A Turn Around

Picture a 19 year old girl, pregnant, unwed and scared to death. She walks into a church which is hard for her to do. She grew up in church, her dad was a pastor for crying out loud. It really was the last place she wanted to be but knew it was where she needed to be. She had dreaded church most of her life, someone was always mad at her dad, mad at her, never ever seemed like a safe place to go and experience love. When you are a pastors kid, church just isn't the same - as much as my parents tried to protect me from that side of it - I knew what was going on and when I didn't know, I tried to figure it out. So, needless to say, church was the last place I wanted to be. But this time, I was no longer the pastors daughter at this church, just a pregnant college girl! What a scene I must have made. But what I found there was a group of ladies and a pastor that loved me anyway! I grew and was taught to study my Bible (precepts) and was discipled by a dear older woman!


13 years later: I walked through those same doors Thursday night only this time to teach a Ladies Night Out the church was having. Talk about a turn around. What an amazing God we serve. He took a bitter, pregnant 19 year old college student and through the change that only Jesus can do in a life, I can now tell of the goodness of the Lord. Jesus tells the man he had healed from a demon in Luke 8:39 to "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you."


I am beginning to see over and over again, in my life and many others, God's story of Redemption. He proves it again and again. He came here to save the lost and the sinners, of which I was the greatest. But He doesn't stop there, He restores our lives and changes us and then we go out and "declare how much God has done for us."