“It is more important to talk to God about people than to talk to people about God.”-Howard Hendricks
As I think of Stephanie my heart aches and I feel tremendously disappointed. Those aren’t new feelings about her or about several other young people that we minister to. Debbie Giles recently commented that we have to remember that we aren’t at the end of the story with so many who seem like they are in a spiritual trauma center. We are in the middle. And how their story ends has a great deal to do with both your prayers and ours for these people.
Stephanie is one who is currently in the “trauma center.” She was doing so well and then Satan cut in on her and threw her off of the good path she was on.
The situation had indeed changed significantly but not as much as she had thought. And maybe she herself hadn’t changed as much as she thought.
Stephanie had been confirmed in our church several years ago but the things she wanted to do in the Lord so often were not the things she ended up doing. We started a discipleship program with her where she was reading the Bible out loud to her mom, memorizing Scripture, helping out with the youth group, and attending worship services each week. She was working hard to finish jr. high so she could apply to the Lutheran Bible school here in
And then she was derailed. On Easter Sunday she was explaining the meaning of a drama the youth group had done during the worship service to the congregation. Five days later I received a frantic and angry phone call from her mother detailing a major moral failure by Stephanie and announcing that she was kicked out of the house. My wife Barb, and Danny Giles went with me to talk to Stephanie and her mom and the other people involved about repentance and forgiveness, discipline and restoration.
Both Stephanie and her mother left the little town where they had lived and move to another but we haven’t heard from them since.
“Hello, 911? We have a spiritual emergency . . . again.”
In Christ,
Todd, Barb, Rachel, Megan and Kirstie Schierkolk
