Bethany’s faith blossomed during her year at school, while she was surrounded by caring Christian friends and a loving church family. But when she went back to her rural hometown for the summer, her relationship with her parents went from bad to worse. They forbade her to contact her church friends, her boyfriend, or his missionary family, and they constantly attacked her faith. When her mother found Bethany reading her Bible one afternoon, she took it away. “There are better ways for you to spend your time. Don’t let me catch you reading this again,” she snapped. Her parents even took away a ring with a cross on it that Bethany wore.
Her mother and stepfather were convinced that Bethany had joined a cult and when she disagreed, they accused her of not “honoring” her parents. They told her over and over that she was “fragile,” a follower who too easily believed what she was told. Perhaps that was true of the old Bethany, who had been quiet and compliant with her authoritarian stepfather’s will. But the new Bethany had discovered the unconditional love of Christ, and she wasn’t about to give it up.
Without intending to, Bethany upset her parents even more when she decided to major in international studies and one day become a missionary. “They told me that I was failing,” she says. “I think they were really disappointed that I wasn’t going to be a doctor as I had hoped, or a lawyer as I had talked about.”
Sensing that they were losing control of their daughter, Bethany’s mother and stepfather refused to let her return to college the following quarter. They said that since she was not good at making her own decisions at age nineteen, they would begin making them for her again.
But her parents underestimated Bethany’s new faith and the determination that a heavenly Father had given her. After praying and agonizing for weeks, she decided she needed to move out. “I couldn’t handle being so cut off from God and from fellowship. I was such a new Christian that I was aching for more support, for more of a community. I wanted my church, I wanted my prayer partners, I wanted God,” she says sadly.
Bethany made arrangements to move back to her college town and live with a young married couple, even if she couldn’t enroll that quarter. While her parents didn’t say much when Bethany announced her plans to move, it was clear the healing Bethany hoped for was still a long way away.
Not long after she moved, Bethany applied to Youth With a Mission’s Discipleship Training School in Switzerland. The six-month program of study and ministry seemed like just what she needed to grow in her faith.
Bethany’s plans upset her parents. They saw overseas study as another sign of their daughter’s “cult” involvement, and they did everything they could to prevent her leaving. They refused to hand over her passport. Claiming she was mentally unstable, they threatened to have her committed to a mental institution. They tried to cancel her airline reservations. Over and over, they told Bethany that she was not smart enough, not responsible enough, not strong enough to make her own decisions. But Bethany knew that God was calling her to the program. And so she went.
Even in Switzerland, Bethany’s faith was tested by her family. Her mother, who had suffered from depression for years, became suicidal. She called Bethany to announce that their strained relationship was what made her want to kill herself. She called another time to say that she had left a letter with Bethany’s aunt “in case I’m not here when you get back.”
Bethany was devastated. “There was a little prayer attic where we were staying, and I spent so many hours up there asking God, ‘Why are You still allowing this?’ I went back and forth between being angry and knowing that I had to trust Him. I prayed, ‘If there is something to learn, show it to me, and I can keep pressing through this.’”
From Switzerland, Bethany’s mission team went to Morocco. There they worked in schools and missionary programs, teaching English and helping wherever they were needed. It was there, essentially cut off from her family, that Bethany began to see what she had been learning through her conflict.
“I think God taught me grace and compassion,” she says. “In Morocco, I realized how much I want the girls around me to know that they are loved. Even if no one else shows them that, they will at least know it from me. Morocco is a very patriarchal society, and a lot of the girls I met were ruled by their fathers. I think I helped them because I identified with them. I knew what it was like to grow up feeling as if you didn’t have a dad, or knowing that he was there but you could never connect with him. I could share what I had learned—that God accepts us into
His
family.”
Now home, Bethany is on fire for God and excited about the work she feels called to do. She misses her family, who have now cut her off completely, but she knows that she is being obedient to God as she continues to prepare for a career as a missionary. She clings to the words of Ruth, who was also torn between family loyalty and the will of God when she made her promise to Naomi.
“I think there is hope in any situation,” Bethany says confidently. “I have talked to people whose family situations are similar. [Reconciliation] could take seven years. It could take twenty. But God allows us to walk through hard times so that we can follow Him, and He can be a beacon. And I remind myself that even if my parents are disowning me, I still belong to His family.”
In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace.
(Ephesians
1:4-6
)
WEEK SIX JOURNAL
• Does your view of God’s goodness change with your circumstances?
• What kinds of things make you question Him the most?
• What “why” questions do you wrestle with the most?
• What would happen if you “died” to the need for answers and let Him fill you with a new kind of trust in His goodness?
• What Bible verse or passage of Scripture has been most meaningful to you this week? Why?
jennifer mckinnon
Alone at the Podium
T
he graduation audience sat quietly as Jennifer McKinnon turned away from the podium and placed her notes beside her folding chair. As she began to sit down, the audience stood, a cheer erupting from the filled-to-capacity high-school stadium. Jennifer smiled. And she thanked God for the greatest evangelism opportunity of her young life.
Jennifer had met Jesus when she was five. The leaders in children’s church shared the gospel with Jennifer and her friends. She knew, even then, that she needed Jesus.
She continued to attend church, but it wasn’t until high school that she started serving Him with all her heart. For three years, she led a weekly Bible study before school, interacting with all kinds of students. She ran cross-country, so she befriended the athletes in her school. She was president of the band, so she made friends with other musicians. Her desire was to share the love of Jesus with anyone in her school, regardless of his or her position or interests.
“I saw God do great things in the lives of other students,” she says. “I tried to show people that being a Christian isn’t about being a radical for rules but about being a radical for love.”
Jennifer wasn’t part of the “in” crowd when she entered high school. Still, she spent her time embracing all sorts of students, sharing the love she’d come to know. “I wasn’t a cheerleader or the quarterback’s girlfriend,” she says. “But at the end of my senior year, I was voted Best All Around by my peers. This wasn’t because I was popular or pretty or smart. I pray it was because I took time to love people as Christ loves people.”
By her senior year, Jennifer felt a keen sense of urgency regarding her classmates. She knew her graduation speech was her last chance to share the gospel with them.
Only one person knew the content of her valedictory speech before she gave it. Not even her parents knew what she was going to say. She was supposed to rehearse the speech in front of her English teacher for approval, but she knew if she did that, she wouldn’t be allowed to give it. Earlier in the school year, that teacher had quipped, “Jennifer will never amount to anything because she’s too concerned with family and religion.” In class, this teacher berated her for her beliefs and intentionally asked jarring and antagonizing questions.
It was an unlikely place to find persecution—in Nederland, Texas, a small town near the Louisiana border. But instead of discouraging her, the teacher’s criticism made Jennifer all the more passionate about sharing Christ, particularly when she stood in front of her peers on graduation night.
The salutatorian rehearsed his speech for the English teacher, a speech full of platitudes such as “Let us give thanks to a higher power, whoever that may be—Allah, Buddha, God.” When Jennifer rehearsed, she gave an alternative speech. She worried she’d be in trouble for doing that, so she submitted the entire manuscript to another teacher who did not hold her in disdain. That teacher approved.
Jennifer wanted her speech to be different—something that touched people and clearly communicated the gospel. She felt God had given her this final opportunity to share Him, as if her speech were an exclamation point to a life lived for Christ in high school. She claimed the words of Jeremiah as her own: “Then the
LORD
stretched out His hand and touched my mouth, and the
LORD
said to me, / ‘Behold, I have put My words in your mouth’” (1:9
NASB
).
She spoke about her grandfather, a sharecropper, who had no education beyond elementary school. She described him as a brilliant craftsman. “Education doesn’t make you a success,” she said. “Having a purpose does.”
Standing in front of thousands of friends and family and community members, she took a breath. “If I could leave you with a message, it would be this: thank God for the blessings He’s given you, and live your life for Him.”
She ended her speech by singing “How Could I Ask for More,” a song written by Christian recording artist Cindy Morgan. When she finished the crowd was silent—until the moment she turned to see the town standing, clapping, and hollering its approval.
It just so happened that she had to pick up her diploma from the teacher who was supposed to approve her speech. Jennifer walked into the classroom and waited.
“Interesting speech.” The teacher handed her the diploma.
“Thank you,” Jennifer said. “God gave it to me.” She left the room smiling—knowing that God had given her words to speak, lives to touch.
Jennifer knew God was calling her into a life of full-time ministry even then. “Most people thought this meant I was going to marry a pastor, but I knew in my heart God was calling
me
to ministry. It wasn’t about the person I would marry. It was about what God wanted to do with my life.”
God continued to put words in Jennifer’s mouth, providing many opportunities to speak in college and beyond. He burned in her a deep desire to teach His truth to teenage girls. “This led me to cofound SAGE Girls Ministries while I was in college,” she recounts. Started with a little bit of change kept in a pickle jar, SAGE Ministries now reaches across the United States with the message that it’s never too early to begin serving Jesus Christ. Its mission statement reads: “To equip a new generation with the resources to develop virtuous character through intimate worship and the sharing of personal testimonies and biblical truths in a relevant, God-honoring manner.”
The heartbeat of SAGE Ministries is to reach, teach, and train young women to impact their communities and the world. “As a high school student,” Jennifer says, “I realized and witnessed firsthand that God could use me if I was willing. I want other girls to realize this same truth—that ministry doesn’t have to begin when you’re thirty or forty. They are not merely the future of the church—they are also the present church. I want to tell young girls that it’s time to stand up and make a difference today for the kingdom of Christ.”
Jennifer continues to be passionate about expanding the kingdom of Christ, traveling to Germany and Russia and sharing Him in places where people’s hearts are calloused to the truth. “In both places I have felt His presence very near as I witnessed in His name,” she says.
But it all started on a lonely platform in front of a silent audience where Jennifer dared to believe God would put His words in her mouth.
Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
(Matthew
5:16
)
britany miller
Revival Bible Study
B
ritany Miller met Jesus in the Waffle House parking lot when she was four years old. “How does someone get saved?” she asked her parents. They led her through the steps to salvation. Eleven years later, she met Jesus afresh, this time as a Bridegroom who took great delight in her.
She remembers her encounter with Jesus as if it were a movie playing on the screen of her mind. Nearly a sophomore in high school, she had become self-conscious, longing for everyone’s approval. Because of this, she placed herself in compromising situations and was drifting away from Jesus.
One day, on a grassy, green hill as a summer evening breeze washed over her, Britany wrote her first love letter to Jesus as the sun tucked itself in for the night. “During that weekend with Jesus, I experienced love and attention that for once looked at my inner beauty, and in the midst of my shamefulness called me beautiful.”
The next summer, before Britany’s junior year of high school, the Lord spoke to her. He said, “I want you to start a small-group Bible study for girls.”
She agreed. The first week of August, she started with three girls from her school in attendance. There was nothing like that going on in her school, so she knew she was taking a leap of faith. One month later, the three girls turned into thirty. She called the group Spoken For to show they were committed to their faith. Soon after, another friend decided to start something similar for guys. In January of that school year, the two groups decided to meet jointly once a month, calling that meeting CoEd.