Everyday Matters Bible for Women

e ve r yd a y m a t t e rs

BIBLE for women

practical encouragement to make every day matter

Transforming everyday matters into a life that matters every day

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here was once a woman who spent hours at a time ironing her family’s clothes. For years she felt like her time was being eaten up by this chore, but one day she had a simple realization that changed her life. She began to use her ironing as a time of prayer and fellowship with God. As she ironed her husband’s shirts, she prayed for him. Ironing her daughter’s dresses became a time to bathe her child in prayer. Every item on the ironing board became an opportunity for fellowship with God. The chore that had once been so tedious became a precious part of her routine.

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oday’s Christian woman is so busy handling the challenges of day-to-day life that spending time in the Word can easily become yet another “should” among a long list of daily “musts.” But our everyday activities and roles can be transformed into moments of growth and nourishment.

Created in partnership with Today's Christian Woman, Christianity Today’s women’s magazine, the Everyday Matters Bible for Women is designed to help women develop spiritual practices that will make their lives richer, not harder. It offers practical encouragement and tools to renew and reinvigorate.

Over 300 features are organized in four ways: Everyday Matters

Everyday Profiles

Two-page articles introduce major themes and focus on essential aspects of understanding and practicing a discipline.

Profiles of twenty-five biblical women highlight the various disciplines.

These wives, mothers, warriors, and businesswomen lived and experienced many of the same feelings, decisions, and challenges that we do today.

Based on spiritual disciplines, this Bible combines the contemporary language of the New Living Translation with content from today’s foremost Christian thinkers.

Everyday Reflections

Everyday Q & As

Selections illustrate ways to personalize and apply God’s Word to your own situation.

Short articles delve into a difficult aspect of spiritual practice and offer practical help for incorporating a discipline into your daily life.

Bible also includes: • How to Use this Bible in a Small Group Study • I ndex of Spiritual Practices • Resources for Further Reading

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How this Bible works…

ithin this Bible are twenty-four spiritual practices, each one represented by a distinctive icon. These icons appear next to special features or Scripture passages that they relate to. Each article indicates where the next icon for that spiritual discipline appears in Scripture, allowing readers to track them throughout the Bible.

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ou can study the disciplines at any pace, from one reading selection per day (again, we’ve selected more than three hundred!) to a more quickly paced discipline per day. This is your Bible; use it as you see fit.

Some suggestions for other ways to use this Bible: • Read one of the pieces within a particular spiritual practice that you want to explore. Read the cited Scripture passage. In a quiet moment at day’s end, consider how that passage affected you and your day’s activities and priorities. Repeat this pattern daily, reading through the supplementary pieces of one spiritual practice, such as prayer, fasting, or justice, and then another.

• Choose one book (or more, if very short) of the Bible to read through in a week. Start with the introductory page, including the book’s outline, to understand the overall themes and cultural context. Then divide the chapters to cover the entire week. How many, and which, spiritual practices are interwoven in the passages? Highlight the passages, biblical or supplementary, that speak to you. At the end of the week, go back through the book and read only the highlighted verses and paragraphs. Make those your prayer that God will use them to grow you spiritually.

• Choose a book of the Bible and do not read any of the supplementary material. As you read that book, note any evident spiritual practices (review the list of twenty-four). Consider their reasons and roles: For what reasons were they practiced by the biblical characters? And what purpose did they effect? What did the characters discover about themselves and God? Next go back and read the supplementary pieces placed alongside the biblical text. Which highlighted disciplines did you identify the first time through the book? Reflect on how you can practice those disciplines more fervently.

• Spend a longer amount of time (a month or a year) and work through the Bible or a particular spiritual practice with another person or a small group.

For more ideas on studying together as a group, the Bible includes a helpful section called, “How to Use This Bible in a Small Group Study.”

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iving out the disciplines can be difficult (thus the name!), but don’t grow discouraged. Keep focused and coming back to the Bible and its message, and God will bless, stretch, and grow you as he desires.

Over 140 contributors, including: Katie Brazelton

Richard Mouw

Jill Briscoe

Wendy Murray

Mark Buchanan

David Neff

Cindy Crosby

Shauna Niequist

Marva Dawn

John Ortberg

Margaret Feinberg

Nancy Ortberg

Richard J. Foster

Ben Patterson

Mark Galli

Eugene Peterson

Ruth Bell Graham

Luci Shaw

Jennifer Grant

Marshall Shelley

Nancy Guthrie

Priscilla Shirer

Jack Hayford

Lewis B. Smedes

Cynthia Heald

Joni Eareckson Tada

Liz Curtis Higgs

Becky Tirabassi

Bill Hybels

Kelli B. Trujillo

Timothy Keller

Miroslav Volf

Anita Lustrea

Ann Voskamp

Gordon MacDonald

Sheila Walsh

Linda Manes

Kay Warren

Frederica Mathewes-Green

Bryan Wilkerson

Elisa Morgan

Vinita Hampton Wright

Sally Morgenthaler

Philip Yancey

New Living Translation 1632 pages • 61/4 x 91/8 inches Jacketed Hardcover • 978-1-59856-705-2 • Retail $44.95 Flexisoft Leather • Rose Floral & Khaki • 978-1-61970-012-3 • Retail $79.95