"Gimme Shelter"

I have a friend. I will keep her name anonymous for now, but I have known her for a little over a year. I first met her picking her up from a women’s homeless shelter. I was given the opportunity to take her to be apart of my church growth group. It was a bunch of us college age students and she was more than happy to be apart and get to know new people. I enjoyed getting to know her. She had a fun personality, though she seemed nervous, and anxious many of times. I asked her why and she blurted out much of her past, her insecurities, and her sins to me. She has told me it was to tell me the worst of her so that way she would know if I would run away. Instead I could only reflect on the truth that God has taken me from my brokenness and sin and into his loving and gracious arms, and I wanted to display nothing but the grace that God had given to me, and still gives me, to my friend. There had been many up and downs to our friendship, and my heart would be excited when I thought I saw God moving but I’ll be honest…many of times I’ve been disappointed. The scary part is emotionally investing in someone and trying to understand and feel their hurts and pains and sometimes I found it hurt me. In the year that we have known each other I too would pull back from the friendship because I just didn’t know how to help and it hurt knowing there was nothing I could do. Our friendship has had its lulls and I have often times put it in the back burner…first just because life can get crazy busy, and second because so it seemed we were parting ways. Until God, for whatever reason, burdened my heart HEAVY for my friend. I wasn’t sure why. So I prayed through these things. I decided to get lunch with her not to long ago. I assumed things might be the same and just as always I wanted to be her friend, whether she was doing well or doing bad. But she was telling me she knew she wanted something drastic to happen in the new year of 2014. She then told me about a program that perked my ears. It is called teen challenge. It’s a yearlong commitment to help with drugs, alcohol, and spiritual bondage. They use biblical principles to help the women who go there with these things. Unlike most commitments to an organization I felt different about this one as she was describing it. After our lunch I decided to take a look at it for myself. It sounds wonderful…I then saw this movie trailer called “Gimme Shelter.” It was pretty much a representation of the hardships and pain my friend has had to go through in her life and yet…there was hope, hope in God, hope in Christ, hope in community. I went to look at show times and it was only played at one theater in town and a late show time at 10pm. I was determined to take my friend to see this movie. So I told her I wanted to have a special night where I would take her to get some dinner, fill out the application for teen challenge, watch this movie together, and she would spend the night at my home thanks to all my roommates. We filled out the application and I could tell even then it was not going to be the easiest process for my friend, as she had to answer some really hard and real questions from her past and her present. After we filled it out we went to the movie. Mind you I haven’t seen her cry…at least not like this. From beginning to end her face was full of tears and so were mine. We went back to my place after the movie, got to talk and pray together and went to bed. The next day we decided to call the teen challenge center to ask a few questions. The lady who picked up the phone was very kind, and she sounded so happy. She was actually one of the girls still in the program herself. She was telling us all about teen challenge and even though there are definitely some tough things about it, it was worth it. We even got to talk to the pastor and head of teen challenge and he informed us there was an open bed and to get her application over as soon as possible. There is a good chance my friend could get into this program, and there is also a good chance she may not…but whatever happens I must trust God, and leave my friend in Gods hands. Please be praying for this friend of mine and be praying for me as well because I know that as much as I prepare myself for it, I will be sad if she doesn’t get to go. I just…I just see this as the tool God could use to break her physical, emotional, and spiritual bondage and pain and I really do care about her. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjyi_dMhyIs 

(this is the URL to watch the movie trailer for Gimme Shelter)