On the second day of her trial, Karen was to hear her verdict. She knew the county had declared her guilty. Seeing Deputy Simpson caused her to start shaking. The facts he reported under oath were not the same as those she had given. Karen could only hope the jury would believe her.
The verdict came late in the afternoon. The jurors walked in the courtroom and wouldn’t look at her. Karen tried to stay calm and not lose hope. Then, as she heard the words “Not guilty,” relief filled her. She knew her life wasn’t really in the hands of the jurors. God was her Counselor and Advocate.
As Karen left the courtroom, one of the pro-choice jurors looked into her eyes, smiled, and winked. Tears flowed down Karen’s face. She knew justice was served but also that God had pierced the heart of a woman who was against what Karen believed. It was all worth it.
I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.
(Philippians
1:20
)
WEEK FIVE JOURNAL
• On a scale of one to ten, how secure do you feel about what others are thinking of you?
• How might your life be different if you could focus more on what God says is true about you?
• What do you feel you need to do in order to be more acceptable to God?
• Have you reached a place where you know and experience His love for you, regardless of what you do?
• What Bible verse or passage of Scripture has been most meaningful to you this week? Why?
dawn delp
Between Two Enemies
W
hen Dawn Delp was twenty years old, she began praying for Kashmir, India, an area barely touched by the gospel. Every day, she pled with Jesus for this place she’d only read about that was desperate for the light of Jesus. She couldn’t explain why God laid this geographical area on her heart, but she continued to pray. One day the Lord told her, “You will go and see that land someday.”
Two years later, in the summer of 1998, her church decided to take a trip to that very place. Dawn and three other college students arrived in Kashmir. Heat and the smell of curry, human sweat, and roaming cows confronted her. In a land so foreign to her own, Dawn prayed.
Their small team met up with Indian Christians who were doctors. They decided to travel by car to several villages and treat the ill, setting up makeshift medical clinics. They also wanted to spend time encouraging existing missionaries and taking prayer walks—circling each town by foot praying for God to move in the hearts of the villagers. They wanted to reach the people by meeting their many physical needs and by ministering to their spiritual ones.
The fact that their team was small proved to be a great advantage because of the dangerous area they targeted. Residual fighting continued in that particular region, the result of a thirty-year war. By day, roads were relatively safe, but by nightfall, warfare raged between Pakistani and Indian factions. One day, as they traveled a road notorious for its evening skirmishes, a mudslide blocked their path, delaying their trip by several hours. They had hoped to reach their new base town during the day, but the delay prevented a timely arrival.
While they waited for debris to be cleared from the road, Dawn’s team pulled out guitars and started singing. A crowd formed around them while an Indian doctor shared Jesus. He did this boldly, knowing that within a few hours all the listeners would be scattered and the police would not be able to track down each one. To share Christ in this unstable region was to risk imprisonment and possibly torture.
Two young men approached the doctor while he shared. They asked him spiritual questions. Later, they asked the doctor for Bibles.
Farther down the road, a collapsed bridge further postponed the missionaries’ journey. Although thankful they weren’t on the bridge at the time of the mayhem, they found themselves stranded at a tiny village. The villagers put up tents for the weary travelers.
The next day, tired from sleeping in makeshift tents and worrying about gunfire, the missionaries continued their journey on a narrow dirt road—just wide enough for one car. The road wound tortuously around a mountain pass, the car hugging the mountain’s steep slope on one side and teasing the other edge, with a sheer drop one thousand feet to a river gorge below. The road had no guardrails, nothing to prevent cars from plummeting to the river below. Dawn prayed they’d meet any oncoming traffic—usually large buses and freight trucks—on straight parts of the road rather than curves. To calm themselves on the harrowing ride, the team members sang praise songs.
They passed a road sign that ordered travelers to stay off that road during certain hours, due to fighting. Dawn checked her watch. They were on the road within that very timeframe. She looked out the window to see Indian soldiers standing on the mountainside holding automatic weapons. Beyond the river gorge, Pakistani soldiers did the same, silently saluting the travelers with weapons at the ready. Dusk and then evening settled in. They could hear gunshots punctuating their drive.
Their driver, keenly aware of the danger of being sandwiched between two fighting factions, moved forward as quickly as he could. He took the corners too fast, spewing gravel and dirt behind them. The car jolted back and forth, leaning dangerously close to the gorge at one moment, the side mirror grazing the mountain’s edge the next. Dawn’s stomach rollicked as she sang—louder and louder—about God’s deliverance, His goodness, His provision, His protection.
The team’s singing intensified with every blind curve, with every approaching vehicle, with every
rat-tat-tat
of machine-gun fire. During this harrowing time, it struck Dawn that not only were they praising God in the midst of a fearful journey, but they were exalting Him in a region of great spiritual darkness. She smiled as she sang about the God who made the Indians and the Pakistanis, both of whom were lost in the darkness.
In the midst of that topsy-turvy journey, God gave Dawn peace. “I realized He was worthy of my life, no matter what the outcome,” she says. “We were being obedient to His call to go, so we trusted He would take care of us.”
The team reached its destination and checked into a hotel. Although they were fairly safe, gunfire rattled in the distance as they tried to sleep. The next day, they read a local paper that detailed the number of casualties on the road the previous evening. Later, when they recounted their adventure to a fellow missionary, she said, “Our driver had to turn off his headlights one evening on that road so we wouldn’t be a target for the Pakistanis.”
Near the end of her trip, Dawn and her teammates trekked ten thousand feet up the same mountains where they had seen the Indian soldiers holding their guns. The trip took five hot days. She prayed for the region, encouraging missionaries she met along the way. They treated the sick. The team took several prayer walks around the area, begging God to bring light to that spiritually dark place.
During that excursion, the mountains as a backdrop, Dawn asked the Lord what He wanted her to do with her life. From the mountain He told her, “Teach in a Muslim country, and serve long-term missionaries.”
Today, she is doing just that—in Turkey, a Muslim country. She met her husband there. Together, they walk a new adventure, not so much on dusty, cliff-edged roads, but through the avenues of people’s lives. The danger is still there, but God continues to give Dawn peace.
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
(Galatians
6:9
)
gina waegele
Child of God
F
rom the outside, Gina Waegele looked as if she had her life together. Majoring in television news and video communication, she worked for Colorado State University’s TV station, winning an Emmy Award for best student informational program and an award from the National College Broadcast Association for best newscast. Gina was beautiful, ambitious, and talented, and she soon anchored the newscasts for a small town’s network affiliate as well as competed in beauty pageants. At twenty-one, she appeared to be on the fast track for a glamorous career.
Yet below the surface, memories haunted Gina. Her father had died suddenly when she was only thirteen, setting off a downward spiral of relationships in Gina’s life and the lives of those she loved.
As a teenager, Gina suffered as she watched her older sister Christine’s marriage end in a painful divorce. Christine was Gina’s mentor and friend, and even though the sisters lived in different states, they shared an unusually close relationship. When Christine met and married her second husband, Gina celebrated with her. There was no hint that anything was wrong. Yet just six months after the wedding Christine was dead, the victim of domestic violence. Her husband strangled her to get her life-insurance money.
Still reeling from the loss of her sister, Gina entered college and found herself in a series of her own unhealthy relationships. Just months after Christine’s death, Gina’s possessive, controlling boyfriend beat her so badly that she wound up in the hospital. Recognizing the danger she was in, Gina cut ties with that boyfriend, only to fall into other hurtful relationships.
Her dating problems and an unresolved anger toward her sister’s murderer forced Gina into a deep depression even as she received multiple broadcasting awards and recognition. By her senior year of college, Gina knew something had to change drastically. She couldn’t keep living with the bitterness and pain that filled her heart.
Although Gina was raised in a Christian home and attended church as a child, she did not have a personal understanding of what it meant to live for Christ. In her heart, she thought that because she was making bad choices and not living the way a Christian should, God could never love her or forgive her. But when Gina reached the end of her own strength and her depression made her question whether she wanted to live or die, she finally cried out to God. “Show me that You’re there. Show me that You’re real!” she begged one night.
God did not answer her with a flash of light or an audible voice, but not long after that night, Gina felt a gentle tugging in her heart to find Christian roommates. She didn’t know it yet, but God was working in her life.
Gina moved in with a few strong Christian friends, and they invited her to church. Still not sure what God was doing, she agreed to go. One service changed her life. Gina felt as if everything that happened that night, from the music to the message about the forgiveness of God, was written specifically for her.
Gina’s struggle with bitterness, especially toward the man who had killed her sister, had been eating at her. She cried herself to sleep at night and lost her temper over the smallest things. Deeply rooted anger controlled Gina’s life, making it impossible for her to understand forgiveness, especially the forgiveness of God.
Yet Gina felt God whisper to her heart, “You have to forgive him.” She struggled against the idea. How could anyone ask her to do that, after what the man did to her family? But God was persistent, and finally Gina understood how her anger and hate consumed her. She began to pray, and slowly the bitterness faded and she was able to let go and truly forgive. Not only did Gina find peace from the tragedy, but she also caught a clear glimpse of God’s forgiveness. If she, a flawed human being, could forgive someone who hurt her and the people around her so much, the Creator of the universe could obviously find forgiveness for the things she had done. After so many years, Gina finally understood the message of the Cross, and it changed her whole life.
A few months after Gina recommitted her life to God, she faced another challenge of faith. She competed in the 1997 Miss Colorado pageant and won the title of First Runner-Up. It was a great honor—Gina had never placed in the top five in any pageant—but it was only the beginning. Six months after the contest, the pageant board of directors took the crown away from the reigning Miss Colorado and called on Gina to serve out the rest of the year. Gina accepted the responsibility. Acting as Miss Colorado gave her the opportunity to travel across the state and talk about her platform issue—domestic violence awareness—and share her own story.
Life as the new Miss Colorado wasn’t easy. The original pageant winner sued to get her title back, and the media constantly pulled Gina into the controversy, often trying to portray her as the villain. Two weeks before Gina’s term would have ended, the court sided in favor of the original pageant winner and instructed Gina to give the title and responsibilities back. As quickly as it started, her reign as Miss Colorado ended.
God had a plan for this as well. In her final press conference, Gina was asked if she would try to sue for the title. Looking calm and confident, Gina answered, “My identity is not in a crown; it’s not in a car; it’s not in money; and it’s not in the title of Miss Colorado. My identity is in my faith in God.” In that moment, Gina realized the full impact of her statement. She was indeed a child of God, and that was more important than anything else she would do or anyone she would date. It was not important whether she was someone’s girlfriend or a TV star.
Gina considered this new perspective carefully as she considered what to do next in her life. After she graduated college, she made a radical decision to leave her job in television and dedicate her life to helping young people develop healthy relationships centered in Christ.
Gina turned down high-paying corporate jobs, choosing instead to work with a small nonprofit organization called Friends First. As the national program director, Gina travels across the country, speaking to high-school students in public and private schools about abstinence and healthy dating relationships. She continues to share her story, with all of its highs and lows, and whenever she can, she includes her favorite Bible verses, James 1:2-4: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”