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A Minister's daughter
learns about a personal, loving God
by Erin Mitchell (Erin's Dad is FBC's Minister of Music, Phil Mitchell)
God has always been
exactly what I needed: a Teacher, a Lover of my Soul, a Redeemer, a Friend,
a Savior. I have seen Him do miracle after miracle in my life, and I still
stand in awe of the beauty that is my Creator.
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I see the seeds
of faith and the inspirational fingerprints He placed ever so gently
upon my life from a young age. He knew exactly how to
bring Romans 8:28 to life for me..... " And we know that in
all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have
been called according to his purpose." To God be the glory in my
life forever, for great things He really has done.
As a child I was in such awe and wonder of this great big
God whom I'd heard so much about. This God, whom as my mother
so eloquently put it "Your daddy works for" was ever so holy and
powerful. |
It has been an interesting life as a
minister's child. |
It has been an interesting life as a minister's child. I was
usually asked to sit quietly on the pew, watching my Dad up front while
silently eating saltine crackers that my mother used to keep me quiet. My
journey at that point seemed almost like reading a fable, always knowing
that there was a moral behind my Biblical upbringing, but feeling like I had
to look deeper to find the reason.
As a teenager, I struggled with feeling like I knew so much
about God but not really feeling as though I knew Him. In
church, I would hear people talk about God as if He was their friend. This
perplexed me to say the least! How could they talk about the Holy God of my
fable-like Bible stories as if He were just someone you could call on the
phone? How is it that they speak as though He had time to listen to their
complaints and sorrows? Didn't He have enough problems to solve? I was sure
that world hunger and AIDS were enough to keep Him busy.
As daunting as this idea was to me, it somehow drew me
in....to a search for who God was to me. I wanted to know Him like that, a
friend like Jesus. Thus began my digging in the feathered pages of my
Teen Study Bible, where I found this man called a Savior, Jesus.
After a while, I
began to find what I was looking for, a God of relationship. A God who had
hours to listen, who spoke and called me by name. This God knew the number
of hairs on my head! The same God who drew Moses into the secret place,
delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, and saved Daniel from the Lion’s den,
was the same God who desired me to be His child.
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After a while, I began to
find what I was looking for, a God of relationship. |
After numerous
failures in my attempts to know this personal God more
intimately, I began to feel a deep stir to bring this God out into
the open in my life. While sitting on my bed one afternoon, I
stutteringly told my mother that I felt as though God were calling
me into missions....in Africa. Needless to say this did not
go over very well. But the calling on my life to serve this Living
God was stronger than any opinion or reservation. I knew Him even
more greatly as a sojourner, a God of adventure and passion. |
While serving in Africa with Youth with a Mission (YWAM), I
learned of the heart behind the Great Commission. In the children's HIV/AIDS
unit at a local hospital in South Africa, I began to see the face of
this God whom I had come to know. As I held a young baby dying of AIDS in my
arms, I fearlessly learned more about Him than I ever knew was possible to
know...this was the God of Love. The One who sees not sin, but beauty; who
sees not death but life; who knows not black or white, African or American,
nor hate, but only knows love. I had gone to such great lengths to
search for Him.
I had come all the
across the world to look for this God of Love, only to find He was
right there where we had begun… on that pew eating saltine crackers.
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