Lysa Terkeurst's Powerful Christian Testimony and Life-Changing Verse

Lysa Terkeurst shares her personal testimony of being impacted by a broken home and father's lack of love.

She struggled with feeling like a 'throwaway person' and made choices that led her away from God.

Lysa's story highlights the importance of a Heavenly Father's love and how it can overcome earthly pain.

She shares her journey of finding love and acceptance in God, despite her difficult childhood.

It's a very personal evening for me because I have been deeply and personally impacted by a center just like the one we're here to celebrate tonight. So, Deb, thank you for having me and thank you to your team. When I was about eight years old, I remember one of my earliest memories was that my mom bought my sister and I brand new dresses for Easter. Now, this was a very big deal because we were not very financially well off when I was a little girl. And so my mom would often make our clothes. And so we would always have homemade dresses, and we even had homemade bathing suits. So I'll let you just ponder that. We don't have any framed pictures of my sister and I in our bathing suits, okay? So I'll just give you that little insight from when we were little girls for sure. But I remember this Easter, my mom went out and bought my sister and I these beautiful store-bought dresses, and I was so excited to see that dress hanging in my closet that I couldn't wait until Easter to wear it. So I went into my closet and pulled the dress down. I put it on, and then I went into the bathroom and fixed my hair the very best that a little 8-year-old girl could fix her hair. And I stepped back and looked at my reflection in the mirror, and I thought, maybe tonight is the night that my daddy will think I'm beautiful enough to pay attention to me. And so I walked out into the den, and there he was sitting. He had a TV remote in one hand and a beer in the other hand, and I went and I stood right beside his chair and hoped that he would at least look my way. But my dad didn't even look over at me at all. And so I did what any little girl would do with a pretty dress on, and I just started to twirl around and around and around. And as my dress flowed out, my heart cried out, Dad, do you love me? Do you notice me? Am I your treasured daughter? My dad never could give me those words of affirmation because of his own brokenness inside and issues that I couldn't have possibly understood when I was a little girl. Often my dad would only speak to me when I would get into trouble and he would say things like, You know, Lisa, I never wanted children, especially not a girl. and so I took all of that hurt and all of that pain all of that shame and I stuffed it down in my heart I put a big smile on my face to make everyone think that I was okay but inside my heart I felt like I was dying and you know when you're a little girl and people start to say things to you about a heavenly father and you don't understand your earthly father because his love didn't seem very present in your life, you start to doubt whether or not a heavenly father would feel any differently about you. So I wrongly started to view myself as a throwaway person because I thought maybe God has lovely, treasured, perfect people, and then maybe God has these other people, these throwaway people, and I think I fit in that category. Of course, that's not at all the way that our God looks at people, but to an eight-year-old girl who is confused because of the lack of her father's love, it's very easy to confuse the Heavenly Father's love or lack thereof as well. And when you feel like a throwaway person, it's easy to start making choices like a throwaway person. And so I did. I didn't follow the rules of the Bible, and I didn't even really understand what this Bible thing was all about. My dad was an atheist, and my mom took us to church on holidays, but navigated her relationship with God and the realities of my dad the very best that she could, but it was complicated to say the least. A few years after that, my parents decided that they were going to get a divorce, and when my dad left our family physically, he left us financially, emotionally, he just left in every way. So my mom was then put in charge of me and my sister and supporting our family just by herself. And it was very, very complicated. My mom took on a second job, and then she was going to need to take a third job on to try to make ends meet, and it was going to be impossible for her to continue to care for my sister and I. So my sister was sent to live with a grandmother that lived about an hour from us, and then I was sent to live with another grandmother who was several states away. When I went to visit my grandmother and stay with her for that season, things started out great because she had financial means to do fun things like go shopping and buy store-bought clothes, and that was awesome to a little girl. But about a few months into my stay with my grandmother, she got very, very sick, and she had to go to the doctor quite often. And when she would go to the doctor, she would leave me in the care of a trusted friend, a man that lived down the street from her. What she didn't know was that this man had terrible problems. And whenever she would drop me off at his house, she would pull out of the driveway. He would shut his front door and he would turn around and look at me. and he would say, you know, if you ever tell anyone what happens, I will make sure your mother dies. So once again, I took all of that hurt and all of that pain, all of that shame, and I stuffed it down in my heart. I put a big smile on my face to make everyone think that I was okay, but inside my heart, I was dying. A few years after that, my mom met and married a wonderful man. And so our family kind of came back together. And my sister and I were very excited when my mom and my stepfather announced that they wanted to have more children. And so the day of my 15th birthday party, mom went into labor with baby girl number three. And then the day of my senior prom, mom went into labor with baby girl number four. That was a very interesting day, let me tell you, because I put on my dress and my date came to pick me up, and I said, now before we go off to dinner and to the dance, we have to stop by the maternity ward to see my mother. That is a great pre-prom activity, actually. Yes, it is. I think it should be required for all people heading to the prom. Because we got on the maternity floor, the elevator doors opened, and there was a glass window where you could look in at all those products of love, right? And I remember we stood there and the nurses held up my baby sister, Haley. She was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. She had jet black hair and big blue eyes, and I absolutely loved her from the minute that I laid eyes on her. I loved all of my sisters, but I had a very, very special connection with Haley. And maybe it's because I was 18 and old enough to have those first inklings of maternal instinct, or maybe it was just that I was supposed to always have a relationship, a special relationship with Haley. But I toted her around that summer as if she were my baby and just loved her so much. Then that fall came and it was time for me to go off to college. And I'd picked a college eight and a half hours away from home. I packed my car. I hugged and kissed everyone in my family. But I lingered a little longer over Haley. And then I said goodbye and I hopped in my car. And while I was driving the eight and a half hours away to college I was thinking about how desperate I was to remake myself sort of hit the reset button on life I did not want to be Lisa from the broken home with the broken background, with the broken story, with the just broken heart. I didn't want to be that Lisa. I wanted to be Lisa from a perfect family with a perfect background and I just decided that I knew exactly how to accomplish that because I had seen this very inappropriate movie called Grease. And everything changed for the main character named Sandy when she got a pair of tight black pants and a big hairdo, right? And so that's what I thought I needed. And so this was the 80s, and the 80s were very kind to people with hair like mine. And so I could have some really big hair. You know you have big hair when your bangs walk into a room five minutes before you do, right? And those of you who were familiar with 1980s and did your hair then, you know exactly what I'm talking about. We were proud of our bangs. So the problem with that was that you can fix up the outside and you can look really good on the outside. You can reframe and rephrase where you came from and what happened to you as a child. But if you do not allow God to touch, fix, forgive, and heal the inside, all the dressing up on the outside won't matter because eventually you'll hit a pothole in the road of life and all of that pressed down hurt and shame and fear and anxiety, all of that will tumble back on top of you. That's exactly what happened to me when my mom called and with a lot of tears said, Lisa, your sister Haley is very, very sick. You need to come home right away. I hopped in my car and I drove home through the night. And by the time I got to the hospital, Haley was in the intensive care unit. They told my parents that Haley had been given some medication in too high of a dose, a prescription that really a baby should have never been given, and it destroyed her liver and that she would not survive without a liver transplant. So they transferred Haley to the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, and Haley did make it through the liver transplant surgery, and we were very, very thankful for that. My whole family went up there, and I remember many, many days sitting beside Haley's bed trying to figure out how to make a good enough deal with God where he would save her life. Eventually, Haley was healed enough to where my parents came to me and said, Lisa, you really need to go back to school. So the last night that I was in the hospital with Haley, I went and sat down and I had a conversation with God as I sat there beside Haley's bed. And the conversation went something like this. God, I don't know you very well, but I would like to make a deal with you. I will go back to school and I will follow all of your rules. but your end of this deal is that you must continue to heal my sister Haley and make sure she is okay. And as long as you keep up your end of the deal, then I will keep up my end of the deal. Because you see, that's all I knew about God at that point. I kind of viewed God like a vending machine, like if I put in what was required, then he would surely give me what I expect. I had no idea that it wasn't just about following rules when you talk about following God. I had no idea what it looked like to have a relationship with God. I had no idea how much God loved me. I had no idea how much God's word could help me and change me. I didn't know about all of that. So I kissed every part of Haley's face, made the deal that I felt was the only possibility in my connection with God, said that prayer, and then kissed her goodbye and went back to school. Every day when I was back at school, I would call my mom and I would say the same thing. Mom, how is Haley doing? And every day my mom would give me the same reply. Lisa, she's getting better and better, stronger every day. But about three weeks into those very reassuring phone calls, I called my mom one day, and her voice didn't sound good at all. I asked the same question that I always ask, Mom, how is Haley doing? And she didn't answer. And so I asked her a second time and a third time, And by this time, I was almost yelling into the phone, so desperate to hear her tell me that Haley was okay. But that's not what she said. In a voice so slight, it was barely a whisper. My mom said back, Lisa, Haley is finally all better, sweetheart. She went to be with Jesus this morning. And in that moment, something in me, it just snapped. I shook my fist at God and I said, I will never love you. I do not understand you. I will never, ever follow you. I don't even think that you exist. and I turned my back on God and I headed straight into the world, determined that I would find love and happiness and significance and I did not need God for all of that. And when I headed straight into the world, determined that I would find a man to say all those things that my heart was so desperate to hear, those things that my dad never said to me. Do you know what I found in the world? I did find men that would tell me that I was beautiful. I did find men that would tell me that they loved me and that I was significant. But I also found that everything in that crazy life I was leading, everything was so very temporary. The men broke my heart, and they took away what I could never get back. And it wasn't too long after that that I found out I was pregnant. I was alone. I was devastated, completely terrified. So I opened up the phone book, and I was desperate to find some help. And I saw an ad in the phone book for an abortion clinic that said that they would counsel me, that they offered free counseling. And that's what I needed. I needed some counseling. I didn't have any friends that I could really turn to to help process this decision. I was so very scared. I couldn't call my mom because my mom was most days not even able to get out of bed. She was so overwhelmed with the grief of losing my sister. So I went to the abortion clinic and I asked them to please help me. Help me know what I could do. They gave me a pregnancy test and they came back and said that I really shouldn't even consider myself pregnant. Because it was just cells dividing, they said. And that they could take care of this problem quick and easy and I would never think about it again. They could take away the source of my fear. And to a young terrified very alone girl that felt like the right thing to do So I bought their terrible life and I had an abortion And I remember the minute that I knew that the procedure was done, I knew they had taken my baby, but it was as if they had taken part of my heart as well. I went home after that, and I laid on the couch in my little apartment, and I cried out to this God that I really didn't even think existed. And I said, if you are there, God, have mercy on me and let me die. because the pain is so overwhelming. My heart is so broken. I had at that time in my life this one friend that I not so affectionately called my Bible friend. Honestly, she got on my nerves a lot because she had a Bible verse for everything. It was like if I had a headache, she had a Bible verse for that. If I broke up with a boyfriend, she had a whole list of verses. I was so skeptical. How does one person have access to so many Bible verses? I mean, this is crazy, right? And so she had no idea, no idea what I was going through. She had no idea that after she would see me at work during the day that I would go home to my little apartment and lay down on the couch and beg God to let me die. She had no idea. Because you see, all those years growing up, I was a master at hiding the shame and the pain of my life, stuffing it down inside of me and putting a big smile on my face and making everyone think that I was okay. And so that pattern continued on into this season in my early 20s. So she definitely had no idea what I was going through, but God knew. And God cared. And God put on this girl's heart the desire to continue to reach out to me. And one day, God put on her heart to write me a card and drop it in the mail. And I could imagine that when God told her to do that, I imagine that this Bible friend could have had a conversation with God that went something like this. God, she doesn't really care. I can see it on her face when I start coming her way. And when I hand her a Bible verse, she rolls her eyes. God, let me give her chocolate because then maybe at least she would like me, but don't make me give her another Bible verse, you know? So I imagine she could have had that conversation. And I think all of us have people in our lives that we assume are tired of us trying to reach them for the message of the gospel. But I'm here to also tell you, as the person on the receiving end of that, never give up. Your job is just to be obedient to God. God's job is everything else. And so she dropped this card in the mail, and the day I received it was one of the worst days that I'd experienced because I had done the math and I knew it was about that time that my baby would have been due. And I was just overwhelmed, completely overwhelmed with grief. I came home from work that day and I went to the mailbox and pulled out all of the mail and then I went into my little apartment and threw the mail on a table. I laid down on the couch beside the table crying like I did every night. And then I noticed in between the sales flyers and the bills that were tossed in the mail that was laying on my table, I noticed this little handwritten card. So I pulled it out. I popped open the envelope's back flap, and I knew immediately who it was from because on the front of the card there was, of course, a Bible verse. Indeed. And, Deb, you'll like this. It was Jeremiah 29, 11. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. I didn't want that verse. I had no desire to read it for a second time except that something stirred deep in my soul when I read it. And so I read it a second time and a third time. And by the fourth time I read it, it was almost as if my name were inserted in the verse. Lisa, I have plans for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you, not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future. I didn't understand that verse, and I certainly didn't understand how to open up the book of Jeremiah and read it in context to see what was really being promised here. And I didn't know anything about the deeper meaning of the message that God could be speaking to me. All I knew in that moment is that my whole life I felt like and looked at myself as a throwaway person. Because my whole life I had very much added up the circumstances of my life and felt like that determined who I was. And so I looked at the circumstances. I was Lisa the unwanted child, Lisa the abandoned child, Lisa the abused child, Lisa the one whose sister passed away and who shook her fist at God and ran straight into the world, Lisa who'd made terrible decisions and now Lisa who'd had the abortion. And I added up all of those circumstances, and I didn't amount to much, and my future definitely didn't look very hopeful. But this verse stood in such stark contrast to what I had always believed about myself. And for the first time, I started to think, maybe just because my earthly daddy didn't love me, maybe that didn't mean that my heavenly father didn't love me. and maybe, just maybe, this verse could be true, that God did have a plan for me and that God did have a hope for me. Now, I didn't know what to do in response to this possibility, and I certainly wasn't going to call my Bible friend because if this thing didn't work out, she would have ammunition forever, you know? And so I did the only thing that I knew to do in that moment. I just knelt down on the floor next to the couch, and I lifted up my hands, and I said, Yes. Yes, God. If you want me, and if you really do have a hope for me, and there really is a future for me, show me how. How is this possible? Well, shortly after that, I felt this stirring in my heart to call my mother-in-law and tell her about the decision that I had made. Now, she wasn't my mother-in-law at this time. She was my future mother-in-law, but I called this woman named Sharon, and I told her what had happened. And Sharon worked at her local crisis pregnancy center, and she said, Lisa, if you go there, they will help you. And so I said to Sharon, Sharon, I don't think you really understand. I am the exact person that a center like that would probably hate because I didn't call them. I didn't even know them. And I've already had an abortion. So I definitely can't go to a place like that. and Sharon assured me that when I would go that I would be met with love and grace and forgiveness And then she said some words that resonated so deep in my heart She said, Lisa, they will help you have hope for a future. And I remembered that card that I'd read. And I'd asked God those very things, like, God, show me how to have hope. show me that you really do have a future for me. And so I called my local center, and I told them that I wanted to come and see them, but I would not meet in any sort of a group, and I would not walk in the front doors because I was too ashamed. So if they could have one of their counselors meet me at a back door, then I would walk in and just sit in a back room, and then I would talk to whoever they had there to talk to me. And they were so sweet. They said, absolutely, we'll do that for you. And so I had one friend in my life that by this point I had told my story to, and she agreed to drive me. and she dropped me off at this back door and I walked in through the back door up a back staircase and I went and sat one-on-one with the counselor and she told me about a post-abortion Bible study and she asked if she could lead me through that. And she sat in that little room day after day, week after week and she helped me meet this God that I never really understood. And she helped me find a hope and a future. And it was shortly after my last meeting with her that a friend asked me to join her in starting Proverbs 31 Ministries. And I can tell you that I would have never believed what my life could look like today. Had I not gone to find the help at my local center, much like the very same help that Her Health Women's Center gives to women in this area, If I wouldn't have found that, I promise you, I would have never, ever, ever been able to teach the Bible, do the ministry that I do today, and really believe that God could love, forgive, and use a woman like me. Today, I have the amazing privilege of teaching millions of women every single day about the love and the grace and the forgiveness and the truth of God. Truth that I never had when I was growing up. But truth I'm determined to give to women every single day. and I get to do it to millions, and it all can be traced back to the help that I found at a center just like Her Health Women's Center. You see, they not only help save babies, but they help save women as well. And what an opportunity that is. When you support Her Health Women's Center, you are not only supporting women who are in desperate need to find a place where there's real counseling. How I wish that I would have walked in the front doors of Her Health Women's Center like I did today. I got the opportunity to tour the center, and I thought, if I would have had this opportunity, if I would have encountered your center, Deb, when I found myself in that very, very difficult position of being pregnant and alone, their center is so beautiful. It looks so professional. It's warm, and it's inviting, and I promise you, the counseling that they offer there is real counseling. If I would have had that opportunity, I would have made a different choice. If I would have had the opportunity to see that it wasn't just cells dividing, but if I had the opportunity to have an ultrasound and to see that it really was a human, that there was a beating heart and there was a human that was forming, I would have made a different decision. Not only do they help women who are in that situation and give them every fighting chance to make a really healthy, good choice, but they also provide sexually transmitted disease testing. They provide counseling for those women who have made the choice to have an abortion. and they give every fighting chance to people who are in the most desperate place that their life has ever known. They give every fighting chance for them to hear the greatest life-saving news, and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. I honestly cannot think of a better way to invest and steward the money that God has entrusted to us in a really, really good way. I would like to invite our table host at every table to distribute the pledge forms in your packet. And I would think that maybe many of you came here tonight and you had a certain dollar amount in your mind that you wanted to give, but I would just ask that you prayerfully consider if there's just even a little bit more that you could invest in this center, in Her Health Women's Center. I think it's important to note that Her Health Women's Center does not receive any government funding, but relies solely on the support of churches and community groups and individuals who have a passion to take a stand for life, every life. I ask that you would join me in giving to this center in two possible ways. would you prayerfully consider a generous one-time contribution this evening? Or secondly, monthly giving is a tremendous way that allows the board and the staff to make financial decisions regarding the ongoing work and ministry of Her Health's Women's Center. Like Deb said, if every single one of us here tonight just committed even $13 a month or $26 per couple, that would aid them in meeting the budgetary needs along with the generous matching gift that's been given that this center needs. So will you prayerfully consider exactly what the Lord would have you do? And on behalf of every other woman, every other young girl that has ever walked into the center that maybe has made some choices that we don't support, But might we consider being that voice of truth? Might we consider that life sometimes really, really is hard? And the girls that are coming to these centers, the girls that walk in and out of the door of Her Help Women's Centers, they need to know that life is possible, not just life for them and life for their baby, but that eternal life, the life-saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. So when you invest in this center, you're not only just investing in this ministry, but you're investing in the kingdom. You're investing in the exact work that I believe God cares about so very, very much. Thank you for letting me share my story tonight. Thank you for letting me put a face to what some people call an issue. I don't think that the abortion topic is an issue. I think it is something that God's people need to rise up and with great grace and tremendous mercy invest until there are no more lives taken.

Playlist coming soon.