“…being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ…” ~ Philippians 1:6
I’m going to publish a post today. Wow. In all my years, I never ever thought those words would come out of my mouth. Yet, as I look around me, there are so many things that surround me that I never would have thought would be a part of my life, even if you had only asked three years ago. I’m on a journey my friends, and I’d love it if you’d join me.
Who am I?
Well, at the most simple, I am Heather Bryner, the founder of Shake the Ground Ministries. I am wife to my loving husband, Jason and mother to our five amazing children: Jakob (20), Matthew (19), Tanner (16), Abygail (7) and Emilie (5). Our fur-children, Luna (the cutest little bug-eyed English Bulldog you’ve ever seen) and Salem (our loving and stereotypically jerky Russian Blue) round out our bunch. We live in my dream house in the neighborhood that I grew up in. The brick colonial on the hill that I dreamed of owning when I’d ride my bike past when I was young. I had it all… dream house, dream husband, dream kids… or so I thought. What I didn’t have was a close and personal relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
I had always considered myself a Christian; always believed in God and Jesus, but my faith as an adolescent had been trampled by religion. The God that was portrayed was someone to be feared and there never seemed to be enough you could do to make things right with him. I literally felt like I needed to be “saved” every. single. week. As I got older, the God I had learned was never the God that I felt in my heart, so I chose to flee. I went as far off the tracks as I guess I felt comfortable going. I still believed in God, I still loved Jesus, but I wanted nothing to do with “organized religion” or church and just did my own thing… Went to church occasionally, tried to be a “good” person, just lived my life how I wanted it; and I can’t say that I thought my life was all that bad.
I thought I had it all, but no matter how much we attained over the years, I just never felt settled. I was content, but somehow empty. I had “made it”, but somehow felt like I had not arrived. Little did I know, God was about to change EVERYTHING. Life as I had previously known it was about to change and it all started with a conversation between my sister and I that we had had, REPEATEDLY, for the previous 13-ish years….
#zerotohero #JesusChangesEverything #ShakeTheGroundMinistries
tgphavelock.org 