Our Called-Out Heroines: Bible Edition - Part 1
Hello Called-Out Woman!
Scripture is full of women who did not have the luxury of easy seasons, yet they carried what God placed in their hands with excellence, courage, and faith. Their stories are not just history. They are a mirror.
This series runs in the order Scripture unfolds it, from Genesis to the resurrection, across three parts. Part One takes you from creation through the Exodus.
Foundational
Eve
Genesis 1–3
“And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.” Genesis 2:22
Eve was the first woman, formed directly by God's own hand, given as a suitable helper and companion to Adam, and named the mother of all living. She was also the first to be deceived, and her failure in the garden brought consequence into the world. But look closely at what God said immediately after the fall, before any punishment was pronounced: He promised that the seed of the woman would one day bruise the serpent's head (Genesis 3:15). That is the first gospel promise in all of Scripture, spoken directly over a woman.
For You
Eve's story tells you that your failures do not disqualify you from God's redemptive plan. The very place where sin entered is the same place God spoke deliverance. If you carry regret over a fall or a failure, remember that God's response to Eve was not abandonment, it was a promise. Eve also carried multiple roles the moment she was formed, wife, helper, and soon mother of all living. If you feel the weight of holding several titles at once, businesswoman, wife, mother, minister, know that carrying many roles was never a design flaw. It was there from the very beginning.
Declare This Over Yourself
Father, I receive Your promise over my failures. Where I have fallen, You have already spoken deliverance. I carry every role You have given me, not as a burden, but as the very design You wrote into me from the beginning. I am not disqualified. I am redeemed and I am purposed.
Faithful
Sarah
Genesis 11–25
“Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed… because she judged him faithful who had promised.” Hebrews 11:11
Sarah waited twenty-five years between God's promise and its fulfilment. She laughed at the promise when it seemed impossible, she made her own detour through Hagar when she tried to help God along, and yet Scripture still credits her faith, not her perfection, as the reason the promise came to pass.
For You
Sarah's story tells you that faith does not require flawless patience. It requires staying in covenant with God even after your own missteps, and trusting that delay is not denial. Think of the woman today running her household, her business, and her ministry assignment all at once, still waiting on a promise God spoke years ago. Sarah shows her that the waiting season is not wasted time. It is still covenant, even while every other plate keeps spinning.
Declare This Over Yourself
Father, I trust You even in the waiting. My missteps have not cancelled Your covenant with me. I release the pressure to be perfectly patient, and I choose instead to remain faithful while I wait. What You have promised me is still coming, and I will not laugh it away in doubt when it finally arrives.
Seen
Hagar
Genesis 16 & 21
“Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?” Genesis 16:13
Hagar was Sarah's Egyptian servant, used and then cast out twice into the wilderness, first while pregnant and fleeing Sarah's harsh treatment, then later with her son Ishmael after Isaac's birth. In both moments of abandonment, God met her personally in the desert. She became the only person in Scripture to give God a name, El Roi, “the God who sees,” and He provided water and a promise for her son's future both times.
For You
Hagar's story matters if you have ever felt unseen, overlooked, or cast aside by people who should have protected you. God met her specifically in the place she felt most invisible, and He named Himself after that meeting. He sees you in the wilderness moments too. The woman today juggling a business, a family, and a ministry can feel most invisible in the very seasons she is pouring out the most, tending to everyone else's needs while her own go unspoken. Hagar reminds her that God sees the exhausted, overextended woman just as clearly as He sees the celebrated one.
Declare This Over Yourself
Father, You are El Roi, the God who sees me. In my most overlooked, overextended moments, You have never once looked away. I am not invisible to You, even when I feel invisible to everyone else. I receive Your provision in this wilderness season, and I trust Your promise over what I am carrying.
Decisive
Rebekah
Genesis 24
“And she said, I will go.” Genesis 24:58
When Abraham's servant arrived seeking a wife for Isaac, Rebekah did not just meet the test of hospitality by watering his camels, she then had to decide, on short notice, whether to leave her entire family and homeland to marry a man she had never met. Her family asked her directly, and her answer was immediate and unwavering: “I will go.” That single decisive sentence changed the trajectory of the covenant line.
For You
Rebekah shows you that some of the most significant moves of faith will not come with long deliberation. There will be moments where clarity arrives quickly, and the call is simply to say yes without delay. The modern woman moving between a board meeting, a school run, and a ministry call rarely has the luxury of long deliberation either. Rebekah shows her that a quick, Spirit-led yes, given in the middle of a packed day, can still carry the full weight of a life-altering decision.
Declare This Over Yourself
Father, give me a discerning heart that recognises Your voice quickly. When clarity comes, let me not delay it with fear or overthinking. I say yes to what You are calling me toward, even in the middle of a packed and demanding day. My obedience does not need perfect conditions to carry eternal weight.
Courageous
Shiphrah and Puah
Exodus 1:15–22
“But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them.” Exodus 1:17
These two Hebrew midwives were ordered directly by Pharaoh to kill every Hebrew boy at birth. They refused, and when questioned, they gave a clever, faith-filled answer that protected them and the babies they delivered. Scripture says God dealt well with them and “made them houses” because of their reverence for Him over the king's decree.
For You
Their courage was not reckless, it was strategic and rooted in the fear of God rather than the fear of man. You may be in a season where obedience to God will put you at odds with authority or expectation. Shiphrah and Puah show you that God honours the woman who chooses reverence Him over the approval of power. This is the same courage required of the woman today running a business, raising a family, and leading in ministry, who is quietly pressured to compromise her convictions to keep the peace or protect her income. Shiphrah and Puah show her that integrity does not have to be loud to be costly, and God still honours it just the same.
Declare This Over Yourself
Father, I choose the fear of You over the fear of man. Where I am pressured to compromise, give me quiet, strategic courage rather than reckless defiance. I trust that You see every act of integrity, even the ones no one else notices, and that You build houses for the women who honour You first.
Sacrificial
Jochebed
Exodus 2:1–10 · Exodus 6:20 · Numbers 26:59 · Hebrews 11:23
“By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king's commandment.” Hebrews 11:23
Jochebed's significance in Bible times cannot be overstated, even though Scripture gives her only a handful of verses. She was a Hebrew woman living under Pharaoh's genocidal decree that every Hebrew baby boy be cast into the Nile at birth. When she gave birth to Moses, she did not surrender him to fear. She hid him for three months, and when hiding him at home was no longer safe, she did something remarkable: she took the very instrument of death that Pharaoh had decreed, the river, and turned it into the vessel of deliverance. She wove a basket of bulrushes, sealed it with pitch, and placed her son on the Nile itself, positioning her daughter Miriam nearby to watch what would happen.
What looked like an act of desperation was actually strategic, Spirit-led faith. Pharaoh's own daughter found the child, was moved with compassion, and, through Miriam's quick thinking, unknowingly hired Jochebed, Moses' own mother, to nurse and raise her son in his earliest years, and to be paid by Pharaoh's household to do it (Exodus 2:7–9). God did not just save Moses. He gave Jochebed back her son, under Pharaoh's own protection and provision, for the very years that would shape his identity most.
This is where her true significance lies. Jochebed likely had Moses for no more than the first few years of his life before he was formally brought into Pharaoh's household to be raised as an Egyptian prince. Yet in that short, hidden window, she planted something in him that Egypt's palaces, gods, and power could never uproot: the knowledge of who he was and whose he was. Hebrews 11:24–26 tells us that “when Moses was come to years, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter,” choosing instead to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. That refusal did not happen by accident in Pharaoh's court. It was seeded in Jochebed's kitchen, in whatever years she was given, in the stories and the faith she poured into him before Egypt ever got the chance to define him.
The son she raised in secret became the man who stood before Pharaoh and said “Let my people go.” He became the one through whom God split the Red Sea, delivered the Ten Commandments, and led over a million people out of four hundred years of bondage. He wrote the first five books of Scripture. He spoke with God “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Exodus 33:11). None of that erases where it started, in the hands of a mother who refused to let fear or an unjust system decide her son's future, and who used the little time she had to root him in identity rather than assimilation.
For You
Their courage was not reckless, it was strategic and rooted in the fear of God rather than the fear of man. You may be in a season where obedience to God will put you at odds with authority or expectation. Shiphrah and Puah show you that God honours the woman who chooses reverence Him over the approval of power. This is the same courage required of the woman today running a business, raising a family, and leading in ministry, who is quietly pressured to compromise her convictions to keep the peace or protect her income. Shiphrah and Puah show her that integrity does not have to be loud to be costly, and God still honours it just the same.
Declare This Over Yourself
Father, I choose the fear of You over the fear of man. Where I am pressured to compromise, give me quiet, strategic courage rather than reckless defiance. I trust that You see every act of integrity, even the ones no one else notices, and that You build houses for the women who honour You first.
Worshipful
Miriam
Exodus 15:20–21
“And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.” Exodus 15:20
Miriam appears first as the quick-thinking sister who watched over baby Moses in the basket and cleverly arranged for their own mother to nurse him. Years later, after the Red Sea closed over Pharaoh's army, Miriam is named a prophetess and leads the women of Israel in worship, song, and dance, celebrating what God had just done. She was present at the beginning of Moses' story and again at its first great triumph.
For You
Miriam shows you that faithfulness in the small, hidden assignments of childhood watchfulness can position you to be a worship leader in the great deliverances that follow. The girl who watched a basket on the Nile became the woman who led a nation in praise. The woman today watching over her children while also building a business and serving in ministry may feel like her assignment is small compared to the platforms others stand on. Miriam shows her that the woman who stays faithful in the background is often the same one God positions to lead the celebration when the breakthrough finally comes.
Declare This Over Yourself
Father, I embrace the assignment I have been given, even the ones hidden by a riverbank where no one else is watching. I trust that my faithfulness in the background is not forgotten. When the breakthrough comes, let me be found ready with a timbrel in my hand, prepared to lead the celebration.
Always Remember:
I love you all — but remember, God absolutely dotes on you. 💖
Part Two continues the story from Jericho through the reign of the kings.
Marian Bonney-Ankrah is a Financial Protection Specialist and the Founder of The Called-Out Woman, a community that empowers women to live set apart, lead with wisdom, and influence every sphere of life through faith, purpose, and excellence.
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