Sherri's Place  

Sherri Lindahl graduated from Belvidere High School in June of 2004 and as you will find out a good writer.  This page will be the place to find out what's on Sherri's mind.

4/9/04

The Body of Christ is like a rice crispy treat...Guest Columnist:  Kyle Hoskins

The body of Christ is like a rice crispy treat - each part needs the other.  The rice crispy part is the people out in front, the crunch, the visible part.  These are the people who speak, lead, small group leaders, church leaders - people like that.  If the rice crispy wasn't there, no one would eat the treat because it would just be a mess of marshmellow and butter. 

The marshmellow - it holds the whole thing together.  The encouragers, the servants, people who help us and hold us up. Without the marshmellow, it would just be a bowl of cereal with butter in it (yuck).  The butter smooths things out and soften things up.  The butter is the people who are unseen, the people of prayer, compassion, and mercy and also the people who organize and strategize.  Without them, the rice crispy treat would be a hard-to-eat-sticky-mess that chips your teeth.

We all need to work together if we want to be a tasty treat, no part is more important or less important than the others.  And the head?  Christ?   Where does He fit in?  Well, He is the one adding the ingredients and mixing and meshing us perfectly.  He knows how much marshmellow will muck up the treat and not enough rice crispy will render the treat unsatisfying.  Too much or not enough butter could ruin the whole batch, and everyone knows a rice crispy treat is yummy goodness. 

God uses the church to show His goodness to the world, so are we going to work together to be a tasty rice crispy treat and show the world how good God is....or are we gonna allow ourselves to become a blochy mess?  You decide.....yeah I am really weird.   kyle hoskins

9/24/03

Hope for the Hopeless

by: Sherri Lindahl

Many of us have people who we pray for just to say we are praying for them.  The kinds of people who we think are so far away from God that they will never come to know the Truth. 

I had a good friend of mine, one who I thought was hopeless, come to know God Sept. 14, 2003 at a concert.  This person's life was "taken by storm" in the matter of minutes.

Heather has been one of my good friends since she moved in next door about seven years ago.  During the summer we were at each other's houses or outside or doing something together all the time.  Despite the four-year difference in our age she is one of my very best friends.  I would definitely say that Heather knows the real me better than any one else on this earth.

Heather has been on the top of my prayer list for about a year, especially after the retreat in Freeport last spring, which focused on saving our friends.  My heart went out to her in so many ways.  I felt like I could sense her pain but attempting to save her would be useless.

This past summer it was hard for me to reach out to her.  I was hardly ever home and she was never outside.  Those are just some of the excuses I used to cover the guilt I was feeling for not making a simple call.  I cherished the few times we did hang out over the summer just to talk.  I remember asking her if reading the Left Behind series made her think about there being something more to life.  Needless to say I didn't get much of a response.

Once school started I was excited because this would be the first time Heather and I would be in the same school.  About three Sundays ago I was told about a Superchick concert.  I knew the concert would be awesome so I saw it as a chance to bring some friends from school and see what they thought about jumping for Jesus.  I invited Heather and her enthusiasm shocked me.  I was expecting a long pause and an "I dunno" but she said yes in an instant.

I started to pray that this concert would make Heather think about life and eternity, nothing big, just to make her think.  I never expected the unexpected.  Once we got to the concert and the head banging bands played I could tell she was having a blast and that just made me pray all the more.

When Superchick came on I looked at Heather every once in a while to see if there was any expression.  I saw how focused she was on the words of the band and I could see the wheels moving in her head.  I prayed and prayed and prayed that entire concert.  I didn't have much hope until that point I saw Heather's eyes.  They say the eyes are the window to the soul and I could see her soul getting saved.

Since the concert Heather claims she has done a complete 180 with her life.  She now knows the truth and is living by it also.  I can definitely notice the change.  She is determined to read the Bible from cover to cover and just finished Genesis.

I am so thankful that Heather has finally seen what I see and felt what I feel.  After seeing what God has done in her life I have a new outlook at the unsaved, or "pre-Christians".  My God is an amazing God and worthy of my life.  This experience has given me so much hope for the future.  Now when I pray I am going to pray not that something might happen but that something will happen.

God is the God of the Hopeless.

In His Grip,

Sherri