There Is a God!

Sunday, May 31, 2020

O Lord, You have searched me and known me. . . . Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me. . . . For You formed my inward parts. Psalms 139:1-13, NKJV.

Thirteen years ago my life was a mess. I did drugs, smoked, drank alcohol, was fat, skipped high school classes, had a horrible attitude, and was mean to my family. When I was a junior I dropped out and wasted a year of my life watching TV and partying.

I believed in the power of self. If I wanted something, I got it. So when I decided to go back to high school, I crammed and graduated with my class, even though my grades were terrible! Who cared; none of my family had ever gone to college.

When I met and married Rick I began cleaning up my lifestyle, but it was not until my grandpa died of colon cancer at 63 that I became a vegetarian. His daily diet of bacon and eggs had probably killed him. Grandpa was the only father I really knew and his death was devastating.

Shortly after, when Grandma had a serious stroke, I came unglued. Why was this happening to me? Then as I took her to all her therapy sessions, I became impressed with the importance of physical therapy (PT) and decided to apply to the PT Assistant program at Michiana College. I was turned down! I couldn’t handle not getting what I wanted, so I moved to our summer cottage in Tennessee to take the PTA program at Roane State in LaFollette.
That’s where I met Kari, who had taken her physical therapy training at Andrews University, a Seventh-day Adventist school just a few miles from our home in South Bend. When I was running 10 to 12 miles a day training for a marathon, Kari would bike or run beside me and tell me Bible stories—something I’d never heard before. As our friendship grew, she encouraged me to apply to the physical therapy program at Andrews University. No way! My grades were lousy! But as it turned out, Kari’s confidence in me gave me the confidence to apply—and they accepted me!

One day in anatomy class as I was studying the skull, it hit me: God was real! Evolution just couldn’t explain the tiny holes in the chin that were exactly the right size for the trigeminal nerves to go through the skull so that we could chew. There had to be a God! And this personal God was directing my life even though I didn’t know anything about Him. Amazing!

Think back on how God has led you in the past, and let the reality of God energize your life!

—Gretchen Turner

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