Growing in Understanding - Clover Sites



Growing in Understanding

Teresa and Wayne Rose

7/09

Teresa’s Background

Teresa Rose grew up in a religious home in St. Louis. At age twelve, she says. “I accepted Jesus as my Savior in a church ceremony, but I didn’t really understand the whole thing about Him being Lord.”

Between ages 12-20, Teresa remembers, “My parents were going through a turbulent marriage. Those years I read the Psalms a lot, prayed, and cried over them.” Finally, her mother filed for legal separation, and they divorced.

Teresa first attended K-State and made it into a sorority her freshman year. She says, “I found myself trying to please everyone. So I’d go to bars with my friends even though I didn’t like to drink. I wanted to make everybody happy.”

Her sophomore year, she joined sorority sisters in judging girls being rushed based on appearance and personality. She says, “That grieved my spirit. I was very disappointed that people would be so shallow. I felt the Holy Spirit working in my heart, saying, ‘This is the way the world is…but not ME.’”

Right afterwards, Teresa still accompanied friends to bars. However, she laughs crediting the Holy Spirit with sabotage. “The first night I wore new jeans to the bar and went to the bathroom where a girl threw up all over my outfit. So I had to go home. The next night, I got knocked down by a football player and had to go home—I could hardly walk. I just hobbled home. And then the third night…can you believe I still went back? I was standing outside another bar.”

There she saw a traveling evangelist named Jed standing on a block with a crowd of people around him. He was very condemning. He pointed his finger at Teresa and said, “All sorority girls are going to hell.”

Teresa said to herself, “Oh no! That’s not true.” Then, she turned to her friend, ”I don’t ever want to come back here again. This is not for me! I need the Lord, and I’ve heard of this place called ICTHUS. I need to go there.”

Full Surrender

So, she went to an ICTHUS meeting, which is an outreach at different college campuses started by KC Colonial Presbyterian Church. The speaker spoke on Revelation 3:16, where Jesus speaks of the Laodicean church. Teresa remembers, “He talked about many times we try to live on both sides of the fence, and we end up sitting on the fence which is very uncomfortable. Because I’d been living in compromise all my college years, I felt like I’d been nailed. The Holy Spirit said, ‘Gotchya.’ I bawled like a baby and said, ‘Lord, I will never go back to a life of compromise…never!’”

That was Teresa’s turning point of full surrender to Jesus as Lord. She joined Christian groups, went to camps, became chaplain in her sorority, and also led Bible studies. After five years, she earned her Bachelor’s degree and physical therapist credentials.

Wayne’s Background

For Wayne, “Home life was really rough. I was an only child, and Mom and Dad fought all the time. I can’t describe how lonely I felt with parents who always fought.”

Wayne’s parents had married quickly when his mother discovered her pregnancy. They lived in Overland Park but seldom were together. Both parents worked—his dad as a traveling salesman away three weeks out of five and, later, four weeks out of five.

Summer of 1971, twelve-year-old Wayne worked as a student assistant at Colonial Presbyterian Church daycare center. He says, “One day I was taking a bunch of kids to the church pool and fell in the parking lot and broke my arm. They took me up to the youth pastor’s office where, uhh…I’ll be honest, I don’t remember a lot. I was in pain! My arm bent at the elbow and down further where it wasn’t supposed to bend. I remember they just talked to me, and I really wasn’t paying much attention to anything they were saying.”

The men spoke to him for some time. Then, the youth pastor Bob asked Wayne, “Do you want to pray to receive Jesus?”

“I said, ‘Yeh,’ only because it was a very leading question. Bob asked, ‘Why don’t you pray about what we’ve been talking about?’ Well, since I hadn’t been listening, I had nothing to say.”

Then, he said, “Just follow me in prayer.”

So, Wayne repeated what he said. Suddenly, God just took the bones of his arm and moved them back together. The three men were watching and saw it happen. However, Wayne could not comprehend anything. These men were very excited and said, “Did you see? Did you see what happened? Did you see God move his hand? Did you see his arm move?”

However, God just filed away in Wayne’s mind all that happened and what those men said. For right then, Wayne had no basis to understand what they were saying. “All I know is that my arm was hurting, and now it wasn’t.”

They never called an ambulance during this lengthy interchange irrespective of this church not believing in miraculous healing. Still, God chose to heal Wayne’s arm before their eyes. Wayne emphasizes, “None of it meant anything to me! The most important thing that happened was the tremendous turmoil in my heart was gone! That was the thing that overwhelmed me—not the arm! The moment I asked Jesus to come into my heart, He did.”

Wayne’s mom arrived. Startled by what had happened, she took him to the emergency room to be X-rayed. The doctor said, “Ma’m, his arm’s not broken…I can tell it was broken before. I can see the calluses where the bone healed.” However, Wayne had never broken his arm before. His mother still had them cast his arm.

The yelling and fighting continued in his home. Despite that chaos, Wayne says, “The Lord drew me back and just LOVED me. I remember just being focused on… ahh… His presence. It was an amazing thing!”

Subsequently, Wayne describes his feelings the following year in 7th-grade, “The burden that was on my shoulders was gone. I never picked up a Bible, I didn’t pray, I didn’t do anything! I didn’t know! But the Holy Spirit just kept speaking to my heart about right and wrong and about faith. I knew it to be true. And I thought that was odd that I believed it.”

Understanding comes

In 1972, he went to Circle-C camp, run by Kansas City Youth for Christ (KCYFC). There, Wayne heard an evangelist speak. “It occurs to me while he was talking that that’s what happened to me a year earlier. The Holy Spirit said, ‘This is because of what you prayed.’”

After camp, Wayne became fully immersed with KCYFC where he had good role models. Then, at a meeting in 1974, guest speaker Bob asked him, “How are you since your arm got healed?”

“Huh? My arm? Healed?” Wayne had no idea what he meant.

Suddenly, all the words that had been said three years before, that God had filed away in his mind, opened up. Wayne remembered Pastor Bob’s words and the doctor’s words, for now he had basis to understand. Despite him praying then only because they wanted him to, God had still changed his heart. Wayne concludes, “It’s all HIM! There was nothing on my part that drew me. God knew the deepest desires of my heart. He just drew me along.”

Growing in Marriage

In 1983, Wayne and a KU friend began driving from Lawrence on Saturday nights to South Kansas City Fellowship. There he soon met Teresa. Teresa describes that meeting, “I saw this cute lumberjack-kind-of-a-guy, offered him a flyer, and he invited me to join him.”

This relationship blossomed into marriage in 1984. They first lived in downtown Kansas City and later in Overland Park. In 1986, Wayne’s divorced parents both fell ill from cancer. Wayne and Teresa cared for them individually until they died.

During that time, children Jacob and Haley were born in 1986 and 1989 respectively. Then, Alyssa’s birth followed in 1990. After that, Teresa suffered three miscarriages and bore a stillborn son, Jonathon. This was traumatic for both parents. Teresa explains, “It just caused us to re-evaluate our faith and drove us into the arms of Jesus. We began to understand the fellowship of suffering. I became so desperate for Him that nothing else would fill those holes, those empty places of pain.”

Wayne says, “Nothing made sense. It was a decision point, and ya’ know, I just surrendered my ability to comprehend.”

He chose to trust God and gained a gentle understanding of God’s sovereignty. Soon thereafter, by reading The Sacred Romance, God further enlightened Teresa and Wayne that He is always good, but He is not safe. Plus, the children have a clearer view of heaven knowing Jonathan lives there. Later, in 1996, daughter Jenna was born.

Church journey to Life Church

After they married, the Rose’s continued attending South Kansas City Fellowship. In 2004, the pastor left that church due to internal strife. Since Wayne and Teresa served on the church leadership team, they experienced grief in this turmoil.

That same year they left that church to check out different churches closer to home, so that their teen-age children might become more involved. After visiting three other churches, Teresa remembered meeting Janice Sizemore the year before. The Internet then directed them to Life Church the next Sunday, Father’s Day, when Steve Sizemore preached. Teresa says, “We loved his vulnerability and his heart. He spoke of personal issues about his own father. That really spoke to our hearts.”

They decided to return the next Sunday, and commitment to Life Church soon followed for the Rose family.

Current Life Church involvement:

Both: Life Group Leaders

Wayne: Real Men

Life Grillers

Usher

Teresa: Care Team

Women’s Bible Study Leader

Life Welcome Center

Their four children are also involved in different activities and service. Moreover, Wayne and Teresa pursue their vision to become Intentional Mentoring Disciplers for the Lord Jesus Christ.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download