Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / September 10, 2019 | Expresso - Hannah Hahn

Transcript

September 10, 2019 | Expresso - Hannah Hahn · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, so I'm a little nervous because this is I don't usually talk in front of this many women.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: So when Connie first reached out to me, she called and left a voicemail on my husband's phone, which I assume that was the only one in the directory, which that was pretty astonishing for me because I didn't even know we were in the church directory.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I was pretty proud of myself for that.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: My second thought was, oh, I know what she's calling for.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it didn't take me long to have or to long to say yes, because I do like to talk, not in many, not in front of this many people, but um I do also love to talk about the Lord.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um after I hung up the phone though, that's when the anxiety of, oh dear, what am I gonna say get sunk in.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um I lost my place, I'll try not to be glued to this.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um my mom, who I look up, she's right there, if you want to embarrass her, um who I look up to the most when it comes to faith in God, would mess message me and share uh her prayers.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And even before this, she prayed real quick with me.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I definitely felt the prayers because the anxiety, anxiety I normally have for things like this, it just wasn't there anymore.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that was so exciting to have.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the power of prayer has always been a spiritual gift of my mother.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Although all my siblings have gone through um difficult times and different paths in our lives, she's prayed for all of us to know the Lord.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's such an encouraging thing to see that the many different walks we've all been on.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we all my siblings have come to know Christ.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so I just that's my mom and my two sisters.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't want to point them out.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I do have a slide, and this is them.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: They are my best friends.
• 2:00
  unknown: Right there.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: There we go.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: These are my best friends, my mom and my two sisters, Heather and Michelle.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I am getting a little ahead of myself.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So before I get into my history, I want to point out how God just doesn't always push you off the edge.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: For some, he might, but for me, uh, my journey has been 29 years of God calling me closer and closer to him.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um looking back, I can see the points of where he was preparing me for the next step and then the next step.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Each lesson has been carefully designed to plant and grow my relationship with him.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'll start from the beginning.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was born the youngest of six in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I also had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you missed that, that's three sixes right from the start.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So luckily, I was born in the Bible belt.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so at just weeks old, I was dedicated in under the pews at our church that our family attended, which was Sunnyside Assembly of God.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: As far as denominations go, Assembly of God is on the strict side.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um my mom has told me that our pastor was no public swimming pools, um, no going to movie theaters, uh, no drinking, no tattoos, things of that nature.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is where my first memories of God and Christ were.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: I pictured Christ as most people, or as most pictures portrayed him as, you know, brown hair, brown beard.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I pictured God as a short and stubby, uh bold guy.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I later I assumed that this was just a prominent church member at our church.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know who he was, but that's who I thought was God, and luckily my opinion on God has changed since then.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um being the youngest of six has definitely shaped who I am today.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: I am the baby, and admittedly, I knew I was a brat.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um my siblings uh would let you know of that fact or wouldn't deny that fact, and they will still let me know today.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um that also shaped my snappy attitude.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: As an adult, it can get kind of confusing because I will say sorry for just breathing because I feel like the annoying little sister.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: But then also, if you push too many wrong buttons, I'll let you know.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Christ has definitely helped me with that.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um just wanna, but I digress.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my family is originally from Kansas, so my dad got a job here and moved back when I was three to be closer to my grandparents.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually we started to go uh going to New Beginnings Christian Church, a non-denominational church with a congregation, I want to say about 50.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: We met in a church, uh, or no, not in a church gym, age, just a gym.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: The pastor's daughter was my best friend, and because I was homeschooled, she was my only real friend outside of my siblings.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Up until about the age of 11 or 12, my relationship with God was with God was very much in the seed plant stage.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: I knew the rules, I believed in him, but I never really had a personal relationship.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you see, I had a great childhood.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: We had a large family and we were really close with them all.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Much of my childhood was spent outside playing with kittens and Barbies.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And as far as little girls are concerned, kittens are Barbies, I mean, that's it.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um so God fit well on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights, and that's about where he stayed for me.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Between the ages of 12 and 15, my best friend moved away.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Our church shortly after disbanded.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: My grandma, my grandma, who we were very close with, started to have early signs of dementia and moved to Texas to live with my aunt and uncle.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: My siblings were all growing up and gaining their independence.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: My dad lost his job and I headed to public school for the first time, where um I did not thrive.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was sad, lonely, angry.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Everything I had known was changing, and I didn't feel I could turn to anyone.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: My anxiety would come at night and just sit on my chest.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember, uh I just remember calling out to God to help in any way.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And instantly, God answered my prayer, and I could feel the stress dissolve away.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: That was my first real taste of God showing me his power as best he knew a preteen could understand.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is where my seed of faith started to grow.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: From my perspective, the rest of my teen years are what as I can best describe as confusing times.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't attending church.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: There weren't, there were some tensions in our family, which I don't really need to go into because all the while God still had me in his grasp.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: He put people in my life that kept me close to him.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: My best friend from high school started bringing me with her to her church, Christ Lutheran.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Lutheran was um definitely a far cry away from what I was used to, but I was pretty involved in the small youth group and attending youth events, which definitely played a huge part in my spiritual growth.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned a little before, public school was not something I was successful in.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't regret it.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still very close with my two best friends from high school, and I met my husband there.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I forgot to put a picture, sorry.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: These are my siblings.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is my husband when we were in high school.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um but despite the relationships I gained, um, the failure I felt from high school left a pretty big scar.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um which made the idea of college terrifying.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't go.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, which it's hard when all of your friends are leaving and have somewhat of an idea of where they're going in life.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not me.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like God wasn't around anymore.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I I still believed in him.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: I just didn't understand where he was.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: So eventually I stopped going to church and started to knowingly live in sin.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: The first two years following high school, I had no real direction.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: I worked two jobs and lived with my family.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: The only real goal I had was starting a life with my boyfriend, and so we did.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Four months after he graduated from basic military training with the Air National Guard, we married in the Lutheran church I attended in high school.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: We defaulted with it because we didn't really know where we fit in as far as denominations go.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: He had been raised Catholic and didn't really adhere to that anymore.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess you could say we were both in no man's land and had to figure out where we belonged together.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, seven months after our wedding, our daughter Adelie was born.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you do the math, you can guess what I mean by living in sin.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: But now looking back, my daughter taught me that God can use anything for his glory.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, sorry.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Although my husband and I didn't wait until marriage and sin, God used Adatalie to transform my life.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: You see, the direction I was lacking before, I'm sorry, before I suddenly came to a pinpoint focus.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now I can see.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And oh boy, howdy, this church is way bigger than anything I had ever been used to.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it looks like a mega church, but the more you get involved, the more it just kind of shrinks.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really, but and just I'm telling you, having a church that is passionate about Christ and serving others is such a blessing.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: When you were discovering who you are in Christ, as I became more involved in church and studied the Bible, God started revealing Himself to me.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, layer by layer I got closer.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: My first layer was putting Jesus above all else.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: That meant my husband, who I realized I had put on a higher pedestal.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: I remember reading a blog post about a girl who was devastated to realize she would not or might not be married to her husband in heaven, and that prayer over time God changed her heart to focus on him.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I remember thinking and feeling ashamed for feeling that way.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt silly about being worried about being with my husband when I should be focused on Christ.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: I really doubted I would get to that point in my life that the author had come to had come to.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: But despite my lack of faith in myself, I prayed for God to change my heart.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was not an instant thing, but the more I prayed and practiced, putting God above everything else, I started to have a joy about seeing Christ in heaven and being with him.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Not only did my joy grow, but my marriage got better.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: A perk I didn't see coming.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I no longer put the pressure on my husband for my happiness.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: He was human and he was going to fail me at some point, and I was human and gonna fail him at some point.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: God is the only constant, and through all this, my relationship with God grew from this tiny little sprout to a small plant.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Even though I still considered myself a plant in my faith, I still needed to be watered and fed.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Church is so important to keep you watered, and that brings me to my next testimony.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: We had been trying for over a year to have another child.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't happening.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had gone to the doctors, I had I was taking, I was tracking everything, even my temperature.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: I started to get better.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: When others would announce that they were pregnant, I would be jealous and mad.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Why wasn't I getting what I wanted?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing what God, I thought God wanted me to do.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: God, where are you?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was demanding of God.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um during this time, TBC was doing a series on prayer.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Tim Collins was preaching about nevertheless prayers.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: The sum of it was is you can still ask for things you long for, but nevertheless, you will still do God's will and be thankful for the gifts you have received.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: This really impacted me and made me refocus my heart from an ungrateful place to a grateful place.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I still desperately wanted another child, but nevertheless, I was so thankful for the child God had already blessed me with, in Adalie.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: A few weeks later, in the same sermon series, Pastor Jim got up to preach about a particular girl in the Bible.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now I've I've read this story many times, but this time it was hitting deep into my heart.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: The story was about Hannah and her prayer for a child.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: I remember sitting in the pews thinking, uh-uh, like God's not really literally just calling me by my name, saying, I know your story.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's like you hear people talk about things like that, but it doesn't happen actually like that.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: But it was.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to say I had the faith to just jump up and run to the quick store and grab a pregnancy test, but I waited until the following Thursday because when you keep seeing the negatives so much, you don't want to see them anymore.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't have to.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: The test turned positive with a within a quarter of the time they say you should wait.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: God was guiding me and with such loving patience, proving his love to me, and that he had it under control.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: That pregnancy, uncoincidentally, was my easiest pregnancy and birth.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we had our son Marvin, who I had always said since I was a little girl, I would name my first son Marvin after my grandfather, and so I did.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because it was my easiest pregnancy and birth, we thought we could do a third.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we started trying again.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, May 10th, 2016, the day before my 26th birthday, we found out we were expecting our third child.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I can show my pictures now of my kids.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um the next the next nine months were a blur.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Marvin turned one, Addie turned four, we bought a new house, my husband started a new job.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: I always say Harrison came rip roaring into this world because he came out so fast that his little face was bruised and his little eyes were bloodshot.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um we joked that we would just adopt for our next kid, but that joke kind of turned into serious talk because he was such a high-demand baby.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I am not exaggerating when I say 90% of his first year of his life was in my arms.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Partly because I kind of knew he would be my last, and um also because he just has a very determined personality.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: He is almost three now and still lives up to that high demand status.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Around his second birthday, my husband and I started having some serious talks about how we were going to move forward with more children.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Although I joked I didn't want any more babies, my husband was surprised that I indeed wanted just one more.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: He brought to the table, though, the idea of fostering.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: I said, sure, but we have to have one more baby first.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: We had always thought to foster when our kids got older, but not when they were little ones.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of back and forth between us and a little tension between us.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And because of the tension, I gave it up to God.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's funny how you can pray for someone else's heart to change, but then your own heart changes.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Between different sermons and even different groups starting within our church, I started to see the need for fostering a fostering.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And again, over time, God changed my heart.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I wanted another child, but God gave me peace that it might not look like the biological baby that I originally thought.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still scared to death of this same fostering, but I can excitedly say we should be licensed to foster within this week for two kids.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: If I hadn't had the lessons or the themes from my past, I wouldn't be able to lean into God the way I can today.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not to say I'm perfect, because I'm far from that.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I would not be doing this, fostering, or any of this, if it wasn't for God holding my hand through it all.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Laying in bed the other night, I was starting to get a little worried about how I was going to wrap all this up and give a conclusion.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: I prayed and God laid on my heart the word submit.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I jumped up and ran down the stairs and looked up all the different Bible verses on submitting, and James 4.7 just screamed out to me, um, submit yourselves then to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Come near to God and he will come near to you.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was just so clear.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: My whole life I had been rebelling against God and not truly sorry, and not truly knowing how to give God the control.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Truth is, it's never been about giving God the control, it's about submitting to his control.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: The world has given, submit, such a bad meaning.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but the more I have submitted to God's will, the more peace I have gained in my life, the more peace I have, or the more joy I have found in my life, whether it's been in my relationship with others, my role as a mother, or even my most recent journey at fostering, I couldn't do any of these without Christ and submitting to his will.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, everybody.