Shannon Ethridge

Biography

Shannon Ethridge

Shannon Ethridge is a million-copy bestselling author, speaker, lay counselor, and advocate for healthy sexuality with a master’s degree in counseling/human relations from Liberty University. She has spoken to youth, college students, and adults since 1989 and her passions include challenging the body of Christ to embrace a life of sexual integrity, encouraging married couples in their pursuit of sexual and emotional intimacy, instilling sexual values in children, and inspiring others to make Jesus Christ the primary love of their lives. She is perhaps best known for her ministry to women who have spent their lives “looking for love in all the wrong places.”

Ethridge first encountered the passionate, sacrificial love of God as a sixteen-year-old girl in Greenville, TX. As she was driving to school one morning, she accidentally hit and killed Marjorie Jarstfer, a wife and mother who had served many years with Wycliffe Bible Translators. Terrified of facing Marjorie’s family, Ethridge was shocked when Gary, Marjorie’s grieving husband, insisted that she come to their home. Gary’s response to his wife’s death left a lasting impression on her whole family. Instead of seeking justice, he showed mercy, saying, “You can’t let this ruin your life, Shannon. God wants to strengthen you through this. He wants to use you. I want you to love Jesus without limits, just like Marjorie did.”

Unpacking all of her emotional baggage and letting Jesus love her into right relationship with Him wasn’t an overnight endeavor. As she has shared so transparently in her books, she wandered in the wilderness of sexual sin for many years as she futilely attempted to satisfy her hunger for love, attention, and affection. In fact, her passion for sexual purity didn’t begin inside church walls, but in mortuary college. Her first career choice, becoming a mortician, led Ethridge to work on dead bodies. Many she embalmed were young people who had died from AIDS or committed suicide as a result of an HIV positive diagnosis. Because of her own promiscuous teenage years, she knew that it was only by the grace of God that she was standing over the embalming table rather than laying on top of it.

God used these experiences to usher her into youth ministry and later into Teen Mania Ministries where she has taught and counseled college-age women on the topics of sexual restoration and emotional integrity since 1999. Shannon’s ministry soon expanded to include women of all ages. Her bestselling Every Woman’s Battle series has been translated into Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Russian, German, Portuguese, Afrikaans, and Japanese. The most common response she receives from women is: “I thought I was the only woman struggling with this issue! Thank you for your vulnerability!” She is now the author of eighteen books, including the COMPLETELY HIS: Loving Jesus Without Limits book and devotional series and her latest release, THE SEXUALLY CONFIDENT WIFE.

Ethridge has been interviewed on national radio and television shows such as “Focus on the Family,” “The 700 Club,” “Life Today” with James and Betty Robison, “FamilyLife Today” with Dennis Rainey and “New Life Live!” with Stephen Arterburn. Ethridge was also featured on the cover of Today’s Christian Woman magazine and is the winner of a Gold Medallion Award for Excellence in Publishing. Although grateful for the opportunities God has given her to influence this generation as a writer and speaker, Ethridge remains most passionate about her primary callings as a wife and best friend to her husband of eighteen years, Greg, and a mother and cheerleader to their two children, Erin and Matthew. She and her family reside in the piney woods of east Texas.

Visit www.shannonethridge.com or www.sexuallyconfidentwife.com for more.