John Burke tells the story.
"Let's go for fun! We'll see how much we can push their buttons," said Amy. "Come on!"
Amy had been in a nine-year relationship that had broken up, leaving her wondering why her deepest longings could never be satisfied. She and Rachel had started seeing each other when they decided to attend one Sunday morning.
"I came on a mission to shock people," says Amy. "Rachel and I would hold hands in front of people, but instead of the disgusted looks we expected, people met eyes with us and treated us like real people. So we started coming to church weekly. We kept moving to the front each week, trying to get a reaction so that we'd be rejected sooner rather than later. When we couldn't shock people, we stopped trying and started learning."
Rachel stopped attending, but Amy continued. "I was searching for something," she says. "I definitely wasn't looking to change, but I wondered if God had answers to my deepest longings. Problem was, I didn't trust God at all.
"The more I listened and learned about the teachings of Jesus, the more I started to actually believe that God really did love me. I heard more and more about being His masterpiece, and in time, I actually started to believe it."
She found out her father had nine affairs while she was growing up, a secret which rocked her world. She saw how the roots of her sexual issues tied together with his. She was just like him, using people to find comfort, life and love outside of God.
As time went by and she learned more of the Scriptures, she fell more and more in love with the Lord. Then she went to a seminar, and what God showed her shocked her. The speaker was talking about bullying.
She remembered a boy who had bullied her all year. Then one day, he apologised for the way he had acted, and invited her to his home. When she went round, two teenage boys were waiting. They raped her. She was nine years old.
The memory was extremely painful, but it was part of the healing process.
Seven years later, Amy leads a ministry in the church to help others find healing.
You see, you can't tell Jesus anything about yourself that He doesn't already know. He loves you. He forgave self-righteous people, adulterers and prostitutes. He wants to forgive you.
But that's not all. He wants to transform your life into something beautiful. He wants to make you the person He intended you to be. His love can do that too.
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