I love your podcast. My brother shared it with me over the weekend and I have not stopped listening to it.
For the first 10 years or so of my life I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church in Friendsville, TN. The pastor of the Southern Baptist Church was my uncle. He was running a failing aviation business in addition to pastoring and ended up swindling a lot of the parishioners (including my parents) out of large sums of money to continue funding his failing business. Among those who were swindled was my aunt, a widow for $100k.
My family left that church, and it became a point of bitterness. My parents had a hard time trusting the Southern Baptists as well as preachers with similar soft spoken preaching styles. My parents took us to visit multiple churches and felt that the IFB lined up with our family belief system. We ended up at an IFB church in Maryville, TN. When I was 18 (in 2005) I graduated High School and went on the mission field to Peru for 6 months. I felt such freedom in South America. My eyes were opened as a young adult to the things that God can do. It was completely different than any other church ministry experience in a very positive way.
I came back to the states when my time was up and started working again in my home church. I worked in the bus ministry as a bus captain. There are a lot of stories within my time at this IFB church that were good, but the bad experiences outweighed the good ones.
My bus routes were either in government housing areas or rural areas of extreme poverty. It was not uncommon for me to go into a child’s home, get him or her ready for church and put them on the church bus and feed them. I had very close relationships with the children and the families on my routes. The one bus ministry story that will always stick with me is this one. I picked up a little boy who had made a profession of faith the week before. He was so excited to come to church! He was waiting in his driveway, bible in hand, climbs up the stairs and says “Miss Whitney, can I sing in the choir today?” I said “Absolutely, dude”. Later, the kids finished Sunday School the service was starting. The little boy comes up to me and says, “can we sing in the choir now?”. I say, “Yes! let’s go!” We get up to the choir and I am told by the choir director that the little boy cannot sing in the choir because not only does he have a worn-out t-shirt on, but the t-shirt says “BUDWISER”. I have never felt so small.
While I was working in that church, I was also going to Crown College to get an ESL teaching certification. Part of the certification requirements were to teach a night class at Maryville college. In the class I was teaching there were many Muslim and Asian students. I shared my “learning another language” story with this student and explained that a huge part of my Spanish education was attending Spanish services in Peru. I encouraged many of the students to come to church with me. At that time we were having our annual “March Madness Super Tuesday” services. During the month of March we would have services on Tuesdays and guest preachers would come and speak. I had invited a few students to come. Many were interested but backed out at the last minute. Tony Hudson was preaching that specific night my students had regretfully backed out of attending. From the pulpit he called Muslims “towel heads”…….. I. Was. Mortified. I can remember actually thanking God that people I invited to church with me did not come with me.
I have many more stories about being IFB but it’s not worth rehashing. I got married and left that church. My husband grew up non-denominational and never could understand IFB-ers. Most of the time he didn’t fit in and would be called out for his casual dress or laid-back-ness. My husband even told me that when we had daughters they would all be wearing pants because in his experience dating me, the idea that skirts were modest was absolutely absurd. He did not want any daughter of his dating with a piece of fabric covering her that could simply be lifted up.
My husband and I moved to Nashville. I went through a period of 10 years where I wanted nothing to do with God nor a church. I would “Identify” as a Christian but I basically did what I wanted to do. I excelled in my career, traveled a lot, dressed how I wanted to and spoke how I saw fit. I looked back over my life and saw that I was completely miserable.
I began working for a Christian company around 4 years ago and God showed me who he really was. I had never met REAL Christian people until then. When I say the word “real”, what I am referring to is the “BROKEN” that Matt Dudley referred to in Episode 61. My employer specifically would talk about Jesus and literally cry in my office. About 3 years ago God started breaking me and 2 years ago anything that I took comfort in was taken away from me. My marriage was broken, my health was not good, my relationship with my family was on the rocks, I was working 70+ hours a week and felt like a hamster on a wheel. God stripped everything down until all I had left was him. He showed me that I needed to learn how to see him as my Father. He showed me that this picture of what a father is that was ingrained in my mind was not who he was. There is a song that says “There’s no shadow You won’t light up, mountain You won’t climb up coming after me. There’s no wall You won’t kick down, lie You won’t tear down coming after me”… The Father was saying – “Whitney, I am coming for you and I will not stop until you surrender.”
I found out that I had been broken this whole time, but I was unable to see it. He loves me. He loves me with reckless abandon. His love never changes, the only thing that changes is my ability to accept it. I can only love him back with the love that he gives me. I can only have faith with the faith that he gives me. Bottom line, I can’t perform any more. I have been performing my whole life like I was trying to earn it and never could measure up. I can’t earn it, I don’t deserve it but he gives himself to me again and again.
My Father has restored my marriage (I’m so unbelievably in love and thankful for my husband) , my health, my heart. To HIM be the glory. Look at what he has done with something so dirty and broken!
I am so thankful for the people (His children) that he has put in my life that have all pointed the way to HIM. No skirts, no rules, no trying to earn it, just HIM.
God showed me in Psalms 37:4 the Bible says “Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart” – that’s KJV and I have heard that verse all my life. If am being honest with myself and with everyone else most of the time I don’t know how to “delight myself in him”…. God whispered to me and said – “Hey Whit, look that up in the Hebrew.” The Hebrew word that was translated as “Delight” actually means “to be soft and pliable”. The father gave me a picture of just collapsing into his hand, going limp and abiding in his hand. Most of the time all I have the energy to do is collapse in his hands and say God, I surrender to you. Take everything. Just give me more of you. This is the table David speaks about that is prepared in the presence of our enemies. This is the desire of my heart.
All that to say – He is good. Thank you all for sharing your heart. I can see Jesus in your eyes.
Sincerely,
Whitney
PS – I texted a friend of mine in GA last night and asked if he had ever heard of your podcast. He said you were close friends of his. I wanted to share my story with you because now I feel like I know you even more, haha.