Unknown to the World, Known by God: What the Women of Kenya Taught Me

The sound is something I don't think I will ever forget.

Women singing.

Not quietly. Not cautiously. But with joy, strength, and a freedom that filled the room.

As I stood among the women of Kenya and listened to their voices rise together in praise to Jesus, I was reminded of something I already knew—but needed to see again:

God sees people the world often overlooks.

Before traveling to Kenya, I had prayed about what God wanted me to teach at the women's conference. I kept coming back to women in Scripture whose names we don't even know.

We know Mary. We know Esther. We know Ruth.

But scattered throughout the Bible are women whose names were never recorded—women who may have seemed insignificant to the people around them, yet whose faithfulness mattered greatly in the Kingdom of God.

So our conference became "Unknown Women of the Bible."

And as I prepared to teach their stories, I thought I was going to Kenya to encourage women with the truth that God sees them.

Instead, God used the women of Kenya to remind me of that truth too.

The Little Maid: Faithful Where God Placed Her

One of the women we studied wasn't even a woman yet.

In 2 Kings 5, we meet a young Israelite girl who had been taken captive and carried away from her home. Scripture doesn't tell us her name. We don't know anything about her family or what happened to them. We don't know how old she was.

We simply know that she became a servant in the home of Naaman, a powerful commander who suffered from leprosy.

From the world's perspective, Naaman had influence. He had position. He had authority.

She had none.

And yet this unnamed servant girl was the one who knew where hope could be found.

She told Naaman's wife about the prophet of God in Israel. Her simple testimony set into motion the events that eventually led to Naaman's healing and his declaration:

"Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel."—2 Kings 5:15

A nameless servant girl pointed a powerful man toward the one true God.

As I looked at the women sitting before me in Kenya, I thought about how easily we confuse visibility with influence.

We think influence belongs to the person holding the microphone, leading the organization, standing on the platform, or gathering the largest following.

But God's Kingdom has never worked that way.

Sometimes Kingdom influence looks like a young girl simply being faithful enough to speak about the God she knows.

The Widow of Zarephath: Trusting God With What She Had

We also studied the widow of Zarephath in 1 Kings 17.

When Elijah met her, she was gathering sticks to prepare what she believed would be the final meal for herself and her son. There was a famine in the land, and she had almost nothing left.

Yet God asked her to trust Him with the little she had.

And she did.

She didn't have abundance when she obeyed.

She didn't have all the answers.

She didn't know exactly how God was going to provide.

She simply took the next step of faith.

And God was faithful.

As I taught her story in Kenya, I couldn't help thinking about the women sitting in front of me. Some of their lives look very different from mine. Their resources may be different. Their challenges may be different.

But the question God asks all of us is remarkably similar:

Will you trust Me with what I have placed in your hands?

That question follows us home to America too.

We can spend so much time thinking about what we don't have—the resources, opportunities, platform, education, time, or influence we wish we had—that we miss what God has already entrusted to us.

The widow reminds us that God does extraordinary things through ordinary obedience.

The Samaritan Woman: Changed People Point People to Jesus

Our final session took us to John 4 and the Samaritan woman at the well.

Once again, Scripture doesn't give us her name.

But Jesus knew her.

He knew her past.

He knew her failures.

He knew the places in her life she probably wished no one else knew.

And He intentionally went to meet her.

That encounter changed everything.

The woman who came to the well carrying an empty water jar left carrying a testimony.

She went back to her community and said:

"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?"—John 4:29

And people came.

Not because she had a theological degree.

Not because she had a platform.

Not because her life had always been perfect.

They came because she had encountered Jesus and couldn't keep it to herself.

That is influence.

And perhaps that is what struck me most deeply as I looked around that room in Kenya.

I saw women worshiping Jesus.

Women learning His Word.

Women serving their families and communities.

Women who may never have their names written in a history book or known outside their villages and churches.

But Heaven knows their names.

They are unknown to much of the world, but they are completely known by God.

And so are you.

Known by God

I traveled to Kenya prepared to teach women about six unnamed women of the Bible.

But somewhere between the teaching, the conversations, the laughter, the prayers, and the beautiful sound of Kenyan women lifting their voices to Jesus, God reminded me that these stories aren't really about being unknown.

They're about being known by the One who matters most.

The world may never know the name of the mother quietly teaching her children to follow Jesus.

It may never know the woman praying faithfully for her family.

It may never recognize the woman serving behind the scenes at her church.

It may never applaud the woman who shares Jesus with a neighbor, encourages a struggling friend, gives sacrificially, disciples another believer, or faithfully serves wherever God has placed her.

But God sees every bit of it.

The women we studied in Scripture remind us that influence in God's Kingdom isn't measured by whether people know our name, but by whether our lives point people to His.

That truth is just as important for the woman sitting in a church in America as it is for the woman worshiping in a church in Kenya.

We live in a world that tells us to build our name.

Jesus calls us to make His name known.

Maybe our prayer shouldn't be, "Lord, make my life significant."

Maybe it should simply be:

"Jesus, wherever You place me, with whatever You give me, use my life to point someone to You."

Because in the end, it doesn't matter if the world remembers our names.

It matters that they know His.

Jesus changes everything.