The "Changed by Jesus" series features stories about how Jesus is working through the ministry of Mars Hill Church to change lives. If God has used Mars Hill to transform your life, email your story to testimony[at]marshillchurch.org.

The following story was published in the 2007-2008 Annual Report (PDF). It's written by Tami, a member of Mars Hill Ballard, who has been changed by Jesus from shame, through repentance, to freedom and joy in the grace of Christ.

Four Times — Changed by Jesus #6

While shopping for my wedding dress, a Christian friend noted that few women could actually wear white on their very special day. My guilt recoiled. The words crawled toward the top of my esophagus and threatened to spill forth, but I choked them down, far too humiliated to tell my beloved friend the truth. I was no longer a sweet and innocent virgin. I had committed the unspeakable for a Christian girl claiming to love Jesus. My fiancé and I had already had sex. Four times. On our wedding day, we stood before family and friends, all of them believing us to be chaste and holy; we took communion, bringing judgment on ourselves because we had never truly repented of the sin driving a wedge between God and us. We felt awful, to be sure, but it was mere guilt, not the godly sorrow that ushers in sweet grace. We sensed a void in our spiritual lives, but our efforts to seek Jesus were frustrated, in part because we had settled for a church that refused to recognize sin. We had confessed to our pastor during pre-marital counseling, but he responded with a joke about what a lucky guy my future husband was that it was me pushing the boundaries, and then he promptly changed the subject. Once we began to reap the consequences of tolerating such a counterfeit spirituality, we could no longer ignore our own failings or our church’s. "Soft words produce hard people. I preach hard words in order to develop soft people." After hearing a friend quote Pastor Mark Driscoll, we immediately went home and filled up our iPods with his sermons. Within a few weeks, we started attending Mars Hill. That was November 2007, almost one year to the day from when we strayed from Jesus’ straight and narrow path of sexual integrity. In the past few months, our lives have been turned upside down as we’ve grown into this church body. We became members in March, joined a community group, and started serving at the Ballard campus. I’ve been humbled to see my husband challenged to stand up and lead our family as a man of God, and I’ve been powerfully compelled by Jesus to face up to my own sins of food addiction, obesity, and idolizing comfort. To his credit alone, Jesus has called us to leadership, in part so that we can minister to others who are burdened and shamed by their sin. By calling us to serve alongside him for his glory, Jesus chose two people who were the least deserving. In light of Ephesians 5:3, our goal is to be so immersed in Jesus Christ that never again is there even a question of hidden sin in us. What a far cry from the couple who exchanged vows through forced smiles while the words "four times" haunted their minds! We now long to name our sin and put it to death so that Jesus’ name will be made great.