Teen Challenge

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I feel like a phony. Those girls who came to our church this morning are a living witness to what Jesus can do in a person's life. Their testimonies were amazing. Young women who were literally down for the count. They had hit rock bottom, some had tried to kill themselves because they didn't want anymore to do with life. How they all ended up in Teen Challenge is a testimony to the greatness, mercy, grace, forgiveness, and power of Jesus Christ. When they speak the name of Jesus, it's with a smile on their face and you know they aren't just trying to impress anyone with their Christianity. They are 100% sold out to Jesus Christ. I talked to a woman who had been through the program, which is one year of intense training and she told me the first two months were the hardest for her. When she arrived they told her she couldn't gossip, couldn't say anything mean about anyone, and she couldn't talk about her music. She said for the first two months she couldn't say anything because that had been her lifestyle. I asked her how often she wanted to just walk out in those two months. She told me every day. She said it was the hardest program she had ever been through, but it had the biggest rewards. She admitted she messed up while in the program. At one point she went home and while she was home she got high and went back to the program stoned and everyone hated her because of what she did. It was during that time when everyone in the program turned their back on her and hated her, that she broke. She hit the bottom, she cried and began the journey with God that changed her life. This woman had been to prison, she almost lost her marriage, today the fact she went to prison does not bring her shame, but it brings a testimony of how God took her life and changed her from the inside out. She has now been married for 21 years. She rose up from the ashes of her life to be a living witness of the power of Jesus Christ. Her smile is genuine. When she uses the name of Jesus it's with power and authority not as a Christian tool. She said the most meaningful time of her life were the twelve months at Teen Challenge. I don't know her name. She wasn't part of the girls who came today and testified in front of everyone. She had graduated from the program many years ago and lives in the Green Bay area and sat at my table with two other girls who were part of Teen Challenge today and encouraged them to keep with the program. Those other two women had that same smile, had hit rock bottom. One of them graduates from the program tomorrow. All of them had that genuine smile. All of them had tears of joy for what Jesus has done in their lives. All of them made me feel like a phony because I don't have what they have. Am I a Christian? Yes, undoubtedly. Do I believe I am going to heaven? Without a doubt, yes. Have I overcome my problems with the power and authority of Jesus Christ? No. I have reservations, doubts, fears, thoughts that I'm not good enough. I know the answers, but I haven't put those answers to work in my life. Those girls admitted to the same failures, the same doubts, fears, anxieties that they weren't good enough, but they did something about it. They put themselves into God's hands 100% and with each other's help, they overcame their addictions, the problems that took them to rock bottom, and acknowledged that it was God, not anything they tried to do on their own, because they had been there done that and it didn't work. Looking at them, hearing them, you know they have been through the fire, through the flood, through the worst that Satan could throw at them, and they came through it with the power of God. You can see it all over them. That power emanates from them. It's in the glow and smile that nothing can wipe away. There is joy in their lives where once destruction reigned. There is hope where none was. That hope gives me hope that I too can have what they have. I know the answers. I need to put those answers to work in my life. That was church this morning. How was your Sunday? Thanks for reading.