What I Needed Most: Lindy Weatherly’s Story
I became a Christian at a young age but I would say I didn’t get serious about this commitment to Christ until college. My first 3 years in college were a struggle. I really rebelled against the attitudes of those around me. I felt like everyone was just going through the motions of Christianity and not really living it out. I was truly a hypocrite though because I was judging everyone with one standard but not judging myself with the same. I got really hardened and bitter and stopped going to church. My friends and I would joke that we were “bedside baptists,” meaning we slept in and didn’t attend a church.
I chose to spend time with my fiancé and I neglected to study the Bible or spend time with the Lord. As my relationship with my fiancé grew, I spent more and more time with him and less and less time even caring that I didn’t have a relationship with God. This all came crashing down on me in the fall of 2000. My fiancé had graduated the semester prior, and he and I were trying to make the long distance thing work. I had a lot of extra time on my hands to think and ponder, and I started getting cold feet about marrying him. I started noticing that the person I had become was not who I wanted to be. I had alienated a lot of my friends. I had stopped attending church. I had a hardness and bitterness in me that I couldn’t shake. I had this big hole in my heart that only God could fill but I had pushed him so far out of my life that I didn’t even know where to begin.
I decided to make a change and as I started pursuing Christ, I felt strongly that I had to end the engagement with my fiancé. I wrestled with God for weeks over this. I didn’t understand why God would ask me to give up someone for Him but I just couldn’t get past it and finally submitted. I broke up with this guy and, even though it was extremely hard, it was the best decision I had ever made. You see I chose Christ over anything this world had to offer including my fiancé. I knew that I had tried to form my life the way I wanted it instead of the way God wanted it.
I prayed a lot in that season of my life. I read the Bible tons because I wanted to know Christ like never before. I was broken because I had lost the one thing I thought I needed most. However, I gained the one thing I truly needed most, a true relationship with Jesus Christ. I started attending church again and it was like my soul had been awakened. I loved being in the presence of other believers. I loved singing worship songs and my heart was so open to the things of God. It was in that moment I knew I was called to be a worship leader. I had always sung in choirs in school but never in the church. I hated singing solos because I felt like it was too showy but worship songs were different. We were singing together to declare the truth about God and it was to Him and for Him. The worship leader gets to bring people into His presence and step back and watch God do a work.
I have found that there is no replacement for His love. There is no relationship or thing that can fill that void in your heart no matter how hard you try to fill it. Jesus is the only person who can truly heal your heart.