If the book impacted you, leave a testimonial in the comments section below.
Here are endorsements by bestselling authors and leaders. The testimonials by other readers follow these at the very bottom.
“Jesus, from the very beginning, has been ‘good news for women.’ Perhaps that news has rarely been needed more clearly than in our day. One reads of His encounters with the women described in this book with a sense of wonder that these interactions took place two thousand years ago. He is good news for women still.”
John Ortberg
What a treasure this diary-style book is! This impactful message focuses on five broken women in the Bible and their life-changing encounters with Jesus. The way Mary and Frank portray their stories will help any woman who has experienced heartbreak, loneliness, and rejection step right into the extravagant grace and love of Jesus.”
Lysa TerKeurst, New York Times bestselling author
Mary and Frank provide a fresh look at biblical women that breathes life, color, and hue into these familiar stories. If you want to better understand the richness of biblical accounts in the context of first-century history, this is a book you won’t want to miss.”
Margaret Feinberg
The Day I Met Jesus is a refreshing look at five women in the Gospels, telling their stories in a way that brings them to life but at the same time based on careful research into the real world in which they lived. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and could not put it down. Through the eyes of women whose lives Jesus touched, this book invites us to see Jesus more deeply. It ministered to broken places in my own heart.”
Craig Keener, professor of New Testament, Asbury Theological Seminary
Step into the first century, as your senses and imagination are engaged in Mary DeMuth’s masterful biblical narrative, deftly exploring the hearts and minds of five women who met the Savior. Then Frank Viola brings his own gifts to the page, opening the Scriptures to help us understand each account more fully. Together, their voices sing of the beauty of Christ and the redemption He offers. The Day I Met Jesus is truly a wonderful book.”
Liz Curtis Higgs, bestselling author of Bad Girls of the Bible
We all long to lift the veil of history and catch a glimpse of the real story–the one that makes our hearts pound, our faith grow, and our lives change. That’s exactly what Frank Viola and Mary DeMuth offer in this compelling book. You will never look at Scripture or God’s work in your own heart the same way again after you close the final page.”
Holley Gerth
Elegant, stimulating, rewarding, this probe into Jesus’ relationship with women packages the best of biblical scholarship and theology in the spellbinding wraps of storytelling.”
Leonard Sweet, bestselling author; professor (Drew University, George Fox University); chief contributor to sermons.com
Story. History. His-Story. This book has all of these and immediately gripped my heart. I held my breath as I read about women who encountered Jesus in their day. I absolutely love books that compel me to love Jesus more. Together, Frank Viola and Mary DeMuth created a masterful biblical narrative that reminds us once again how Jesus feels about the sinner who desperately needs saving. He loves us. He came to save us. Enjoy every page of this book. You’ll be glad you did.”
Susie Larson
Many Christians fail to experience the full power of the Bible’s stories because they never learned how to imaginatively ‘get inside’ the lives of biblical characters to make them come alive. I don’t know of any book that better helps readers do this than The Day I Met Jesus. Combining imaginative creativity, historical scholarship, and great story-telling, Viola and DeMuth help readers enter into the lives of five women in the Gospels to experience Jesus from their perspective. And by this means, they help readers deepen their own understanding of, and love for, Jesus. After reading this poignant and gripping book, you won’t view these five women, Jesus, or yourself the same way!”
Greg Boyd
An amazing new book that will give you a glimpse of Jesus that you probably never saw before. This is a very unique book.”
Dr. Michael Brown
The Day I Met Jesus by Frank Viola and Mary DeMuth is destined to be a classic. Five exquisitely imaginative stories of women from the Gospels describe lives turned upside down by their encounters with Jesus. The book reveals the beauty of our Savior–His character, His compassion, His humility, His humanity, and His divinity. This gem of a book will move you, inspire you, and very likely, set you free.”
Felicity Dale
In The Day I Met Jesus, Frank and Mary demonstrate lucid insight into the balanced, candid, focused, tender, and penetrating manner of our Master–Jesus the Christ. See again the Savior who was God and Man embodied to show and transform us by His unpretentious holiness, empowering authenticity–without scorn or condemnation, transmitting love’s purity, life’s vitality, and hope’s eternity. I commend the authors and this book to you: both will enrich and enlarge your thoughts and your life.”
Pastor Jack W. Hayford
The women you’ve always read about. Now, in real life. This fresh new take on timeless stories of the Bible’s fiercest heroines will leave you inspired, empowered, and thrilled for more. Thank you, DeMuth and Viola, for this gift to women everywhere.”
Claire Diaz-Ortiz
The Day I Met Jesus bears the souls of five familiar women from Scripture and the deep significance of their personal encounters with Jesus. Frank Viola and Mary DeMuth have crafted a beautiful account of these women’s stories with a rawness that punctuates the significance of our Savior’s grace. May we be so moved to experience the love, joy, hope, and grace of the Jesus portrayed in these pages.”
Jenni Catron
Through the stories of five unique women from the Gospels, Frank Viola and Mary DeMuth masterfully reveal the truth of Jesus in a riveting, breathtaking way. Each story captivatingly invites you on a journey through pain, rejection, and brokenness and leads you right into the heart of Jesus as He meets each woman in an intimately restorative and loving way, as only Jesus can. This book will minister to the broken places in your heart and leave you longing to know Jesus more deeply.”
Derwin L. Gray
For each of us, the day we met Jesus is to be celebrated, held in awe, memorized, and memorialized. In The Day I Met Jesus, Frank and Mary have enabled us to do just that alongside five women of biblical fame. Their stories are beautifully framed, permitting us to know them and walk beside them as they meet this Man and are forgiven, set free, transformed by His love and grace. And then we are taken deep into the Scriptures and our own hearts to see how Jesus wants to forgive us and set us free and, yes, transform us. You will want to read this book.”
Judy Douglass
Everyone loves an amazing true-life story: one kissed with hope and redemption and love. The Day I Met Jesus is a book of such things. Smartly written and personally inspiring, Viola and DeMuth hit the mark on the beautiful lives of broken women who met the God who changed everything. Their powerful stories, written from a first-person perspective, remind me of my own brokenness and the God who rescued me too. I am grateful for this book, and I am moved.”
Lisa Whittle
I thought I knew the women in these stories well, but in this beautiful book I met each one in a fresh, personal, and profound way. The life-changing grace and mercy Christ extended to these our sisters so long ago is here right now for you and for me.”
Sheila Walsh
It’s one thing to skim a story about women meeting Jesus; it’s another one to dive deeply into their hearts. The Day I Met Jesus shines the light on desperate lives and Jesus’ powerful intervention. These stories made me think about my own transformation by the One I love. If you want to love Jesus more, this is the book for you. Scholarly and accurate, but also tender and beckoning, it’s a book you won’t want to miss!”
Tricia Goyer
Inventive, engaging, compelling, and filled with freedom, this book will help you see the wonder of our Jesus more clearly. Here is very simply the truth about Jesus and His relationship with women: He loved us. What a powerful truth for women in the world today! Jesus is always the hero of the story. Through this book, we see and know that He is the hero of our stories too.”
Sarah Bessey
As a woman and an artist, I loved having the scene of these encounters with Jesus for women in different walks in life. I felt like I was there with them, experiencing their brokenness and the love Jesus showed them first hand. The way Frank Viola and Mary DeMuth wove out the stories and the truth backed up in scripture was truly remarkable. I highly recommend this book who want to walk alongside these first centry sisters in a very REAL way.
Wanna meet Jesus? Wanna hear a familiar story told differently? Want a little more flesh on the bone? Wanna find a God “so blessedly alive you can touch Him?”
Whether you’ve yet to meet Him or you’ve had your faith in Him for a long time, this book will reach you and introduce you (even again) to the friend of sinners, the Savior of your soul.
“Some stories cry their way to the streets”, as it says in sentence one, story one. And these stories of five very real, remarkably relatable women from the dusty streets of the Bible certainly do. The woman caught in adultery. The Samaritan woman. The bleeder. The prostitute. The woman Jesus loved. Their stories, told and translated, are not just five women’s stories. They’re not. As Frank and Mary so masterfully and persuasively put forth, they are the stories of us all.
Meet these women. Mary DeMuth has put flesh on their biblical-bones and clothes on their real and weary backs. And meet the man who met them where they were, in the dirt, in their daily chore, in their desperation, and changed everything for them. Meet Jesus.
Their lives were never the same. Neither will yours.
On the heels of each transformative encounter, the sacred text is examined, and Frank Viola walks it out with you in his thoughtful and relatable exposition. New to the faith or long in the tooth of it, you will learn something.
If Frank and Mary have done their job well, the Gospels will rise up and walk around your living room. They certainly did in mine.
Five stars and two thumbs way, way up.
Every pariah has a backstory. Every sinner has hidden wounds. Every hero is driven by love.
In The Day I Met Jesus, authors Frank Viola and Mary DeMuth bring you into the minds of five New Testament women and invite you to see the world through their eyes. The book is poignant, moving, and masterfully executed. Its stated goal is to help see Jesus more clearly. But I think it accomplishes something else. Reading The Day I Met Jesus also gives you insight into the struggles of womanhood.
An example. When we Bible readers meet the woman caught in adultery in John chapter 8, she is already an adulteress at that point. That is her label, her identity. What Viola and DeMuth do, through the artifice of the woman’s own first-person account, is to remind us that before she was an adulteress, the woman was a wife. Surely she once was desired and loved by her husband. What happened to bring her to the place where she could be shoved in front of a rabbi and pronounced guilty of a capital crime?
Or how about the prostitute who washed Jesus’s feet with perfumed ointment? The pharisees call her a sinner, but she once was an innocent little girl.
To see such women for what they once were, and what they could become again, is to look at them through eyes that are more like Jesus’s.
Drawing heavily from the historical milieu of first-century Palestine, The Day I Met Jesus reveals the tragic female figures behind these well-known stories. The woman caught in adultery? Her once-loving husband had grown to despise her merely because she was not an excellent housekeeper? The prostitute who kissed the Lord’s feet? Most likely, she ended up on that path because she was a rape victim.
We also spend time with the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman who couldn’t stop bleeding, and Mary the sister of Lazarus. The book is challenging and informative.
And just because it’s a book about five women doesn’t mean it’s a book solely for women. First, the centerpiece of the book is Jesus. And we all need to be reminded about the qualities that made him so special, so fascinating, so radical, so redemptive. But second, I think it’s terribly important for men like me to hear the gospel message of deliverance from the perspective of women.
As I often try to express, people with privilege cannot possibly understand the harms they inadvertently inflict on the less-privileged unless they sincerely listen. Reading these stories will remind men just how cruel we often are without even realizing it. First-century Judea (and most of the world today) is thoroughly a man’s world. Even in America, we have a long way to go.
As Paul instructed Timothy, men in Christ are to treat all women as their sisters or mothers (I Timothy 5:1-2). Too often, men see women as objects to possess and exploit at worst or strangers impossible-to-understand at best. If you want to be a better man, this book can help you by impressing on your psyche just how vulnerable women still can be, how badly we men can hurt them, and how important the radical acceptance of Jesus can be in healing those wounds.
Buy this book for your mother, your sister, your significant other. But also read it yourself.
This is Bren Hughes, the author of Heaven’s Muscle, and I wholeheartedly endorse The Day I Met Jesus.
As I began reading The Day I Met Jesus I felt as if I had stepped into the inner world of five real women from the New Testament whose lives had been radically changed by one encounter with Jesus. The woman at the well, the woman with the issue of blood, the woman caught in the act of adultery, the prostitute, and Mary the sister of Lazarus. Five women who had no voice in their culture. Five women who had little to lose and everything to gain. Five women who were desperate to meet Jesus. You see, they knew about Jesus. But that wasn’t enough. They knew they had to meet Him face to face. These women needed to be transformed and they understood Jesus was their only hope.
The Day I Met Jesus opened my eyes in a fresh way to Christ’s love for the broken and marginalized. This same Jesus who stepped down out of heaven and all its glory to don human flesh and pursue the outcasts of society desires to meet you face to face too. He longs to have deep conversations with you. To heal your wounds and set you free.
Five women. One God.
Isn’t it time you met Jesus face to face?
See Jesus in a whole new way! The Day I Met Jesus and not only refreshed many familiar stories from the Bible, but has opened my eyes to the way I see Him. Through reading this amazing book, my life has been challenged and my heart softened to those around me. This is a book everyone should read! It’s an in depth study of women we thought we knew giving us more insight to who Jesus is and how He touched lives when he walked the earth. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow and for that I am thankful!
Thank you Mary and Frank for opening my eyes and teaching more about who our Savior is. I feel like I just met Jesus again!
This book is a life changing compilation of stories from 5 women in the Bible. However, the stories are not what you think. When we read the account in the Scriptures, we get a small snapshot of the story. But what led that women to that point in time when she met Jesus and her life was drastically, surprisingly, changed? In this book, Mary DeMuth skillfully (and beautifully) crafted THAT story. Written with knowledge of the times then, and what we know now about women who end up in similar situations, the backstory is created in such a way that you will never read the stories the same again. Your compassion for these women will be activated and they will be come quite real to you. After each story is the actual Biblical account, the Scriptures that tell what we know is true, and then Frank Viola writes the rest of each chapter with the in-depth look of the passage so we get a better understanding of what the Scripture is telling us, and he brings out the practical applications for each of us. You will not regret adding this book to your library!
What would it have been like to physically meet Jesus face to face?
Looking into Jesus’ eyes, what would a shunned person experience?
Or a person rebuked for violating social norms?
And what if, as that shunned or rebuked person, you met Jesus face to face and He fully loved you and affirmed you, even defending you to your detractors?
In this book, hear from people who did encounter Jesus face to face. Frank Viola and Mary DeMuth have teamed up to write engaging, heart-pricking, thought-provoking Biblical narrative.
Many times while reading I was moved to tears, both joyful and poignant. The fleshed out stories are believable. The writing engages the reader. The scriptural truths both cut and mend souls. I highly recommend this book. Buy several; you’ll want to give some away.
Can you imagine meeting Jesus face-to-face? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to step back into biblical history and experience a real “come to Jesus” moment?
In their new book, The Day I Met Jesus, Mary DeMuth and Frank Viloa set the stage for us to observe the stories of five women in the Bible who experienced personal and powerful encounters with Jesus.
Each chapter offers a descriptive narrative and helpful, biblical insights, encouraging readers to seek a personal encounter with Jesus and to apply the spiritual truths revealed in this book to their own lives. Powerful book!
Five Women. Five Stories.
We’ve heard the stories so many times that their plots no longer phase us.
Five husbands? Sure.
Jewish women publicly washing the Messiah’s feet in costly oil? Why not?
A show-down in the temple between Grace and Law? Yeah, it’s fun when Jesus outsmarts the Pharisees.
A desperately ill woman healed in a crowd with just a touch? Well, um . . . this is the Bible isn’t it?
The Day I Met Jesus opens the imaginary diaries of five New Testament women, allowing us to relive their stories in real time with the benefit of Mary Demuth’s imaginative back story added to set the scene and provide depth. (If you have ever enjoyed reading Ellen Gunderson Traylor, you will find these stories to be delightful.) The actual scripture text follows the story and is then skillfully unpacked by Frank Viola. He alludes to Old Testament background passages, biblical themes found in the story, and helps his readers to place the event in the great arc of redemptive history. Questions have been provided for each chapter to facilitate individual study or group discussion.
I found that my empathy for the five New Testament women was enhanced by reading the historical and cultural context behind their story. In addition, Demuth’s sanctified imagination provided very probable and believable circumstances leading them up to the day they met Jesus:
1. The woman caught in adultery was an abused wife who became a Christ-follower and a witness to the crucifixion, longing to shout, “He who is without sin, crucify this man!”
2. The prostitute who crashed Simon the Pharisee’s party and anointed Jesus’ feet with oil is portrayed as a victim of rape and, therefore, a teenage runaway. She learns of a Man who loves outcasts, and following Him, her hungry heart found hope and forgiveness in His gentle teaching on a hillside. Finally free of her shame, she wanted nothing more than to give Jesus her greatest gift.
3. The early church named the Samaritan woman Photine [Foteenie] which means “enlightened one.” As a result of her divine appointment at the well, this desperate woman who, after six failed relationships, had used up all her chances in life, finally encountered her true Husband — and a Samaritan community met their Messiah.
4. Tradition has christened the woman with a flow of blood Veronica, and, looking over her shoulder as she writes a final letter to her granddaughter, the reader is invited to relive the years of her shame and anguish. Ceremonially unclean and suffering from infertility in a culture where either affliction was devastating, Veronica’s desperation created in her an inspiring (and enviable) depth of faith and determination.
5. Most well-known of the five, but perhaps least understood, is Mary of Bethany who reminds us that even those closest to Jesus are not exempt from disappointment and testing of faith. Whenever she appears in scripture, Mary honors Christ in a way that demonstrates his true worth.
In The Day I Met Jesus, the reader’s eyes are opened to a way of reading the Bible that most of us miss. Spare narratives, nameless characters, and minimal backstory, if taken at face value as mere words on a page, will become “just another story.” With these five memoirs to prime the pump, I’m encouraged to dig deeper into the cultural context, the unspoken motivations, and the presuppositions that drive the characters’ words and actions. Naturally, the point of these five revealing diaries is not merely to record history, but rather to encourage the reader to consider his or her own meeting with Jesus. Is it a warm memory of an event that has little significance in the present? Was it the first meeting in a series of daily encounters that continue to shape your life? Is it yet to occur? Jesus welcomes the powerless, the marginalized, the outcast; the educated, the influential, and the elite. He will welcome you.
Greetings! In the spirit of camaradarie, let me offer the unique experiences of five other women who also know Jesus.
I just got my hands on a new book, started reading and thought “I’ve got to tell other women about this!” In the book, five women, each with different circumstances but sharing our human needs, desires, hopes and dreams, have a life-changing encounter with Jesus. As I read, I found my heart pounding with the sheer beauty of my Savior and his refreshing love.
The book? “The day I met Jesus: The Revealing Diaries of Five Women from the Gospels” by Frank Viola and Mary DeMuth, published by BakerBooks.
Thanks, Frank and Mary, for this powerful work of art, work of faith, this revealing of the overwhelming Beauty of Jesus.
Phyllis
I enjoyed reading the story from the woman’s perspective and also having the bible text written after it. It was a moving and enjoyable book. It touched my heart and made the story real
This book is so wonderful. I felt as if I had stepped into the time when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, veiled in flesh, walked on this earth.
One of the things that God has taught me through reading this book, is to be more loving and compassionate to others as His Son, Jesus was.
He has also opened my eyes as to how women were treated in that era, and how His Son, Jesus, elevated them to a position of honor, with dignity and grace.
The combination of Frank Viola and Mary DeMuth are spiritually powerful!
The Day I Met Jesus opened my eyes to the two sides of a coin thoughts. I now feel I have a more or better concept of these five women, the other side of the coin. I now have a greater understanding of our Master Jesus. I can feel His compassion and love plus His wisdom on dealing with others. I believe I will react differently to various issues and approaches, striving to act and react more like Jesus. I love both authors very much. I sense the intelligence coupled with love that you both want to share, as Christ wants you too. This book or CD will be a great gift. My prayers are that our Father God continues to bless you both in a way that only He can bless. Semper Fidelis to Christ first, Fred Mitchell.
I’m extremely happy because I read this book. My eyes are open to various thoughts of our Master Jesus as well as the five women. Plus being able to learn of some history of 1st Century times was like adding the sugar to the cake mixture.
I am going to read it again, plus I want to send this book as gifts to my friend.
Thank you so much for all that you both do for our Father God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
Semper Fidelis to Christ first, Fred and Elizabeth Mitchell.
I loved the book in so many ways … I could relate to every woman, and I can testify to God’s beautiful, precious undying love that He Himself poured out on me In the most difficult times in my life where there seemed to be no hope, no friend in sight. He was always there with open arms to embrace me. He has given to me what each of those women experienced, true love. This is a wonderful book, especially for those women who know and have experienced the type of lives depicted in this book, a true unfolding of Gods wonderful hope filled love.
Thank you!
Susan Dunn