Have you ever wished you could sit down in a casual coffee shop with one of our authors and speakers and chat? We are so thankful for the amazing women of God we have the privilege of working with regularly. And while we can’t all gather in our favorite downtown coffee shop, we want to give you the opportunity to know them a little more personally.
Every so often we’re sharing a fresh “coffee chat” with a member of the Lifeway Women family to give you the opportunity to get to know her a little better.
This month, get to know Adrienne Camp!
Tell us about your writing process. Any favorite pens, locales, teas to drink, and music to listen to?
I have a few different cozy spots I like to write in, usually nestled into the corner of my couch with a cup of Yorkshire® Gold tea, but I also love to sit outside if the glare isn’t too much for my computer screen. I sometimes listen to music while I write but at a really low volume. It can’t be too loud for me to actually listen to it—quirky, I know—but it helps me focus on what I’m writing and drown everything else out.
What is the best advice you have ever received?
“Protect your connection to Jesus.”
Basically, a paraphrase from Proverbs 4:23, “Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life.”
I don’t think it can be overemphasized enough that our relationship with Jesus needs to be the preeminent love and desire of our lives. The quality of our connection to Jesus will determine everything else—our thought life, how we interact with others, our integrity, and the list goes on.
You have a new Bible study with Lifeway called As for Me. Tell us a little about it.
I’m so excited about this study! It’s a 7-week study that goes through the various themes found in the Psalms. It’s a call to go deeper in our walks with Jesus, especially engaging in prayer and honest communication with Him.
Even though I wrote this study to be published, I feel as though it has been a treasure and a feast to my own soul – I’ve desperately needed the comfort, healing, lament, and challenges to trust and praise that the book of Psalms offers us.
Psalm 71:14 (NIV) says, “As for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more.”
Years ago, as I was reading through the Psalms, this little phrase as for me kept jumping out at me, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
It was as if the psalmists were declaring a holy defiance against being drowned by the hopelessness of the world around them.
No matter what, they had resolved in their hearts to keep their hearts consumed with Jesus. I have prayed for that resolution to be deeply rooted in me and those who will go through this study.
As you worked on As for Me, what were some new things you learned along the way?
Learning that Jesus quoted from the Psalms more than any other book in the Old Testament gave them an extra layer of intrigue. They were written by multiple authors over about a thousand years and are such a beautiful reflection of the prayers and honest cries of those who have gone before us and the ways they interacted with the Lord. I loved learning how we can journey with Jesus intimately and transparently, as the psalmists do, while we learn to include Him in all the rhythms of our life. It was also surprising to me that the lament psalms are the majority of the psalms written, and most of them are corporate, meaning they were written for and sung in a community setting. It spoke volumes to me of the call of the body of Christ to cry out honestly and passionately together to see the Lord work in the depths of our hearts and overflowing into our communities.
Want to learn more about the Psalms? Check out As for Me: Life through the Lens of the Psalms. In this 7-session Bible study, author and singer Adrienne Camp invites you to join her on a journey through the book of Psalms. Gain a deeper understanding of who God is and be encouraged to hold on to Him no matter what is happening around you. Let the psalms become the prayers you carry with you into every moment of every day, so that you, too, can say with confidence, “As for me, I will worship and serve the Lord no matter what.”
Adrienne “Adie” Camp, a South African singer and songwriter, was the lead singer of the Christian rock band The Benjamin Gate before launching her solo career. She is married to fellow musician Jeremy Camp, whom she met on tour in 2002. They have been married since 2003 and have two daughters, Bella and Arie, and one son, Egan. Adrienne is deeply passionate about her marriage and her family. She homeschools her children as they often accompany Jeremy on tour.
She has authored three books—Even Me, an illustrated children’s book about her daughters’ adventurous trip to Uganda, In Unison, which she coauthored with her husband, Jeremy, about navigating their marriage and relationship, and As for Me: Life Through the Lens of the Psalms, a Bible study book with Lifeway Women. So far, she has traveled to twenty different countries and is motivated by a desire to see people encounter God’s love all around the world.
