The idyllic setting in the mountains of North Idaho belied the inner turmoil that was billowing inside my chest. Feelings of grief, fear, and sorrow surged through me.
Last night was unforgettable – the entire course of my life had changed. One moment, I had been a happy little Mennonite girl, loving life in a close-knit community, and the next moment, I had been plunged into the uncertainty of having no church, no friends, no community.
Excommunicated!
The dread of that awful word was palpable. How could I go on without my friends? I had known them all my life. We had been saved within a few months of each other, and had shared our hearts, our childish dreams and aspirations. We had prayed together, studied the Bible together, sung together, and even memorized Scripture together. Life now looked empty, dark — the future: bleak and fearful.
I had known something was brewing for months already. I’d overheard the bishop and my parents discussing their differences. But I never dreamed it would come to this.
Tears filled my eyes again, as I remembered the tearful goodbyes, not knowing when we would see one another again. We were children, caught helplessly in the decisions adults were making. The consequences for us were unavoidable.
My dad tried to help me by encouraging me to remember that God is in control of all things, and that He works all things together for our good. He suggested that maybe God was bringing us out of our little church family to give us the bigger family of all Christians everywhere.
I knew he, too, was struggling to understand: I’d hear him talking to people on the phone, trying to decide if he had been understanding the Bible accurately or not, and why, if the Bible said what he believed it did, the church couldn’t see the truth. Why did they have to excommunicate us?
Through it all, my parents helped me to focus on who God is, and that despite people’s rejection, God has not rejected me, and is walking through the hard times with me. They didn’t allow me to wallow in self-pity or grief. Instead, they made effort to attend other churches and find other believers to fellowship with.
That night we were excommunicated will always remain a sharp memory, that can still bring tears to my eyes, even today, but the prick has dulled with time, and looking back, I can see how foundational truths were built into my life through that experience.
Foundational Knowledge of God and His Word
Yes, I’d already been introduced to God years before that night. I’d even given my life to Jesus at 9 years old. I felt called to be a missionary somewhere – didn’t know where yet. But now at 11, I was facing my first real crisis with God. My first introduction, if you will, to clinging to a promise, even when everything around me was falling apart, and watching God fulfill it as time passed.
I admired my parents, as they stood firmly by what they believed God’s Word said, even though it was costing them family and friends. I admired their sweet attitudes in the face of rejection, betrayal, and abandonment. It shaped my understanding of who a Christian is in real life, when things aren’t just sailing smoothly.
But more than that, this painful situation, early in life, set the stage for how I would handle hard throughout my lifetime. It forced me to dig into God’s Word for comfort, hope, and direction. And it introduced me, just briefly, to the tender, loving God that I would later come to know well.
Learning to Expect Answers to Prayer
Over the next several years, my life was impacted by many different Christians in many different places. I learned to appreciate all their strengths, and to avoid their weaknesses and fallacies, through a careful study of Scripture. I was learning to be a “good Berean”.
But probably the Christian who impacted me the most, and shaped my character the most was my mother. She was a woman of prayer, and taught me to pray. Not only did she teach me to pray about everything, big or small, she also taught me to expect answers, and how to accept the answer, even if it wasn’t what I wanted or expected.
I can recall many answers to childhood prayers, but one I remember well was a pair of shoes.
We had been reading a biography of Hudson Taylor, and I was struck by Taylor’s commitment to move men by moving God through prayer alone. I was perhaps putting God to the test – but I’m so grateful He chose to answer my prayer, cementing forever in my mind, that God was truly able to do anything.
“Lord, I need a pair of shoes,” I prayed. “Everyday shoes. Mine are getting too small, and are almost worn out. I know I could ask Daddy, but I’m asking You, because I want to see if You can really answer my prayers. I’ll be happy with anything You provide, but it would be lovely if they were pretty…”
My childish mind tended to exaggerate time periods somewhat, so what seemed like two weeks, could have actually been shorter. I remember reminding God from time to time that I had asked for a pair of shoes, but eventually, I decided that God was probably not going to answer, because I could still wear my old ones a little while longer.
However, almost as soon as I gave up, someone gave our family a large trash bag of hand-me-downs.
Most of the items had sleeves that were too short, or the hem or collar was trimmed with lace, something that was forbidden to us. I don’t remember that much of anything else was of any use to us in the entire bag, but when we got to the bottom, there was a beautiful pair of white tennis shoes, with beautiful red stars stitched on the side. I thought they were the prettiest shoes I’d ever seen, and they fit me with a little room to grow! I remember telling God I was sorry I had doubted Him, and I thanked Him profusely for answering my prayer.
Cracks in the Foundation
I am forever grateful for the solid foundation in God’s Word and Prayer that my parents gave me, but unknown to me at the time, my foundation had some dangerous cracks in it, that significantly contributed to the course my life was to take.
The first was a fear of transgressing a holy God, and being condemned to hell. I don’t want you to misunderstand me: hell is a very real place, and God is completely holy. I don’t wish to minimize these truths at all. Sin most definitely separates from God, but the error was in my understanding of Jesus’ finished work on the cross. My mother, especially, believed that any sin, no matter how small, even after salvation, would separate her from God. She lived in constant introspection, confessing little things like misspeaking, as if they were sins that would keep her from heaven. And I think she truly believed that. She has since come to understand that Jesus died on the cross in our place for all the sins we would ever commit, and while she is still careful to make her wrongs right to the best of her ability, she understands that when Jesus said, “It is finished,” He meant that the way was now open that we no longer had to be separated from God, nor would we be, unless we chose to walk away from Him.
However, in those early days of childhood, I was taught to believe that the slightest of sins would separate me from God, and doom me to hell, unless I confessed my sin and repented of it. That became a crack in my foundation: a motivation to try to make sure of what God’s will was before taking a step in any direction, so I didn’t make a mistake.
The second was believing that God-given authorities were the main source of direction from God apart from His written Word. My father was strong on this point: that the Bible doesn’t teach that children should only obey their parents while they are children, nor does it specify a time when children are no longer children, so he firmly taught us that we needed to honor and obey him until that authority was transferred to our husbands. If the Bible explicitly spelled out direction in a situation, by all means, the Bible was the first source of direction, but if direction was not clearly spelled out, then our “God-given” authorities were the go-to for knowing God’s will. If that still left room for question as to what to do, you might use a “fleece” such as Gideon used to determine God’s specific will.
I remember an incident in my mid-teen years that impacted my perception of understanding God’s will.
Because we were without a church, I didn’t often get opportunity to spend time with other young people, and further complicating the matter, my father was very protective, and didn’t often let us go places where he wasn’t present.
At my grandma’s church, young people were allowed to join the youth at fifteen. I was fourteen, almost fifteen, so my cousins graciously invited me to go with them to their youth Bible study. I went to ask Daddy for permission, certain that the answer would most likely be no, but to my surprise, he said he would leave the decision to me. He let me know that he preferred I didn’t go, but that I needed to ask God for myself, and see what He wanted me to do.
I’ll admit, I probably didn’t spend a lot of time listening to any answer God may have given, but I did dutifully pray about it, sensed no obstruction to my going, and went. We had a wonderful evening, and I went back home feeling exhilarated, energized, and inspired.
But a few days later, we were all afflicted with the stomach flu. Miserably. Before long, we realized that someone at the Youth Bible Study had unknowingly shared the illness with nearly everyone there.
I will never forget my father’s response to me: “Angela, this is why I usually make the decisions, because it’s clear that you don’t hear accurately from God. I didn’t feel clear about you going, so I was hoping you would have the wisdom to decide not to go, but you decided to go, and look at the results. Now, you are sick, and the rest of us, too.”
And I will never forget the guilt and remorse that washed over me, as I realized I was the reason my family was sick. I resolved in my heart that I would always try to please my father, if I had any inkling of what his preference was, even if he hadn’t exactly expressed it.
Because of the teaching I’d had that any little sin could keep me from heaven, and because I believed that discerning God’s will and walking in it was paramount to maintaining my salvation, I spent quite a bit of time trying to discern God’s will in even the small decisions of life. But the means I often used to discern God’s will were faulty.
That brings me to the third crack in my foundation: an indirect means of hearing from God.
I read God’s Word daily, and found comfort and direction in its pages. That was a form of direct communication, as was prayer. But I had been discouraged from listening directly for God’s voice in answer to my prayers. I had been told that I couldn’t discern His will accurately, and that I needed to ask my authorities. I had also been encouraged to use “fleeces” to determine God’s will.
One such “fleece” I remember was when I had a crush on a young man, and I wanted to know if he was the one I should marry. He wanted to be a missionary pilot some day, so my “fleece” had to do with seeing a certain number of planes flying overhead before I saw him again two weeks later. But I failed to take into consideration that our home was directly under the flight path to a major international airport, so that number was met within the first two days. That didn’t feel like a conclusive answer to me, so I doubled the target number, and again exceeded it quickly. However, by now, the reliability of the “fleece” felt compromised, so I disregarded the apparent “answer” that I was to marry this young man, and in a short time, he was married to another woman. Through that, I realized that we can influence the results of the “fleeces” we choose according to our desires, based on the parameters we set. I haven’t completely avoided using fleeces since then, but I’m now much more cautious in how I determine what a “fleece” will be, and careful in how I interpret it as well.
I will say, though, that despite the fallacies of my early childhood teaching, I developed a strong faith in an omnipotent, sovereign God, who was intimately interested in, and involved with the details of my life. I became convinced that if an authority was telling me wrong, God could overrule and change the “king’s” heart: as the rivers of waters, He could turn it whithersoever He would. (Proverbs 21:1)
I am forever grateful that God introduced Himself to me from a young age, because the solid foundation in His Word that I had, as well as the strong faith in God’s power and sovereignty that I developed was invaluable to me later. It was an unshakable foundation, in many ways, that held me steadfast in all kinds of hard, even as the cracks began to surface, years down the road.