I Am Who God Say I Am

Growing up as a little girl in rural North Carolina, running through the cornfields, working out in the tobacco, shelling black-eyed peas on the front porch, and drinking cool well water straight out of a tin dipper drawn up from the dark earth, I had no earthly idea that one day I would be called into the ministry. Back then, my whole world was simple and wide open. We played baseball out in the open dirt fields sometimes using hard rocks because we did not have a real ball. We climbed trees right alongside the boys, scraped our knees on the red clay, and spent hot summer days laughing until our sides ached. God was already planting seeds in my heart during those early years, even when I was too young and too busy running around barefoot to notice what He was doing.

I was brought up in the church at a young age. Faith was not something we talked about on special occasions or pulled out of the closet for Easter Sunday. It was woven into our everyday lives just like the red dirt that stuck to our shoes. Every Sunday morning, my brothers and I would wash up, put on our Sunday best, and sit out on the porch waiting to hear the sound of my grandpa’s car coming around the curve. That car had a distinct whistle about it, a high, unmistakable sound that let everybody on the road know he was on his way to pick us up. As soon as that whistling engine cut through the quiet morning air, somebody would shout, "Chalk Level CME Church, here we come!"

Going to Chalk Level was an event that filled your whole spirit. I remember standing up in the choir stand as a young girl with my head lifted high in the air, singing with every single bit of breath in my body until the veins stuck out of my neck. My grandmother had sewn me a beautiful gold dress with her own hands, taking careful stitches on her old machine to make sure it fit just right. When I put that dress on and stepped into that choir box, I felt like a little princess. We did not have all the fancy instruments, electronic keyboards, or sound systems that churches use today. We had the wooden floor beneath our feet, our hands, and the tambourines. Playing that tambourine, stomping your feet hard against the floorboards, and clapping your hands made a powerful, driving music that shook the dust off the rafters. You felt the rhythm go straight up through your shoes and right into your chest.

Morning service was only the beginning of our Sunday routine. Once the benediction was given around midday, nobody went home to watch television or lay around. We packed into the cars and drove straight over to my grandma’s house for Sunday dinner. The kitchen would be warm and filled with the smells of fried chicken, collard greens, sweet potatoes, and fresh-baked cornbread that had been cooking since before sunrise.  But you could not get too comfortable or take off your church clothes for good, because as soon as late afternoon rolled around, it was time to pack back into the cars and head right back to church for the evening service. There was no whining, no complaining, and absolutely no saying you did not want to go. You went because you were told to go, and that was the end of the discussion.

The Discipline of the Sanctuary

Those long Sunday rituals did something deep inside us. They gave our lives a steady rhythm and taught us respect, patience, and honor for God's house. In our community, the church was not merely a building where people gathered once a week. It was the central pillar of our survival and the anchor of our families. The older folks understood something that my generation had to learn the hard way. They knew that life out in the world was rough and unforgiving, and if you did not have a solid foundation built on the rock of Jesus Christ, the storms of life would knock your house flat. Every prayer prayed over us, every song sung from the choir stand, and every wooden board we stomped on was building a spiritual wall of protection around our souls.

As I grew older, became a teenager, and eventually earned my driver’s license, the rules in my household did not change one bit. My dad was a firm man who believed in structure and accountability. He made sure that my brothers and I honored our commitments. He had one strict rule that everyone in the neighborhood knew: you could go out on Friday night, and you could go out on Saturday night with your friends, but when Sunday morning arrived, you were going to be sitting upright in church. It did not matter if you were tired, it did not matter if you had been out late, and it certainly did not matter if you felt like sleeping in. When Sunday morning broke, my dad expected our feet on the floor and our bodies in the pew.

Looking back now, I see the wisdom in my father’s rule. He was teaching us that your obligations to God do not stop just because you decided to have a good time the night before. He was building spiritual discipline in us, showing us that worship requires effort and personal sacrifice. Yet, even with all that training, there was a gap growing inside my heart. I was following the rules, I was singing the songs, and I was sitting in the pews every single Sunday without fail, but the true meaning of the cross had not completely penetrated my inner life. I was going through the physical motions of church because it was what was expected of me by my parents and my grandparents. The outward routine was there, clear and unbroken, but the inward fire had not yet been lit.

There is a vast difference between keeping up religious appearances and having a living, breathing relationship with the Lord. You can sit on a wooden pew for fifty years, know every hymn on every page of the hymnal, and pay your tithes down to the exact penny, but still be completely dry on the inside. That was where I found myself during those transition years. I had the training, I had the manners, and I had the respect, but I had not yet met Jesus for myself in the middle of a personal crisis. I was living on the borrowed faith of my grandmother’s prayers, my grandfather’s whistling car, and my father's strict household rules.

Spiritual Drifting in Young Adulthood

The real test of my foundation came when I eventually got married and moved out into a home of my own. For the first time in my life, nobody was standing over me on Sunday morning knocking on my bedroom door. Nobody was telling me to get up, wash my face, and put on my Sunday dress. I was a grown woman, earning my own living, running my own household, and making my own daily choices. That newfound independence revealed what was really going on inside my spiritual life.

Once I was out from under my father's roof, my church attendance began to slip. I still went from time to time because the memory of Chalk Level was burned into my mind, but I did not go with any real consistency. If I went out on Saturday night and stayed out late, I simply chose to sleep in on Sunday morning. I told myself that I worked hard all week and deserved some rest. I told myself that God understood my schedule and that going to a building was not the most important thing in the world. Bit by bit, week by week, the pull of the world began to crowd out the spiritual habits that had kept me safe for so many years.

Here is the honest truth about that season of my life: I was going to church occasionally, but the church was definitely not in me. I was attending when it felt convenient, treating God like a spare tire that you only pull out of the trunk when you get a flat on the side of the road. I felt an uneasy tension pulling at my heart. I had enough religion in me to feel guilty when I stayed home, but not enough spiritual surrender to give my whole life over to Christ. That kind of double-minded living wears a person down. You find yourself trying to keep one foot firmly planted in the pleasures and freedoms of the secular world while trying to keep the other foot lightly resting on the church doorstep.

During those wayward years in my early twenties, I did things that I was not proud of. I made choices that did not reflect the values my grandparents had prayed into me on that front porch. I drifted into relationships, mindsets, and habits that led me away from peace. Yet, even when I was running in the opposite direction, there was something holding me back from going completely over the edge. That invisible tether was the prayers of the saints who had raised me. Every time I started to drift too far into the darkness, a memory would flash across my mind. I would hear the sound of the tambourine clattering against a palm, remember the Sunday afternoons, or hear my grandfather’s car coming around the bend. Those memories served as gentle tugs from the Holy Spirit, reminding me who I was and whose I was.

What I did not realize back then is that going to church as a child is the very reason I am where I am today. If I had completely stopped going to church, and if my family had not forced me to build those deep spiritual roots, I truly believe the world would have swallowed me up whole. The world has a way of drawing you in with bright lights and empty promises, slowly pulling you out into deep waters until you find yourself drowning in sorrow, confusion, and pain. It was the unshakable foundation laid in that small country church that kept my feet anchored when the winds of life began to blow fierce and cold.

Lessons in Grace and Grit

Faith is not something that happens by accident. It is built piece by piece, layer by layer, through discipline, hardship, and the quiet grace of God. When I look back at the saints at Chalk Level CME Church, I realize they possessed a rare combination of grace and grit. They worked hard in the fields from sunup to sundown, faced hard times, endured unfair treatment in a broken world, and carried heavy loads without complaining. Yet, when they stepped inside the doors of the church house, they left their burdens at the foot of the cross and praised God with everything they had. They knew how to survive because their trust was not in man, but in the Almighty.

Think about the woman who prayed for you when you were too young or too stubborn to pray for yourself. Think about the grandmothers, mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles who labored quietly behind the scenes to make sure you had a spiritual roof over your head. In our communities, we have seen so many examples of this quiet, enduring power. 

God uses those early deposits like seeds planted deep beneath the cold dirt during the winter months. To an outside observer, it looks like nothing is happening. The field appears barren, brown, and lifeless. You might look at a young person who has wandered away from the church and assume that all those Sunday school lessons and choir rehearsals were a complete waste of time. But underneath the surface, where human eyes cannot see, the moisture of God's grace is working on that seed. The roots are pushing down into the soil, waiting for the appointed season when the rain falls and the sun breaks through. When trouble comes, and trouble will always come, those roots are what keep the tree from being ripped completely out of the ground.

The table below highlights the clear differences between simply practicing outward religious duty and walking in genuine, internal faith:

Aspect of Life	Outward Religious Duty	Genuine Internal Faith
Primary Motivation	Fear of judgment, family pressure, or habit	Deep love for Jesus Christ and gratitude for grace
Reaction to Trouble	Bitterness, despair, and running from God	Running to the altar and trusting God's sovereign plan
Personal Obedience	Checking off boxes while the heart remains hard	Joyful surrender of personal will to God's direction
Church Involvement	Spectator mindset focused on outward rituals	Active ministry focused on serving others with humility

When you look at this comparison, you have to ask yourself where you currently stand. For many years of my early life, I was living entirely on the left side of that table. I was checking off the boxes, maintaining the outward appearance, and making sure my family was satisfied with my church attendance. But God was preparing me for something far deeper. He was getting ready to take me through fires that outward religion could never sustain. He was preparing to break down my self-reliance so that He could build up a genuine, unshakable faith inside my soul.

The Living Church Within You

To truly understand your calling in this life, you must come to the place where the church moves from the building on the corner into the very center of your heart. When the building on the corner is closed, the church within you must remain wide open. When the choir is not singing and the tambourines have stopped clattering, the song of the Lord must still be echoing down in your spirit. If your faith only operates when you are surrounded by a crowd of believers on Sunday morning, you will fall apart the moment you face isolation, criticism, or personal loss on a Tuesday afternoon.

Many women and men across our communities feel a deep tugging on their lives, just like I felt for so many years. They know God has a specific purpose for them. They know there is work for them to do in the kingdom. But they hesitate because they look at their own past mistakes, their seasons of spiritual wandering, and their current shortcomings. They think that because they spent years running away from church or living on the wild side of life, God cannot use them for holy things. That is a lie straight from the enemy. God does not call the qualified; He qualifies the called. He uses every field you ever ran through, every rock you ever picked up, and every season of rebellion to teach you mercy, compassion, and endurance.

When God looks at your life, He does not just see where you are sitting today. He sees the whole timeline from beginning to end. He remembers the prayers of your ancestors that are still hovering over your life like a warm blanket. He remembers the seeds that were planted in your heart when you were a child sitting on a wooden bench with your legs swinging, listening to the old folks sing praises. Those early investments are not lost. They are stored up in the heavenly record, waiting to be unlocked when you finally say yes to His divine will.

If you want to understand how an unshakable faith is developed over a lifetime, consider these four vital stages of spiritual growth:

1. The Foundation of Heritage: Receiving the seeds of truth, family discipline, and community accountability through early instruction and observation of faithful elders.
2. The Valley of Drifting: Testing personal independence away from parental control, experiencing the emptiness of worldly choices, and feeling the painful dissonance of living outside God's presence.
3. The Crucible of Awakening: Encountering personal trials, heartbreaks, or divine encounters that shatter self-reliance and reveal the urgent need for a real Savior.
4. The Mantle of Surrender: Fully yielding your personal ambitions, accepting your divine assignment without excuses, and letting the Holy Spirit lead every step of your journey.

Every single one of these stages serves a distinct purpose in your journey. You cannot skip the first stage and jump straight into leadership, because without that early foundation, you will have no roots to keep you upright when opposition comes. You cannot avoid the pain of the awakening, because without brokenness, there is no true surrender. My journey through Chalk Level CME Church was not just a pleasant childhood memory; it was the boot camp for my spiritual survival. God was teaching me how to sing when my heart was heavy, how to stomp my feet when my body was tired, and how to hold onto His unchanging hand when everything around me was shaking.

Heart Examination and Personal Inventory

As we close this part of the journey and prepare to walk through the deeper valleys that lay ahead in my story, I want you to pause and take a hard, honest look at your own spiritual history. God does not bring us through trials just so we can keep the lessons to ourselves. He brings us through so we can look back, trace His hand of protection, and help someone else who is currently stumbling through the dark.

Take a few moments to sit quietly before the Lord and reflect on the roots that have brought you to where you are right now. Consider these serious questions for your personal walk:

• What childhood spiritual traditions, prayers, or family values laid the foundation for your current faith walk, and have you thanked God for the people who modeled them for you?
• Can you identify a specific season in your life when you were simply going through the religious motions without having any real internal devotion to Jesus Christ?
• What worldly distractions or personal choices caused you to drift away from the steady habits of prayer, worship, and active service in God's house?
• How has God used your past seasons of rebellion or wandering to build humility, patience, and understanding in your heart toward others who are currently lost?

It is easy to look at other people and judge their spiritual walk based on where they are currently struggling. But when you remember the well water, the dipper, the red clay fields, and the long road back to the altar, your heart fills with true compassion. You realize that nobody gets to the place of spiritual maturity on their own strength. We are all products of grace, mercy, and the steady prayers of someone who refused to let us go.

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Spiritual Lineage Exercise

To help you see the hand of God across your own life story, take some time to complete this practical exercise. Map your personal spiritual lineage by listing three family members, church elders, or mentors who helped build your spiritual foundation during your early years. Next to each person's name, write down the specific core values, prayers, or lessons they taught you through their actions.

1. First Foundation Builder: Write their name and describe one specific lesson of faith or endurance they demonstrated in their daily life that still influences how you make decisions today.
2. Second Foundation Builder: Write their name and record a specific prayer, phrase, or piece of advice they gave you when you were facing a difficult choice or wandering in the world.
3. Third Foundation Builder: Write their name and note how their personal sacrifice, discipline, or service in the church showed you what true Christian character looks like in action.

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Hold fast to those foundational memories. Write them down in your journal, speak them over your children and grandchildren, and never let yourself forget where the Lord brought you from. When the enemy tries to tell you that you are unworthy, that your past is too messy, or that you do not have what it takes to stand for righteousness in this generation, you stand up tall, lift your head high just like I did in that handmade gold dress, and remember that you are covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. The same God who watched over you when you were running through the fields is the God who will carry you through every battle that lies ahead. Stand firm, keep your feet on the solid rock, and know beyond any shadow of a doubt that your foundation in Him will never fail.