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Priscilla Shirer has a name for the woman who believes in God with her whole heart and still lives, Monday through Saturday, as if he does not exist. She calls her a Christian atheist. And she says she used to be one. Priscilla Shirer has taught the Bible to packed arenas of women for decades. She is a bestselling author many times over. She has stood on some of the biggest stages in the Christian world. And she stood up in front of thousands of churchgoing women and said something almost no one is brave enough to say to a room full of believers. Most of you are fans of Jesus. Very few of you are actually following him. Read that again. You can be in church every single Sunday and be a fan. You can know all the songs and sing every word and be a fan. You can read a verse a day to keep the devil away, because that is just what you are supposed to do, and be a fan. You can show up faithfully because your mama and your grandmama did, because it is simply what your family has always done, and still be nothing more than a fan in the crowd. A fan admires him from a distance. A fan shows up for the show. A fan would never deny him, and has also never really followed him anywhere. I know. Because I was that woman. I had been in church my whole life and I would have told you I loved Jesus. I did all of it. The Sunday service. The verse on my phone. The right words at the right times. And if I am honest, the moment I walked out of those church doors, I lived the rest of my week exactly like he was not there at all. I made my decisions without him. I worried like I had no Father. I treated him like a face in a frame I admired, not a person I actually knew. I believed in him completely. I just did not know him at all. Priscilla put a name to it that I have never been able to shake. She said you can be what she calls a Christian atheist. Someone who believes in God, but lives like he does not exist. And then she said the part that undid me. She said, that was me. I grew up around the things of God. I believed in God. But I did not know him. But here is what most Christian women never figure out, and what nobody seems willing to say out loud. The distance between a fan and a follower is not how much you believe. It is whether you actually know him. A fan knows everything about the famous person and has never once met them. A follower knows him. And you cannot know a person you have only ever heard about secondhand. You have known the Jesus your pastor described. The Jesus your mama handed down. The Jesus the culture sells. You have never sat down with his own Word and met him for yourself. So of course you are still standing in the crowd. You have never actually been introduced. Priscilla said the whole reason Jesus asked his disciples that question was to settle it before he invited them to follow him. Identity first. Invitation second. He looked at them and said, who do you say that I am. Not who does the crowd say. Not who did your family say. Not who does the world say. Who do you say. And here is the quiet, terrible truth I finally had to face. I could not answer it. Not really. Not from anything I actually knew myself. Everything I knew about Jesus, I had gotten from someone else. The problem wasn't that I didn't believe in God. It wasn't that I didn't show up. I never missed. It wasn't that I didn't try. It was that I had spent my whole life as a fan in the crowd, admiring a Jesus I had never once been close enough to actually know. And you cannot give your life to someone you have only ever watched from a distance. I know. Because I was that woman. I went to church every single Sunday for my entire adult life. I had a Bible I genuinely tried to read. I started reading plans in January more times than I can count. I made it through Leviticus barely holding on, wondering what animal sacrifices have to do with my life. I read Romans and closed the book not able to explain a single thing I had just read. I read the Psalms and felt comforted in the moment but couldn't tell you two days later what I had actually learned. Year after year, the same cycle. Start in January. Slow down by March. Quietly stop by April. And carry that shame, that quiet guilt of being a Christian woman who still didn't really know her own Bible, all the way back to December. When I'd tell myself again that next year would be different. And the whole time, I stayed a fan. Because the one thing that turns a fan into a follower, actually knowing him in his Word, was the one thing I could never do. Priscilla talks about the crowds that pressed in around Jesus. Thousands of them. Always near him. Always marveling at what he could do. And in that same crowd, one woman who refused to just admire him from a distance. She pushed through everyone, got close enough to reach out, and touched the edge of his robe. And that one real moment of contact changed the entire course of her life. The crowd watched. She touched him. That is the whole difference. And I had spent my entire life in the crowd. Think about it this way. You can know everything there is to know about a famous person. Their story, their words, every quote. And if you have never actually met them, you do not know them. You are a fan. That is what most of us are with Jesus. We know the verses people post and the stories from Sunday and the songs by heart. We have never once sat down with the actual words he left us and let him introduce himself. Because the only place you actually meet him is his Word. And no one ever taught us how to read it. Priscilla can preach to a packed arena. But she can only reach you for the length of one sermon. A few minutes before the lights come up and everyone files out. She can't be in your kitchen at 6am, when the crowd is gone and it is just you and a Bible you have never been taught to read. That's when I found something that changed everything. A 52-week guided study that walks you through the entire Bible, one theme at a time, from Genesis to Revelation. Before you read anything each week, it gives you a short explanation of exactly what you are about to get into. Who wrote it. When. Why. What was happening in the world at the time. And how every page connects to who Jesus actually is. Not the secondhand version. Not the one everyone else handed you. Him. In his own words. The Gospels: who Jesus really is, firsthand. The actual answer to the question Priscilla says you have to settle. Who do you say that I am. Psalms: written by people who did not admire God from the back of the crowd, but knew him in the dark, in the fear, in the worst nights of their lives. Romans: what it actually means to belong to him. Not to be a fan of him. To be his. For the first time in my life, I read my Bible and I actually knew the One I had been singing about for years. Not knew about him. Knew him. Myself. In his own words. I'd open it in the morning and not want to close it. I'd read something and think about it all day. Verses I'd read dozens of times suddenly meant something completely new, because I finally had the context to understand what they were actually saying. And slowly, week by week, I stopped being a fan. I stopped admiring him from the crowd and started actually walking with him. For the first time, I could answer his question with something that was truly mine. I knew who I said he was. Because I finally knew him. Priscilla says it is possible to spend your whole life as a fan and never once become a follower. The difference was never how loud you sing. It is whether you ever stopped watching from the crowd, and actually came close enough to know him. And the only place you do that is in his Word. This is what finally closed that gap for me. Right now it's up to 62% off, and every order comes with a free pen pack. Don't spend another year as a fan in the crowd, admiring a Jesus you have never actually known. Don't spend another year believing in him with your whole heart and living like he isn't there. This is what Priscilla has been pointing women toward all along. Not another reason to cheer for him. The chance to finally know him. Tap below and grab yours before they sell out.