Tiffany's Story!

One of the biggest problems with the church today is that we don’t just go through the motions, we put on a stained glass masquerade. We go to church and put on a show for everyone else so that they will see us as “good Christians.” Then we go home and live however we want. I used to really struggle with this. I’m the oldest in my family and my Dad’s a preacher. In the church he pastored several years ago, I felt like everyone was watching me. This is not I good feeling, let me tell you. Out of all the other kids, I felt that everyone expected me to be perfect, to do all the right things, to answer all the questions right in Sunday School. I had problems with this, because at the time I was really struggling with a few things spiritually and otherwise. For starters, I was still a fairly new Christian and even though I had grown up in church, that was still a big deal. Also, I was having problems in school. My school work was getting harder as went into the 6th and 7th grades, especially math. I was having trouble adjusting. So here I am about eleven years old, I feel like the entire church expects me to be perfect, I’m a fairly new Christian, I’m having some trouble in school, and I’ve just hit puberty. You getting the picture? So I, to my shame, joined the stained glass masquerade. I went to church and acting like my life was just perfect, then came home and actually cheated on my math an entire year. (I ended up taking it again.) I was doing things at church because I wanted everyone to see me and think I was perfect. But I wasn’t. Then we moved. We moved because my parents felt led to plant a church, and we did. First, however we spent a year living with my grandmother an hour away from our target area. We went to an amazing church while we were up there. They have one of the best youth groups I have seen. I went to youth camp with them. While I was there, they taught me how to worship. What I mean by that is that they gave me the freedom to worship freely, something I had sadly never known. It was life changing. Now my dad pastors the church that we planted and I’m the preacher’s kid again. But this time its different. This time I know, beyond a shadow of doubt that I can offer up my praise to God without worrying what other people think. He set me free, and he used that church to do it.
Tiffany