Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 8, 2022 | Expresso - Maria Rodriguez-Ard

Transcript

March 8, 2022 | Expresso - Maria Rodriguez-Ard · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, ladies.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna start out by sharing something that I heard the librarian across the street say.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: We're having a book fair, and um the kids were taking the books off the shelf and trying to flip through them, and there were some people in there helping.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I better hold this because I do tend to move around.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there were some people in there helping, and they were like, put the books back, what are you doing?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Just just look around and see which and she goes, no, she goes, just a second, respect sign.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, I'm okay with them taking the books off the shelf and opening them up and looking through them.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can't judge a book by its cover.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um God just kind of spoke to me and said, That's what you're gonna be doing.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you're gonna let people open the story of your life, you're gonna reveal it to them, you're gonna open it up and kind of share some of the chapters.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um, our prayer, all of us, is that we be a blessing to one another.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: If I um get a little choked up, my only prayer is that I don't ugly cry is what I told Connie, because I still get very uh I'm a very emotional person, but I'm a person that's very strong in my faith, and it's because what God's done.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um I have so many chapters that I could share of what God's done in and through my life.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, bad things that have happened, great things that have happened, highs, lows.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there are a couple things that I want to really try and hit on.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, BC and AD was before Christ, um, and then after his death.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or am I saying that right?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Am I saying that right, ladies?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um anyway, Jesus Christ split time.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes in your life you have those kind of defining moments where you recognize that God split time in your life.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a time in my life before I was 12 that I didn't really know him.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up most of my childhood, I don't remember anyone really witnessing to me, inviting me to church, praying for me, which may sound weird living in the United States of America, and growing up in Oakland, where there was a church all almost on it, seemed like every corner, but not quite.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: But March 8th, 1978, my grandmother was um murdered.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: She was uh let someone that she knew inside um and was raped and stabbed seven times in the neck.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm sharing graphics because shocking to hear, it was horrifying for my family to live through.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And my mother, bless her heart, started a godly heritage in our family because of that moment.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: What the enemy meant to destroy, not only her potential faith and any callings on her life or any of her children's lives, God took and turned around for good.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And anything, doesn't matter how disastrous it is or how horrible it is, God's able to do that.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um through different things that happened in my life before that, I was as a child, we were very poor.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um my father was um Mexican and my mother was white, and I'm 55 years old, and there was a little bit of prejudice growing up.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I was teased and bullied some because of us being so poor, and because of my family.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um I felt very unworthy and insecure because of that.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I also had inappropriate experience with sexual touch in my elementary years that I didn't understand, but it made me feel very dirty and unworthy.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I never really told anyone and never really dealt with it.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um as I grew older, um, this moment, March 8, 1978, the day my mom didn't come home, because when she discovered my grandmother, um, because they talked every single day, she didn't come home that evening because she couldn't pull herself together.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we got the news from my aunts.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I was angry at my mother because I thought, where is she?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I need her right now.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: My aunts are telling me this, where is she?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, I didn't, there was so much I didn't understand.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um I did learn through the years and was able to label and identify that that insecurity and and the different things that happened that created some unstability created instilled fear in my life.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Fear was my biggest enemy.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Fear of um man, fear of abandonment, fear of um being lonely, fear of something horrible happening to someone I loved again.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was so bad for my mother, and the reason um it was a defining moment in our family, we hadn't been going to church.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my mom later revealed to me that my grandmother had told her for years, please take those kids to church, please get your family in church.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And she did.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um she decided to turn to God to try and bring her some peace in the middle of the horrible situation, all the investigation, all the wondering of who it was.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Was it someone she became very fearful and it was very oppressive?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I started having nightmares of people I love, uh bad things happening to them, we'll just say that.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And became very sensitive at night.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't sleep good.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this went on through my teen years and only got worse after I was sexually assaulted in high school.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be, with someone I shouldn't have been with.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I didn't tell anyone.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I felt very alone, very dirty, very insecure.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: We had started going to church, and there were lots of wonderful people in the church that reached out to me in love.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: There were ladies who came to me and said, I'm so sorry you lost your grandma that way.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be like a grandma to you.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And at first I was kind of like, my grandma died.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't need someone to offer to be like a grandma to me.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: But as time went on, the love of God shone through those people and he used those people to minister to me and to love on me.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I learned about this insecurity and this loneliness and how it led to fear is one of the biggest ways to disarm it was to let people in.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest part of fear is there's lies attached to it.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you can't see them just yourself.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: The best person that you can hang with is God.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: He will reveal so much to you one-on-one, and you don't really have to have anyone else, but praise God, he provides other people for us.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Probably the second worst thing that I went through was I was, as a result of being sexually assaulted in high school, fearful because I went to school with the guy, and um this guy started pursuing me at school that everybody was a little scared of because he had a temper.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um he was a little volatile, he had a really rough upbringing, and he started pursuing me right after this happened.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he was cute, you know, had a nice uh build, was tall.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I always tended to like tall guys.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, um, I started dating him because he made me feel safe.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I still didn't know how to turn to God.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how to apply that relationship yet, even though I was going to church.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so this guy kind of became my security blanket at school.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he was my high school sweetheart, and I fell in love with him.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: He was very damaged because of the alcoholic abusive relationship that he suffered for so many years in his home.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: He was homeless in his high school years.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I discovered throughout the years of our marriage and the ups and downs and his self-destructive behaviors that he didn't know how to deal with it, and I wasn't really helping him deal with it because um I kind of enabled him.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was a fixer.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And God had to do a work in me.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: What he started doing was he started revealing scriptures to me.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: The sleeplessness at night in my relationship with God, I started pursuing it and I was like, God, I've got to be able to sleep better at night.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm tired of these nightmares, they're so real.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, God will meet you at your where you're at, he will minister to your need if you let him.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't know how to find that, then like I said, let other people in so they can help you.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: But he showed me Proverbs 3:24.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: When you lie down, you will not be afraid.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: You will lie down and your sleep will be sweet.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I started praying that before I went to bed.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I started looking at Psalms 127, too, where it says, Um, he grants sleep to those he loves.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: It talks about us toiling in our day.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that that was so me.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: I would I was a very busy, very um active person, kind of hyper, um, which served me well in a lot of ways.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: But doing it in your own strength, it makes you very tired and very stressed, especially when you carry baggage.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: So God started doing a work in my heart, and he started helping me apply his word to my life instead of just going to church.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was good that I went to church, it was a start, but I didn't really have that personal relationship with God.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: I gave my heart to him when I was 16.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: I really believe I was saved at 16, but I was not really pursuing him.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when I graduated from high school, the my high school sweetheart was still in school for another year, um, God started to really deal with me that I was messing up and then I needed to change things, but I just couldn't break up with the guy I loved.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: I tried a couple times because I could tell he was damaged and I was kind of worried about it, but I loved him, and I thought maybe I could help fix him.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And when you genuinely love someone, it's really hard sometimes to know how and what to do.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: So unfortunately, under unlike her convictions, I didn't stick by the convictions I was taught.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was sexually active and I got pregnant.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And at the age of 18, because I was 17 when I graduated, my um sweetheart, high school sweetheart, and I married.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: We had two beautiful daughters together.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of them's here this evening, the other one lives here in Texas, um, lives in Texas with her family.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am so tremendously blessed.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: But that marriage was rocky from the start.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I so wanted to make things work.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: My insecurity and my abandonment issues, my fear of man, all those things kind of played and fed into um who I was.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I remember asking God, you know, to help me train up my children in the way they should go.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at scriptures like Proverbs 14, 26, and I said, God, you say reverence or a healthy fear or respect of you gives man deep strength.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: His children have a place of refuge and security.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I prayed for my children, but I'll be honest, I felt like I had messed up because I could tell my husband went through these cycles of going up and down, and I didn't know how to get off of the ride.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: So for over 20 years we were married.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: There were a couple times in the marriage where it got really bad.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: The first one was when my daughters were in middle school and in high school, and um I found out that he was cheating kind of by accident through a cell phone message.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: He worked a job where he was on call, and I just had this gut feeling that something was wrong.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he went through these times of withdrawal, but I just had this gut feeling that something wasn't quite right.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I discovered this, tried to confront him, and he was like, I'm not talking to you about this, and he left.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, not talking to me about this.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I just went to God.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, God, why?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you love me, would you let this kind of stuff happen?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to raise these children that you've blessed us with.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was worried about the damage that it was going to do.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it is so funny.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: We worry and we fear about things, and God still ultimately got things in control.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: My mother was not perfect.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: When she went through my grandmother's murder, she was a very fearful, trying and very controlling, trying to keep us safe, and instilled that in us by accident.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And even though she did damage, she started us on a path that led to life not only for her children, but for her grandchildren.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a godly heritage because of it.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be perfect, first of all.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just remember that, ladies, God can use an imperfect vessel as a mother, as a wife, you know, as a Christian.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I also realized that I had those deep insecurities, how I felt about myself, that I was really, because I was a poor half-breed kid and I didn't fit in, because those are the things I heard from the bullies, you know, um, that I was dirty because of what had happened to me, that no one knew about, that I wasn't good enough, had that fear as well.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: When my husband cheated on me, and the first time I took him back, I was scared.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to raise my kids alone.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to give up on my husband because I thought divorce was wrong.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Even though I knew he cheated on me, I wanted to give him another chance.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I did love him, I did root for him.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I also, when I took him back, I struggled with that fear.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: That fear became very real again in my life, a different type of fear of man, of the abandonment.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: My dad became ill and started losing his memory.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: He had dementia, and I struggled because my dad didn't get saved right away when we were kids.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: My mom went to church for five years by herself with us kids and had to take a stand because my dad didn't want to have anything to do with it.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: He'd been in the war and had some issues there.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: He'd faced prejudice growing up, even from people in the church.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: So he had his excuses and his reasons.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't interested.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: If mom absolutely had to have it, fine.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: But he gave her a little H-E-double hockey sticks about it, you know.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to play on it.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was middle school and high school age.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, can I stay home with dad?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Dad, can I stay home with you?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And mom would be, you absolutely not.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to church.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: But my dad got saved after five years.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in high school and I had all this stuff happening, and my parents didn't really have a clue.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't bad parents, they just didn't know.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I was angry at him for not knowing.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was angry at him for not figuring it out.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I got really kind of rebellious and I kind of started spiraling.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And even though I was in church and God was working on me, it took me getting pregnant with that first child for me to really get down on my knees and tell him, I am so sorry I've been doing things my own way.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because now I have this beautiful responsibility, and I don't know what to do.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was a young mom who um was scared.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to say, again, people in the church stepped up.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they tried to come alongside and encourage.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um I talked with a pastor about some of our fears um going into it and everything, and he said, God makes up the difference.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you do the best you can and you commit yourself to God and your family to God, and and then he'll make up the difference.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I trusted him to do, and he has.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: He has, he's been faithful.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um I will say that through the abandonment issues that I experienced, I got down on my knees again and I was like, God, your word says in Hebrews that your word is living and active and sharper than a double-edged sword, and it can penetrate and divide the soul and spirit, judging the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the story of King David kind of bothered me because God said that he was a man after God's own heart.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: What did King David do?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: He sinned with Bathsheba and then had the guy killed, right?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, whatever you saw in King David that I can't see because I'm only looking at the outside.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Help me see, get to my heart, help me deal with my issues, help me be who I'm supposed to be.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been a process my whole life.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm not gonna lie and say that I've even arrived now.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've grown and in wonderful ways, God's used wonderful things.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the Bible says the Lord restores my soul, your mind, your will, your emotions.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: He can do a healing work with them, and he's done that for me.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: I learned that I had to change what I was thinking on.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: You guys remember when kids were going, whatever, right?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: I hated whatever.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then I heard a pastor share a whole message on the scripture, Philippians 4.8.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, think on such things.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized part of my problem was where I was staying, where my mind, where the paths that I was allowing my thoughts to go.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And God had to take me through a process of helping me change that.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: He used Christian music, he used um several different ministries, he used divorce care.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's some of the ladies that actually went through divorce care.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um we made ourselves vulnerable to each other.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: I went to Christian counseling.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I've heard people say, you know.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: You well, I don't believe in counseling, I don't need that.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I needed extra help, so I went to counseling.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to be ready for whenever God opened up a door for me to possibly love again because I believed in love.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought that you know I kind of messed up and I stayed single for like seven years.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, excuse me, it was five years.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: I did date someone for about three years.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't work out.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't sold out for God, and it was hard to make that work.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: There were kids that were rebelling against going to church, and he was trying to make it work, and it didn't.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't okay when it happened.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: I went back to divorce care again because I had my heart shattered again.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Insecurity, fear, and all that came right back.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when I wasn't looking, I was content to be single, enjoy my family because I'm blessed with a tremendous family, enjoy my friends because I have some wonderful friends.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: My car was totaled.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Truck didn't see me.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Second time in like five, seven years that I was hit because the truck didn't see me.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, you know what, this time I'm gonna go buy something decent.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I start going car shopping, and the guy that sold me my car ended up being the guy that I fell in love with.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yay, God, because I would have never, my girls thought it was so funny because they were like, a car salesman?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: I can't believe that you even let him in the door, you know.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um actually, John broke all my rules.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of funny because I had this list because I was so hurt in the relationship that I was in for those three years because I love the guy's kids.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when I broke up with him, I lost them too, of course.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can't hold on to someone else's kids when you're not in a relationship with him.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: So one of my rules was a person's not gonna have any kids this time.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna do that to myself.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's not gonna be younger than me.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And some good divorce care advice, although I did break it, is he hadn't been divorced as long as my standard was.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: He broke my rules because I saw something in him that I didn't have in my ex-husband or the ex-boyfriend.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: He had God.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: He had a hunger for doing what was right.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there were things I loved about him, but the very cool thing is there are all kinds of things in our that happen in our lives that are tragic and hard.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know when I went through the first separation, it was the first and only time I had suicidal thoughts in my life.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't even, I was shocked that I felt them and thought them.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, I reached out to my mom when that happened.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it is just so funny to me to look back and think that I couldn't see a future.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't see my daughters, they were a big motivation for me to hang on because they were precious.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I still struggled with life at times, and that's okay.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes life gets hard and it's not always our fault.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes bad things happen when we're doing the right things, even.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes bad things happen because we're not doing the right things.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: God's big enough to turn it around.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible says he works good in Romans 8.28.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purposes.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Thessalonians tells us to encourage us and build each other up.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And Romans 12.21 says, Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I made another note about 1 Corinthians 15, 33.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Bad company corrupts good character.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: A cautionary tale.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um I said, don't be alone going through stuff, right?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Spend time with God, Christian friends, support group, counseling.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, God showed me that there is bad advice out there.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: I had people that were whispering in my ear that could have led me down the wrong path.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I will not even say they were well-intentioned, they just wanted someone to get in trouble with, and not that innocent kind of trouble that I get into sometimes with friends, but I mean bad advice.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Bad company corrupts good character.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Be careful.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: So count your blessings, think on those things.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is noble or praiseworthy, think on those kind of things to help keep you from focusing on the negative.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: And remember not to be alone.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Spend time with God.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: You let God use Christian friends and family, the church to build you up.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you need to get involved in a group, there's nothing wrong with that.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing wrong with that.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Go to counseling, talk to your pastor, don't be alone.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other thing God really showed me, because I started praying once I got through the darkness, God restore to me the joy of my salvation.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was really happy being saved.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what he told me?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Start serving others.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna discover your gifts, you're gonna notice your blessings.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let me use you.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the joy of your salvation can be restored not only through the process of him healing your mind, will, and emotions with his word, but it also is restored in giving to other people.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I promise you that's the truth.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I've been blessed enough to work with youth, I've been blessed enough to mentor people one-on-one, I've been blessed enough to be involved in children ministry.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's just it's just a joy that you can't describe.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you've never led anyone to the Lord or really got to pray with anything anyone about something and connected, there's a joy in that that is uncomparable.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: So be encouraged that whatever your story is, wherever you're at in your story, ups, downs, terrible, great, God is there with you.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: And what he's done for someone like me, he's no respecter of persons, he'll do it for you.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: He loves you just as much.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter what secrets you have in your past, or things you've never told anyone, or the regrets you have that you didn't tell anyone.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: God's bigger than all of that.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I just thank you for letting me share.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I'd done pictures.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she suggested that.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I had, but I didn't.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it's okay.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.