Three stories, one God

On this Testimony Sunday three people from Elan Church each share how they have come to know one person of the Trinity in a personal way: Shammrie on the Father's love, Joy on Jesus as a friend, and Bob on fellowship with the Holy Spirit.

Shammrie: the Father's love and father hunger

Shammrie opens with Colossians 3:13, the call to forgive as the Lord forgave you, and shows the only childhood photo he has with his father. He remembers being eight, taken to see Mortal Kombat, and not wanting to stay the night because he barely knew his dad. In college he read Robert McGee's book Father Hunger and recognized the emptiness it describes: the lack of a father's love that had driven his rebellion, anxiety, and impulsive decisions as a teenager. When he accepted Christ he began to understand God as his heavenly Father and realized his behavior had to reflect his Father's character rather than that emptiness. Forgiveness came first, and his father made it easy, calling him his beloved son and apologizing every time they spoke. Restoration came next through therapy, where a counselor noticed he talked about his dad like a friend rather than a parent and encouraged him to start asking his father questions as a son would. They grew very close before his father died in 2020. God did not just restore the relationship, Shammrie says, He redeemed it, and that wholeness prepared him to be a father himself. Citing Psalm 68, a father to the fatherless, he offers hope to anyone whose father cannot show up, because God places other people in our lives, and he prays for God to fill the God-sized void in every heart.

Joy: a friend who sticks closer than a brother

Joy describes Jesus as most people understand Him, the Son of God who reconciled us to the Father, and then shares a further revelation: Jesus as a friend who has stuck closer than her own family and friends back home. She moved from Zambia to the States in 2019, leaving a church where she served, nine siblings, and a communal culture where friendships were never hard. Once the semester got hard and cold, she experienced a loneliness she had never known, crying herself to sleep and spending nights in the dorm prayer room asking why God had brought her to a foreign land only to forsake her. One Sunday afternoon she went for a walk, hoping no one would speak to her, and a stranger ran after her and said she sensed God wanted her to know that He is a friend who sticks closer than a brother and had never left her. Joy wept in front of this stranger. She realized her confidence in relationships back home had become an idol, and when God stripped it away she was left to trust Him. Reading Proverbs 18:24 and John 15:13–15, she explains that Jesus can empathize with loneliness because He suffered it Himself, and she encourages anyone struggling that "Jesus is a friend who sticks closer than a brother and he wants a friendship with you."

Bob: the fellowship of the Holy Spirit

Bob begins with 2 Corinthians 13:14 and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Raised Baptist, he pictured the Spirit as a dove, a flame, or an impersonal force, and relationship with the Spirit was not on his radar. In college, exposed to the charismatic side of the church he had been warned about, he decided to find out for himself and poured himself into studying the Bible for years. Then the Holy Spirit spoke to him with a strong, clear inner voice: "Bob, you search the scriptures because you think in them you have life, but you're unwilling to come to me." He realized his trinity had become Father, Son, and Holy Scriptures. Using the picture of a restaurant menu, he explains that believing in the steak printed on the page is not the same as eating it; the Bible is meant to lead us to an encounter with the living God behind it, and when you encounter Him your life changes. His driving question has become how much of God he can experience on this side of heaven.

A prayer for more

Bob closes by praying over the room, asking the Holy Spirit to break through cold or crusted hearts, to soften them, and to meet each person in a very real way as they get alone with God.