Speaker 1: All right, thanks, roderick.
Speaker 1: Well, thank y'all for letting me come up here and speak.
Speaker 1: It's the first time I've done this in a very, very, very long time.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that says that I just haven't done this in a while, or it just means I'm old, but I appreciate it, and this time I will put on my glasses, because I didn't do that last time at FCA and Ian made fun of me afterwards.
Speaker 1: So I want you to.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is a very personal story for me what we're going to discuss.
Speaker 1: Working on me for the last few years, but it's something that started a really long time ago.
Speaker 1: So I want you to look at this first or read this first.
Speaker 1: If you have your Bibles with you, turn to 1 Peter, 2, 9 through 10.
Speaker 1: I want you to think about this first or read this first.
Speaker 1: If you have your Bibles with you, turn to 1 Peter, 2, 9 through 10.
Speaker 1: I want you to think about this first.
Speaker 1: It says you're a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
Speaker 1: Those things don't happen like in a blink of an eye or in the snap of a finger.
Speaker 1: That's something that takes a really long time to happen.
Speaker 1: That's generations of people that God has called to himself.
Speaker 1: It's using and he's used other people to also proclaim that truth and draw more people in, and I think that's a huge, amazing thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine seeing a genealogy chart of the beginning of God, starting that until now, and every Christ child is on that list?
Speaker 1: I mean that'd be amazing to see, and I know the Bible has a ton in it, but that's just a drop of who all has joined the story that God has started.
Speaker 1: Then it says God calls you out of darkness, away from your sin, asking you to come, leave the sin and become a member of his family.
Speaker 1: You were dead in sin.
Speaker 1: You deserve death, and he sent his son to pay your debt instead of punishing you.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine committing the worst sin?
Speaker 1: Think about maybe the worst sin you can think of.
Speaker 1: I know you've probably some of you seen the criminal shows where there's some mass murder or whatever.
Speaker 1: He's put up on trial.
Speaker 1: Somebody comes up and goes, hey, I forgive you on um try.
Speaker 1: Somebody comes up and goes, hey, I forgive you, I'm going to give my son to take your place.
Speaker 1: You can put him to death.
Speaker 1: I'm not only going to do that, but I'm also going to take you.
Speaker 1: Take you home with me, I'm going to adopt you and I'm going to give you all the inheritance that I would have given him.
Speaker 1: And the inheritance is something beyond amazing, like just think of I don't know what the inerrance nowadays would be considered amazing, but it's beyond that because it's talking about heaven.
Speaker 1: It's eternal life with him.
Speaker 1: I mean, think of that.
Speaker 1: Someone does that.
Speaker 1: I mean I can't even comprehend that, other than what I know God does for me.
Speaker 1: But what I want to know is there's another part of this.
Speaker 1: It says.
Speaker 1: Then it says we are chosen.
Speaker 1: Then it says we are chosen to do something.
Speaker 1: It says to proclaim the excellence of him who called us out of darkness and into the marvelous light.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think if anybody did one of those things, or even something even smaller than that, would we not be going around shouting that to everybody we know and proclaiming his excellence?
Speaker 1: I don't think happens a lot, or at least not as much as it should be.
Speaker 1: What are some things that you know of that get proclaimed in life?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's like hey, we're going to college here, I got in, or I got this scholarship.
Speaker 1: Or, as I'm going to explain.
Speaker 1: I recently had a son get well, he got married recently, but about a year ago he got engagement, was proclaimed to everybody.
Speaker 1: There was a ring put on a finger that was shown to so many people.
Speaker 1: It was not hidden, it was right there.
Speaker 1: There were details that were talked about.
Speaker 1: There was love that it was exuding out of my son and his future wife.
Speaker 1: All of the families were excited and anytime you mentioned, hey, I hear Will's engaged.
Speaker 1: Was there not like all this story and all these questions we could answer?
Speaker 1: And we were excited and we told all the people.
Speaker 1: There were pictures on Instagram and Facebook and you know all the parties that happened before that.
Speaker 1: So I want you to take that and then change that and go.
Speaker 1: How is it that we have something as amazing as God's story?
Speaker 1: He's pulled us out of this.
Speaker 1: Not only did he create the universe, but he then sent his son to die for us and for some reason, we're not proclaiming that in the same way.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to tell you a personal story.
Speaker 1: When I was three, my parents, my dad, got saved in Germany.
Speaker 1: My mom rededicated her life.
Speaker 1: She thought she had been a Christian her whole life, but she hadn't really been walking with the Lord.
Speaker 1: Well, when I was three, apparently, their salvation was so big and so strong and so memorable in my life.
Speaker 1: My mom said that I sat out on the porch of our house in Germany and I would preach to all the neighbors and say you need to love Jesus.
Speaker 1: Jesus loves you so much, he died for your sins.
Speaker 1: Nobody was able to get by without hearing that.
Speaker 1: So there I was at three, then at eight, in a service in San Antonio, texas.
Speaker 1: My dad was a pastor and I remember sitting there and I heard a testimony of someone and it resonated so much with me.
Speaker 1: I knew my sin as an eight-year-old was so big and so heavy and I felt so burdened that I knew I needed Jesus, not because I loved him anymore, but because I needed him to pay for my sins.
Speaker 1: And you're thinking you're an eight-year-old, right?
Speaker 1: What kind of big sins does an eight-year-old have?
Speaker 1: And that's probably what I eventually thought.
Speaker 1: But right then I walked that aisle and I knew that it was amazing and I cried and I smiled and it was tears of joy as I got baptized and I told all my friends at school, I told all my friends at church.
Speaker 1: They came to watch me get baptized.
Speaker 1: I probably carried on and told a little while longer.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm sure as an eight-year-old you're willing to tell a few people, and I remember, I think I even told my teachers.
Speaker 1: Well, at some point, being raised in a Baptist church in San Antonio and hearing all the testimonies all the time that were so convicting and powerful, I somehow tucked my story away and decided I wasn't good enough to share the gospel.
Speaker 1: I decided that my story wasn't big enough.
Speaker 1: I decided my story was not exciting enough and I decided that, hey, you know what, maybe I didn't need to share it anymore.
Speaker 1: Okay, just like that engagement.
Speaker 1: What would happen if, once the engagement happened, they told nobody?
Speaker 1: What if the ring came off the finger?
Speaker 1: What if, let's say, all the details maybe were pushed off, maybe nobody was told they were getting married?
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you kind of doubt the relationship?
Speaker 1: Would you doubt that it existed?
Speaker 1: Would you doubt that maybe they probably shouldn't get married If they're not willing to share and exchange the information that they have and how much they love each other?
Speaker 1: I would be concerned If I had seen that with my son and his future wife.
Speaker 1: I would have probably said something.
Speaker 1: So here we are with our testimony and we sit on it and we put it in a drawer and decide it's not important enough to talk about.
Speaker 1: So I know that sounds silly about not wanting to share it, but I did.
Speaker 1: I didn't understand that my story was the same story as everyone else's story, same as your story and anybody else in this room.
Speaker 1: Our stories are all the same.
Speaker 1: We're dead in our sin, we are destined for punishment, and yet God came, sent his son and he died for us.
Speaker 1: So our punishment, our story, all looks the same.
Speaker 1: However, when God replaces that, it then changes.
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 1: That's where it changes.
Speaker 1: It's still the same.
Speaker 1: It may look different, the details might look a little different mine than yours, maybe God saved you from a sin that had greater consequences at the time, but our stories are the same.
Speaker 1: So, to remind me that we are saved, we have the same amazing story of salvation and God is using our stories to weave his big story and I pray that tonight that you'll kind of think more about your story and whether or not you're allowing God to use you in his that he's creating.
Speaker 1: So there are other reasons why we don't share our testimony as well.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's because we're like, hey, do we just share the day we got saved?
Speaker 1: No, we can also share that God continues to mold and change us as we submit to the power of the Holy Spirit that he gives us.
Speaker 1: We may have allowed years of life to pass us by not acknowledging that God has been there and seen us through portions of our lives, kind of like an ungrateful child.
Speaker 1: When we ask for Christmas gifts, we get them, we open them and we walk away.
Speaker 1: God is there with us in our difficult times, in our struggles, and sometimes we just forget to see it, acknowledge it or even recognize it.
Speaker 1: So that's one reason we forget to share a testimony is because we compare.
Speaker 1: Second is sometimes we go through some really tough times.
Speaker 1: So last year I was struggling to see God's goodness in my life I'm going to try not to cry, sorry.
Speaker 1: I naturally do that, but hopefully I won't tonight and I began to worry, I doubted and I complained.
Speaker 1: There are some of you in here that probably heard a little bit of it.
Speaker 1: At that time I wondered if God had anything good for my future.
Speaker 1: Did I know I was going to heaven?
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 1: So I started reading the Bible recap and I was in the Old Testament and I kept noticing that God had called his people constantly to remember what he had done and things that only he could do, over and over again I mean David in the Psalms it was like God, I know you can do this, I don't see you doing this, I only see bad.
Speaker 1: But, god, I'm going to praise your name and then, over and over, god, you did this.
Speaker 1: Now, I don't see it.
Speaker 1: I know you can, I will praise your name.
Speaker 1: And I saw that over and over and I was like why?
Speaker 1: Well, it kind of keeps going as you go through Israel and you see that God tells them to do that, so that what, they won't grumble, they won't walk away from him, they won't leave him for other gods and for many other reasons, some of which I was doing at the time, I didn't leave him, but I did grumble.
Speaker 1: So to keep my eyes on him and instead of my circumstances, I began to write down as many different ways I saw God's character in the Bible and then, as I kept going, god kind of prompted me to go.
Speaker 1: I need you to remember all the things I've done in your life, I need you to count them, I need you to write them down one by one.
Speaker 1: So I went back and I started as far back as I could remember and these are just a few of the things that I wrote down.
Speaker 1: Before I was born, the doctor told my mom that I was not.
Speaker 1: She was not pregnant.
Speaker 1: At DNC have it all scraped out, that the infection should be taken away.
Speaker 1: And she was not pregnant.
Speaker 1: And my dad was like you need to go have it done.
Speaker 1: You need to do it, you need to listen to the doctor.
Speaker 1: My mom was like I think you're pregnant.
Speaker 1: I think I'm pregnant.
Speaker 1: Yes, she was.
Speaker 1: I was born six months later, so that was one.
Speaker 1: My mom, even though she wasn't walking with the Lord at the time, named me Andrea Christian.
Speaker 1: Andrea means godly woman, christian means Christ follower.
Speaker 1: Then after that, I got saved at a really young age.
Speaker 1: I know that is not possible with everybody.
Speaker 1: Not everybody comes to faith early but my life at 10 years old took a huge change.
Speaker 1: My dad was diagnosed with bipolar.
Speaker 1: He almost passed away due to some serious mental health and God knew that I needed to be so strong in my faith before I got there.
Speaker 1: So I would not turn away, and it was for my mom's help too.
Speaker 1: I think the foundation of the people around me also pulled me through, not just mentally but physically.
Speaker 1: God met my needs when my dad could not, when my mom could not have a job.
Speaker 1: People provided a place to live, people provided food, people provided a place to stay.
Speaker 1: So it was not just me, it was not just God, it was God even using the people around me.
Speaker 1: God provided women mentors in my life.
Speaker 1: He took away some opportunities that I thought would have led me down a hill that would have taken me into someplace very bad.
Speaker 1: I thought it was bad at the time, but it was a good thing that it happened.
Speaker 1: God brought me a husband that jumped through hoops for a dad, that put all sorts of prerequisites on marrying me, and he did every single one of them.
Speaker 1: I would say find a husband like that, girls, if you can, because that means they're going to stick with you.
Speaker 1: Let God.
Speaker 1: I have six amazing children I am blessed to love and care for.
Speaker 1: He brought me to FBC Bernie in 1998, and I'm still here.
Speaker 1: This is also a part of my family.
Speaker 1: He brought me through COVID and at home with my mom as she passed away.
Speaker 1: So I know COVID was a horrible time, but he allowed me to be in her home when working from there in order to spend time with her.
Speaker 1: He has given me each one of you that's in this room.
Speaker 1: Your encouraging smiles on Wednesdays are amazing.
Speaker 1: This job has been amazing, and these are all things that I could not have provided for myself.
Speaker 1: These are all things that God has put in my path.
Speaker 1: So over the past year, god allowed me to use each one of these things to remind myself of his character.
Speaker 1: When I struggled because my future seemed unsure and I wondered if God did have a good plan for me, I began to tell myself everything I knew he did for me and what he had done in the Bible, and then I would remind myself that, ultimately, part that gift is still being with him in heaven.
Speaker 1: I still have the best gift of eternal life.
Speaker 1: So my outlook would change to be seeing everything God did this year as a bonus gift and not an expectation.
Speaker 1: It wasn't easy and his plans weren't always what I thought they would turn out to be, but they were used for my family's good and they were used to build our character.
Speaker 1: It was all about our lives, pointing us back to God and not ourselves.
Speaker 1: Now there's another thing that keeps us from sharing our testimony, and that's sin.
Speaker 1: And this is not one I wanted to put on the list, because who wants to say, hey, god, thank you for sending your son and dying for that sin, forgiving it?
Speaker 1: And now I'm going to walk back.
Speaker 1: I mean, how many of us have heard that verse about a dog returning to vomit?
Speaker 1: And that is what God says it is, and that's disgusting, but we do it.
Speaker 1: Our sin natures are really strong.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is, sometimes the sin is something as stupid as gossip, selfishness or just pride.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we don't even want to share our testimony because of pride.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what it was for me when I thought my testimony was not good enough.
Speaker 1: So we need to have our hearts ready to constantly be asking God to change our hearts, to be constantly showing us where that sin is in our lives and how to get it out.
Speaker 1: So how do we counteract these deterrents?
Speaker 1: I want to encourage you first.
Speaker 1: I know there are some of you in this room that probably have not even joined this story.
Speaker 1: You have not allowed God to write you into his story.
Speaker 1: You have not swapped your punishment for his inheritance.
Speaker 1: And I want to tell you don't wait.
Speaker 1: If you can do it when you're younger and you can really see him in your life, don't wait.
Speaker 1: It has brought me through the biggest trials and it has held me stronger, even when I was struggling.
Speaker 1: And I know that that seems stupid, that you would go, but, god, I thought your life would be so much better.
Speaker 1: No, but you're not going to do it alone.
Speaker 1: So don't wait, because guess what?
Speaker 1: That little eight-year-old girl, her testimony that she thought was so simple, it definitely changed.
Speaker 1: I'm now 48, and there's a lot more that happened between eight and 48.
Speaker 1: So now I'm going to talk to you, who have joined the story and are allowing God to write you into his.
Speaker 1: Are you too embarrassed about what people will think?
Speaker 1: Why have you quit proclaiming his name?
Speaker 1: Do you think you have nothing to share?
Speaker 1: I want to tell you you do.
Speaker 1: It may not be as exciting as some movie, or it may not be something important.
Speaker 1: It could change someone's life.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that you're going to walk up to somebody and you're going to tell them hey, guess what?
Speaker 1: I got saved on this day.
Speaker 1: And God saved my soul and say come, find me if you have any questions.
Speaker 1: That's not what it looks like it might sometimes.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it won't, but in general that's not how that happens.
Speaker 1: As you allow God to show you in response to what you go through and you send to listen and hear other people's lives and their stories, you will be able to talk to them, listen to them, share with them, help them and, when they see that, they will see Christ in you.
Speaker 1: So are you loving the people around you?
Speaker 1: Are you being an example to the teachers, the family members, the friends that maybe?
Speaker 1: I know that seems silly because I had this conversation with some middle schoolers recently that their teachers, even though they're a lot older than them some are not saved, so that means their light might be the only one that their teachers will see.
Speaker 1: If you don't know enough about scripture and how to encourage yourself or to encourage others, get in and dig deep and start preaching to yourself as well as to others.
Speaker 1: I would tell you to keep digging in and not be discouraged.
Speaker 1: Ask God to give you the opportunities to share, because he will, because listening to them can take the focus off of you and your disappointments and your struggles and put them somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And I will tell you, this past year there were a couple of people that were also struggling and I would contact them and the moment I would call them and say, hey, how are you doing?
Speaker 1: It made the light, the burden that was on my heart feel so much lighter, even though none of us were in a different situation at that moment.
Speaker 1: It just made us both feel so much better to be like well, how are you doing, I'm doing this, and it just.
Speaker 1: We were like okay, we can now take another day.
Speaker 1: If you're struggling with the sin, confess it and run back to Christ.
Speaker 1: He will restore it.
Speaker 1: He has promised to do so.
Speaker 1: Don't let Satan distract you, because one of the biggest things that he can do is just let you be neutral.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many of you have seen those characters in a movie where you're like well, that character was pointless.
Speaker 1: Well, guess what?
Speaker 1: That's maybe the easiest thing for Satan to do.
Speaker 1: It's not to discourage you, it's not to make you do something bad, it's just to make you just inefficient and do nothing at all.
Speaker 1: So, stay an essential character in God's story by letting him use you.
Speaker 1: I want to say I'm going to leave you with this verse.
Speaker 1: It's 2 Corinthians 4.15.
Speaker 1: I want to say I'm going to leave you with this verse.
Speaker 1: It's 2 Corinthians 4.15.
Speaker 1: For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God.
Speaker 1: We should be pointing people back to God.
Speaker 1: So I pray that right now, today, you will go.
Speaker 1: What is my story?
Speaker 1: How has God written me into his great, grand story?
Speaker 1: And I know it may feel like a little blip in the giant scheme of things, but it's super important.
Speaker 1: Think of all the people you come in contact with in this life.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to leave you with this.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead and pray and then we're going to be dismissed to our groups.
Speaker 1: But if you have not allowed God to write you into his story, please talk to someone, please have a conversation, whether it's a leader, whether it's me, if you want to wait and talk to Garrett when he gets back, but I would not put that off.
Speaker 1: Let's bow our heads.
Speaker 1: Dear Lord, I just thank you.
Speaker 1: I thank you for your salvation.
Speaker 1: I thank you that you have given us this gift that we do not owe, that we do not deserve, but that we need.
Speaker 1: I thank you that you did it for us.
Speaker 1: And even when we turn back from what we shouldn't do and go back to what we previously did, lord, you forgive us.
Speaker 1: Lord, I pray that we would see your potential for what is out there, for the friends that we see, the family and the people who need you, and, lord, that we would proclaim, we would proclaim your name and allow you to write our story.