Your Texts. My Respect.
On Sunday at Suncrest, we talked about how God doesn’t waste our experiences — the good, bad, and ugly. He actually wants to use them (even redeem them) in our stories to now serve someone else. To make sure we were connecting with the real stuff people have gone through, we (me at west campus…Andy Kaser at east campus) spent the last 15 minutes of the service responding to the various good, bad, and ugly things that people have in their stories.
To say we were overwhelmed at what people sent in might be the understatement of the year. We expected more bad than good, but my respect for all of our church grew immediately learning about just a slice of the “ugly” people in our church have experienced. I very much appreciate you being candid enough. Let me share just a sample of the texts (we got WAY more than we could have ever had time to talk about in each of the 4 services):
-Taking care of Mom for 30 years. Alzheimer now consumes her and wreaking havoc in my family
-Crack addiction
-Feel alone in my marriage
-Sexually abused leading to drug abuse
-Hardened heart from Divorce
-went bankrupt from bad decisions and bad timing
-Strained business partnership to point of possible dissolvement
-husband divorced me after 13 years…left me with 3 kids/no money
-child dealing with depression
-molested as a child
-Can’t find a job
-No dad
-Cousin killed in Iraq
-I’ve mistreated too many people over the years.
-Loss of a child
-Cheating with the same sex
-No trust in men because of my father
-Dad was/is a drunk
-Car accident. I was driver and lived. Best friend died.
-Divorce, Suicide attempt
That’s not all of them, but you get the idea. In addition to this UGLY stuff, there were quite a few GOOD parts of stories shared too. My favorite part? I’m biased, but I loved the people who said finding Suncrest was the good in their stories.
I’ll put in the next post my best advice for responding to all of this pain/ugliness in our stories.
.Real.Greg.Lee. 
God does not waste our experiences. Praise the Lord for that. I didn’t think I was ever going to see how that could be true. And now He has opened doors that I never dreamed could be opened. Like speaking to teens about recovery from abuse. Speaking to unwed mothers who think there is no forgiveness or hope for them. Sharing my story, as hard as it is, to bring Glory to God to show His mercy and healing to others.
Suncrest was the beginning of the pointing me in the right direction. God bless you Greg for your following of Christ and reaching others.
Jana,
Thank you for sharing this. Your story is one we can all look at to see God at work first hand. I’m glad you keep letting him use you!
Greg