Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 10, 2018 | Expresso - Ashley Davenport

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April 10, 2018 | Expresso - Ashley Davenport · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Three years ago, I moved back to Topeka from Memphis, Tennessee to work at Young Life.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: And here's a picture of me and some of my kiddos.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that sounds really spiritual, right?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, some people were like, she works in ministry, praise the Lord.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um but if you really knew me and you asked me, hey, how are you?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I would have said, I'm mad at God.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm okay, but I'm mad at God.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so for me, I was working in ministry but mad at God.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the question is, how can that be?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, reality was that I had been in denial about some things that had happened in my story for a really, really, really long time.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And tonight I'm gonna share some of those experiences with you.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and my hope is that if you find yourself in denial or anger or depression or discouragement, that you would be encouraged that there's hope.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and maybe just maybe God's not done with you yet.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: So here we go.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was born to this beautiful, happy couple in Sprinkfield, Missouri.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and by the looks of it, everything seems good, uh, but that's just not true.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my mom side of the family never approved of this relationship because my father had committed the criminal offense of being born black.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And back in those days, multi- or biracial couples were just not a thing.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so when my mom kind of shared, hey, I am pregnant by this black man, um, it was not greeted back and received with streamers, balloons, parties, and well-wishes, but looks of disappointment and frustration.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the irony of all this was that my dad helped raise my sister.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's my me, my sister, and my dad.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, my sister never actually knew her father until she was 17.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but my family just couldn't see the goodness in that.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and my dad was never permitted around my family, and my early memories are filled with holidays spent without him.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so this racial tension, coupled with my dad's declining health, that led to the amputation of his leg, he had gangrene, um, and he was ultimately placed on disability because of that, just put a lot of strain on this relationship that they couldn't handle.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not to mention they were both sinners that had no idea who Jesus was.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh they also had no money and both had horrible coping mechanisms.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a recipe for a disaster uh very early on.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so my parents split when I was in second grade, and the mess of my life just kind of went from bad to worse.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my mom moved in with my great-grandmother, who really didn't love the fact that I was half-black.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and my dad entered a marriage that was pretty much a good recipe for a horror story.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, at my mom's house, I was under the constant harsh critical eye of my great-grandma.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I could do nothing right for her.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: I blew my nose too loud, my hair was untamed.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and for some reason, she just could not understand the words that were coming out of my mouth.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: On the contrary, there's my older sister Courtney, uh, who's fully white and was one of my grandma's favorites.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so there was a lot of different treatment that happened between the two of us.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and when you're eight, you just don't seem to understand that.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of the most hurtful things of all that was that my mom did nothing to protect me at all.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she knew her family had a problem with me because of the color of my skin, and she subjected me to them anyway.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so after all that, you know, you go over there and you think, oh, the logical thing would be I just need to go spend time at dad's house.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wrong.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my dad was depressed by his disability and the loss of both of his parents.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he got married, like I said, to this wife, and she had three sons.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And let's just say they partook in a lot of activities that led to, and it was the police at our door trying to understand what was going on with them.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this coupled with alcohol and recreational drugs led to fights that the best boxing matches would give a run for their money.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and somehow, in the middle of all that, I became the referee.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I constantly found myself in the middle trying to get my dad off of his wife so that he didn't kill her.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: My stepbrothers were older than me, but they didn't have the rapport with my dad.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I literally am like clawing adults off of each other.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the killing part is no exaggeration.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I can remember fights where literally there were guns on the bed, and had I not intervened, um, it probably would have ended up really bad.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so to make matters worse, I found my older stepbrother in my room one night caressing my face.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And because I didn't know anything about sex at this time, I lived in a constant fear that maybe, just maybe he was raping me and I in my sleep and I just didn't wake up.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had a lot of fear going on.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm 11 years old for crying out loud when all this is going on.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this was my life, and nobody really knew a single thing about it because I had told myself, you don't let people know your story, and you don't let them know what's going on with your parents because you kind of need to protect them and make sure that they don't get in trouble.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so my dad didn't know what was going on at my mom's house.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: My mom had no idea what was going on in my dad's house, and I just managed and survived in silence.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you would have seen me as a kid, I would always have a smile on my face.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was a cheerleader.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Everything seemed to be pretty good.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, to make matters worse, my eighth grade year, uh my dad died suddenly uh from heart failure.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And by this time, I had stopped going to his house because I couldn't sleep peacefully or feel protected, but he had no idea about that.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: I knew if I told my dad what was going on with my stepbrother, my step, like he would have killed him.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, let's just say that his death just kind of left me devastated.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that following year, my mom had kind of stayed around Springfield because my dad, she was struggling.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: She was a single mom of three kids at this point.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And once my dad was kind of gone, she was like, I just need to go be with my family.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so that year, two weeks before my freshman year of high school, I moved to Shawnee Heights, moved up here to Topeka.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And again, we lived with my mom's side of the family, and that was less than ideal.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um I enrolled at Shawnee Heights, and honestly, y'all, it was culture shock.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: I had grown up in poverty.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: I had grown up kind of um in an environment kind of like Highland Park.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so to take me from that and put me in Shawnee Heights district was just really hard for me.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I tried to fit in and that didn't work out.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to be on sports teams and that was hard.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I just really felt misunderstood and struggled a lot.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so eventually I transferred to Topeka West, and that was a better fit.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but before I could take a sigh of relief, uh my mom got married and engaged right before my senior year, and she moved to Chapman, Kansas, and I felt abandoned and unprepared for life.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: My mom had kind of left me in the basement of my grandparents' home, and I was just I lived off my dad's social security check and kind of made things happen.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so this was the recipe of my story for the most part, or at least what I could see that left me angry three years ago.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I was angry at God and I was angry at my family.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And however, one huge detail that I kind of left out was that somewhere along the line of this story of my life, God had intersected my story.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in the midst of all of this drama, I grew up at different churches hearing about echoes of him.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I accepted Christ around 10 or 11 years old and grew up knowing a lot about him.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: But even that got distorted.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when I got a little older, I joined churches that were very legalistic.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And for a long time, I didn't think about any of the things that I'd gone through.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought, okay, if I can work harder, faster, better, God will quit punish me in this life, and um, I won't find myself in this predicament anymore.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I kept working hard, I kept trying to be good.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and eventually I found myself in situations in sin that I never thought myself capable of.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I asked God, I was like, God, how did I end up here?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he just gently said, Girl, you have ignored your story for all of these years.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And because you didn't deal with it, it's now dealing with you, and you don't really get to do that.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, hmm, that's nice.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that's when I finally had to turn around and kind of start to look at my story because reality was it's up to this point I had believed, I kind of told everybody, hey, how are you doing?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Ash, I'm great, like everything's fine.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, smile, hello.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I actually believed that.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, yeah, I'm fine.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: I yeah, my dad died, what?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And who who cares?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I just was like, this is life, let's go.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so now I'm looking back at it and I had to turn around and I kind of came out of denial.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was in denial about all the things that had happened, and now I'm like looking at it.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And when I looked at it, um, I was really angry.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And here's an excerpt um from one of my journals.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can't read it, I'll read it to you.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: It says, uh, when I look back over my life, I see God's grace.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: However, what people have done, namely rejection, abandonment, abuse, lack of protection, lack of care, etc., scream so much louder.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And every part of me wants to scream at God, why didn't you stop it?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you allow this?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I know the Christian needs answers of one, all things work together for the good.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Two, God is sovereign.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Three, people are sinners, they did it, not him.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Four, Joseph, Job, Jesus, people walking through the fire, not getting burnt, etc.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: However, I feel burnt.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: My heart hurts.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Trusting you is scary because you won't prevent pain, hurt, and sorrow.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: So what do I hope in?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: How do I trust knowing suffering and turmoil will come?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: What can I expect from you?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you in all of this?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: What promises of hope do believers have?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because I seem to be missing it.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have joy.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: My heart doesn't want to do what you ask Christians to do.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: I still love my life and my safety, and I don't know how to change that.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen some big revelation of what is so much greater than my life here and now concerning you.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Heaven is good and dandy, but it hasn't sustained me, and half the time I don't know if I'm going there anyway.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Father, please give me a foundation of something I can cling to.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Help me love you more than I uh than life and have hope in something greater.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: For even Jesus saw beyond and said, looking unto Jesus, the founder and protect or perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 12, 2.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: What is the joy set before me?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: What can I hold on to?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: What is promised to me?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is it the promised land?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: What were the great cloud of witnesses looking to in Hebrews 11?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this, I mean, I showed you all this because that's literally what I was asking God.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had some very, very big questions and I was mad because I couldn't understand how a good God could allow all of these things and still be trustworthy.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And right in the midst of the raw truth of my heart, the healing journey began.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I ended up in counseling and began to work through years of silence, grief, and pain.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was challenged to make to take the mess and my questions to a big God who was big enough to answer them.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And y'all, God met me.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: He began to show me where he was and all the things that had happened.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: The answers he gave me didn't sound cliche to me, but tailor-made to what I needed to hear.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: He began to show me how he showed up through his people my whole life, and how he too was well acquainted with grief.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: He took me to the Garden of Gethsemane and showed me how he could relate with not wanting the story that he had been given and yet said, nevertheless, not my will, but your wills be done, Lord, in full trust that his father had a plan that was good for him and good for others.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I stand here and I now know that I wouldn't be as equipped to minister to my babies that I love so much had I not um gone through what I did.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Cause there's something different to look into a kid's eye and say, Hey, I get there.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, was processing one of my stories right after my dad died and not that long ago.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I wrote, I just showed up to school the next day and nobody knew what happened.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like my dad died on a Saturday, I went to school on Monday and I didn't say anything to anybody.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, wow, how many of my kids are just showing up to school the next day?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so the Lord just began to show me that, hey, um, I have a plan.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that I can stand here and there's probably, I don't know, just given the amount of women that are in this room, um, there are probably women in the room thinking, I hear what you're saying, and that sounds good, but you don't know my story, Ash.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you're probably writhing and excruciating pain because you've kind of been through hell on earth and you don't see hope.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I know that because I was there, and you can be doing ministry and godly things, and that still be where you find your heart.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and my encouragement would be hey, God's not finished with you yet.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he's probably beckoning you to come to him.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite verses is found in Psalm 147.3, and it says he heals the brokenhearted and he binds up their wounds.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it was a Bethmore study I was doing once that said the Hebrew word for that is stitch by stitch, which is really sweet.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Psalm 34, 18 says, He is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if this is you, uh my encouragement is for you to get help that you would seek out sisters in this room or sisters in the faith that are around you and be honest about what's going on in your story.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, position yourself in his presence.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times I would love to say, yeah, and the Lord microwave my story, and then voila, I said a prayer and everything was over.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's not true.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was in counseling for about six years.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I still go to counseling, I ain't gonna lie.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm just gonna be honest.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And counseling is great, y'all.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: I really thought that counseling, I was like, I'm not going to counseling.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you go to counseling, that means you're crazy.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I have this fear that I am crazy, and so I don't want to go and it'd be confirmed that I'm crazy.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: But um counseling is really great.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's really great.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's wisdom in a multitude of counselors for sure.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um so one of the other things I would say is that what you've gone through hasn't killed you yet.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's probably a reason why you're still here.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so you might feel like it is, though.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: You might be like, no, but I feel dead.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I get it.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: But God is able.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm a witness because I'm here.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I lived it, and I want you guys to be able to say the same.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Before I close, though, I want to share about some people that God's used in my life and how he showed up in my story.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um this picture right here is my family.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people are like, Who are your parents?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, well, Heather Sprue and Calvin Sprue, and people are like, wait a minute, help me with that.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And about 12 years ago, I started showing up around TBC with them, and people were really confused because Heather offered y'all no explanation.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: She was like, Have you met my daughter Ash?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And y'all looked so confused, like, wait, but who'd she come from?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And y'all tried to hide it, but I saw it.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and y'all were wondering, wait, so when did Heather cheat?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, when did Calvin cheat?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: What happened?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, neither one of them cheated.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: They just kind of adopted me into my story.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, after my mom moved to Chapman, they said, Hey, when you come back from college, you can live with us.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Really?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I tried to get out of it.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you know Heather, but she was like, I already made your bed, and here's the key.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Yes, ma'am, I will I will be there.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, they are some of God's warriors that I would look at and say, Hey, he used them to reach me.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and y'all, these people love me like I'm their own grandma's here, go to her house every Christmas.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and y'all can't tell me any different.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And God has used them to show me, hey, I showed up all along.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they're just one of like many.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: We had a chronological study not that long ago, and one of the questions was who are women that have showed up in your life and that you God has used to teach you about him that you kind of emulate now?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I like listed 20 people.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm just gonna kind of show you a couple of them.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is Dina Young.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all love me some Dina Young.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Dina Young, uh, when I was in elementary school, she was my elementary school counselor, and she literally um somehow circumvented the laws between church and state.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord would open up the door and she would, she and her husband would just come to our neighborhood and pick up kids and take them to church.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And y'all, she didn't have it all together.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ms.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ms.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Dina, I love her, but she's ditzy.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and she's super sweet.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I remember one time she showed up in the church van and I saw it coming down the street like the bus, and I was like, I don't want to go to church today.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so I like hopped off my bike and like went and hid under the car.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and she like got off in her whole suit and like kind of pranced on over there and like looked under the car, and I was mortified.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: And she was like, Are you coming to church today?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, No.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: But isn't that just like God?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we try to hide and he shows up anyway.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: So she's definitely one person.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And even as I like get in a van and go pick up a gazillion kids who tell me that they're coming, and then you get to their house and they don't come out of the house.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm reminded I did this to Miss Dina.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this is like I'm reaping what I sow, so it's great.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, these lovely people uh are Marvin and Angie Daniels.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when I moved from Springfield to Topeka, I went to a program called Higher Ground, which was a Christian sports camp.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that down there is their family.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: They have five of their own kids.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but yet they raised so many of us, and they like taught us how to have quiet times.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: They taught us how to share our faith.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: In high school, they taught us how to, I don't know, life with Jesus, a lot of foundation of our faith.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so love them.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're still in my life.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Miss, they live in Kansas City now.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Miss Angie was gonna come, but she had a prior engagement.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this picture is a little blurry, but in the corner on the right, well, your left, in the front row, there's a lady named Miss Regina.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And this was my college small group, which was really funny because all of them was were older white women, and then all of a sudden they let these college girls come be apart, and they took care of us.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I point out Miss Regina because when I found myself in that situation and I was like, I don't know how I ended up in this sin, I called her and it was the middle of the night.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And Regina is a prayer warrior, and she still prays uh for me as I do ministry today.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I love her as well.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all know this woman, that's Miss Patty.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Love her.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, somehow randomly ended up in her office, not random, God is good, um, to talk to her about discipleship, and she like peered into my soul and was like, what you do is really hard.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, How do you know?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Oh, I think I'm supposed to go see her.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so for about a year and some change, she just said, Hey, you need to go do business with God.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, You're right.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: I need to go do business with God.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so super sweet.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then this last woman, um, that is my Titi, is what I call her.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: She is my dad's aunt, my great aunt.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: And y'all, I want to be like her when I grow up.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my aunt literally, I don't know.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: She she's she's a um, she was a janitor for over 25 years.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, totally lived through the time of like she picked cotton, was a sharecopper, was part of the help.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever seen that movie, that was her, and then got a job and loves Jesus, and there's not any hate in her heart at all.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um she goes and visits the sick, and she goes to church faithfully every Sunday.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I just look at her and I'm just like, wow, like, how do you live through what you've gone through and still have so much love?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: My mom had another um child after me, my baby brother.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's 11 years younger than me, totally not related to her, okay?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: And they share a birthday, and their birthday is gonna be April 26th, and I guarantee you, she's gonna call my brother, who doesn't really know her all that well, but she's just like, you're part of my family, even though they separated a long time ago and tell him happy birthday.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just love her, and these are just some of the people that God has brought into my life.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so maybe you can't relate to being mad at God, praise the Lord.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that part of my story didn't really encourage you, but I encourage you that there are people like me that need your gifts.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they need you to pray and to encourage them, and you don't have to be like spectacular and be like, oh, I need to be Miss Patty.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: No, they just need you to be you.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they need you to ask them to go to church and maybe give them a ride.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, God wants to use all of us, I would say.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm here because people said yes to him using them.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so my encouragement to y'all would be please do the same.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I know that people in my life had no idea, no idea how God was using them or the ministry he called them to.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love to tell you that I always had the straight and arrow, but that's not true.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, most of my life is me going like this and God being like, come on, girl.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so, and that's discouraging.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like now that I'm on this side of things and I'm mentoring young ladies, it's really hard to see people you're pouring into kind of go that way.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but God is faithful, and you, if you keep showing up and you keep being faithful, just hang in there.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you never know, maybe somebody will be up here giving their espresso testimony and they'll be talking about, yeah, this girl was praying for me and she always had just encouragement for me.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I would tell her, I did this again.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just like, it's okay, honey, let's pray.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Come on over here or let me give you these verses on these cards or whatever.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so maybe that's you, you're not angry at God, or you're not in that whole journey, but maybe you're like, man, like maybe God is done using me yet.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: He really isn't.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so my encouragement to you would be just say yes, even if it's just knocking on your neighbor's door and taking them cookies.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what people do, but maybe that's it.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm single.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: I said bachelorette life, I don't take people cookies, but maybe the Lord has blessed you to do that.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, that's all I have to say.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.