Mechthild Clark
I’ve lived quite a long time now on this earth and have experienced so much! And I have learned a lot! Especially about our heavenly Father and my relationship with Him. I understood some things quickly, and sometimes God had to be very, very patient with me. And I still have a lot to learn. Because with God we are always disciples, i.e. learners!
And so I would like to take you on a journey today! A short journey through my life. You will get to know me a little better. But more importantly: I want to talk about 5 points, 5 truths that have become very important to me! And after that you will know me a little better…
And I’ll start at the very beginning! With my birth!
We are in early 1951! It was the post-war period in Germany. My mother was 37 years old, she weighed than 110 lbs. (50 kg), and already had 3 children, one had died during the war. She had a very serious heart condition and all of the sudden, she was pregnant with me…
The first thing the doctor said to a mother was: we have to terminate this pregnancy immediately. You will not survive this. Your children will no longer have a mother!
My parents were both devoted Catholics, but more than that – they had a strong faith and trust in God and an abortion was out of the question for them. My mother later told me: “I was convinced that God had allowed this pregnancy and that He would carry me through.”
After I was born, my mother was seriously ill for weeks. I was so tiny that the doctors spoke of dwarfism, i.e. that I would be disabled and would always be very tiny. And now look at me… By the way my mother lived to be almost 92 years of age.
My parents must have had great fear and yet they trusted in God…
This brings me to my first point, which has become so important to me:
1. I am wanted and planned by God
Looking back, I have often thought that God already had His hands on my life before I even said “yes” to him.
Here’s a scripture that we all know. Psalm 139:15–16:
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand – when I awake, I am still with you.
Many times, over the years I have had conversations with people that felt they had been a burden to their parents. They were told: “Actually, we didn’t want another child, but then you came along. Well that’s the way it goes!” It’s sad when adult men and women feel inferior because of their parents’ behavior. It’s a great burden to bear, thinking that you were unwelcomed.
But God says to each of us: You are wanted and planned by me
… God has said “yes” to us, before we even come to know Him.
… He has numbered the hairs on my head, says a passage in the Bible. He knows everything about me…
God speaks to Jeremiah 1:5: Before I formed you in the womb I knew] you, before you were born, I set you apart.
David in Psalm 139, 16–18:
… your eyes saw my body even before it was formed. You planned how many days I would live. You wrote down the number of them in your book before I had lived through even one of them. God, your thoughts about me are priceless. No one can possibly add them all up. If I could count them, they would be more than the grains of sand. If I were to fall asleep counting and then wake up, you would still be there with me.
I was a very strong-willed child! Some of you think you have a difficult child. You can be glad you didn’t know me when I was little. I was headstrong, easily provoked to anger, and I was very critical of everything.
If someone said go to the right, I had a strong desire to go to the left. Sometimes I still feel that way today!
How often have I heard the phrase: Do you always have to have the last word? My favorite answer was: “Sorry, I didn’t know that you still had anything more to say.”
I was an extremely freedom-loving individual and had thoughts of escaping when someone tried to hold me down – sometimes that even happens today…
My biggest fear was that someone would clip my wings or rob me of my freedom. However, I’m grateful for my parents who probably recognized this intuitively and gave me a lot of freedom. At the same time, they set me boundaries and taught me values.
Already at the age of 13, I decided that church meant nothing to me and that God had no place in my life – I even questioned whether he existed at all. I knew one thing: I wanted to determine my own life and no one would tell me what to do…
At age 21, I took a great job in a large company in Wiesbaden, and at the same time also began studying business administration in Frankfurt. My life looked good … It was all planned – I was making a career.
But then I heard about Jesus through a friend I had met. And for the first time in my life, I really started to deal with the question, if there is a God. I saw many things in my friend’s life that I wanted, especially knowing about the meaning of life…
And then, after a lot of thinking and extensive reading, I wanted to give it a try and see if God really exists.
When I took this step, all the lights came on for me and all of the sudden I understood what Jesus had done for me on the cross. I had only one desire – to follow Him completely. Nothing was too much for me, I would have given up everything because I suddenly realized that He was what I had been looking for.
He completely turned my life upside down and the goals I had until then radically changed. And that brings me to my second point:
2. God does NOT limit a space for us to live in, in fact He wants to expand it!
I had often thought before that Christian faith was restrictive, that it was a crutch that only weak people needed. And on top of it, then there were all the rules like: you mustn’t or you can’t, or you have to… For me, this meant that all individual freedom was entirely gone.
But I quickly learned that God is completely different! God is not interested in constraining us, squeezing us into a mold so that we are all the same…He responds to us personally – He wants to widen our horizon and our thinking. He wants us to grow and develop as individuals so that we can discover our giftings and blossom!
He desires to remove our personal limitations and give us more space to do things we thought we couldn’t do.
As I was praying alone one night, after being a Christian for a few months, I read a scripture verse and I knew it was for me! I’m sure you’ve also have had this kind of experience?
I came across Psalm 119:37:
Turn my eyes away from things that are worthless. Keep me alive as you have promised.
(in the German Bible translation: Don’t let me pursue teachings that are worthless to you…)
I knew at that very moment that my life would take a completely different course than I had planned.
God didn’t say: your studies are bad of making a career is bad, but I understood He was saying the following: I have something better for your life. Something will fulfill you much more, providing you with personal happiness and satisfaction. And I knew then that my life would take a completely different course than what I had planned.
I quit my job, discontinued my studies and began working with drug addicts at Teen Challenge. I saw and experienced things I had never seen beforehand. And this was the beginning of me of doing things in my life that I never thought possible.
In many places in the Bible, God says that he wants to give us “wide open spaces”!
He has done that for me. He did not constrain me, but gave me people along my way who have always encouraged me to think further. Others, who have helped me plan further, to dream bigger – including my husband! When I say: I can’t do it, he says: of course you can – with God’s help.
1.Chronicles 4:10:
Jabez called upon the God of Israel, saying, “Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border…”
Today is International Women’s Day! And here’s something to think about: What would the world be without women?
It wouldn’t exist! What women have accomplished and are accomplishing every day is incredible – in their families, in their communities, in their professions and social surroundings.
I think often of the women who were and are “simply” at home taking care of their families. These Woman have raised children who are now teachers, carpenters, plumbers, doctors, pastors, men and women who govern – what a job.
I think of the women who, more than 150 years ago, went alone as missionaries to foreign countries to care for the sick, to start schools and orphanages, to establish churches …. even in those times where social or church norms wanted to hold them back.
God does not limit us – He expands our space to live in. He helps us turn dreams into action for Him.
3 God has a perfect plan for our lives – for every life
I am quite sure that if I had not quit my studies and rather made a career, but continued to serve God – God would have blessed me too.
But I was so excited by the realization of His love for me that I wanted to serve God him with everything I had.
My husband Paul and I were born and raised on other continents. A completely different way of growing up – Paul grew up in a church like this. He actually wanted to become a lawyer and a politician.
Although we come from completely different worlds, we just happened to meet. I often think: no other person could understand and accept me like Paul, with all my idiosyncrasies, my urge for freedom, my strong will, my desire to always have everything under control so that nothing slips away from me…
When we met, we were both working for Teen Challenge. We talked a lot about the future, about our dreams and our vision. We both had the same goal, to serve God and to be used by him. We wanted to live transparently, loyal to God and to each other.
God led us step by step. And we have experienced this again and again over the past 48 years, taking one step at a time.
We were married in Germany in 1977. We knew when it was time to go to the USA and plant a church there. And after five years being stateside we returned to Germany to plant churches in various German cities, and later also in Austria and Liechtenstein. We have been doing this for 48 years…
We have had the normal challenges in our lives like everyone else.
The first few years we were so broke! I cleaned houses, Paul did janitorial work and gave guitar lessons. We had worries about our children, experienced illness, and many worries about the churches we led and individual people. But we also experienced wonderful times of growth and beautiful development in the church – the normal madness of life.
We have always tried to live in His will, to be faithful to God, faithful in giving of our finances, our gifts, our time, and of ourselves
Ephesians 2:10:
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Proverbs 16:9:
The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.
We prayed again and again: Lord, what comes next? Where should we go? We had certainty in our hearts, always in agreement about the next steps. Sometimes God corrected our steps as he redirected us.
God’s blessing for us is beyond measure: When I look back on my life and see how God has implemented His plan, I can only say: I would go the same way again! Because God is faithful…
4 God is with us even in times of need
Shortly before my 50th birthday – The year 2001: We had moved to a new city again because of the church ministry. Our children were both in the USA studying. I had started working for our church denomination and had a lot of responsibility in the area of finances. We had a bit more money for ourselves – everything was super nice. We went on vacations alone for the first time…
Sometimes I had the thought in the back of my mind that my life was almost picture-perfect. And then I often had the thought that something had to happen at some point.
My mother who was widowed for almost 30 years at the age of 87 become ill. I realized then that she was developing dementia. My sisters we not able to take care of her and decided she should to go in to a nursing home. They had arranged everything. And I was given the task of picking my mother up from hospital and taking her to the nursing home which I just could not bring myself to do.
And my life changed overnight We were care-givers for my mom for 3 ½ years. Despite this, we still had a move and were pastoring a new church.
Then in 2004, my widowed sister Renate, without children, had a brain aneurysm. Hospital care and rehab followed. We had to help her move in to a nursing home, close down her apartment, give away her dog, sell her car, and deal with the governmental authorities.
– Then I had to put my mother in a nursing care because I couldn’t cope any more.
– Then my other sister Monika died suddenly
– Then my mother died a few months later in 2005 at the age of almost 92.
– We moved to plant a church in Bad Dürkheim and my sister was moved into a new care home there until she died in 2012.
After that, I felt a little orphaned. During those years, I always tried to do my best, to do my duty, demanding everything from myself. 120% – And that came at a price!
For the first time in my life, I felt like I had no air left to breathe, I was always clenching my teeth so much that my jaw hurt. Sometimes I didn’t know how to take the next step or whether I would even have any strength left for the day ahead. Due to my personality I wanted to do everything super perfect.
What have I learned over the years?
God is with me, even when everything is gray and difficult. Even when I can’t pray, he gives me people who pray for me and walk the path with me. My husband, my children, brothers and sisters in the church, were all there for me. I could never have done it without Paul.
And at some point, the sun will shine again if we don’t give up. Sometimes it takes time and sometimes the road is very rocky and long.
But never give up!
Because even in difficult times there are beautiful events – the weddings of our children, vacations, a house being built in Bad Dürkheim. We have enjoyed great churches with wonderful brothers and sisters in the Lord.
Let’s look again to God’s word:
Deuteronomy 31:6: Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.
1 Peter 5:7:… casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.
Sometimes all you can do in difficult times is read these kinds of Bible passages, listen to worship songs, just trying to have strength for every single day. We don’t look to our strength, but look alone to God’s strength! And I would like to say to us today: don’t look too far into the future, but live every single day through God’s grace:
Gott, bei dir bin ich geborgen, God, with you I am safe,
habe keine Angst vor morgen, I am not afraid of tomorrow,
weil nach jeder dunklen Nacht because after every dark night
ein neuer heller Tag erwacht. a new bright day awakens.
(Unbekannt) (Unknown)
5 God holds my future in His hands
I just said: don’t look too far into the future! And yet sometimes I do – maybe it’s old age.
Do you ever wonder what tomorrow will bring? I do! And I realize that I need to work on my attitude. Bill Gates said once: “Most of the time I think about the future, because that’s where I will spend the rest of my life.”
I already have the feeling that a new phase in my life has begun, but I am holding on to God’s promise:
1 Thessalonians 5:24: The God who has chosen you is faithful. He will do all these things.
“The future has many names,
For the weak, it means the unattainable.
For the fearful, it means the unknown.
For the courageous, it means opportunity.” (Victor Hugo)
I desire to be courageous! I still have expectations for my life. I want to continue encouraging people, spurring them on to expect great things from God as they work in His Kingdom!
I don’t want to stop living out the plan that God has had for me since He planned and designed me. I want to be faithful to him. I want to continue to let Him change me.
I want to become more patient. I desire to see things less black and white, not always thinking that my plan is the only right one.
I want to experience some new things with God! I want to look with confidence at what lies ahead!
Psalm 92:14: When they get old, they will still bear fruit. Like young trees they will stay fresh and strong.
2 Corinthians 4:16: We don’t give up. Our bodies are becoming weaker and weaker. But our spirits are being renewed day by day.
I have realized that the happiest people are those who don’t dwell on the past. They don’t dwell on missed opportunities and botched decisions, but look to the future with great expectation. The past does teach us how to shape our future better.
I want to finish the race well, no matter how many years I still have ahead. I always want to be a testimony to my children, my grandchildren and those around me.
And I want to encourage and call out to everyone:
Follow Jesus! Be uncompromising! Give Him your all!