The congregation at LECC is spending the summer taking tests from James, the brother of Jesus, who wrote to Christians of his day to instruct them in Godly living. Our members have testified how God has taken their messes and turned them into messages about faith, wisdom, addictions, and the language we use.
This past Sunday we explored how submitting to the world can damage our relationship with God.
James 4: 4-5 asks, “Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God?” Sierra, who now lives with her husband Kamarean in Lawton, OK, testified about running away from her relationship with God and struggling to regain it.
Sierra was raised in the church by parents who prayed, read the Bible, and taught their children to lead kind, loving, moral lives. When she was in sixth grade, she began wondering if all she’d learned about God from them and from the church was really true. She kept her doubts to herself because she said, “There was so much judgment in that church, I was afraid to tell anyone.”
For seven years she prayed for hours trying to understand the true essence of God. “I had a deceptive image of who God was,” she confessed. “I pictured Him as this mean, old guy up there, like a traffic cop—clicking us for all our sins. I thought, can’t we just be good people and still get to heaven?” She drifted further away.
After she went off to college in Tennessee on a cheerleading scholarship, she got into drinking and partying, started experimenting with mystical religions and one day a bad thing happened: she was physically and sexually assaulted.
“It broke me,” she said. “I tried reaching out to get help, but it didn’t go anywhere.” Friends tried to help, but mainly with more drinking, partying, and now doing party drugs. Afraid of men, she started openly dating women. “I felt I’d fallen absolutely flat on my face, as far away from God as I’d ever been.”
When she came back to Eufaula for her brother’s wedding, she was struck by the joy and love that radiated from the minister who sat down next to her and her girlfriend at the time. Sierra recalled, “I don’t know what this man has,” she told herself, “but I know I need whatever he has. I thought he was going to shove Jesus down my throat, but he didn’t. He radiated kindness. Looking back now, I think about how in that moment, I didn’t need another Bible story about Jesus, I needed to encounter the love of Jesus. That is what began the break-through of my walk back to God.”
Back in Tennessee, she wrote me a long, long text that began weeks of back-and-forth conversations. This time of wrestling with her questions, her faith, and her worldly lifestyle concluded with her surrender. She texted that she’d broken off everything else, given up that lifestyle, and was coming home to be baptized. Sierra mentioned that after her baptism, she heard God’s voice for the first time in her life. The voice said, “Sierra, I forgive you.” And she cried with utter joy.
A funny side note to this story is that during this time I’d also been praying for God to send someone to our church who knew how to use the new sound tech equipment we’d installed during COVID renovations. Amazingly, Sierra did! In all of our discussions, she’d never mentioned what she studied in college. She had been learning computer technology graphics and design. So, she served as our competent technician for two years and trained others to replace her when she left.
Sierra’s old life before Jesus is living proof that “everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” Sierra now lives wholeheartedly for God! She has graduated college with her master’s degree and will become a certified counselor. God is using her story to help and minister to others. And her husband, Kamarean, has gone back to school to be a Pastor. What a testimony. It’s amazing how God works to completely transform our lives when we choose Him.
We’ll have another inspiring testimony next Sunday and hope you’ll come to hear it at 415897 Highway 9, Eufaula. Small group Bible study starts at 10 a.m. and worship at 11 a.m.
God Bless You!
Jeremy Little, Minister.
