God radically changed my life by calling me to himself at the young age of 7 years old. I am incredibly blessed to have been walking with the Lord for such a long time, I can pinpoint so many moments over the course of those 14 years that he has sanctified me and showed me more of himself. However, as I grew up I lacked having someone to walk alongside me in those moments. I was a girl that was hungry to know God’s word, but with no one to teach her how to study it with her heart, soul, and mind. I was a girl who was broken-hearted for her lost friends but had no one to walk with her through gospel conversations. I was facing the same struggles with confidence and identity that most middle school and high school girls faced with no one sharing with me the riches of God’s promises that would bring so much clarity in that time of confusion. I loved the Lord with all that I had but had very few people, and even fewer women, in my life that were investing in me and walking with me to show me a life of holiness that I could imitate.

It was for this reason that as I grew up and as I was plugged into Summit College through The Summit Church that I not only began to see what genuine discipleship looked like but felt an increasing burden for the girls at my home church to see it as well. As I have worked with Summit College over the course of my time at NC State I began to form relationships with other mature believers in Christ. It was in those relationships that I learned what it looked like to have honest conversations about sin, how to encourage people in their gifts, and the joy of living in community with brothers and sisters. I have been in weekly bible studies with them, led weekly bible studies, attended many meetings and sessions to equip me as a leader, and through all of it, all I could think about was how much I wanted my girls at home to have the same things. It was around this same time that Chris Parker invited me to take a position at that church as a Youth Ministry Intern for the summer, and I quickly accepted. At the time, I was a political science major who had intentions of going to law school one day but was excited for the chance to disciple the girls in the youth ministry for the summer. As I spent the summer teaching the importance of biblical literacy and encouraging girls to dig deep into their bibles, planning community-wide worship nights, and simply doing life with the girls in our youth group I had almost an uneasy feeling. I loved every second of that summer, not because it was easy or because everything always went according to plan but because I had the sense that I was doing what I was created to do, but I was still clinging tightly to the plans I had made for myself. Pursuing ministry seemed scary and unknown, even though so many were encouraging me by pointing out the gifts I had for teaching and discipling. Chris was incredibly gracious with me as he saw how the Lord was molding me and pushing me to be obedient. Chris equipped me as a leader by teaching me through books like “What’s Best Next?”, encouraging me in ways that I could grow, calling out the things I did well, and genuinely living a life I could imitate. He was constantly asking me questions about why I had the goals that I had and what my motivations were, and encouraging me to be rooted in scripture knowing I couldn’t ministry on my own. He taught me dependence on the Lord above all, but at the time I was still struggling to fully understand those things.

However, the Lord radically changed this one day as I began to teach our students from Exodus 3. I read the passage to them and began to talk about how terrified Moses must have been, how he kept asking God why on Earth God would call him to such a weighty task that he felt so ill-equipped for. I told them that God’s answer was clear, God was not asking Moses to trust in Moses’s abilities but to trust that God is I Am whose purposes could not be thwarted and whose power is limitless. In the same way, God is not asking us to have everything figured out, to be completely prepared, or to know all of the right things to say, he is just asking for us to be obedient. As I said those words, I was struck. God had illuminated his holy word in such a way that it felt undeniably clear. God was asking for my obedience, he wasn’t asking me to choose the option that I thought was safest or that I felt made the most sense, he was asking me to trust in the gifts he had given me and was making it all the more abundantly clear as I suddenly saw him more clearly as the glorious I Am by teaching it to someone else. It was then that I surrendered all of my plans into his hands, feeling confident that it was because he was calling me to use my gifts, my experiences, and my weaknesses to make much of him to the young women so much life myself.

As I finish my last year of college, I have begun fervently asking God what my next steps should be. Not in such a way that I am seeking for him to reveal a certain position, but that I am asking him to give me wisdom and clarity as to what career choice will cause me to love him more and make him know. I am asking him to show me what will produce more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in myself while also living out Matthew 9:36-38. As I have looked to God’s word and asked him in prayer, I firmly believe that to have the privilege of discipling the young women of Parkwood Baptist Church would be the answer to those questions. I earnestly want to walk alongside those young women so that they know they are precious image-bearers whom God has intentionally created to glorify him in all of their gifts and in all that they do. I want them each to know the good news that God would become flesh, live the perfect life they could not live, die the gruesome and heart-wrenching death they deserved, and rise from the grave defeating death and shame so that they might live as firstborns and citizens of Heaven. I want no girl to feel alone in her walk with Christ because they were never created to follow Him alone. I want to use all that I have for the glory of God, and I believe being a Student Disciple-Making Associate would allow me to do that.

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