When Eric and I first stepped into full-time ministry, I was completely unprepared for the spiritual attacks that hit us full force. Financial difficulties, false accusation, health problems, discouragement, and exhaustion became a normal part of our lives.
At first glance, his life seemed like a dismal failure — his untimely death a senseless waste. Robert Jermain Thomas was a strong, well-educated, talented young man who left for the mission field in China with his wife in 1863.
The lovely, innocent-looking teenaged girl fidgeted nervously as she shared her heartbreaking story on camera, hesitantly answering questions posed by an off-screen reporter. The account she shared was true, but so disturbing it was almost hard to believe.
A number of years ago, I was invited to speak on a radio program for Christian mothers. When I began to talk about prayer being one of our most important motherhood tools, the host stopped me short. “Prayer is great, but it’s not a very practical solution to our daily problems,” she countered.
I sat up in bed, kicking off the covers in frustration as another violent coughing fit shook me. It was well past midnight, and I had been tossing and turning for over two hours, unable to sleep because of the extreme congestion in my head and chest. Eric was lying awake as well, staring at the ceiling, unable to get any rest because of all my coughing.
Eric and I spent the first ten years of our marriage speaking in churches and Christian gatherings around the country, as well as overseas. As a young Christian stepping into the excitement of full-time ministry, I had romanticized ideals about what traveling from church to church would be like. It didn’t take long before those ideals were shattered. While we did meet many truly committed and victorious Christians, we also encountered an uncomfortable amount of counterfeit leaders and hypocritical believers.
I vividly remember a particularly exhausting season when Eric and I had recently welcomed our fourth child. We were trying to maintain our sanity with four children under the age of five, two of them still in diapers.
Leslie finishes her Navigating Modern Christianity series this week with a soul-stirring reminder about the importance of making Jesus our North Star…
While it’s easy to point the finger at the apathy we see in the Church at large, God often wants change to begin within us…