El Roi - God Who Sees. Sarah.

Sarah and I went to high school together, and she's someone who has made a lasting impact on my life. We went to a conservative, private Christian school. We had to take a lot of religion classes and went to chapel, but among all of that, there was just something about Sarah that was different than those things. Something more real, raw, and attainable. Sarah's life isn't easy, and she's never tried to hide that. But she never stops going. She keeps fighting and holding onto Jesus for dear life. And she praises Him through it all. When I became more fed up with religion and starting seeking a relationship with Jesus, Sarah shone even brighter in my eyes. In Sarah's story, she says "At least I hope I shone. I thought I shone." Sarah - you shone. You shone brighter than anyone. And you continue to shine your light brighter and brighter. 

               Testimony is a funny thing. Where does the story really start and where does it really end? Only God truly knows and sees the unseen, the things happening backstage during the production of our lives. So as far as I know my story starts when I was born. Mainly with who my parents are. (Don’t worry, I’ll try not to give you my whole life story.)

                 My mom was only a Christian for about five years before I was born. But after talking with her, you’d think she’s been doing this all her life. One of the strongest Christians I know, she raised me on Bible reading and prayers, on writing out appropriate Bible verses 5 to 20 times instead of time-outs for punishment, on talking about God openly and all the time. It is because of my mom (and probably God helping her a lot) that I can say I was raised in a Christian home.

                Then there’s my dad. I don’t really know how to explain him. He is mentally and emotionally unstable, crazy and kinda creepy. Growing up, I never felt quite comfortable around him, and I had good reason. I don’t want to go into specific detail, or even have enough room to, so just trust me on this one. Even now I’m still discovering unresolved trauma on my heart due to his actions. He finally left us in fourth grade after faking his own suicide (yes, I told you he was crazy). And this is where my story begins.

                In fifth grade, my father filed for divorce (which relieved me) and my best friend allowed another girl to shut me out of our friendship (which devastated me). I lost what little of a father I had, and I lost my best friend ever. I lost my self-confidence, my hope, my joy, my muchness, if you will for all you Alice in Wonderland fans. I lost myself. And no I’m not exaggerating. I can’t even begin to count how many times I came home and cried after school from fifth grade to eighth grade. My one best friend, while we still hung out together, was completely caught up in this new friend. Our friendship was never the same after that year. Because of the divorce, this was a time when I needed my best friend the most, and this was the beginning of the time I had her the least. I had never felt so alone in my life.

                The divorce took from fifth grade until eighth grade because Jeff (my father) was fighting for visitation rights with me and my brother. At the time, I was terrified of him and his emotional abuse that he had done to both of us. But the multiple counselors and lawyers we were forced to see told us that we were being “mean” and “didn’t we see how much pain our father was in” and “he’s our father, we have to see him.” Even my brother’s and my lawyer told us things like this. Jeff, skilled in the art of making himself the victim, had left me and my brother with no allies, except my mother and her lawyer. In eighth grade, we were forced to see Jeff in a safe house every few weeks for a couple of hours. On those mornings I was so upset I couldn’t eat, and often, I would have a stomachache the rest of the day. Finally these stopped when the police officer and lead counselor there told the judge to stop the visits because they had never seen a parent work so hard to get a rouse out of his kids.

                These four years were the worst of my life. The only person I could completely lean on and talk to about any of it was my mother. And she always turned me back to God. She taught me about Him and His promises, and I learned to lean on Him through those times. But while I sort of had my own relationship with Him, I believe much of it was through my mother and through my head. But knowing God is a heart issue. And I think I was protecting my broken heart too much at that time to truly begin to know God. And because of my father, I probably wasn’t even sure I wanted to know God. So I knew all the answers, and I rehearsed all the lines (test for true Tenth Avenue North fans here) but it wasn’t quite in my heart. And I still believed no one cared or even saw me. I thought if I died, no one in school would notice.

                This was where I was coming into high school. I believed I was unwelcome, unwanted, unloved, unbeautiful, un-everything good in the world. I had seen high school as a chance to start over and make new friends, but all my old wounds were still open and throbbing, so while I had some friends, I never felt super close to any of them the first two years of high school.  I believe pretty much all of that was my fault because I was too hurt to let anyone close because I didn’t want anyone to stab me in the back again, because honestly, that’s what it had felt like in fifth grade (sorry for the super run on sentence). There were multiple times the first two years of high school where I honestly hated my life and cried myself to sleep. But one of my spiritual gifts is faith, and so there was some part of me that believed something, sometime, would change. And it did.

                The summer before junior year we changed churches and I started attending the youth group Wednesday nights. There was a guy there that I thought was super cute, and so I mainly went to see him (oh how young and foolish I was). But maybe God knew that was the only way to get me there. The teens there worshiped in ways I had never, ever seen before. They held their hands up to God and knelt down on the ground and cried and jumped and ran with joy during worship. And my spirit wanted that. This was how I was made to worship. At first I was too afraid and self-conscious. I never wanted to worship that way to look good, but at the beginning all I could think of was how I looked. So I stood in the back. But the more I went, thanks to that guy, the more I began to feel God’s presence. And the youth pastor’s sermons were amazing! They were full of hope and grace and joy. So many sermons today are about how we should be acting, but why would we ever want to follow God’s commands until we understand His love for us, and His many rewards for us. This was what I was hearing. I wanted that relationship with Him, not just the religion. And so I began to fall in love with Jesus and fall in love with worshiping Him. Before this summer, I could only ever read the Gospels and some stories in the Old Testament without getting bored, but that summer I wanted to read it all. I wanted to soak up every word He has ever said. I started enjoying praying and listening for and learning His voice.

                Then I began to notice the changes in me. During worship I would be so at peace, which was something I was not used to because I considered myself a worrier. So I began to test myself. During worship I would actually try to worry. And I couldn’t. It was literally impossible for me to worry when I was worshipping in the presence of God. I began to have more hope, hope of a life I wanted, and joy, joy to wake up in the morning and live.

                School began and I still didn’t feel like I had a lot of friends. But that began to change. I had a new boldness in me, a new confidence. Now, I wasn’t completely healed. Even at graduation, I still felt like so many of my peers were “better” than me. But it was a step, and it’s been a process. I opened myself up to new opportunities and found my place on the stage. Before, I had thought nobody ever saw me, but now I was having lead roles in plays and dancing parts in musicals, and I shone. (At least I hope I shone. I thought I shone.) And this new boldness wasn’t just for myself. It was for God. I became bold for Him. Not as much as I wish I had been. And honestly, looking back I don’t even remember many times that I was bold for Him, except when I worshiped freely among many stone-faced peers in chapel. But my inner self had changed and begun the healing process, and that was what mattered.

                That summer, I began to know the heart of God. My heart was molded to His heart. A relationship with God isn’t something we can ever fully comprehend. Like I said, knowing God is a heart issue. That doesn’t mean He doesn’t want us to use our brains and reason and logicify (yes I made that word up, and I happen to love it) but I believe that first coming to know God is in your heart. And when your heart has been traumatized, it puts up walls that often shut out God. But He pushed through to mine and has been healing it ever since that summer.

                Looking back I can see how God has taken care of me. During my junior high years, while my mom was starting her house cleaning business, she often didn’t know how she was going to buy groceries. But every time that happened, people would anonymously give us gift cards for grocery stores. And then when my mom had enough money again, they would stop coming. And she never told anyone when she was worried about money. I also found out that people were paying for my private school. If whoever it was hadn’t been, I would have never been able to go to school at Trinity and Concordia. I am so grateful for those people who allowed God to work through them. And even now He continues to provide for me, in a way my father should have but never did.

                So like I said, testimony is a funny thing. No one’s testimony ever really ends. Mine certainly hasn’t. There have been new heartbreaks and sins and wounds I’ve had to deal with since that summer. Many more stories I could share. I’ve even been discovering wounds from my father and former best friend that still haven’t healed. I still cry for them. But it is the cry of a daughter nestled safely in her Father’s (and Best Friend’s) arms. Now I don’t just know God, I know God. And I am completely and irrevocably in love with Him. He is a God who always sees you and always, always loves you.

Erika.

       I've only known Erika for a few short months, but after spending a month with her in Kenya, she has quickly become one of my closest friends. Erika is just the coolest. She's the only person I know who has an ocarina and can play it. She's the only person who has taken contacts directly of their eyes and rubbed them on my face. She's always laughing, but can have a serious conversation at a moment's notice. Erika is full of JOY. She recognizes her brokenness and her life is an expression of thankfulness for Jesus' redemption. She's been radically changed, and Jesus is continuing to use her to change people. Erika is SO teachable, full of compassion, and the most fun and refreshing person to be around. I LOVE this lady, and I'm so glad you get to step inside her mind.

            Anger, hatred, misery, depression and resentment were just a few of the many strong emotions I was hiding under my mask of indifference and passiveness. I lived every moment spontaneously; recklessly burning my way through life, not even knowing how broken I was. Any money that I had I spent on drugs or alcohol, desperately searching for relief; for an escape from the treacherous pain I had bottled within me. I would do anything for that temporary escape from reality. My parents’ divorce had caused tremendous amounts of pain and brokenness in my life, and my relationship with my mom was nearly nonexistent. My friends had become my family since things were so dysfunctional at home, and I lived off of the shallow relationships that I had with them. I was buried deep within this pit of darkness just two and a half years ago, until a magnificent Savior came to my rescue and turned my life upside-down.

It was late February in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and things had never been worse. I cringed at the thought of returning home, so I spent almost every night of the week at different friends’ houses. I couldn’t stand to be at school while I was sober, so I skipped at least one class every day, which of course had me nearly failing the eleventh grade. One evening, my mother was insisting that I come home and that I was grounded. I wouldn’t tell her where I was and I refused to come home. I called my dad to inform him of my side of the story so that he wouldn’t hear my mom’s side of the story first. He could sense that something was terribly wrong, so he demanded to know where I was so that he could come get me and bring me to his house in Bentonville, Arkansas to stay with him, my step-mother and two siblings for the night. He explained that I didn’t even have to go to school the next day, but that we needed to sort things out. So on the long drive from Fayetteville to Bentonville, I told my dad a censored and extremely mild version of what had been going on in my life. My dad went to Fayetteville High that week and talked to my counselor and the school resource officers. He then found out about the kind of trouble I had been getting into, and the kind of crowd I was hanging around with. Knowing that if I had one more absence I would fail my junior year, he pulled me out of Fayetteville and enrolled me at Bentonville High School.

I was living; literally walking through, my worst and most horrific nightmare on the first day I spent at BHS. Not only were all my best friends that I’d had since elementary school thirty minutes away, but I barely knew two people in the entire school of 3,600 students. I felt betrayed, mistreated and like an alien from a planet that was light years away. My despair was overwhelming, yet still; I tucked it away, hiding my true feelings from everyone else. For the first two weeks at my dad’s house, everything was normal. But one night, my dad read the text messages on my phone and found out just how far down a dark path I had already gone, and how deeply lost I was. From that point on, I had no phone, no Facebook, no MySpace (ha), no email, no contact whatsoever with the friends from my past.

Before I became that person that is so unrecognizable to me now, I had a faint relationship with God up until my ninth grade year, when things started to fall apart. But God never left me. God never forgot about me. God had never once stopped trying to win my heart over. I had ignored Him for such a long time, so God finally picked me up by the neck and shook me until I listened. He stripped me of every single thing that had meaning to me, begging me to choose Him. My father had heard of a program called Celebrate Recovery at our church, and he knew that there was a program for hurting teens called the Landing. He took me there on the Friday after he had taken away nearly every freedom I had.

The Landing has been the outlet that God used to transform me. I remember my first night there so clearly; during worship I was trying to sing the words, but as I sang, God tugged at my heart harder and harder. Finally, I didn’t have the strength to hold in my cries anymore. I let out all the pain and hurt that I had bottled up, and God took it all, freeing me, relieving me of the weight that had crushed down on my shoulders for so many years. In that moment, God revived me, for I had been the living dead for so long. That night was my breaking point, the time at which I finally turned to God for comfort and healing rather than drugs or alcohol. I ran to God, and He was waiting there for me, His arms wide open and His loving heart ready to pour into my cold and empty heart. I walked out of the Landing that night with a smile across my face. I felt joy; true, real and marvelous joy, for the first time in my life.

Fast-forward two and a half years and you see a completely transformed human being. You would not recognize me now if you saw who I was just a few years ago. Back then, I lived as though relationship with Jesus was some fairytale to hope for but never attained. How wrong I was. Jesus is REAL. He is ALIVE and with me every second, always pursuing and chasing after me. He freely offers me His true and abundant life of fulfillment and joy. Because of the Holy Spirit living inside me, I have constant and eternal access to the God of the universe. Jesus freely offers me intimacy with Him. He requires me to do nothing but seek Him; to know, believe and walk in His truth; to walk with Him. He chose to reveal this to me! And He didn’t choose to reveal this to me because I’m a “good person,” He chose to save me and show this to me when I was in the depth of my sin.

...ME! Two years ago, He chose to reveal these beautiful things to ME! The selfish druggie/alcoholic that did nothing but wreak havoc any place she went. God does not pick His favorites. And he most definitely does not choose (in the world’s eyes) the strongest, smartest, most popular or most beautiful. He chooses (in the world’s eyes) the weakest, the below average, the smallest, most pitiful and most lost. I am the prime example of this. Why? Because in my weakness, He is MADE STRONG! His greatness, His beauty and His love is glorified in my life because I was so lost in darkness, and now His light beams and pours out from my life!

God has renewed my life and changed my heart in every way. He has healed me (and is continually healing me) from so many wounds and He teaches me something new every day. I passed my junior year and graduated from Bentonville High School with good grades, and I am now a sophomore in college. God has blessed me with so many new and wonderful friends and I now have remarkable relationships with my family members. The road has not been easy, and sometimes I still feel like my world is crumbling. But because of what Jesus has done for me, I experience His abundant life every day! And God is always there; ready to catch and embrace me with loving arms when I’m hurting. I simply cannot express in words how very grateful I am for the miraculous work that God has done in me and in my life. ‘Grateful’ seems like such a puny word in the scope of His glory. He has redeemed me from the horrible life that I lived! But I am no more deserving of His love now than I was two years ago. Despite my utter weakness, and despite the mistakes I make every day, He still pours over me His grace, His love, His mercy, His joy and peace. Even in the darkest of times, I never lose hope because of my Savior. I have no fear of death and no guilt in life because His grace covers me no matter what. These are Biblical truths that He has revealed to me over the past few years, and walking in them has given me the greatest freedom I have ever known. Because He died on the Cross to pay the debt that I could never pay, I am free forever, and I get to experience Him in all His fullness every day!

Oh how marvelous He is! The only proper and appropriate response to the marvelous majesty and magnificence of God is to offer my life back up to Him, so that He may be glorified through it! When I look at myself and my life, I can so clearly see the glorious fingerprints of God. I can cheerfully say that my life is forever changed, and it will never be the same!

Hannah.

Hannah and I met a VERY long time ago. She's the friend that I've known the longest. One thing that amazes me at Hannah is how consistent she's been since we met. She's never let her family, friends, or titles define her. She's grown into an independent, free-thinking person. Hannah is super convicting, but not because she pushes her convictions onto people, but because she feels so passionately about things that you can't help but feel the same way about them. I LOVE her heart for people and can't even imagine what she'll do as the Lord continues to increase that love. Step into Hannah's life, but prepare to get rocked.

Hello! My name is Hannah, I am 20 years old and from Ohio! I met Alyssa when she lived here, and we were in a group called Keepers of the Home. If you know Alyssa personally, please ask her about this embarrassing season of our lives.  

It depends who you’re talking to..but my life is kind of far from typical. I used to sum it up like this: I am a pastors/missionaries’ kid, vegetarian, and home schooled. How bad can it get? :] (Thankfully, I am no longer the latter two).

“Community” is a buzz word in the church these days. We have community groups, community projects, community parties. Sadly..that community is usually referring to the group of people on the inside of the church, and not so much the outside..or our actual neighborhoods and places where we spend the majority of our weeks.

When I was 4 years old, my parents decided to move my family of 6 out of our nice home in the ‘burbs into the second-highest crime rated neighborhood in all of Akron (Akron is the 5^th largest city in Ohio, with population around 200,000).  AKA, the ghetto. My dad quit his full-time job as a firefighter and from then forward committed his life to full time “ministry”. (side note- I hate when people use ministry in sentences like that. Haha, because we should ALL be committing our lives to full time ministry..no matter what our career choice is, ministry is a requirement for any believer. But for the purpose of explanation, yes..my dad quit his typical salary paying career job to do strictly gospel work. I am sorry, does that make sense?) We were the only Caucasian family in a neighborhood full of African Americans, Asians, and Latinos. And in case you have never heard of such a thing..America needs missionaries too. My parents’ hearts became so burdened for the inner-city they knew that Jesus was calling them to not just preach at or minister to the poor once a week, but to follow His example and actually live among the poor day in and day out. My dad willingly gave up his entire salary and did not write 1 support letter for nearly 5 years. I was young so it is hard to remember the details, but how could you not recognize there was a God when He was so evident in our lives, and providing SO tangibly for our family? Dinner was served each night by a miracle, because my parents were living completely by faith.

It is shameful that most Americans don’t believe in God because we don’t allow room for God to move, live, and breath. People always talk about how nice it must have been in Jesus’ time to see His miracles; we don’t see them because we don’t need them. We live our lives distant from the intimacy of God and lack opportunities to trust Him, and to allow for Him to show up. What makes my family sad is when people praise us for the choices we have to made. God calls all his people to be living in such intentional ways in their neighborhoods and communities.

Moving into South Akron was a huge step for my family. Because of my parents’ choices my life has been seriously impacted. Thankfully, I never had to go through a negative rebelling season like some PK’s (it often makes sense why that is a stereotype) Before I paint you the wrong picture however- it has been VERY difficult also. Any time your parent is in a leadership role and it feels like the world is watching, there is some unspoken pressure. Not only were we pastors’ kids, but also lived radically different just by our lifestyle. There is no distinction between home and ministry- South Street Ministries is based out of our house (we have grown and now own a building). We have all had to learn to create healthy boundaries and involvement in things outside of the ministry. I’ve never been able to leave my yard without a male with me. I never rode my bike around my neighborhood, and often my friends were not allowed to come over because of where we lived. We left my house for extended periods of time (a couple days and about a month) because my dad and our lives were being threatened.  In context of the big picture, these are very small sacrifices when many people all over the world struggle to survive each day.

I could tell you about a million different stories about how my parents felt “the call”, the prostitutes and drug dealers I know by name because they're my neighbors, the hundreds of families to be evicted, and the absolute worst- going to funerals of children much too young to ever have died. If you would like to know more sometime..if inner city ministry really intrigues you, email me at hecrabbs1@malone.edu. However, those aren’t really my stories to tell. Those are stories you need to experience yourself. There is nothing pretty and glamorous or glorified about them. We often feel the need to try and make sense of ministry, to put numbers and dollar signs on it. There are no easy formulas, But it is through the ashes we find the beauty of Christ to continue on. Obedience to the Lord isn’t always a big pillow fight at a slumber party.  

One of the biggest things I pray you learn from my story is that ministry is wherever you are located. “There is plenty you can do to change the world from your own 50 square miles of beaten path” It doesn’t take the perfect person, let me remind you..God used unlikely people in unlikely places for his Kingdom (Moses, Rahab, Job, just to name a few). I don’t know how old you are, but we 20-somethings get real caught up in trying to figure out what were going to do with our lives, and just what the perfect path is. I think we become so overwhelmed with the intensity of sin and brokenness in the world that we end up settling for simply re-posting the latest social justice issues on our twitter and facebook pages and call it a wrap (Kony 2012 campaign did great things..just be careful as to what you are actually calling service or ministry in your life. We must be willing to sacrifice much more than 4 minutes. ) We begin to learn just how big the world is, and how complicated the problems are that we neglect looking outside our back door, or even worse, we fail to look inwards first and deal with our own crap.

A quote I heard a while back and is constantly driving me is this: “If you don’t need the gospel more than the one you are sharing it with, you ought to not be sharing it”

Let that motivate you to fall in love with Jesus again- to search scripture and know why you love the Lord. The natural overflow from this love should be what grounds you in ministry. Not that new book you read, or inspirational speaker you heard at a conference. Following and serving Christ is about the day in, and day out. We get bored, or tired of conflict and move on. But that is not how Christ called us. Be rooted in community

And don’t you worry. Every word I wrote of this was a starch reminder to myself of how much more I need to grow in Christ.

Couple of plugs..

Check out South Street Ministries on FaceBook or the site: http://www.southstreetministries.org/

Second plug..

Currently my high school youth pastor and wife are adopting their second child from Russia. Adoption is VERY near and dear to my heart- and more importantly, weighs on Gods heart more than you could ever imagine. There are about a zillion scripture verses about it. Anyways, it is very pricey, and they need help from community to make it happen! I started this 1$ campaign..check it out. www.indiegogo.com/HelpAdd1  the idea is for everyone to donate just 1$ (we all have one buck to spare, no matter how poor you are---especially us college students..we spend our money on the dumbest things sometimes) So far there has been an AWESOME response!! I would love to see our goal met, and exceeded before the deadline. Please give, and spread the word. THANK YOU!! J

Walk in the Light friends,

Hannah