Melva Henderson can’t remember a time when she didn’t love Jesus. When you ask her about the start of that love, her big beautiful brown eyes begin to sparkle. She quickly takes you back to her growing up years sitting at her grandmother, Sadie Monroe’s feet, gleaning every bit of wisdom she could get to face whatever she was going through at the time. When talking about her spiritual journey, she talks admiringly about the woman responsible for it all—her grandmother, “Ma’ma” as Melva affectionately called her.
You can feel the deep love and connection the two of them had, as Melva’s face lights up just remembering her, and it quickly becomes evident that Melva’s grandmother has been the single most significant person in her life.
Over 55 years ago, Melva and her twin brother were born into less than ideal circumstances. It was her grandmother who made a decision that forever changed the course of their lives—and was ultimately used to introduce Melva to a faith that has only deepened through the years—and is now making a difference in people’s lives all over the world, making them a mighty force for the kingdom.
“At birth, my mom left my twin brother and me at the hospital because as a teen mother she couldn’t take care of us. She was planning to put us up for adoption. The Lord spoke clearly to my grandmother that she was to take us home to raise us as her own children.” Melva’s grandmother was due to have her own baby 21 days later, but she knew without a doubt that God wanted her to raise Melva, her brother, Marvin, and Melva’s “aunt” Pat as triplets. So that’s what she did.
Melva never imagined she’d one day have an international teaching ministry. But when her hunger for God’s Word exploded, she came to understand that the “inner knowing” she had from her earliest recollections—that she was “not to live her life unto herself”—meant that God had a unique calling on her life. And sitting at her grandmother’s feet was the catalyst for learning about living a life of faith and eventually committing her life to love and train others to do the same as a dynamic speaker and author.
Today, Melva is on a mission to see people’s lives transformed by the Word of God and discipleship. Her passion is contagious. She’s drawing people into a deeper relationship with God as President and Founder of World Bible Training Institute in Milwaukee, Wis., where Christian leaders from all over the world are trained and discipled for ministry. Additionally, she co-pastors at their church World Outreach Center with her husband Pastor Ervin “Skip” who she’s been married to for 25 years.
In 2007, she started The Little Feet of Mexico and The Milwaukee Give, both humanitarian efforts aimed at providing food and clothing to the poor in the city. Melva is also host of Discipling the Nations radio and television broadcasts. In addition, she is the mother of five adult children and grandmother of four.
Just Between Us (JBU) had the privilege of sitting down with Melva to talk about the power of one woman’s influence and her passion to live a life in love with Jesus and people.
Melva Henderson
JBU:
Tell us about your grandmother.
Melva: She has been the most influential person in my life. I grew up all my life wishing I had my mom, wishing I had my dad—but always—I had my grandmother. She was my mentor. She only finished the sixth grade, but she walked deeply with God and was a pillar in her church. She poured her life into mine. Going into her home, you didn’t really have a choice. It was Jesus or nothing at all. So I grew up in church and where God was always honored. I joke if I was born on a Saturday; I was in church on Sunday!
By age 12, there was a hunger in my heart to know more about God, to make my faith my own. By this time, my birth mother had come to Christ and come home, so she took my brother and me to a citywide Crusade for Christ. I had never heard of anything like that before. When the altar call was made, I walked down to make Jesus the Lord of my life.
JBU:
How did God change you after that?
Melva: Although I have made some mistakes in my life, from that day forward I never looked back. I can’t remember a day when I wasn’t conscious of my relationship with God after that. Even when I was in sin in college. I was the girl who would be at the bar making everybody else miserable because I was crying, “God’s not pleased.” I knew that I was some place that God didn’t want me to be. How was I going to make a difference in a bar? At 21, my relationship with the Lord went deeper when I surrendered completely to Him and His plan for my life.
JBU:
What are some things your grandmother taught you that have shaped you today?
Melva: How to love people. “Linny, (that’s what she called me), you’ve got to love people,” she would say. “I don’t care what they do or say about you, just love them.”
And it was through her example that I learned the power of prayer. I would walk by her bedroom every night and there she would be on her knees. She was an amazing woman who always made God a priority.
JBU:
How can mothers and grandmothers influence their children in the faith?
Melva: Through a consistency in their own walk with God. We often say, “Faith is better caught than taught.” If what we have in our personal relationship with the Father doesn’t translate to something our children can tangibly see and experience, then they won’t buy into it. Nothing is more powerful than having my children watch me walk through difficult times knowing only God could have brought me through. And although many children take paths opposite of their upbringing, when moms and grandmothers are consistently walking the walk and talking the talk, it leaves a mark on them that not even the world can erase.
JBU:
How can women develop mentoring relationships like you had with your grandmother?
Melva: Everyone needs someone speaking into their life to guide them along the way. This next generation has Google and, unfortunately, they think Google replaces the wisdom of the age. It doesn’t. Throughout my life, I sat at my grandmother’s feet, listening to her tell me the same stories over and over again.
When I was 18 she said, “You may catch me in knowledge, but you will never catch me in wisdom, because I’ve lived longer and I’ve experienced more. I’ve been where you are trying to go.” Every woman needs someone to speak into their life who’s been where they’re trying to go.
I love the relationship between Oprah and her best friend Gayle. When Oprah made her first couple of million dollars, she turned around and gave Gayle one million dollars because she wanted her to feel what it felt like to be a millionaire. When you walk closely with someone, they download their treasures into your life, so I want to listen to godly women like my grandmother—women who know God and walk with Him deeply. Through them God can teach us some things about life.
JBU:
How have you known that your life was always about making a difference?
Melva: I’ve just always had this inner knowing that I wasn’t to live my life for myself. That I was supposed to give it away, so I positioned myself for that. My prayer was, “I want what You want for me. I want to go where you want me to go. I’ll do what you want me to do.” I’ve been praying that all my Christian life.
JBU:
Have there ever been moments where you’ve thought, “Lord, I’m just not qualified; I can’t do these things you’ve called me to do?”
Melva: It’s something I fight almost every day. Then I remember what 2 Peter 1:3 says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness.” I use this verse to remind myself that to every vocation there’s an equal allocation of grace. When I’ve gotten into that place, I often say to God, “I didn’t give this to myself. You gave this to me. I don’t know why, but you gave this to me—whether it’s a desire to reach a people, reach a nation, reach a city, write a book, or preach a sermon—You gave this to me. Now give me the wisdom to walk this out for Your glory.”
JBU:
What do you do when fear holds you back?
Melva: Do it afraid with your knees knocking and your heart pounding. Step into it because as we step into where God leads us the doors open. And fear only has the power to stop us if we yield to it. I’ve gotten to a place where I recognize fear because it tries to creep into my life in some form or fashion almost every day.
JBU:
How do you combat it?
Melva: I lean on God, I look to the Word, and I keep stepping. Because it’s a walk. To lead a fearless life means you have to live dependent on the Holy Spirit. Totally dependent on Him. Lord, you told me to come, like you told Peter, so I’ll step out on that one word. He’s always there. And so each step past fear gives me the strength to step past greater fears.
JBU:
How did you develop such a love for God’s Word?
Melva: When I was a student in Bible School in 1991, I discovered John 15:7 where Jesus said, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you” (ESV). In the verses before that, Jesus said, “I am the true Vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.” Here, He’s talking about abiding in Him. And I saw that Jesus and the Word were synonymous. I realized that if you want to flourish, you’ve got to commit yourself to God’s Word. Jesus went on to say in John 14:23 that when you come to me, my Father and I will come and we will sup with you. I was thinking, “How does that happen?” It has to happen through the Word. I wanted to sup with the Father and I wanted to sup with the Son, so I made a commitment to the Word. It’s the Word of God that will give us the answers for our lives.
JBU:
How can we keep a life-long rhythm in the Word?
Melva: That nasty word discipline. The world, technology, our phones, our IPad—they’re all screaming for our time and attention, so you have to make up your mind that God’s Word will be a priority. My grandmother would always say, “‘You have to have a made up mind’ that God is going to be first in your life.” So every day I look to God. I discipline myself even when I don’t feel like it. Paul puts it so well in 1 Cor. 9:27, “I beat down my body;” another version says, “I buffet my body.” In other words, I make my body do what it’s supposed to be doing. What I know it should be doing. It’s a discipline.
Thirty years ago, I started getting up very early in the morning to pray. You are talking about discipline. Every morning I wake up and prepare myself to talk to God. I start by looking at my Bible and praying.
JBU:
What does your Bible reading look like?
Melva: I always start with one of the Proverbs—there are 31. Then I read the prayers of Paul every morning (Ephesians 1:14-23; Ephesians 3:17-21; Colossians 1:9; and Philippians 1:9). I start with Ephesians where Paul is saying, “I want God to give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation, and the knowledge of Him. I want God to open the eyes of your understanding so that you’ll know the hope of His calling.” Then in Ephesians 3, he says, “You need to understand what is the breath, length, width, height of God’s love.” If I’m conscious of the fact that God’s love is in me, no matter what goes on in my life, I have the capacity to love people in spite of.
Phillipians tells me that I have a supply of the Spirit, so that I can do the work of God. If there’s something going on in my life, some trouble in my heart, then I look up verses of Scripture to help me with that. Once I get my heart full of the Word, I start praying, so I’m praying the answer.
JBU:
Is there a time where you experienced God’s Word in an especially powerful way?
Melva: The passing of my grandmother two years ago. (She was 90.) I don’t know if there’s anything that’s affected my life like her death. It took me two years just to get to the place where I could imagine living my life without her. And because I wasn’t raised with my father or my mother, my grandmother was my family. For a while, I pulled away from everything and started just existing. My decline was fast—filled with confusion, fear, and turmoil. But I really believe that all of the years of storing the Word of God in my heart carried me through.
One day in my grief, the Lord said to me as clear as day that He would be my Father. Psalm 68:5 says, “He is a father to the fatherless.” It was that word from the Lord that pulled me out of the pit. To know that God would be my Father and I wouldn’t be alone changed my life. I also realized that Jesus carried my grief—and I was grieving. He encouraged me in Matthew 5:4, “Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.” And so I gave myself permission to grieve which helped me so much and deciding to trust God to be my Father changed everything.
JBU:
What do you say to women going through a wilderness experience like yours?
Melva: Never lose sight of the Fatherhood of God. There is no Father like Him. That truth is what made me whole.
JBU:
How does fasting deepen your spiritual hunger for God?
Melva: Every Tuesday is my Sabbath, my day of rest where I unplug from the world and make my family my priority. I don’t go on Facebook, I don’t go on Social Media, and I don’t answer emails or text messages. I disconnect because sometimes things are coming at me so fast I can’t even have a complete thought. I want to be able to make wise decisions. I want to be able to execute my life in a mature and strategic way, so fasting from technology as a spiritual discipline is definitely a must.
God rested and took one day and ceased from labor. We’re not greater than God. We need a day where we’re unplugging, unwinding, and fasting from technology and food. It’s a wonderful way to maintain health and to rest your mind. It’s a time to tell your flesh to be quiet so you can listen exclusively to God today. It takes discipline to do that and intentionally shut down. There’s that word again. Whether it’s fasting from technology, food, or people—whatever you’re pulling yourself away from—you pull away to draw near to. I’m doing it for the purpose of going to God so that I can keep my life before Him and allow the rest of the world to hush. I’m pulling peace to my soul and everything I need to be a whole person.
JBU:
How can women use their gifts to make a difference in the world?
Melva: First, verse yourself in Scripture. Then keep your gifting before God and allow Him to continually train you and develop you to minister to people. Be intentional about using your gift and start where you are. First in Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria. and then the uttermost parts of the earth.
For some of you, the Jerusalem may be your children. You start wherever it is that God has called and commissioned you to be. I’m sure the mothers of our Presidents had no idea when they were at home that they would be raising a future President of the United States. But they were. No matter what you find yourself doing, recognize that God has equipped you with the necessary tools to change a nation, and your “nation” can be between your own two feet, like my grandmother’s was. Know that you’ve got the goods to touch people’s lives no matter where you are, no matter your background, ethnicity, or socio-economic background—know that wherever God has placed you, He put you there because you have the “goods” to make a difference.
JBU:
What worries you about women today?
Melva: A lack of intimacy with God. Pull away from the rest of the world and give God your life. Love Him with your life. No compromising. There’s a lot of compromise in the church today. First Peter 1:16, says “Be holy, because I am holy.” We can’t compromise on holiness.
Another concern is division. It seems like everybody’s focus is on me, my, and there’s not enough focus on “we.” We need to think about others before ourselves. That’s what I’ve been praying about. We need love, love, love, love as my grandmother so wisely taught me. We are to walk in the love of God. It’s not about you; it’s about the people you’ve been called to.
JBU:
What encouragement do you want to leave us?
Melva: Believe in yourself. Believe that God’s called you. Believe that His Spirit resides in you. Believe that you’ve been forgiven. Believe that you can be healed and whole. Believe that He can be trusted. Believe that He’s got your life in His hands, and that if you yield to Him, He will really take care of you. God is safe. It doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen, because we live in a fallen, broken world with fallen, broken people. But God is good and He will take care of you no matter what.
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