Wendy's Testimony

I've been with Women of Hope now for several years. The term "hope" drew me to the study since I was looking for a hope that I no longer felt. Life had gotten the best of me. Mostly you wouldn't know it. I'm a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps type of person, but that just kept me from asking anyone for help, including God.

There are so many things I could tell you about Women of Hope. I could say that it's not a typical bible study class. I could tell you that I've seen people demonstrating the working of God in their lives in a way that is much deeper and meaningful than I have ever seen. I could tell you of the beauty I see in each woman or the life-impacting lessons I've learned, but all of this can be summed up in one thing: God met me.

That's it. He met me, I didn't meet him. I received God's salvation when I was three, but I'd never felt free. By the time I was five I thought for sure God would strike me down during communion because I felt like such an evil little girl. Women of Hope first taught me about the misconceptions I had about God and then I began to work on the even more warped view I had of myself.

When Jesus sends out the disciples he tells them to go into the world healing the sick and preaching the good news. I'd always known that God wanted me to know that he'd freed me from the penalty of sin, but I hadn't realized that he wished to heal me also. During Women of Hope, we'd had a lesson on surrendering to God. For some reason, that particular lesson struck a chord in my soul and I began to realize that my hopelessness was deeply tied to my inability to surrender control to God. I guess it's just human nature to want to put ourselves on the throne of our own lives and that finally put me at the bottom of a pit where all my plans had failed. I finally had been learning to trust that God's intent for me was pure, so I said "just take it all, take everything." Then, He met me. I felt as Paul must have felt when the prison bars sprang open and he was free.

If I could tell you one piece of good news that I've learned from my experiences in the last few years it is this: God is always at the bottom of the pit. He reaches out to us and comes to us, because we can't possibly reach Him.

In Women of Hope, I've learned more about applied scripture than I think I've learned during the rest of my life - and I've led bible studies before. This is more. It's about what happens when you invite God into your midst, and what happens when He shows up.