Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 8, 2022 | Expresso - Davienne Koci

Transcript

March 8, 2022 | Expresso - Davienne Koci · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whoo, there's a lot of you.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um I just wanted to start.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is that how you do it?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this is how I know that God exists and that he is a loving God.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I experienced him um in my life and his love regularly throughout my life.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: We do not have enough time tonight to talk about my entire life and how all the ways that God has moved and changed me and demonstrated himself to be trustworthy and strong.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I will give you three defining situations.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is my dad.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was born uh on February 19th, 1977, to Drs John and Nancy Toth, like she said, at Scotts Air Force Base in O'Fellan, Illinois.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was the first of six children.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I would like to believe that I was such an awesome child that my mother wanted to have five more.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're welcome, Jessica.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: She was number five.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: My parents were Christians, and Christ was always in our home.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: We moved to Topeka when I was about two years old, and around the age of five, I was molested.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: The who, the when, the where are not what's important.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: The most important part of that awful situation was what I believed about myself and about God as a result.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: John 10, 10 says, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Satan interferes with children for this very purpose, to instill lies into the hearts of the victim.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: That those lies that I believed in my heart about myself were that I wasn't lovable, I wasn't good enough.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: The lies I believed about God were that there had to be something wrong with me for God to allow this to happen to me.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And God couldn't love me because I was unlovable.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And because of these lies, I believed that I had to earn love.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I could do it on my own, I could earn approval, I could earn respect, earn God's love if I just worked hard enough at it.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, around that same time period in my life, I asked Jesus into my heart.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I asked him several times over the coming years, but my most vivid memory of it was going to vacation Bible school.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the week, Sue Jernigan asked us uh to bow our heads and close our eyes.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if we wanted to accept Jesus into our hearts, we were to raise our hands.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: My brother Jonathan and I both did that.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: We she took us into a back room and told us what it meant to ask Jesus into our hearts.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um that he had given all the gifts he had given us by dying on the cross for our sins.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked him to come into my heart that day.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I knew in my mind that God loved me, after all the Bible tells me so.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: This dichotomy of thought, though, this belief, um, knowing in my head that Jesus loved me no matter what I did, and a belief in my heart that I was unlovable would be a war in my life for years to come.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: My parents helped found CareParavel in around 1981.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And although, if given the choice at age six, um, I really wanted to stay home, but uh I had to go to school.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I really loved CareParel.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I loved learning about God daily.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I met some of my best friends in first grade that I still have today.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is me and my mom.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um I learned so much there.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: I had some insecurities, but not many problems in grade school.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: In junior high and high school, I did as much as I could.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite sport was volleyball, and I loved being a setter.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was in madrigals, choir, theater.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um I loved to sing, uh do uh poetry, recitation, um, art, played piano, um, madrigals, choir.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Did I already say that?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: I also did taekwondo, and I had a very solid GPA.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I knew everyone in high school.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: How could I not?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: There were like 10 people in my class.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um I know that I was liked.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was friends with almost everyone.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: I prided myself on being a chameleon.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: I could be whatever anyone wanted me to be.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: I could blend into every group of kids at school.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was not the most popular, though.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: I remember at night while in bed, um, I would be thinking about the day's conversations that I had with people, especially the popular kids or who I thought were popular.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I would think how dumb I sounded.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I just did not think of the best thing to say.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was not witty enough, I was not pretty enough, or good enough.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I would cry and wonder why I was so stupid.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't good enough today, but I can do better tomorrow.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I would pray, Lord, please help me to do better tomorrow.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: On one hand, I was learning so much about God and building a deeper relationship with Him through classes like Life of Christ and Bible survey where I was reading the entire Bible.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was doing Bible studies, I was going to Sunday school at TBC.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there was this disconnect.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Deep down, I felt like I had to earn my place in God's good standing.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I believed that he loved me, but I had to do well and be good to get his blessing.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: If I was bad, I would be punished.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: For the most part, in high school, I was a good kid.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was driven and wanted to go to college.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: I graduated from CareProvel and started my college career at CODI College.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: This was a place where my faith became my own, not just something that I was taught at home or at school.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was a freshman and I was friends with this senior uh named Amanda.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And at CODI, um, it's a two-year women's college, so there's two grades.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're either a freshman or you're a senior.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um so she was really sweet and beautiful and cool, and I was so excited to be her friend.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And one day I told her that I was a Christian, and she told me she was a Christian too.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here I was in a non-Christian college, and my good friend was a Christian.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: So um we started talking about Christ.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the more I talked, um, the more I realized that that really wasn't the case because she was a universalist.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: She believed that there were many ways to God.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and as we were talking, more people joined in on the conversation.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: The cotton dorms were set up in suite systems, so there were eight girls to each suite, and you had a bathroom, kitchen, and living space, and then your dorm rooms around that.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I personally lived with two Mormons, a Korean, a Catholic, another Christian, and a couple non-Christians.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as the conversation progressed, it became more apparent that everyone in this conversation was against me.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: The main problem was that I believed that there was only one way to God.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone else there, all of them, believed that you could get to God through whatever way you chose.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to make some good arguments that I had been taught in high school, um in hermeneutics, but the main thing that kept me steadfast was one verse.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: That verse was the only thing that came to mind as I was being told that I was narrow-minded and I was condemning.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: John 14, 6.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I am the way, the truth, and the life.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: No man comes to the Father except through me.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: No one comes to the Father except through me.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was after that debate that I realized that Christianity was really my faith.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I better know it.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I did well at CODI.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: I got an associate's in arts and an associate in science and went on to Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, my dream college.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: I got a vocal music scholarship and a campus job in order to go there.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I had several Christian friends, but I was also a tri-delta.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: My sorority did a lot of awesome philanthropy, but we also threw a lot of great parties.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout my college career, I lived a dual life.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: I straddled the fence between being a Christian and acting like the world.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I would work hard studying during the week, went out dancing and drinking on Friday and Saturday night, and went to church on Sunday.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Something that really seemed strange to me is that I had this drive that would slowly build over time.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: It could take about a month or two, but I would have this urge to go out, and I needed to be wanted.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: I needed to be desired.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: I would go into these evenings with an intent to attracting someone, flirting with them, being in control of the entire evening.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: I am blessed to say that God had instilled in me a respect for not having sex before marriage.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I was limited mainly to kissing, kissing guys that I had just met.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: This there was a sense of accomplishment when I would do this.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: I had proven to myself that I was attractive, that I could be loved if I really wanted to be by those guys.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was good enough.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: The next day, though, I would be deeply remorseful.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Why did I do that?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: God is going to punish me.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: I am so sorry, God.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I was thinking.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I sinned against him.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I sinned against myself.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I did this throughout my college career, not understanding this drive and what it was stemming from.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I could be really good for a while, and then this drive would slowly become stronger and stronger until I went out and got attention from a guy.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then I would be so condemning of myself, so remorseful, so repentant all over again.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that was my normal.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: I graduated in 1999 from Rhodes with a business administration degree, but had done all the prerequisites for a pre-med.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: A smart doctor that I knew, Dr.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Doug Eilef, once told me, because he was doing great ideas class in high school, if you know that you want to go into a professional school that will take a lot of time, like med school, then do your undergraduate in something else so that you don't get burned out before you even get into it.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I took that as good advice, hence the business degree and pre-med.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: I decided on physician assistant school and applied to several schools.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: At that time, there were about 500 applicants for just 45 spots.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I did a lot of praying.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: I really felt that this is where God wanted me to be.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I also knew that if this was where he wanted to be me to be, he was gonna need me, or he was going to need to get me into that school.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he did.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was accepted to Wichita State uh physician assistant program, and it was about this time when I was preparing to go to school that I found out that my dad was cheating on my mom with another woman.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was working for my dad at the time, and one day I was just driving to work, and I thought, just out of the blue, I wonder if my dad's cheating.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: That just popped into my head.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have no idea where it came from.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was the weirdest thing.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: But that was like a half day of work, and on my way home, my mom called me and she said she needed to talk to me when I got home.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: I immediately felt the weight in the pick of my stomach.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: When I got home, my mom wanted me to listen to a saved message on my dad's cell phone.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was Cynthia, uh, her voice calling my dad her love.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: This was bad.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan, my brother, was there, and he had listened to it first and was out the door to go confront my father.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: I knew my mom was going to kill my dad.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: When my dad came home, I knew my mom would go get the gun from the safe, and she was gonna shoot him, and he was gonna die.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: But when my dad did come home, my mom calmly confronted him and asked him questions about what was going on, and she handled it really well.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't believe it.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout my life, my mom had been a rager, and she would get so angry about things, especially with the stress of holidays.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that happened throughout my life.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: But here in the most stressful time in our lives, she was calm and she was collected.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I did my ask, I asked my mom what was different for her.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: And she said that she had been doing some prayer work and allowing God to work, really work in her life, getting rid of the lies that she had believed in her life.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember thinking, wow, God really works.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Over the next year, my family went through the worst experience we could have imagined at that time.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we had a family meeting where each of us kids poured out our hearts to our Father.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: We told him how much we loved him, how much he was hurting us, and we all wanted him to come home.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: He needed to repent and return to us.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: We prayed with him, we prayed for him.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: We were met with hardness of heart.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew 19, 8, Jesus replied, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: But it was not this way from the beginning.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality and marries another woman, commits adultery.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't think that the relationship between him and my mom could be reconciled.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: The problem with teaching your children about Christ and his doctrine is that you can expect to hear it back when you are messing up.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: We spouted everything back to him.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Divorce is despised by God.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Divorce is not an option.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Adultery is wrong.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: God can do all things.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is impossible for God.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Marriage is an institution created by God and he can build it up again.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was impervious to all of our pleading and our arguments.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: We found out later that he told a friend of his that we would all be okay and get over it.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: He finally left the house Christmas night while we were over at our grandparents' house.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the most devastating experience of my adult life.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: But through it, God held each one of us in the palm of his hand.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 91.4 says, He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: We bonded deeply as a family this time.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: When one sibling or my mom would be sad, the others would come alongside of them and comfort them and pray.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: We did a lot of praying, we did a lot of crying.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: But God was faithful.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: In the lost position that my father held in my life, God took on that role.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Through prayer in his word, God taught me that my dad was just a man who sins and is not perfect, although he did make a big mistake.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: But my God is perfect and will never leave me nor forsake me.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Another shocking realization for me was that marriage for life was not guaranteed.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: My parents were married for 29, almost 29 years.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And for my entire life, I had been told that divorce was not an option.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: There was comfort and stability in that, something I could count on.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, there was this realization that any future marriage is vulnerable and imperfect, just like every human.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: God gave me the understanding that just because my father allowed his marriage to be broken, God's design for marriage was still the best choice if that was where God would lead me.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was in PA school in Wichita, Kansas in 2001, and it was a very welcome distraction from the turmoil of home.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: It seemed every time I came home from school there was some new depressing and saddening thing that we had to deal with as a family.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: I loved coming home to my family, but it was really hard.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: PA school was my niche.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: I found friends there that really understood me.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: They were Christians and they were people that I could talk to, have fun with, and just enjoy.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was still feeling this urge to go out and meet some random guy, get attention, feel like I was in control, and then punish myself the next day for doing it.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: At some point, I made the realization that this was not normal.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: This urge was coming from somewhere.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: The need for attention, the need to be in control, the perpetually condemning myself, they were not of God.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I started talking to my mom about these things and started to do some prayer work.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when I say prayer work, I mean getting myself right with God and asking him what was going on in my life.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: I would ask him what he wanted to deal with in my life at that moment, and I would have to wait for his answer.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was not easy, and I had someone to pray with me.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but when I really am doing some deep prayer work with God, I get really sleepy.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I really needed somebody to be there to keep me going and actively praying.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: I usually had an emotion that would stir up, and I would follow that emotion like to a memory, like a trail of crumbs, and ask him about what lie I was believing in that pain.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And once the lie was revealed, Jesus would speak his truth into my life through either scripture popping into my head or his still small voice.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And like an onion being peeled, um, so the layers of the lies in my life were being replaced with truth.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And my life slowly began to change.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: You see, there was a disconnect between my head and my heart.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: I had believed lies about myself through the sexual interference as a child.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: I believed that God didn't love me because he allowed this to happen to me.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: I believed that I wasn't lovable.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why else would something like this happen?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't good enough.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I also made promises that I was going to prove God in the world wrong.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: I am good enough.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I can be loved.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to do all this in my own strength because God could not be counted on.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: That is what I believed in my heart for 20 years.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I spent 20 years trying to prove to God, to my family, to friends, that I was worth it.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was a people pleaser to get affection.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: But through prayer, one lie at a time, Jesus replaced those awful lies with his truth.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: John 8 32, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: John 8 36, so if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was then that I knew at my core that I was loved by God, the maker of heaven and earth, that I was worth it.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: God sent his son to die on the cross for me.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: I am worthy of genuine love.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: I could be a genuine person, not who I thought everyone wanted me to be.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: At this point, my heart was lining up with what I knew in my head about God, that he is a living God that loves me so much.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that verse in the beginning that I spoke?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: John 10 10, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus then says, I have come that they may have life and have it to the fullest.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: What Satan meant to destroy in me and keep me from God, God used to bring me closer to him.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: My life didn't just change overnight.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I still like to go out, still like to plan my life and be in control, but over time that urge to go out, get attention from guys faded away.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: After school, um, I started working at Kansas Orthopedic and Sports Medicine and assisting in surgery at both hospitals here.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Working in surgery, I was surrounded by people all the time.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was awesome.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: I got to know so many great people.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um one friend in particular, well, that's a little extra.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: My roommate Jessica Tarvin moved in with me.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a group of us that would go and bowl every Tuesday night for like a year.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And through Jessica, I got to know Eric Moriarty, who brought his friend Jordan Kochi one night to hang out at Bolt Frogs Live.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I met my husband at a bar.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: We sat and talked for a while.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: He was a Marine and had gotten back from a tour in Iraq about two months earlier.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: He was a great storyteller.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: He was funny and he was cute.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: At that time, he was dating someone else, and um we didn't actually see each other again for about a month until my friends had this swimming party one night.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: We had a great time talking, joking, and getting to know each other.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we went on several group dates and then one-on-one dates.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about God, and I could tell he wasn't a Christian, but he was definitely searching.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I invited him to TBC.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: He started coming with me and then joined a Bible study with Jerry Bros.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Jerry was they were studying John at the time.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um during that Bible study, he gave his life to Christ, and his entire family actually started coming to TBC as well.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: After about seven months of dating, Jordan asked me to marry him in February of 2008.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: But we didn't actually get married until April of 2009 because my brothers were not back from their deployments and we wanted them to be groomsmen.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I also wrote a song for the wedding titled You Are What I Prayed For.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And my brothers and sisters played that song and sang.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Jim Congdon did the best wedding service tied around the words to that song, and everything went pretty much without a hitch.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was perfect.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that's when the real work began.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: We had gone through premarital counseling, but I don't think anything could have prepared me for the struggle of the first year of our marriage.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: We both did not deal with conflict well.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of stuff within our marriage that wasn't godly.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: We tried different Christian counselors, but things didn't work out.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was pregnant with our first child at that time and did not want him growing up in the current state of our family.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: It had got so bad that in November of 2009, I filed for separation.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Not divorce, because I didn't believe in divorce, but we needed things to change.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: I needed God to reground me and help us see truth in our marriage.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: We started counseling with a Christian counselor, Susan Adkins, who really helped us.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: We got back together in around January of 2010, and it was an improvement, but not perfect.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: But most marriages are not perfect.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: We had to learn how to love and respect each other.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: I learned that I wasn't going to change Jordan to meet my expectations.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: If I wanted uh change, I was going to have to pray for it.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I read Power of a Praying Wife several times.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the only other books I've ever read more than once are the Bible and Pride and Prejudice.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that was saying something.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Jordan was not only uh not only the only one that God was changing during that time.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: You might guess uh he changed me quite a bit as well.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: So it has taken 13 years, four kids, five cars, two small groups, family, three dogs, and a whole lot of Jesus working in our lives to get us where we are today.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: These are my siblings.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: God never guaranteed that my life would be easy.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Second Corinthians 4, 16 through 18 says, Therefore we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: For our light and momentary trouble are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And 2 Corinthians 12, 9 and 10 says, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: God does not give us what we can handle, God helps us handle what we are given.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: I see that having experienced sexual interference as a child helped me to recognize that I am continually in need of a savior, that I am flawed.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: It helped me to be more compassionate and understanding towards others.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And dealing with my father in divorce helped me to take my father down off the pedestal that I had him on and recognize him as a man, just as flawed as anyone else.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to also put God on the throne in my life where he should be and trust in him.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: The family bond that was recreated during this time was invaluable and continues to this day.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Dealing with Jordan allowed me to see the flaws and unrealistic expectations that I had in myself.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: As iron sharpens iron, so Jordan and I have slowly worn down the selfishness and sinfulness in each other.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: That is not to say that it is all gone or that we are done with the struggles in our marriage, but we are a stronger foundation in Christ who strengthens us.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: I have a plaque in my kitchen that says, I still remember the days that I prayed for what I have now.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it reminds me that God is awesome and can do anything, change anything, create anything, even out of sin and pain and loss.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: I experience Him daily and I love it.