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Testimony for Carol A. Jenkins I was ten when I met Jesus for the first time. I fell in love with Him instantly, accepting Him as my Lord and Savior and beginning the process of having a living-breathing, personal relationship with a very big God. Following my parents' example, I fell into ministry very young. God had laid on my heart a deep desire to communicate His love to individuals who had never known it and through my church's very active and large youth ministry, I had many opportunities to do that. During this time, as I focused on serving God, I spent very little time learning the truth of His Word, believing instead that the work of my hands superseded the faith building exercises of Bible study and meditation spoken of in Psalm 1. My child-like faith was turning into a childish faith, stunted by good intentions and little Biblical support. The year I turned seventeen, my life and its underdeveloped faith found itself on a collision course with evil as I was raped by a man I was trying to help. The fallout was instantaneous. My mind swirled around questions of "how could God allow this?" to "what did I do to deserve this?". The big God, with whom I had fallen in love, was now small and weak at best, cruel at worst. I began to believe the worst. I knew too little about God and His truth to have the deep and abiding roots that would have protected and sustained me in the center of my hurricane. It wasn't long before I was toppled by the lies of the evil one and the half-truths of my childish faith. "God can not be trusted. He is not in control. God will never again love me, nor will He forgive me." My life was broken beyond recognition and I believed that I would never again be safe in His arms. I lived in constant fear and deepening shame. Fortunately, God was not afflicted by my doubt, nor was He willing to leave me in the center of it. For a number of years, my heart had limped, crippled by a weak mind and a lack of knowledge of God's sustaining truths. But slowly, that changed. Hungry for truth, desperate to find my way back to the God of my youth, I began to attend church again. I picked up His Word and started to read it on a daily basis. I learned who I am in Christ. I am God's child - loved, chosen, forgiven, secure, sanctified and called! I learned, according to His Word, that God truly is - Sovereign, Almighty, Holy, Just, Love, Righteous, Faithful, Gracious and Good! I learned about God's plan for my life and why He allows difficult circumstances. I learned that in the center of those circumstances God will always answer the question, "what do you want me to learn from this". And, I learned that from the first moment I met Jesus to this very moment, God has never changed and He never will. The peace I've found came in the form of TRUTH, God's truth! My mind was renewed; my faith was strengthened; my heart was encouraged; and my past was healed. And now, the passion of my life is all about God's truth - teaching it to others and helping them lay a firm foundation based upon the Word of God. We need roots that are deep and abiding so that when the storm comes, and it will, we will not be shaken!