Embrace It by Guest Blogger Teri Gegen

Meet Teri Gegen – speaker, leader, and administrator.
Teri Gegen, Women's Ministry Rep
Teri has been actively serving as the director of “Heartbeat”, the women’s ministry of Frontline Christian Center, for the past several years.  She also serves as the office administrator as well as the administrative assistant to the Senior Pastor. She regularly sings on the worship team. Teri choreographs liturgical dance for Frontline’s musicals and dramas.  
In addition to her many responsibilities at the church, Teri is actively involved in the community. She currently serves in an ecumenical para-church ministry on the Secretariat for Gold Coast Via De Cristo. This ministry has been an effective instrument of change in the hearts and lives of thousands of men and women in Palm Beach County.  Every other Tuesday night, you will find Teri singing on the worship team at Celebrate Recovery a drug dependency outreach.  
She is also a wife and mother who enjoys family time and activities.   
Women's Ministry of Frontline Christian Center





You can check Teri and her church family out: 
every Sunday at 10am.
Olympic Heights High School  Auditorium
20101 Lyons Road
Boca Raton, fl 33434





Embrace It


I was posting a picture of my father on Facebook for Father’s Day, thinking about our less than perfect circumstances and our relational history, when two words popped into my head.  “Embrace it.”  I knew this was God speaking to me.
Embrace Life

My father did not do that.  He did not “embrace” life.  At times he was charming and fun.  I bet he was creative and sensitive as a young boy, too.  Something a boy was not allowed to be when he was a coal miner’s son growing up in Kentucky, at least not his father’s son.  My father’s childhood was harsh, not something easily embraced.  He protected himself from it by submerging himself in alcohol and cigarettes, a legacy passed down to him by his father and a few generations before him.  He passed this legacy down to me in the form of food and procrastination.  I am afraid I have influenced my daughter with it in a lighter form.  

Embrace God's Plan
You see, I asked Jesus to take my life and change it when she was a child.  Praise God He changed the course our lives were running.  Since that day, many years ago, we have been on a journey, sometimes bumpy, sometimes uphill, sometimes down.  However, through it all we have become more like Him with every breath.  We love with an ever evolving, closer to Jesus’ love because He first loved us.  God knows me.  He knows I still cling to regrets.  This morning as I thought about the legacy passed down by my father’s line, God told me to “embrace it” and then again, emphatically, He repeated, “Embrace It!”   (I can be a little hard headed sometimes.)  He showed me that I need to accept it, learn from it so that I can move forward. 

 Embrace our Legacy
For you see, the legacy handed down to us, the past has a huge influence on what we are today.  We need to embrace our legacy, embrace life and all that God has planned for us.  Face the fact that there is good and bad.  Embrace it and not hide in alcohol, food, drugs, work, daydreaming, constant busyness, or whatever else we use to protect ourselves from this world.  Make God your hiding place.   Run straight to Him and believe these God inspired words from David in Psalm 32:7; “Thou {art} my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.”   
I know.  It won’t be easy, but you will have a life worth living.  Take the troubles of this world to Him, who “is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.” Eph 3:20.  Embracing the walk God has given us on earth fully aware and alive will hold some awkward or downright painful moments, but God has an exciting and great adventurous plan out there for you.


What are some of the ways you embrace life? 

1 comment:

Leave a comment