Stories

I spent my youth in foster care, moving from family to family. I had given up on God at this point. I had tried to find God and be successful on my own, and it hadn’t worked. Then when I was 16, I had a dream. Jesus was asking me if I believed in him. Shortly after that dream I was interviewing with a new family, and they had this giant field out back. I went into the field while they talked. For some reason, at that moment, I confessed out loud to God that I couldn’t do things myself. I said I was sorry. And God accepted me. I decided to follow Jesus.

I did not grow up going to church. I did not really think much about it until one day, my friends Darrell and Arlene invited me to attend Open Door. As I listened to the message by John Withers, it was like somebody smacked me in the back. It was the voice of God speaking. The Lord wanted me to come to Him. So, not long after that Sunday, I repented and decided to follow Jesus, and John baptized me. I was a little afraid John would drop me, but he didn’t. That was 18 years ago, and I have been coming on Sunday ever since.

The church is my family. Sally makes me chicken noodle soup. Darrell and Arlene give me a ride. Lavada has cleaned my house some and taken me places. I love Open Door. It is like Jesus said, “Those who do the will of God are my brothers and mother,” my family.

I just want to remind you that these 18 years of faith began with somebody inviting me. Maybe you can come with me to church sometime.

About two years ago, I was at a very low place. I was sitting in my car at the community inn, where folks stay if they are homeless. I had no money, no food, no gas, nothing to drink. I was ready to give up on life. I felt like I was broken, and I let myself down. I had no hope.

In that moment of brokenness, I remembered Jesus. My dad had taught me about Him as a child. So I prayed, “What should I do?” God told me, a voice inside me came, and said, “Read your Bible.” I opened it and read Psalm 108. As I read, I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit again. The Spirit spoke: “It’s going to be OK my child, just believe.” After I read three times, I thought to myself, “He hung on the cross for me, shed His blood for me.”

The next step was to find a church to keep hearing the Word. I ended up at Nathaniel mission. That helped get me started. Then I came here and found peace and a family. My Christian family here has helped me get through. When I was down low, God reminded that I was still His child. Even though I was broken, I was chosen.

II would like to share some of my story with you. Growing up, I always had a picture of Jesus on the wall. But Jesus was just the picture. I didn’t really follow Him. I thought just believing was enough.

Well, that thinking led to a hurtful lifestyle. I got into trouble for marijuana and ended up in jail. While I was in jail, I met a preacher named Tom, who was in jail for drugs, too. He loved the Bible, though, and started a Bible study in jail. He eventually got me to go, and I read the Bible 90 days straight. I decided to follow Jesus.

Soon as I got out, I was homeless. I backslid again and left the authority of Jesus. Well, after some time, I ended up in the E.R., because I got shot. This experience caused me to repent and follow Christ again. Open Door let me live in the building a while. Now I have a church family, I quit drinking, I want to keep growing, and Jesus is more than a picture on the wall.

My name is Jetti Bach, and I have been a member of Open Door for a few years now. Over the past few Sundays, I have heard some folks talk about their desire to quit smoking. I want to share a brief story about that.

My nephew Nathan struggles with health problems, one of them being diabetes. For years, he has struggled with smoking which causes major problems with diabetes. I have been caring for Nathan his whole life, and I have asked prayer for him numerous times here at Open Door.

Well, one of the things we prayed for Nathan was that he would quit smoking because it was hurting him so bad. About a year ago, a doctor came in and told him he would die soon from cancer, and smoking was a big part of that. Well, Nathan decided to quit immediately. He quit cold turkey. And I believe our prayers for Nathan working with the Spirit helped him have the strength to quit.

He has been smoke-free for over a year now and I thank God, and Open Door, for helping Nathan leave smoking behind, and I believe He can help you, too, if you want it.

Thank you.

My name is Vitalik.  I lived  in Crimea, Russia and my family never went to church.  I did not care about faith.   I was 15 and Going to public high school.   

Christians from US helped teach English there.  I got to know them and one day they  asked where they could  go to church.  They needed a translator to understand the church service so I translated for them.  I did this for  a year not really paying attention.  But God was working on me.  

One Sunday I started thinking about what I was translating.  God began to gradually reveal himself through the words I was translating.  Finally I decided 

I should give it a try.   I found one day that I believe what I am translating.  

The whole Bible talks about the same thing :  Gods love for us.  We are all sinners, God loves us, we need God to be saved.

I confessed my sins and got baptized 

Ended up coming to a Kentucky Christian university, my last option.  I’m staying with a family I met through that university.  My wife and children are in Mexico.  I’m looking for work and trying to get my work visa. 

God has brought me to this point 

I don’t understand what’s happening or know what’s going to happen

Proverbs 3:5-6 says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your path.  

I’ve stopped fighting struggling to do it my way

I’ve stopped worrying 

I’m more intellectual, but I’m learning not lean not on my own understanding 

Right now I am having to trust God.

God is going to have to work in a supernatural way.

I’m tired of fighting to make my life better by myself.  I am now learning in a new way to trust God and lean not on my understanding .  I am learning to acknowledge him and he has directed my path, to this church, to Luke, and to many loving people here.  I trust he will take me the rest of the way. 

Item descriptionHello everyone.  My name is Chrissy Juelles.  

I grew up going to church. I committed to accept Jesus at 12, but I had not been baptized.  

I know Jesus is our Lord and savior and died on the cross for our sins

It is important to repent.  I always felt I needed to be baptized.  

I have been at Open Door 10 years.  I feel welcome accepted by everyone here. 

Our faith and our church help me stay happy.  I am happy to be baptized here with my church family today.  

Pray for me that my baptism goes well

Item descriptionIf you were to ask my mother, she would tell you I started singing before I could speak. If you asked my sisters, they’d tell you I could talk to a rock for 30 minutes and not notice. If you ask my dad, he’ll tell you I have always been able to speak my mind - something he was both proud of and regretted teaching me, depending on the circumstances. My husband would tell you that I connect enough with people for the both of us - something his introversion greatly appreciates. My voice has always been my most obvious gifting.

I started performing on stage first when I was 6 years old. I was cast as the Virgin Mary in our Christmas play, and I LOVED it. Before our performance, it had been stressed to me that “the show must go on” no matter what. So when the lights went out mid-show, I took it upon myself to keep the show rolling and “give birth” to the baby Jesus so our audience wouldn’t know about the issue. The laughter from the congregation showed me I was doing well!

Later that year, I would find out from a pbs commercial, that there were people struggling with housing. After sobbing in prayer, I felt the call to do something. With the support of my mom, I marched up to the pulpit that Sunday and charged the congregation with helping me find ways to help everyone find a home. Our church did a fundraiser for our local homeless shelter, and we raised a sizable donation of money and items.

As a young adult attending college as a Music Education Major, I heard about the Syrian Refugees who were struggling to find asylum from the violence that was occurring on the home front. Again, I felt called to advocate for and donate to person’s who are unable to advocate for themselves because the need to survive was overwhelming and immediate. It was then that my pastor challenged me to reflect on a possible call to ministry. I was told him he was dead wrong. He then challenged me to preach the message I’d been given to 3 churches in the area in order to pick up a special donation. I accepted, and God’s people raised over $1800 for the Refugees for medicine and food at the front.

A year later, after a change in college majors, I was working in communication disorders and learning to be a speech pathologist. My love for the voice, translated into a passion for helping others find theirs. During this time I encountered many people who were suffering deeply, and I was moved to understand and explore that suffering through the lens of scripture. I shared these understandings with my pastor and again he very rudely me to explore my call to the ministry. I was furious! So I did what anyone would do and I appease my pastor by applying to one seminary while also applying to five different graduate programs for speech pathology. Wouldn’t you know it? God showed up! Asbury Theological Seminary was the only graduate program who accepted me, and I came kicking and screaming to Wilmore, Kentucky.

Since being here, I have completed a masters degree in mental health counseling and have nearly completed my Masters of Divinity. Now, more than ever, I am grateful for the voice that God gave me. Through this gift I have been able to share the peace of Christ in a meaningful and personal way with those I encounter. While the call has changed and morphed over time, God’s gift to me has been consistent. My voice has been a constant reminder of God‘s love and faithfulness.

I grew up calling myself a Christian, and some of my earliest memories were in a church or talking about God with my sister, but I did not have faith. Though I believed God existed, and I believed myself to be a Christian, both beliefs were vague and unspecific. I never really understood what it meant to be a Christian, despite the best efforts of my church and parents. As an example of what my “faith” was like, I have a memory of a conversation in high school where me and a friend talked about dying. She asked me if I thought I’d go to heaven when I died, and I said “I’m not sure”. I didn’t believe that I deserved to go to heaven, and I worried God would reject me for messing up so many times in my life.

Yet, paradoxically, I was very zealous about my faith. I often would argue with atheists, albeit usually on the Internet, if they mocked Christianity. If someone mocked Jesus or the Christian faith, I felt as though I and my family were being mocked. Christianity had more to do with my identity than it did with my worldview.

Though I believe God made some inroads into my heart throughout high school, such as using tragedy and hard times to draw me nearer to Him, my lukewarm belief remained until I entered my undergraduate studies. It was there that He led me to a campus ministry called Cru (some of you may know it by its former name: Campus Crusaders for Christ). They gently and wisely counseled me, answering questions I had and giving me biblical answers that I had never known. One of the first and most significant things they taught me was that I cannot earn my way into heaven. When I first joined Cru, I remember taking a survey and saying that, on a scale of 0-100%, I was 50% sure I’d go to heaven when I died. They asked me why, since I claimed to believe in Jesus. I explained that, because I was so imperfect, God might reject me. I thought my sins might outweigh the good in my life.

But they taught me the truth of the Gospel. No amount of my effort could ever get me into heaven; instead, Jesus is the only way. This was my first major step towards a serious relationship with God. I can’t point to an exact moment where I can say “from this point on I was saved”, but I can certainly say that by the end of my freshman year I was 100% confident I would enter into God’s presence when I died.

Though, perhaps the closest I came to an “exact moment” was during one of our bible studies. We were watching a video about a sermon preaching on the scandal of the cross, and what madness it was, by the standards of Jesus’ time, that he would take the place of Barabbas. In this sermon, the pastor makes the point that he, and all of us, are Barabbas. He dramatizes this by voicing Jesus being taken away in chains as we stand there, shocked, that he willfully took our place. We cry out “this is crazy, he doesn’t deserve this!”. And Jesus shouts behind Himself as He willfully goes to the death we deserve, "It’s okay, my son! Go, get out of here! You’re free!”.

I remember hearing those words, and as soon as I did, I burst into tears. I had no strong feelings about this sermon when we began watching it, and I was in a perfectly good mood when I came to bible study that evening. At this point, I had only met the other men in that group a few times, so it was very uncharacteristic of me to show such emotion in front of them. In fact, it’s rare for me to cry in general. I had never done anything like that before, and have never done anything like that since.

At the time, I didn’t quite understand why I wept watching that video, but now I believe it was God’s Spirit bearing witness to my own spirit, as Paul discusses in Romans 8:16. In that moment, I wept with gratitude, finally not just knowing intellectually, but sensing deep in my heart that I am God’s son, and He is my “Abba”, my father.

Although my family and I attended a church as I grew up, I became much more involved with the church after I discovered a Chrisitan coffeehouse fellowship where I was living in Germany. 

Afterwards, I moved to Mississippi for college. However, I didn’t really take my faith seriously during this time, and I never really attended any of the campus churches. I felt like I had a falling away from God, and I had one bad relationship, and was severely depressed. I also had several painful experiences with churches throughout this period of my life, and I felt abandoned and hurt.

After graduating from college, I had more chaos in my life, and made some bad decisions.  Finally after 10 years of trying to be successful working on my own, I met my husband Mike.  Mike and I did go to church.  

Then, Mike was diagnosed with cancer. Before he passed away, Mike motivated me to visit a church again. However, I had lost several family members and many of the support systems for my mental health, so my daughter took me to Eastern State Hospital. From there, I went to Central Kentucky Recovery Center. 

While at CKRC, I felt what was perhaps the Holy Spirit come over me, and I had an awakening; it all just struck me, how I’ve hurt other people and how my actions have impacted others. This awakening, along with Mike’s motivation and my family’s encouragement, inspired me to get on the church van with Val to visit Open Door, where I met an friendly, loving and supportive community to become involved with. They also had free fried chicken! 

Today, my relationship with Jesus has healed my past anger problems, helped with my depression, and given me a welcoming community at Open Door.