hroughout history, God has called Spirit-filled men and women to boldly but lovingly speak his truth to their generation. Some of these warrior-missionaries were married couples, equally engaged in the mission. William and Catherine Booth, Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand and Jim and Elisabeth Elliot are but a few of them. Enter Eric and Leslie Ludy, one such couple appointed for our day.

This prime-of-life husband-wife team caught God’s vision for the postmodern – some would say post-church – age and is known around the globe for their clearly articulated and timeless message of biblical holiness, purity and passion for Christ.

Eric and Leslie each recently authored attention-grabbing books – between them they have penned as many as 15, some of them bestsellers – that have taken their 14-year ministry to a higher plane. Eric’s “The Bravehearted Gospel” and Leslie’s “Set-Apart Femininity” are the culmination of an amazing journey of “a thousand little ‘God-moments,’” say the couple.

Eric and Leslie Ludy sharing a moment on vacation in 2009.

Looking back: surprises and humility

Some of those earlier moments led to the 1999 mega-bestseller, “When God Writes Your Love Story,” a third edition of which is due out in June of this year.

“‘When God Writes Your Love Story’ is the book that surprised us the most,” Leslie says, citing its “quirky personal stories and straightforward message of complete trust in the Author of Romance” – God.

Eric adds, “When Leslie and I made the decision to walk this path of purity in our pre-marriage relationship, we had no idea that our choices would one day impact thousands of young people. It’s humbling and honoring that God made us an example of his pattern to our generation. It also reminds us how seriously we must guard our marriage relationship.”

Life has not exactly been a storybook happily-ever-after for the Ludys. The challenges started coming fast and furious soon after they married.

“It seemed that every time we tried to step out and fulfill the call of God upon our life, a million roadblocks would stand in our way,” Leslie recalls. “We grew to accept things like financial crisis, relational betrayal and backstabbing, exhaustion, stress and health problems as normal.”

Eric and Leslie learned out of necessity to rely upon the Holy Spirit to help them fight and grow through each crisis.

“As we applied this principle together and fought for God’s best in our lives, we experienced an incredible, amazing victory in areas where we used to feel defeated. This is probably the most profound lesson God taught us as a couple,” Leslie says.

Eric Ludy and son Hudson share an "Eskimo kiss."

For most of the first decade of their married life, the Ludys traveled the world, in great demand as speakers, pointing others to the beauty of a God-written life and love story. That was their “BK era” – before kids. A growing family necessitated some creativity in their ministry approach, itself a growing vision.

Today, with three young children and a fourth on the way, the Ludy household can be a bit chaotic at times. But even in their devotion to their children, Eric and Leslie see kingdom lessons.

“Tending to a crying newborn several times a night and spending my best energies during the day changing diapers, pouring juice and kissing ‘owies’ – instead of taking a nap or relaxing on the couch with a book – are a few small ways I am learning to die to self’s agenda and live a poured-out life for the glory of God,” Leslie says.

Discipling every generation

Eric and Leslie Ludy with their children (left to right): Kipling, Hudson, and Harper.

In addition to serving as an example in their own 14-year marriage, the Ludys pass on their hard-earned godly wisdom to young men and women – the future of the Church – in the form of intensive discipleship conferences and retreats around the country. They plan to launch a discipleship training school in Colorado in the near future.

Through these encounters and the feedback they receive from readers of their books, the Ludys stay intimately acquainted with the challenges younger-generation Christians face. In fact, they are among those few brave souls who are not afraid to address the often-hidden problems of sexual sin within our churches and in Christian homes. They have an entire catalog of eye-opening stories to draw from.

“The large majority of today’s young women, even in Christian circles, have thrown away their purity and are suffering under a cloud of guilt and shame over it,” Leslie points out. “Many believe it is too late for them to experience anything beautiful or godly in this area of their lives. They often feel distant from God.”

Eric sees the other side of this equation playing out in the lives of young men. His message of Christ-centered purity is not just for the young, however. To punctuate this point, he often tells of observing a pastor criticizing a wife for being “offended” at her husband’s pornography addiction. “‘He’s not a pervert or a sex addict,’ the pastor said. ‘He’s just a normal, red-blooded male. Every guy deals with this, and it’s time we stop making men feel ashamed about it.’”

The Ludys, heartsick that so many Christians are defeated by sexual sin, long to correct that sentiment.

“Though the Christian men of our culture are supposed to be the ones who will rise above the debased mediocrity around them, they are ensnared by the same warped perspective and sinful sexual vices as the rest of their male counterparts,” Eric observes. Echoes Leslie, “True purity flows from a life absolutely abandoned to Jesus Christ.”

It is no secret that even pastors and Christ-professing leaders within our churches are enslaved in growing numbers to Internet pornography, premarital sex and adulterous affairs.

In “the smelly fray”

The Ludys have no farther to look than their own past single lives to confirm the universality of the me-centered compromise that so easily can overtake young men and women. They speak quite openly about their respective past struggles with purity. That gives them a point of intersection with other young people they address.

Still, it is not easy to put the hard truth – all of it – before God’s people. While Leslie teaches young women what godly femininity and devotion to Christ look like, Eric focuses on “dishing out the manly stuff” he believes the Church desperately needs.

“God’s been training me how to stand up and both deliver the truth like a man and receive the consequential backlash like a man,” says Eric. “It’s simply Christianity 101; but for me, it’s something I’m learning a bit later in life.”

“The Bravehearted Gospel” is the culmination of that education for Eric. A no-holds-barred book, its message is piercing hearts and opening minds far and wide.

“We are experiencing a crisis of biblical illiteracy,” Eric maintains. “The Church today takes its cues from the pulpit and not from the Scriptures themselves. When the pulpits of a nation are sound, then the danger isn’t readily apparent, but now … we have epic issues.”

Behind the tough, unvarnished veneer of the Ludys’ call back to “Christianity 101” are two tender-hearted parents who love nothing better than spending time with their growing brood of three. Their firstborn, 4-year-old Hudson Jack, welcomed two adopted siblings: 2-year-old Harper Grace and the newest arrival, 5-month-old Kipling Joel Anthony.

Eric and Leslie Ludy with adopted daughter, Hudson.

The Ludy children even have their own “Little Ludy Blog” at their parents’ main website, www.setapartlife.com – which also links to Eric’s and Leslie’s individual sites and blogs.

For Eric, fatherhood awakened a latent God-call to live a commandment too often overlooked.

“God has laid orphans on Leslie’s and my heart,” Eric says. “It’s funny how you can agree with what God says in Scripture and, the whole while, not necessarily feel what God is feeling. For years I’ve esteemed God’s heart for the poor and the least, but for some reason, I was disconnected at the heart level.”
 
Moved to do “something practical,” the Ludys today have a number of orphan-care initiatives in the works that they hope will put “a big dent into the problem globally.” As Eric puts it, “These past couple of years, God lifted me out of my comfortable, little spiritual crawl space and plopped my life in the center of the smelly fray.”

Perhaps the one verse in Scripture that best sums up the Ludys’ ministry outlook is, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1:27)