A Story About God
Brother Felimaur Flauta: By now you’re probably seeing a theme here. No matter what situation, for example, the pandemic one faces, or how discouraged one could get whether by a condition, an illness, or a situation, one can expect our Almighty God to act and give us the help we need. Exactly how the Bible teaches in Psalm chapter 42 and the verse is 11:
But, O my soul, don’t be discouraged. Don’t be upset. Expect God to act! For I know that I shall again have plenty of reason to praise him for all that he will do. He is my help! He is my God!
[Psalms 42:11 The Living Bible]
Brother Felimaur: When God gives that help, we can certainly keep moving forward. How beautiful is God’s love? Well, our next speaker is going to share the wonderful ways that God called him to the fold, and even the blessing of sharing his faith with his loved one. Let us welcome Stevyn Anthony.
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A STORY ABOUT GOD
STEVYN ANTHONY
Stevyn Anthony: I am here to share a story. It’s not my story. It’s a story about God. How God extends His patience, understanding, and loving guidance to all of us. Everyday. The funny thing is for fifty-three years, I thought, before this story about God unfolded, that it was about me.
My earliest memory of religion was when my family started attending Bothell United Methodist Church. I’m pretty sure I was in the second grade. I was always active in the church youth group. Whenever something was going on, I wanted to be there. I also played trumpet through school and three of us actually performed in front of the entire congregation several times once we had reached high school. I played a lot of sports growing up, but I knew early on that I would never be a pro athlete. After all, I was only 4’11” when I started my sophomore year in high school.
Talking sports, that was my ticket. I loved to talk about sports. I literally drove my sister crazy reading the sports page to her every morning at the breakfast table. I had a captive audience everyday until she finished eating. I was that kind of kid. When I was seven, my dad assembled a do-it-yourself radio transmitter, and then when he was finished he drove down the street to listen to me talk on his car radio. I still have that transmitter. I was a public address announcer for my high school basketball team. No doubt, still true today, I love to talk. It so happens that one of the best broadcasting schools in the entire country is at Washington State University, just 300 miles away from my hometown of Kirkland, Washington where I grew up.
Going to the University of Washington here in Seattle would have meant staying at home with my parents, and despite being a pretty good kid growing up, I really needed space. Attending school at WSU gave me the opportunity to make my own decisions.
When I went to college, I fell away from the church I grew up attending. It wasn’t even deliberate. The Church was at home, 300 miles away. It never even crossed my mind that I was doing something wrong when I stopped attending. It was never pointed out to me how wrong it was to do most of the things that I was doing. Or maybe I was just past listening. After all, I knew what was best for me. I could handle my life on my own. As I finished school, I worked hard pursuing a career in radio play by play. And I had a lot of amazing experiences. I was at the call, on the mic for a lot of really amazing situations in my life, but it is a far more difficult world to financially succeed in as a sports broadcaster than I had ever planned. And I was so focused on plan A, that I never even considered developing a plan B.
The ensuing twenty-two years of my life resulted in a marriage and four kids. An uncertain future in my chosen field led me to search for multiple career changes in an effort to support my family. However, with life’s ups and downs, I found myself facing divorce at age forty-four. Why was my life not going the way I wanted it to go?
Fast forward with me please through ten long and difficult years to 2016. By then I was on career number 217. This one as a memorial counselor of all things at Evergreen Washelli Cemetery Funeral Home. I can guarantee you I was about as lonely as I had ever been. One day my coworker and friend, also named Steve, introduced- mentioned to me that there was a woman that he wanted me to meet. It was a blustery day, February 28, 2016, the day I was introduced to Mylene. That same afternoon she invited me to an activity at her Church. She called it an E-V-M and I thought to myself, “You liked going to church, so why not?” For me when you went to church, you sat together and if there were kids, they sat between mom and dad. So imagine my surprise when I walked into the Everett chapel with Mylene and Brother Jimmy directed me to my left to sit down, while he sent Mylene to the right. I first thought, “Wait, this is different.” As I went slowly to my left and I went forward, I was hit with the epiphany of all ages. I almost stopped dead in my tracks. I wasn’t here to go to church with her, I was here to learn about and worship Him. It’s not about me, it was about God. His timeline was set in motion.
Eight short months later I was baptized on October 29, 2016. God’s story in me, however, was just beginning.
When I first joined the Church Of Christ, my kids were very concerned for me. Their mother was claiming that I had joined a cult. You see, the youngest one, Preston, was only three when his mother and I divorced back in 2006. And he had the hardest time growing up, understandably. To this day, he still doesn’t do well with his parents criticizing one another. Preston began to explore his own faith and during his teenage years, he worked hard at it. He even asked me questions about the basic doctrines inside the Church Of Christ. And that’s when God’s influence in my life was the beginning of a different story.
Preston approached me one day in early 2022 to find out more about the Church, and when the conversation turned to the concept of the “trinity,” I mentioned that the word doesn’t even appear in the Bible, and Jesus was a man, and not God. Preston was nodding his head slowly. I asked him if he wanted to talk to a resident minister. He agreed that would be a good idea. So I shared their phone numbers and they texted each other a few times as far as I knew. But I hadn’t heard anything from either one of them for a while after that.
A few months later, our resident minister and his wife were visiting my wife and I… Remember my friend, Mylene, Sister May, she’s my wife now. So during this visit, the minister held out his phone to me to show me a text he had just received. I mean, literally. When I looked at his phone, I saw that it was from, “Brother Preston.” The message read, “Yes, that should be great, unless my work schedule changes.” My son had just agreed, at that moment in real time, to begin the lessons inside the Church Of Christ.
Tears erupted from my eyes, my nose! My whole face! Every pore of skin like a squeezed sponge, not from pain or sadness. Tears of pure joy poured from me unceasingly. My wife was completely alarmed, “Why are you crying, hun, what is wrong?” When I finally caught my breath, I said, “Nothing, hun, absolutely nothing is wrong. Look at this text. God is filling me with so much love. I can’t contain it all!”
This is where God’s story took hold in my son, another story for another time. I had journeyed through my entire adult life without any realization of God’s influence. His patience, His understanding, and loving guidance led me to cross paths with Sister May and my introduction to the Church. His story in me took hold when I fell in love with the Church Of Christ in every way. The lessons, the teachings, the ministers, the hymns, the brethren. Everything clicked. I truly felt this is what God intended for me. He has guided me to where I am.
I took oath as second head deacon for the Lynwood congregation. I assisted our minister as he baptized my son. Preston and I share the same date of baptism, 6 years apart. October 29th. Now more than a year later I cherish my duties more than ever. I find peace in this difficult world every time I go to the chapel where I can give true thanks, glory and honor to Him. It’s here in the Church where I find God’s patience, understanding, and loving guidance is unending. Yes, I have too much love, I can’t contain it all. I’m so glad I haven’t because I love you all. Thank you.
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