Grace Through the Darkness

On November 1, Youth Pastor Kevin Bonesteel preached at the Berlin Seventh Day Baptist Church. During his sermon, Kevin shared a bit of his testimony, which reveals how God's grace can touch us even when we think all hope is lost:

As I child I lived in fear – mostly a fear of failure and of acceptance. I believed that I was worthless and that I could do nothing right. My friendships were shallow, I was contently bullied in school, and my family life was anything but peaceful. To no fault of my parents I spent most of my early years in the background as my parents were constantly dealing with and struggling with how to handle my brother, Phillip, who has severe brain damage which has made him aggressive, violent, and often uncontrollable. It seemed like all my parents time was invested in him and there was not a lot left for me. It made it hard to make friends, since I couldn’t invite them over because you never knew when Phillip was going to erupt.

There was one thing in my life that was constant: I played soccer and I was pretty good at it. As I started getting older, other people started point out to me that I was pretty good too; I became obsessed – the praise was amazing. I was finally good at something and people were recognizing me. I was valuable, I was important, and I was no longer in the background – or at least I thought.  Then, at pivotal time in the soccer career of a boy I broke my ankle, sprained the other one twice, and had to have emergency surgery on my calf to have a blood clot removed. I lost everything! Since I was not running, I gained a lot more weight and my so-called friends stopped talking to me. To add to it, I was three years behind everyone else when it came to my soccer abilities. My pride was destroyed, my obsession gone. But God was in control and knew exactly what He was doing – not that I knew that then. Because of my injuries I soon dropped out of soccer and felt like I had nowhere to turn. I was again alone and afraid; the one thing I was good at was gone. During my time on crutches I met a few people in school who invited be back to Youth Group. I again heard the message of God’s love and sacrifice for me, and because the wall that was my pride was knocked down, I was able to begin to understand what it meant to be a Christian. Because of my humbling experience I was able to realize my inabilities to fix my life, and was open to His leading, and to accepting His love and His grace.