JESUS AS BRIDEGROOM

Sue became a Christian at the age of twelve, but never thought much about Jesus being a bridegroom to his people -- both men and women. Years later, as a wife and mom of three young kids, she sensed the Lord directing her to study the Song of Solomon from the Old Testament. Sue delved into the first section (chapter 1:1-2:7), and found truths that helped her then and would see her through hard times later, when she went through a divorce.  

She also began teaching what she learned. “If you’re seeking a deeper relationship with the Lord, you will find Jesus and yourself in this story,” Sue says. “The drama tells of the struggles, hardships, and extreme delights the two lovers in the poem experience. Once believers understand the story that is unfolding, they put themselves in the place of the maiden and recognize the Lover is the Lord Jesus. This story is a progression of the life of the earnest believer: the stages, tests, failures, and victories that happen to us as we follow the Lord. He completes what He starts in the life of the maiden, and He will complete what He had begun in us also.”  

FOLLOWING HIM 

In the second portion of Song of Solomon (2:8-5:1), Sue sees an invitation to leave one’s comfort zone and go wherever the Lord leads. The maiden’s trusting response to the king in this portion, and the comfort He provides in a new, uncertain place was reassuring to her. “The responsive heart is what the Lord enjoys, not our particular stage of maturity,” she says. “He doesn’t reveal all our shortcomings all at once. We go from glory to glory one step at a time. We are hopeless without Him at work in our lives. As we submit to Him, knowing we’re powerless, we ravish His heart.”  

Sue says she was certainly out of her comfort zone as a newly-divorced mom in her forties, needing to work again to support herself and her three children. She went back to college to earn a teaching degree, and also agreed to sponsor an FCA group at a local middle school. Though it was all new and often scary to her, she saw it as an opportunity to partner with Jesus on a mission which would bear fruit.

THE DARK NIGHT 

“This wasn’t how I thought my life would go. Marriage was supposed to be for life. I feared the turmoil in our family around the divorce would cause my kids to turn away from Jesus,” Sue remembers. She says for the first year after her divorce, she would put her kids on the school bus every weekday and cry for 30 minutes, feeling completely overwhelmed. “I told the Lord that what I’d been teaching (from the Song of Solomon) had to become real for me, that I was taking Jesus to be my husband on a whole new level. Jesus has shown Himself to me on many occasions to be the husband I needed, especially while I went through my divorce.”  

As Sue pored over the third section of the Song of Solomon (5:2-7:13), she saw a parallel in the intimacy between the maiden and the king, and that of Jesus and his people. “As we feast upon Jesus, we also will produce double fruit,” she states. “I believe I have a private gate where I meet with God. That place is just for Jesus and me. I believe our God has a private personal place to meet with each of us. When I’m in a private time with God, I feel He is listening only to me. I’m not sharing His attention with anyone else. The Creator of the universe knows me; He knows me! He is everything I thought He was and even more than I could have imagined.”

OUR BRIGHT FUTURE

Over the thirty-some years that Sue has been studying this great book, its many encouragements have sustained her. She says the closing verses (8:1-8:14) assure us of the bright future with the Lord in the resurrection for all believers. “The Bride is asking to be bound to her Beloved in an exclusive spousal love relationship. We too are sealed in His heart and with his strength and power (His arm). He will never let us go, just as death never lets go. It is the Lord who keeps us by His power. He is able to keep that which is committed to Him. We are sealed unto the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30). She is saying, as we say, ‘Come quickly, Lord Jesus! We know He is coming back for us, and we look forward to that glorious day. Like the young deer, He will leap over every obstacle and principality to free us from this wilderness that is not our home.”  

Years ago, Sue was in Hawaii with family and saw the lava flow from a live volcano. “As we drove around the island, we could see vegetation coming up through the black charcoal blanket. It got greener and greener as we drove. Out of the destructions of a volcano comes new life and very fertile ground.” Those green shoots reminded her of her own life, which had once seemed hopeless, and how the Lord had been so faithful to bring new life. “My children are now adults, and they are all strong Christian people,” she says happily. “Today, I’m a retired schoolteacher who still ministers to God’s people and reaches out to the lost.” 

To purchase Sue Baker House's book, Song of Songs, please vist her website: www.SueBakerHouse.com.

“I think I felt guilt and shame, because how could I allow myself, first of all, to be put in a situation like that? It was my fault. I must have done something to allow them, to give them permission to do what they did to me,” Jennifer says.

In October, 1988, Jennifer Zimmerman was a freshman in college with a bright future ahead of her. But everything changed one night when she went to a friend’s apartment off campus. “It was a normal weekday evening, just going over to his apartment--no party, anything like that,” she says. “There were a couple of other girls in the apartment, I remember that, and maybe some of his roommates. The next thing I remember, waking up, in a bed. and I said, ‘I don't feel good. Something doesn't feel right. I need help.’ I couldn't see faces. I could just see silhouettes of bodies.’ It wouldn't take long for me to understand what was happening.”

The events of that evening would haunt her for decades. “My trust was destroyed after that, after that night, again, because he was my friend. So I struggled with that, for a very long time.”

After being threatened by the men, Jennifer left campus and moved back home. She later discovered she was pregnant. “I remember going to a clinic, a women's clinic. I remember going there and just standing and staring at that door thinking, ‘I can't have this baby.’ And something would stop me from going through those doors.”

Jennifer kept her baby. In 1998, after dating for several years, she married, and she and her husband had three children. She wanted to start attending church to seek healing, but her emotionally abusive husband, refused to allow her to attend. “I had begged, ‘Pease let me go to church. We need help. I need help. I need something. I'm suffering. I'm dying inside.’ And, it just wasn't allowed.”

Then, in 2015, Jennifer was diagnosed with cervical cancer. “I was told very early on that I was looking at a year. I had a year left to live,” she says. “And I was just angry enough to stay alive and angry enough to say, ‘No, it's not on your terms anymore. It's on my terms. It's on His terms. I'm going to church.”

While taking her cancer treatments, Jennifer continued to seek God. She also says it was during this time that she had an encounter with Jesus in an unlikely place. “I met Jesus in a radiation tunnel. The radiation is so intense, if it would hit any other organ in my body, it would destroy it. I had to be so still. And it was in that stillness that I met Jesus truly in that radiation tunnel. I felt His presence.”

There, Jennifer asked God to heal her and to save her. “I could just feel His presence. I could feel His arms around me,” she says. “I didn't even know up until that point that I could call out on God, um, and that He would answer. I don’t know if there are adequate words to express how I felt. I just knew. I knew it was Him. I was set free. I was bold and, and I knew, I knew then whatever, whatever amount of time that I had left, whether they were a right or they were wrong, if I had a year, I was gonna use it to glorify His name. And I knew in that moment, I couldn’t deny Him.”

She later asked God to help her change her heart toward the men who assaulted her. “He absolutely is doing a work in me and it’s gonna take some time and some patience with myself. I do want to be set free from that,” she adds. “And not so much because he hurt me. It's because of the collateral damage, what it caused for my son. I left that campus carrying a child who would spend the next, the biggest part of his life, not knowing who his father was.”

Jennifer and her husband eventually divorced, and she continued to respond to cancer treatments and is now in total remission. “Cancer saved my life. It, it gave me permission to boldly chase Him. There's so much beauty and so much promise and so much love and peace. Everything has changed. My world is brighter.”

She has since founded a ministry called ‘Rise’ that helps women who are victims of domestic abuse. “It truly just started with me sharing my story,” Jennifer says. “There was a time I needed shelter and I needed safety, and I didn’t seek it because it was just more trauma. Now I get to go into these spaces and I get to design for them, and I get to, I get to walk this part of people's stories, helping them transition out of these shelters into their own homes.”

As she grew in her relationship with Christ, Jennifer was released from her guilt and shame and wants to tell everyone about the physical, emotional—and spiritual--healing power of Jesus. 

“I physically can't shut my mouth about it now. And I said, ‘I will scream it from the mountaintops.’ I love Him so much, and to know that I am loved by such a perfect God. I'm not worthy. I know that, but I'm loved anyhow,” she says. “The rest of the world needs to feel and know too.  People need to be set free from their own bondages and their own prisons, serving sentences for crimes they didn't commit. That's my purpose."

When eastern Kentucky was struck by heavy rain and dangerous flooding, for many people, the water came with little warning.

Brenda said, “It came fast. If we would have waited too much longer, we wouldn’t have made it out. We watched the water keep coming, keep coming.” Pointing to her waist level, she added, “It got up on my house to here.”

Brenda’s an 89-year-old widow, without much of an income.  

“And now to go with no husband and nothing, that’s all I have,” said Brenda. 

Brenda lost a lot, but she managed to keep her loved ones safe. The night of the flood, she had family staying over.

Brenda explained, “We had three of four great grandchildren here. And, we loaded them in the car. That’s where we stayed till it was over. And I tried to tell them we’ve got each other.” 

Operation Blessing quickly mobilized to help families in eastern Kentucky take their first steps toward recovery. Volunteers arrived at Brenda’s house, ripped up damaged floors, and tore out flood-soaked drywall.

“Operation Blessing is a blessing,” said Brenda. “They’ve worked so hard today, and it is so hot. They moved stuff out, they’ve carried garbage, they’ve worked so, so hard.”

Operation Blessing also brought the family emergency meal kits, water, and cleaning supplies to help them get back on their feet.

Brenda said, “They have to love people, and love the Lord, to do things like that, for people. Or they couldn’t do it. They are loving people.” 

Thanks to the support of Operation Blessing partners, volunteers are helping families with their damaged homes, and also brining much needed hope.

With a smile, Brenda said, “I would like to say to the partners, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you. God bless you.’”

“I was raised in a loving Christian home. I knew I was loved, I never questioned that. But one day when I was eight years old at school, I had these friends of mine look at me and say, 'You're weird and different,'" recalled Steventhen Holland. Growing up, he never felt out of place within his family, until one day at school, kids pointed out he looked different. 
  
“I come home that day, I sit on the edge of bed with my mom, and I find out in that moment that I was actually a foster child at seven days old, and officially adopted by my family at two years old,” said Steventhen. “That's the first in my life I ever remember feeling broken and asking God, 'Why? Why would a mother not want her son?' That cut really deep for me as an eight-year-old. Was I really loved? Was I wanted? Struggling with my identity and where I fit."  

Steventhen continued, “When I was eight years old, I had been given this information. It was eight pages of typewriter paperwork from 1982. It had my birth mom's name in it, and then it had broken information, but that's all I had. I kind of knew a little bit of where my roots were from, but that identity and worth was found in trying to find it in everything but the Lord. And it wasn't until a night at a church service that we were having a revival. I just knew in that moment this Jesus I'd heard about my whole life, I needed a relationship with Him. So, I came running in the middle of the service to an altar and fell on my knees and accepted Jesus as that broken little eight-year-old boy. Even though I had a relationship with Him, it was the sports and trying the dating life and all those things, but nothing seemed to fill that void.”

Steventhen excelled at sports during his college years, where he majored in youth ministry and met his wife. He recalls a difficult time, “I'm youth pastoring in Florida at this time, and my wife and I decide we want to try to have children, and she gets pregnant. We have a miscarriage, and it literally just breaks our heart, and we're both asking, 'Why, God?' So we get through that loss and we actually have Isabella, a successful pregnancy, and then we have our third pregnancy. We lose another baby, and it messed me up. It broke my heart, just as a dad and a husband excited to be dad and having to go not through one loss, but two.”

Steventhen paused, “This is where God found me, literally this broken dad and husband, just seeking Him out, really crying out, 'God, why?' I was depressed and God met me right in that moment, and He said, 'It's time to look for your mom.'"

Pouring through those eight pages and searching the internet, he was able to locate his birth uncle. Two months later, he traveled to meet him. “He told me that there were six siblings. My mom was one of six, and all of them except for him were mentally handicapped,” says Steventhen. “My mom only functioned as an eleven-year-old child. So at eighteen, when she aged out of the system, their parents had actually died. She was alone, had no family, no resources, so she became a ward of the state of Georgia.
She was placed into a mental facility, and what my uncle told me, standing in his living room that day at twenty-seven, was, 'Your mom was actually raped by five men, and you were conceived in that way, and you talk about two grown men weeping and crying.' To hear that kind of news all those years, wondering, 'Why would my mom not want me?' We knew that she made it somehow to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and made it to this little town where I grew up.”

He continued, “It just happened to be a family that had four kids of their own and had a miscarriage two years prior, and God opened their home to actually bring one more child in. They were foster parenting because of a loss that they had and brokenness that they had, and God was about to restore that through me.”

“Can you imagine this woman? She has no money, no job, no family, no resources, so the only option that they were giving her was, 'You have to abort.' But by the grace of God, she literally ran away from this facility to save her baby. Even as only an eleven-year-old mental mind, to me it's a miracle.”

He pauses again, “My uncle got quiet. He looked at me deep in the eyes, and he said, 'You know what? Your mom is alive. She's five hours south of where we sit right now.' He said, 'Do you want to meet her?' So we jump in the car and drive five hours south and I get to meet the lady I call my hero, Mama Glenda.”

Video excerpt:
“You had a little boy when you were about 18, and you missed that little boy. The family that you gave him to take care of, their last name was Holland. So his name is Steventhen William Holland.”

Steventhen continues, “One thing that I didn't even know that I needed that she said to me was, 'I love you, son. I would have never given you up if I could have kept you.' I didn't even know I needed that closure in my heart. But just to hear her say that, all those questions of why in my life were answered, and that she loved me, she cared about me, she wanted me.”

They got to spend 11 years reconnecting before Glenda's passing in 2020. Stevethen is now a national pro-life speaker and has helped raise millions of dollars for pregnancy care centers across the country.

“It just amazes me that today I'm a dad of three beautiful daughters that wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that choice to choose life,” he smiles as he says, “it's so amazing that I literally have been in 39 states and I get to stand on stages, and raise support, and awareness for these beautiful organizations that are fighting for life, affirming life every day.”

“When I get to share our story, I get to champion and honor my mother, because she truly is the hero of the story when it comes to my life. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her and it's truly an honor to get to carry that torch and to keep her name alive. 'Mama Glenda, I love you and I thank you for life.'”

For more information about Steventhen Holland, please visit his website: www.Steventhen.com, and to learn more about the ministries Steventhen is involved in, please visit: www.BrokenNotDead.com.