New Song

I shared on Facebook that my friend was baptized over last weekend.  This is her sweet story of redemption.  It's amazing how obedience brings forth fruit-- Daniela has finally asked me to be baptized, too!  

Psalm 40:30 He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the LORD.

Several times over the past couple of weeks I have been asked to share “my story”. This time I was asked to put it in written form. Turns out it’s even harder to write it down than it is to speak it out loud. There’s something so concrete about putting a pen to paper (or fingers to a keyboard) that makes it feel so much weightier. But, I guess it makes sense, it should be weighty because this story is not mine; if it were I wouldn’t have the courage to share it. This story is the story of Christ, His Redeeming Grace and how for 23 years I, His daughter, pretended to know Him while living a life that grieved Him. It’s a story that I’ve come to realize is like that of so many others in the Body though most of us are too prideful to share it. Slowly God has been breaking down my pride and has left me undone and overcome by His goodness and faithfulness and now He’s been asking me not to keep that a secret. Like I said, it’s not my story: it’s His.

From the beginning…

I grew up in a church surrounded by people who not only spoke of their faith, but also lived it. My family stood in front of that church and dedicated me to God just weeks after I was born; they made a verbal commitment, as did the rest of my church, to do their best to raise me for Him. From then on if the church doors were open, chances are I was there with someone: Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, holidays, celebrations, Bible quizzing…the list goes on. If my friends were over Saturday night they came to church with me on Sunday morning. I knew all the right answers to the Sunday school questions. I was the perfect “church kid”.

Somewhere along the line I grew complacent. I got really good at living a lie. I continued walking through the motions living a life that reflected Christ while people were watching, but as soon as they turned their head my life reflected a different story. I still knew all of the right answers, I knew how to act it out (“act” versus “live”), and though I’m sure people recognized I wasn’t perfect, I was still a “church kid”.

High school came around and I continued living that same lie. I was living “in” the world and day-by-day I was beginning to live more and more “of” the world. God kept me safe, placed barriers in my path from sinking too far, and brought people into my life that started seeing the lies and speaking to them. He finally got ahold of me and pointed me in the direction of a Christian college: Olivet Nazarene University. I knew I was missing something, and I knew I wanted more of Him after spending so long walking outside of His light but I didn’t quite know how to get it.

Freshman year of college God moved in me more than He ever had before. If you would have asked me about a month ago I would have told you that I was truly saved that year. I started hearing and seeing Him more and I started to understand what it truly should look like to follow Him. Yet I still was not following Him. I continued to act it out versus live it out and for the most part I didn’t even recognize the disconnect. When one thing would go wrong it would shake me to the core, I would doubt again and question His character. I asked questions like why does He feel so distant? Why won’t He reach in and rescue me from this? I had no foundation. It was all surface level.

After I graduated I moved to the Dominican Republic as a missionary with a Christian organization. Still then I was not living a life that reflected Christ. I professed to despise hypocrisy while being one of the biggest hypocrites of them all. I was even a part of the worship team Sunday mornings, closing my eyes and singing and praying while truthfully I didn’t even have a relationship with God. I still couldn’t understand the disconnect. It started to get a lot less comfortable though because I started to realize that it’s really hard to hide in the environment that I’m in right now. Whereas in America it’s really easy to pretend you have it all together on Sunday mornings, it’s a lot harder when you have to pretend every day of the week. I started to shrink back from the people around me here, hiding for fear of being discovered in the midst of my lies, too prideful to admit that something was off that I wasn’t that perfect “church kid”. 

Then God happened.

Just like that.

Three Sundays ago I was sitting in church listening to the Pastor speak from Acts on boldness. At the end of the message it was evident that the Holy Spirit was moving in the room. He opened it up for prayer and people began pouring out their hearts. Then all of a sudden someone started to pray and immediately I understood that God was speaking through her directly to me. Her words convicted and wrecked me. At one point she said (and I’m paraphrasing) ‘We pray to hear you but we’re not even in our Word.’ That definitely wasn’t the only part of her prayer that challenged me but with that phrase in particular something snapped into place. I have never consistently been in the Word. I’ve heard all the stories, but I’ve never sought to read the Bible on my own. How in almost 23 years with my church background have I missed this?!

John 1:1-5 says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” How much more obvious does it get that the Word is a pretty important part of this walk? I’ve had the first part of this passage memorized for years and still I’ve missed it.

That week I was convicted to finally start reading and still it took me until the following Saturday to even pull one of my four Bibles off my bookshelf (ironic how many Bibles I have even here with me in the D.R. when I didn’t even actually read them). During the week I had been talking with a friend of mine and she had mentioned a verse from James. I don’t remember the context or even the particular verse but when I opened my Bible I thought maybe God wants me in James, so that’s where I started and immediately I was overwhelmed with how directly God was speaking to me through it. That Saturday I read three chapters. In James 3:1 it says, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” I thought about the position of ministry God put me in and was broken by the disservice I have done trying to lead teenagers into the light while walking in darkness.

That night I woke up around two o’clock in the morning. I was exhausted but for whatever reason could not fall back asleep. I started thinking about the stories I had heard people share about God waking them up in the middle of the night and thought, ‘Is that what this is?’ I started praying and I wasn’t honestly even sure what to pray about. Looking back and knowing what He did that next day I understand that He wanted to have my full attention. After one day of being in the Word I was already hearing Him in new ways.

The next day I read James chapters 4 and 5. I got to church that morning and again our Pastor was speaking out of Acts but this time the message ended up being about confession. As he was speaking he put a passage from James 5 on the screen (“ironic” how I had read it just that morning). Part of the passage read “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” (James 5:16) I remember thinking and praying: ‘Okay God, I hear you, I know you are asking me to finally stop living a lie, but I’m too weak and prideful. I don’t have the courage to humble myself enough to bring this into the light. Please give me the courage and I will do as you ask.’

After I had prayed this I relaxed and thought, ‘Alright, I’m going to let God work that out in my heart, wait for the courage and then I’ll do something about it.’ Immediately after I had thought that our Pastor said, ‘I will just challenge you to find someone you trust and confess to them by the end of the day.’ What? Turns out that when you start listening, you start hearing Him. That doesn’t mean you’re always going to like what He says. After church I was a mess. My stomach was in knots and I was terrified. How was I supposed to tell someone that I’d been lying and hiding for years? But, He had made it clear that is what He wanted me to do. That day I spoke to a close friend and I let her see through all of the lies that I had been spinning. I could not believe the freedom and healing that simply talking to her brought me. It was then that I decided I was done walking in darkness because I had tasted the light and couldn’t turn back.

From that God continued to show me things, line up scripture for me to read and just spoke to me in a way that I had never experienced before because I had not been listening. Up to that point I had never been baptized. I had always been afraid of baptism because I knew that I didn’t truly have a relationship with Christ. I knew that being baptized would mean that I had to actually choose to live the life rather than just act it out and I was not ready. That Sunday I realized that for the first time I truly wanted to be baptized. I wanted the concrete representation of a rebirth in Him, but I was afraid. Being baptized meant not only sharing how God was working in my life with one close friend, but in front of the entire church, to the whole Body. It meant humbling myself enough to say to the students and staff I work with every day, ‘Hey guys, I’ve been lying to you.’ I was afraid of what people would think of me, but I knew God was asking me to do it. I didn’t know it at the time, but as excited, as I’m sure He is to have His daughter back, He was going to use my obedience to do so much more for His Kingdom.

I spoke with my Pastor and the following Sunday, March 26^th, 2017, I shared with my church how God was moving in me, I confessed to them the lies that I had told them, and I was baptized.  Person after person congratulated me, hugged me, and cried with me because finally after years of pretending, He saved me. I spent years knowing of Him, but now I truly know Him. And the sweetest and most humbling thing is that He’s showed me how He’s already begun to use this story in the lives of people around me. That He’s allowed me to be a part of that absolutely blows my mind. This is how God moves; this is how He works. One simple step of obedience and He moves mountains in our favor. He’s released me from the chains that have bound me and now I get to start this journey with Him in complete freedom.

I keep trying to think of a good way to wrap this up, but nothing comes to mind because the story isn’t done. It’s only begun to be written and I can’t wait to see what He does next.

In Him,

Steph