In 1990, We Lost Our Business…

In 1990, We Lost Our Business…

In 1990, we lost our business, our wealth and our home. I was mad at God — hadn’t we been faithful, ethical and generous? I felt we deserved better and descended into a long season of disillusionment.

On Easter Sunday in 1993, we visited “that new church” at Belmont, downstairs in “The Barn”. Without any distracting externals, the Holy Spirit’s presence was weighty. Three months later while driving home from Dallas, David asked, “If we could go to church anywhere this morning, where would it be?” I answered, “Grace.” The next Sunday we showed up and have never thought of going anywhere else. My first year of worship was mostly in tears, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone that God was working on my soul. I read Rose Marie Miller’s “From Fear to Freedom” with a small group, and was awakened to my presumptive faith with this passage: “Wasn’t the universe founded on a moral order and tilted in favor of the hard working and the righteous? Like the orphan I had cried, ‘I am abandoned,’ when in fact God’s grace was passionately pursuing me.” That book and Scott’s steady, dense exposition of the Word restored me to a truer faith.

A beautiful evidence of “Grace at Grace” happened upstairs at Belmont after singing “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” No one moved. The words hung in the silence. Many wept. I mark that moment as my healing—one of many—and my sealing into covenant with Grace Community Church.

– Elaine Atchison