How Jesus changed a 14 year old girls life.
There is this young girl who got connected into our youth ministry last year, she is awesome! Tayla and I love her. She attends a state school on the gold coast and recently shared with us her english assignment she wrote. Her task was to write about something that radically changed her life. She wrote about how Jesus changed her life! This will encourage and inspire you.
CAITLIN, 14 years old:
Change. If you really think about it, it’s quite a hard theme to write about, especially when it’s about your life. The thing about change is that you don’t know if you’re living in black and white until something changes and then suddenly your life is in screaming colour.
So, when I was born I was christened and became a Catholic/Christian, however I didn’t understand any of it. I went to a Catholic school across the road. I met amazing friends there and the education was very good but their religion program? That’s got to be a no from me. I never learnt anything as much as I have at my youth group within the 8 years I went to the catholic school. In truth the only time I spoke God’s name was to curse or take it in vain.
At the age of 12, I thought I was an atheist and when I got to high school I was jumping for joy to discover there was no religion class. Boy was I wrong!
Everything changed for me last year when my best friend invited me to her Youth group, Revolution Youth at Metro Church. I’m not sure if you know what that is but a Youth group is pretty much a group of teenagers who go to a church and learn about Jesus as well as praising and worshiping him.
It was so weird. But I loved it. I made so many new friends that I have to this very day and I couldn’t be any happier with my life. Man, I could never get sick of that place. It’s like it’s the only place I can really be myself around my friends. Then in January this year, I was attending the annual Youth Alive Conference when something extraordinary happened. A moment so significant that I’ll remember it for the rest of my life. The second night at Youth Alive, the band was playing and we were doing praise and worship. We were in the middle of singing Good, Good Father by Chris Tomlin which is one of my favourite songs because the lyrics in the song are so beautiful. So some people have told me how they experienced the Holy Spirit and one of them was that they just start crying randomly because they have this feeling in them. So here I was just singing this amazing song and staring at the roof until I felt something wet hit my cheek. It was soon that I realised that I was crying and I didn’t know why. I wasn’t sad and I wasn’t overly happy about anything so that left me with one thing - the Holy Spirit.
I burst into floods of tears yet it was the best feeling in the world. I felt all tingly inside but a good tingly. It was kind of embarrassing though because some guy saw me crying. The next day, a famous preacher, Tim Ross was speaking to us. He told us to close our eyes, so we did and he prayed for us. I was listening to Tim Ross speaking. In a moment of silence, I heard a very deep voice speak to me.
“What makes you different?” It asked. I was surprised to hear a male voice as I was surrounded by girls but I immediately replied. “Nothing, but who are you?”
Then in the silence, the voice spoke again. “Of course you are different, Caitlin. I know that you will change this world and do great things.” He then replied back, ignoring my question. Now, this freaked me out a bit and I thought about it. What did he mean I was going to change the world and do great things?
I came up with something though, my major goal in life is to become a singer so maybe that’s what he meant. They say God has your whole life planned out so whatever he’s planned for me, I’m ready and willing to do what he wants me to. Because overall, I don’t think involving myself with Jesus was out of interest at all. He planned this for me.
By Caitlin.