One of five children, Gretchen G.’s home was unstable after the death of her mother who died of a brain aneurysm. As her father turned to alcohol, she found security in the home of a young family—where she hid out during her high school years. She married David less than a year after high school. It would be years before she learned how important the word of God would be in her life–a literal Rock.
Gretchen Learned the Word Was Her Rock
Gretchen found that her husband was unable to give her what was missing in her heart. While David was in the Navy in Maryland, his brother started telling him about wonderful things that were happening in his marriage. They were going to a Bible study given by the Navigators at Kansas State University. “We’ve come to Christ,” he said. “May we come for a visit?”
What does that mean? Come to Christ! That means he’s going to be whacking us over the head with that religious stuff. I’m not interested, Gretchen thought. If we just clean up our lives and quit fighting, things will get better.
While the couple was visiting, David’s brother asked them, “Would you like us to find a couple out here who would be willing to meet with you to have a home Bible study?” “Sure. That’s what we want to do.” David said.
What’s up with that? Gretchen could not believe what she was hearing.
Wanting to avoid conflict at all costs, Gretchen found herself in the home of another couple the next evening. Through verses of Scripture like 1 John 5:11-12, they found that Jesus was the missing link in their lives. “This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
Especially significant to Gretchen was the Word, “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men” (1 Timothy 2:5).
SALT IS THE WORD SEED WE PLANT WITH PRAYER
This couple became their mentors, and taught them how to love one another as God had designed them as husband and wife.
Years later, Gretchen and David found themselves comfortable in their job, but spiritually coasting. David accepted a job in another city which turned out to be a very difficult move for their family.
Life was not easy during this time, but Gretchen confessed the Word, “God has grown me up in the process. Jesus has become my friend. I’ve seen that ‘though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights’” (Hab. 3:17-19).
Understanding that God was more concerned with her character than her circumstance, Gretchen determined to plant the salt seed in others as it had been planted in her. She wanted to mentor one-on-one. From her part-time positions as a fitness tech at Curves and at her church, she met women who needed the Lord or needed to grow as a Christian.
Using the acronym, F-A-T—something on every woman’s mind—she prayed to find women who were Faithful, Available and Teachable. God brings them across her path, and she meets with each one every week—giving them the Word to memorize in a personal manner. “I will entrust to reliable [wo]men who will also be qualified to teach others” (from 2 Tim. 2:2). Her calendar is packed and overflowing.
Gretchen and David discovered unexpectedly that they came to the Kingdom through the prayer of a man they never met. While attending a Navigator conference, the story was told of a young man who would go out over the campus of K State each week and pray for the students. He was drafted and sent to Vietnam and never came back. They realized he was praying when David’s brother was a student. This young man never knew he impacted their whole family.
Salt attracts other salt. A salt crystal held in a container of brine (salt diluted in water) will grow larger the longer it is there.[1] The longer Gretchen and David lived in the town where they moved, the more they impacted the lives of couples and families through prayer as this young man had prayed for them. Through one-on-one mentoring, they work hard at planting salt of Scripture (the Word seed) memorization, “putting off the old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of [their] minds” (Eph. 4:22-23).
They can say of God Most High, “Who is the Rock except our God?” (Ps. 18:31).
SALT IS SHARING GOD’S WORD, LOVE, CARE AND COMFORT
Cheri B. praises God Most High, “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Cor. 1:3-4). Her salt is sharing God’s Word, love, and care to those going through similar heartaches as she did.
From Cheri’s earliest memories, all she wanted was to be a mother and a writer. At age eighteen, she was married and had given birth to a premature baby boy. She asked the nurse, “Will he live?” All she was told was, “Aw, 50/50.”
While her husband was attending a chiropractic college and studying night and day, Cheri cared for a crying baby around the clock. At six months of age he was only seven pounds. She was isolated and alone and unable to take him into the Chicago air.
Cheri wasn’t sure what she believed spiritually and continually called her pastor to ask him, “What do we believe about _____?”
Tired of her calls, the pastor gave her a Bible, and said, “If you knew the Word of God, you would not have to call me.”
Cheri read through the whole Bible. Getting through Chronicles was hard, but it laid a salty foundation that grew and grew. Stripped of everything she had leaned on, she learned to pray to a different level.
She instilled the Word in her children, total of five—who have been her ministry. At age four, one son brought his little brother to her and said, “Mama, pray so he will get saved!” That son has an evangelist’s heart and went to Australia at age fourteen to build a camp where eighty people received Christ. At age twenty, he went to Brazil. The youngest son went to Albania with Teen Missions International when he was fifteen.
Her daughter went to India where she got typhoid of the worse type. Before Cheri learned of it, a friend gave her this Word,
Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth— everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.—Isaiah 43: 5-7
Satan fought hard for all Cheri’s children, especially her first born, but failed to win. She says, “My heritage is that ‘no weapon forged against [me] will prevail’” (Isa. 54:17).
Family is Cheri’s ministry. When she was a small girl, she was pushed aside. Her little brother had been in a car accident and required round-the-clock care. Today Cheri is always looking for the little angels being pushed to the sidelines and not being noticed. Her heart is tender toward mothers fighting for their children. She fights alongside them claiming God’s word in prayer.
Sometime after forgiving her dad of past hurts, and while at the stove cooking she heard the Lord’s voice tell her, “Your grandpa is going to die.”
“I don’t know if he’s ready yet. Don’t take him until I know he’s ready, Lord.”
She invited her dad to get a hamburger. Suddenly, the restaurant’s lights went out. As they sat in the dark, she told him how the Lord spoke to her and what she prayed.
“Cheri, don’t waste any time.” Tears rolled down her dad’s eyes, “I’ve gotten a phone call saying he almost died already.”
“Will you go with me, Dad?” Both went to see Grandpa.
“Grandpa, do you know the Lord?” Cheri popped the question.
“No, I don’t know the Lord.”
“I don’t know Him, either,” her dad spoke up.
Both men wept as Cheri had them repeat the sinner’s prayer after her, “Heavenly Father, I have sinned against you. I want forgiveness for all my sins. I believe Jesus died on the cross for me and rose from the grave. Father, I give you my life to do with as you wish. I want Jesus Christ to come into my life and into my heart. This I ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.”
Cheri can say of God Most High, “He trains my hands for battle . . . . You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me” (Ps. 18:34-35).
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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sodium_chloride (accessed April 7, 2007).