Crystal’s Story

I cannot remember a time when I did not have some idea of who God was. Ever since I was a baby, my parents brought me to church and taught me the truths of the Bible. I went to Sunday School and Christian schools kindergarten through my senior year of high school. My father has been the pastor at my home church for over thirty years, and my mother was also involved in the church. Most of my extended family also attended the same church or one in their respective areas. Needless to say, I have been blessed with a rich spiritual environment and know very much about the Bible.

Sadly, however, knowledge does not necessarily equal a life led by faith and filled with love for God. During my high school years, I began to notice that while I knew so many things about the Bible, there was something still missing. I went to church and recited passages, but it didn’t really mean very much to me. These thoughts secretly began to undermine my values and beliefs about who God is and who I am as His child. To anyone who did not know me, there was not much different about me than any other person around. I gave in to sinful habits, starting with using bad words and gossiping about others. I began to give in the coarse joking and sexual innuendos that are so common in secular society, and I believed it to be ok, because I went to church every Sunday, and my thinking was, “It’s not really all that bad. It’s not like I’m having sex or doing drugs or getting into trouble. In fact, this really isn’t that sinful at all.” If I only I could have known what destruction this thinking would bring upon my faith.

All sin begins in the heart. I let this false belief that sexual impurity was just fine really take a hold in my life. I let other values go to make amends for these. I started dating, and my faith took even bigger hits. I thought I needed a boyfriend to make all my problems go away, and I believed the lie that the only way for a guy to like me is to give away a part of my heart. My longest relationship was the climax of my sinful living. The lies concerning sexual purity had mounted so much that I thought as long as I wasn’t having sexual intercourse, everything else was ok.

But it wasn’t. I was so far away from God. I was not participating in my relationship with my Savior. Finally, He had had enough. He loved me too much to let me keep going in my sinful ways. He made it clear to me that I needed to break up with my boyfriend and to flee from sexual and other temptations and sins. He wanted me for Him and His will alone, although I did not realize this at the time. All I knew was that He didn’t want me living that way anymore.

God brought me to college in Minnesota State University-Moorhead, because He knew it would be the start and development of the journey of His servant. After a few months of confusion as to who I was and where I fit in, some of my new friends invited me to attend Campus Crusade for Christ. I was very skeptical at first, but grudgingly went along. What do you know, but I loved it. I began to attend regularly. I made many wonderful, strong Christian friends, and attended TCX, the winter conference in Minneapolis over Christmas break.

But I wasn’t golden yet. I still didn’t really understand God’s will for my life yet, or what it really meant to be in a relationship with Him. So God decided it was time for me to begin to understand that. He shoved it on my heart to go on summer project with Cru to Medora, North Dakota, in the beautiful Badlands. I thought I was going out there to do mission work, which happened eventually, but not right away, and not even in the way I imagined it. There He revealed to me that He is so in love with me and wanted me to be transformed. He was calling me to follow His will, to live to glorify Him, not because I have to, but because I want to, out of thanks to Him. I read a book called “Crazy Love” by Francis Chan that summer, and my eyes were opened to how lukewarm I had been, and I was filled with an overwhelming desire to live for Him. I accepted Christ the summer of 2009. This doesn’t mean that I just believed He was real or knew of it, but He now owns my heart and my passion and my life. It can never be supposedly just mine, ever again, because He will not let go!!

So now what? Well, that wasn’t just the end, or the climax of the story, because I am far from there. My whole life is building and learning in Christ, and growing in my relationship with Him. My sinful flesh prevents me from reaching that perfection in relationship with God, but I can still grow in it with His help. God knew how much I would need Him in the months following Medora. I would need Him to get through stressful homework times. I would need Him to carry me through when it sometimes seemed as if I was the only one who cared about the salvation of others. I would need Him to hold me when I felt as if the world was crashing down.

I would need Him to pick me up the days following when my dad called me and said, “Mom went to heaven this morning.” It is a curiosity how life can change so dramatically in a matter of seconds. My mother died suddenly and unexpectedly of a ruptured berry aneurysm on December 4, 2009. Jesus promises, “And in all things, I work for the good of those that love me, who I have called according to my purpose.” It is so hard to believe that sometimes! Without my strong relationship with my heavenly Father, I would not have made it through. I would not have been able to be there to carry my dad and my brother, to be the strong one, helping everyone else first with their pain. I saw so many wonderful things come out of it. The God-given strength provided to me was a lighthouse to my friends, most especially those who do not yet have a real relationship with Jesus. I am able to sympathize with others, and help them lean on God through similar situations. I would be lying if I said that I never have days when I miss my mother more than you can imagine, or wonder why God would take her from me. But God gives comfort, and He holds me in his everlasting arms. I can never fully understand His ways or His will, but I know that only the best come of them.

God used to be a Sunday morning affair for me. But not anymore. He is the love of my life and He holds and cherishes my heart. I believe God will use my faith to glorify Himself and that others see Him shining through my lifetime dance with Him, and I pray that they come to know Him also. For what is life but a time to love God, glorify Him, and give up everything you hold dear just to see one other person come to the rich graces of the gospel.