Testimony

Journeys are interesting things.  A journey can certainly be measured by the beginning and ending, but I like to think of mine more as many, many steps – one right after the other – slowly but surely becoming more and more planted and established in what God originally created me for.

I was born as the third child of loving parents and I grew up in a fairly normal, middle-class home.  My parents were Christians and going to church was a regular part of my experience.  At the age of 8 I gave my life to Jesus and was baptized into Him.  Just as a baby doesn’t really comprehend the life it has been born into, I was unaware of the new life that had begun in me – but the first steps had been taken and the journey began.

Over the next 6 years, by childhood steps went in many directions.  Some were wonderful and some were quite painful.  At the age of 15 I found myself face to face with a big mountain: the dilemma of whether or not my journey with Christ would take me into the realm of sacrifice.  One step after another I was faced with choices of standing up for Christ or not.  I was a leader and I understand now that it was very important for me back then to appear as if I had it all together to the people that mattered most to me.  At that time in my life those people were my Christian friends and church family.   I made the hard choices to follow Christ in the face of opposition, but my steps were taking be down a dangerous path of working for acceptance from people and from the God who had saved me – and I didn’t realize it at all!

For the next several years I was very involved in anything “Christian.”  I loved God and I was giving Him time and energy.  I got a lot of praise from my Christian family about the “good choices” that I was making.  I believed that God loved me, but inwardly, as the real questions of life began to surface, I began to see things in my private life that brought shame and I was questioning the reality of God’s love.

After high school, my steps took me 13 hours away from the home and church that I knew and loved as I went off to Bible college.  Early on I became involved in ministry, being young and naïve and thinking I had all the answers.  My freshman year was difficult as I was involved in a very unhealthy dating relationship.  By the time my sophomore year came along Providence had removed me from the relationship, but the emotional scars were not gone.  I began to wonder where the girl had gone who had it all together in high school.  I wasn’t sure where she even was anymore.  On the surface I was still involved in ministry, but inside the wounds were festering.  I didn’t really have an identity at school and I was searching for something but wasn’t sure what it was.  By the middle of my junior year I was engaged and moving south to finish school and marry my high school sweetheart, Marvin, who was a youth minister.  We were married at the end of my junior year and I found myself being a minister’s wife, finishing college and in the midst of many surface relationships.  Here I was again, in a position of leadership and yet on the inside I was really struggling.  For the girl who liked to appear in control, I was walking on shaky ground.

Our marriage was strong because we were friends, but rough at the same time, too.  My husband and I were struggling to relate to one another in the midst of the constantly nagging, type A personalities that we both have.  In addition, we were very young and naïve and trying to learn the roles of ministry life.  Three years into our marriage we were excited at the possibility of having children.  Several months went by,  and – nothing.  A year went by and we were hurt and worried.  I had “given my life” to serving God, so why wouldn’t He give me the one thing I wanted most, a baby?  As the months went by with no conception, I found my steps taking me to places that I never dreamed that I would go:  angry, so angry at God, depressed, isolated emotionally and full of shame, convinced that I didn’t measure up enough for God to give me a baby.

We walked the roads of prayer, anointing with oil, begging, tests, medicine, procedures, insurance issues, surgeries and well wishes - and still, nothing.  All the while I was getting more and more physically challenged with the endometriosis that was plaguing my system.  I would look back at the confident girl that I had been in high school and not believe where I had ended up.  I still was acting like her on the outside but inside I couldn’t even talk to God, much less read the Bible.  If I was in a group of Christians I could pray or do the Christian things.  But when I was alone and I could sense God drawing me to Him, it was like I was in a room all by myself with someone that I was totally angry at, and I could say nothing at all.
During that time I also came face to face with some stark realities about myself.  I wasn’t this perfect Christian girl that I had led everyone to believe.  I had issues.  I realized that I didn’t really care about God’s Word.  I realized that I really didn’t know God’s Word and that I didn’t have a clue how to lead people to God.  I realized there were some sin issues in my life that I had no idea how to deal with, and I came face to face with some hurts from the past that were threatening to undo me.   I also realized some things about God.  I realized that even though I was angry at Him, I knew enough to be true that He was the only way. I knew I really didn’t have anything else to turn to, I just didn’t know how to turn to Him anymore because I really didn’t believe He cared.  Or worse than that, somehow I must have made Him too mad to care.  Or so I thought.

That basic belief, that He was the only way, kept me going, stepping along although my steps were heavy and filled with hurt.  I just wanted a baby.  Everyone was having babies but me.  It didn’t matter what I did, I couldn’t make it happen.  Somehow though, that basic belief allowed me to hear a promise from the Lord one very painful Thanksgiving.  He said, “At this time next year, you will have a baby.”  That was 1990 and 1991 dawned with no pregnancy.  We stepped through many procedures and more surgery and by August there was no baby and no hint of one coming.  I was in despair.  The little bit of faith I had left was almost gone.  And then suddenly God began to show His faithfulness to us and the word He had given.  On Thanksgiving Day our family had a baby shower for us as we celebrated the birth and adoption of our precious daughter, McKenzie, born only 16 days before. 

That was my first real lesson in grace.  I had done nothing to deserve this precious child.  I had been mad at God, barely even speaking to Him, and in an incredibly miraculous way, He gave us the desire of our hearts - a baby.  After years of waiting, we were finally parents.
My steps went on into motherhood and preschool years.  I was blessed to be a mom but I was surprised to learn that the issues didn’t go away.  I was still dealing with depression, insecurity, a relationship with God that really hadn’t been mended yet, and sin issues.  I didn’t have peace.  And all the while, I was still the youth minister’s wife with barely any spiritual formation going on in me at all.   For 3 years I had been telling God, “If you want me to read Your Word, then you give me a desire for it.  I am tired of feeling guilty about it.”   My steps were anything but established in His Word and I knew it.

God was hearing my prayers, arrogant though they were, and He led my steps to a Community Bible Study.  Several women I knew were going, so I decided to go as well.  I knew I needed God to do something, maybe this would help.  I now know that God’s Word doesn’t return void and I believe this study was a real seed planted in my heart.  In November 1994 I had a hysterectomy due to the endometriosis.  We were trying to adopt again with no success and by January I was sinking into a deep depression.   I knew it, Marvin knew it, and we didn’t know what to do about it. 
Desperate for some inner peace, I went with some of these women from my Bible Study to a Joyce Meyer conference and the Word that I had been studying began to bear fruit.  I remember standing in that room as she taught the Word and the light came on for me.  JESUS LOVED ME!  HE DIED FOR ME!  HE WANTS TO MOVE AND LIVE IN ME!  How many times had I heard those words?  How many times had I said them myself?  The difference was the Holy Spirit was telling me this time.  It wasn’t about what I did or didn’t do, how well I performed, or the people that I impressed.  Jesus did care about me, He wasn’t ashamed of me and He loved me.  I can’t explain the supernatural work of God, but I know that I have never been the same. 

I came home a different woman.  I remember lying on the couch that night telling Marvin about all of the changes, begging him to forgive me for the pain that I had brought into our marriage and sharing excitement about my new understanding of salvation. I woke up the next morning with such a hunger for the Bible.  It was almost scary.  Over the next several months I spent more time reading and studying the Bible than I had in years.  The Lord began to teach me and heal me as He gave me understanding of who He was.  He brought two women in my life who came alongside me and showed me the Truth.  I marveled at how the Holy Spirit Himself had become my teacher. 
During this time I was very drawn to a verse in Isaiah which says, “And Sharon shall be a pasture land for flock and the Valley of Achor a resting place for herds for my people who seek me.”  (Isaiah 65:10)  I read that for a week or so every day and kept asking the Holy Spirit to show me something from that verse.  I didn’t understand it but it had my name in it so I wanted to understand it.  I never said anything to anyone about it.  I figured the Holy Spirit would show me. 

One day I came home and on my answering machine was this message from a man that I hadn’t seen in about 3 months.  He said, “Sharon the Lord has been putting a verse on my heart for you and has wanted me to share this with you.  I have been trying to reach you but can’t seem to get ahold of you so I thought I would go ahead and leave a message for you.”  He went on to read Isaiah 65:10 and I almost dropped the phone.  He then went on to say, “Sharon the Lord is going to use you as a teacher of His Word to be a place of rest for many of his sheep.  As you teach them His Word they will find peace.  The Valley of Achor was a place of great suffering and I know that you have suffered in your struggles.  But the Lord will use that place of suffering in you to bring others hope as you share with them the Truth they find in His Word.” 

That was my calling! I was speechless and listened to the message over and over.  I saved it for weeks and listened to it again and again.   It amazed me, it thrilled me, it scared me to death.  I didn’t know His Word well enough to teach it.  I was just trying to get a grip on it myself.  But clearly God had spoken and I had learned He was faithful, so I started to ask Him to prepare me.

My steps over the last 11 years have definitely been ones of preparation.  I have studied, I have memorized, I have spoken when given the opportunity.  I have taught, I have prayed, I have obeyed.  I have had to repent and find places of brokenness before the Lord.  I have realized how much I don’t know and how great my God is.  I have been hungry for Truth so I can understand who He is.  I have come to the point that I cannot make it through the day without the living breathing active word of God moving in my life.  His Word has become my treasure.   The Lord has transformed my thinking, my desires, my hopes and my dreams.  He has given us another child to parent, a son named Sam, and He has taught me total trust.  He has entrusted me with moments of leading and I have seen success and I have been ashamed of myself at times, too.  He has taught me His grace and forgiveness.   He has taken us through trials and shown me how to depend on Him.   He has taught me how to sow to the Spirit and not to the flesh.  He has rescued me from the pit and given me a burden to share the power of His love and the power of His Word to women all around me that I see who are hurting.  My footsteps have become established in Him.  I am so thankful.

I recently turned 40 and God spoke to me again and said, “It’s time, I am going to start using you to speak.”  It has been 11-12 years since that first call.  That is a long time!  I asked the Lord to confirm that to me, not sure that I had heard Him correctly.  He has confirmed that to me with ministry and speaking/teaching opportunities coming in many ways and last spring Marvin and I realized it was time for me to step out in faith and fulfill this call of God on my life. The Lord has opened my eyes to women all around me who just need someone to come along side them and sow the Word of God into their lives.  Two women did it for me and God has called me to do the same.
And so “Established Footsteps” is born!  And the journey will continue, step by step by step until the Lord brings me home to Him.

I pray that my testimony has encouraged you to know that there is no pit too deep that the arm of the Lord cannot reach you. He can pull you out of blatant sin and he can pull you out of the place where you have been deceiving yourself.  You have seen that He did both for me!   He longs to touch you with His love and grace.  I have found that He most often does that with His Word.   So I encourage you to read it, to study it, to memorize it and to live with it daily.  You will be amazed at how God will move in your life as you make His Word a priority.  Established Footsteps was begun to help you do just that.  I would love to hear from you, to hear your story or your need for God to move in your life.  Feel free to contact me. 
Keep stepping.  Establish our footsteps in Your Word Lord so that no sin will have dominion over us!