This past Sunday, Foothills family member, Stephen Carroll, shared the following testimony of hope.
“One hundred precent of my story, is God’s story. I had the opportunity to live through it, to experience it, but it’s all God’s story. Before I tell you this story, I want you to consider Romans 15:13 which says, ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.’ Jesus Christ is our hope in every situation. Also I want to share with you one of my life verses, Philippians 4:13 which says, ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me.’”
“I want to tell you about the day I had all of my hopes and dreams taken away from me.”
“Have you ever been in a situation that had an unexpected outcome? I have. I know exactly what that feels like. I want to tell you about the day I had all of my hopes and dreams taken away from me. As a result I had to think of things in a different way.”
“By the time I was fourteen years old, I was a pretty accomplished soccer player. I was also good at wrestling. I lived and breathed playing sports. I would wake up in the morning thinking about playing soccer, and that’s what I would think about all day. I would go through the school day, and then participate in whatever after school sport there was, basketball, football, and then I would come home, grab my dinner and eat it on the way to play soccer for two hours. Then I would come home, do my homework and go to bed. That was my life.”
“From my perspective that was the best phone call of my life.”
“In June of 1992 I received a phone call from the US Youth Soccer, asking me to come and play in the Olympic development program. From my perspective that was the best phone call of my life. So at age fourteen, I had the opportunity to train for playing soccer in the Olympics.”
“Two days later, my brother and I were playing basketball in the driveway at home. I was winning of course, because that’s what big brothers do. At that same time, a sixteen year old girl was coming home from getting her driver’s license. She turned on the corner of the road we lived on too fast and lost control of the car. Being inexperienced, she over corrected the car and ended up pressing her foot on the gas pedal instead of the brake pedal. She came through the driveway we were playing basketball on at 60 mile per hour. The car hit me, sending me flying through the air, and I landed between two horse trailers that were next door. The car kept going and hit our well, causing the car to jump over a two foot rock wall and hit me again, pinning me between the car and a horse trailer.”
“I was in a coma for seven weeks.”
“I was pretty messed up. I was in a coma for seven weeks. I had a broken neck with a C1 fracture (topmost vertebra of the spinal column). I had a bruised heart, a bruised lung, a bruised liver, and a shattered leg. Because of possible infection from gangrene, they amputated my leg two days later. I also had a broken clavicle and broken knuckles.”
“As you can imagine, because of all those injuries, there was a lot of rehab ahead of me. I had to relearn how to walk, how to talk, even how to eat all over again.”
“I had the phenomenal opportunity to place my entire hope in Christ.”
“I had the phenomenal opportunity to place my entire hope in Christ. I remember vividly lying in bed in the dark. I couldn’t do anything but just lay there. So I prayed. I just prayed to Christ and got closer and closer to Him. And I learned how to trust Him. I learned that there was nothing I could do, zero I could do, on my own.”
“We don’t know what’s coming next.”
“We don’t know what’s coming next. We make plans about what we’re going to do or what we’re going to accomplish, but we don’t know what God has in store for us. God taught me that at an early age, and to this day I know I can do nothing on my own power. My hope is completely in Christ. I used to have the hope of playing soccer, now I have the hope of being used by God as I share my life story. And I have had the honor to share my story almost on a daily basis.”
What a powerful illustration of how God wants to fill us with joy and peace and how by the power of the Holy Spirit, He grants us an abundance of hope.