Griffith] Yes.

[17:18] [Teresa Whiting] I have been certified as a trauma-informed life coach, but this is not a therapy session. I want to make that clear. We're not doing therapy, but we are going to look through a trauma-informed lens at this sexual brokenness, at all different types of brokenness, and what does that look like, and how does that come out in our lives and in our bodies, and what are some things we can do for healing? And in addition to God's Word, like just some somatic practices and some community things we can do and kind of going a little bit deeper than we're just going through the Bible study.

[17:52] [Andrea Griffith] You're going for the heart. This morning, I was reading in my devotional, my Paul Tripp devotional that I do every day, Everyday Gospel, and he said in there that true religion is dealing with our heart. It's not these outward things that we do, it's not the outward way that we look, but it's Bringing our brokenness to God, it's dealing with the sin, it's inviting him in to see what's really going on in our heart.

[18:19] [Teresa Whiting] Mm-hmm.

[18:19] [Andrea Griffith] And then listening to his invitation of, where can I repent? What's he inviting me to believe? And how can I take a step forward in love? And that's what you are offering in this cohort is, let's get our hearts to the feet of Jesus, and then let's soak in that grace, and then let's move forward in the freedom.

[18:38] [Teresa Whiting] That's right.

[18:39] [Andrea Griffith] That Jesus has offered us on the cross. And so thank you for writing this. Thank you for being a woman that I can invite other women to, to be involved in this cohort with you. So again, the cohort begins on January 13th. It's on Tuesday mornings, and it's going to meet twice a month for 6 months. And you can find all of that information at thechurchhub.com. Look for Women's cohorts, look for women's ministry, and you'll see Teresa Whiting in there.

[19:08] [Andrea Griffith ] Thanks for joining us today. If you'd like to learn more about The Church Hub and how we're strengthening ministry leaders and the families who walk with them, you can visit thechurchhub.org. Until we meet again, I'll be praying that you experience the nearness of Jesus.