One80 Podcast Episode 90
God Called Me a Friend, Katie Tootle, Intern Show

This transcript may have errors that veer from the original audio, found here:
https://one80podcast.com/

 

 

Katie Tootle: 0:30

They were with so much love and so much joy. They wore it like a glow on their faces and I wanted that so bad.

Brystol Beatley: 0:37

This is Bristol Beatley, welcoming you to the One80 Intern Show. Every part of the show was done by the one-way interns. Katie Toodle was living an angry and bitter life. Enter the Sunrise Crew, a group of radiant young adults who led Katie to the God who calls her friend. Welcome to Katie’s One80.

Katie Tootle: 1:02

My name is Katie. So I grew up in southern Mississippi and then, when I was about eight, we moved to Houston, Texas, a suburb of it. I grew up with one older brother, both parents in the house, awesome people. I was in the South so everybody knew the gospel and everybody professed Christianity. So I grew up with both my parents professing Christianity. We went to church most of the time, but I never really knew what the gospel was.

I kind of knew what it was on a textbook. I knew that Jesus had died and that he had conquered it, but I didn’t know why, and so I believed it, but I didn’t really see the importance of believing it. I didn’t see God as someone to know or as his own person. I didn’t see the church as. So in the South there will be this high and mighty nature of I don’t steal. I would never steal because I’m a Christian, but I will go gossip about this person for hours on end and tear them down on social media and do all these things because they did this wrong. You know she tossed my hair the wrong way and I’m mad about it, but it’s just kind of a pick and choose faith. There was just a lot of cracks in the little faith I had, and the faith I had was less in God and more so in culture.

Katie Tootle: 2:23

I went into middle school and my Bible stayed on the shelf all throughout, and when you’re entering your teenhood, that’s when you really start to see suffering for what it is, which is suffering. I think when you’re a kid it’s easy to see tragic things and then always expect a happy twist to go to them, and that’s just not the reality. In a broken world, sometimes there’s just hurt and you can’t look at it and say this was the cause or this is the way we’re going to get around it. And that crushed me because I had seen life as well. We’re all Christians and this God is good, so where is he? Like I could look at global problems and say, “Well, what’s going on? Where’s God now?”

Katie Tootle: 3:03

So I began to get really frustrated with the concept of suffering and my Bible stayed on the shelf while I did. I didn’t know why it mattered and I didn’t really care to learn because I was angry. So I continued on throughout middle school and I started to really care to learn because I was angry. So I continued on throughout middle school and I started to get to know some of the Christians at my church and they were kids and kids are learning and they were mean and they made some really awful jokes and mistakes and I was picked on and I picked on other kids Like it was just pain. You know, a world with pain is going to have it. But I saw them as representatives of Christ and I did not like the way they were representing it.

Katie Tootle: 3:44

So I got really bitter to God and I decided, well, if this is God’s people, then this must be what God’s like. And where is God in all of the suffering? I don’t know. So why do I want anything to do with it? I was kind of living a double life openly, where I’d say I’m a Christian but I’d also support all the wrong things and I would treat people the wrong way. I wouldn’t love myself the right way. I was just living in all the worst things and I was unhappy all of the time.

Brystol Beatley: 4:11

What caused the unhappiness? Next, I asked Katie to share an example.

Katie Tootle: 4:16

Sometimes there were family members that we no longer got to speak to or there were friends that we had to take distance from or friends.

Katie Tootle: 4:24

I had a friend move across the country without saying anything because of a sudden emergency in her family and that was awful because she was my childhood best friend and I’ve not heard of her since. So that led into early high school where I just continued, I continued to be bitter, sin. You just spiral into. You know it kind of tangles you I think of. Oh where is it? Ephesians 4:26 to 27, which says in your anger, do not sin, do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, do not give the devil a foothold. So a foothold is like kind of a closing brick when you’re trying to close the door, when you’re really frustrated and you’re trying to close the door and they stick their foot in and you can’t get it done all the way.

And that’s what I had let sin and anger do. I had let the sun go down on my anger at God many times and I had let sin creep into my life many times. What turned from a foothold was just like an open door of anger and bitterness. So I entered ninth grade very frustrated and very far from the Lord and not really eager to know Him. I kind of wanted to sit in my anger, in my self-righteousness. So it might be good to add that throughout all of this process of getting to know God and Christianity, I had continued to believe the gospel was true. I just didn’t want to mingle with it because I didn’t see the gospel as something saving from sin.

I saw it as kind of like a moral scale of what’s good, what’s wrong. Here are the commandments, what you do, what you don’t, and you know. The whole reason we have the gospel is because we’re not perfect people. But I didn’t know that, I didn’t know the meaning. So we had the gospel and I was like, well, why aren’t we acting accordingly? So I didn’t see God as like this holy figure who loved me. I saw him as kind of like a moral commander or a boss. And it can be really easy to resent your boss when you’re in the wrong, because you can just get bitter. So that’s what happened to me.

Katie Tootle: 6:19

But, yeah, in my second semester of ninth grade so I’ve been in high school for maybe six months COVID hit and COVID really stranded me. But my brother I have a brother, his name’s Gabe, he’s three years older had known the gospel and he had community around him that wanted to share it. And I did not want to hear it, but my brother wants to tell it to you all the time. And so COVID hit and I was grumpy and I started being mean and I was losing friends and I didn’t really care and I was tossing most of my life away. I dropped swimming, which was a sport I did. I quit playing piano. I was depressed, I wasn’t taking joy in all the things I had before. But the Lord can still grab you when you’re sad. I think he does it a lot. So, yeah, my brother said, come hang out with me and my friends.

Brystol Beatley: 7:12

Katie cynically dubbed this group of people the Sunrise Crew. See how they helped change her view of God.

Katie Tootle: 7:19

I called them the Sunrise Crew because they would all go and watch the sunrise and just talk about God for two hours before church every Sunday. It was the craziest thing I had ever seen, because I didn’t talk to people that loved God. I didn’t see what there was to love, I didn’t see how awesome he was. So, yeah, these kids, they’d get together, they’d watch the sunrise and they’d say what they had been reading in the Word and what conversations they had had with people and the conversations they were having with God and a worship song they like, and sometimes we’d sing and other times we’d pray and other times we’d just sit silent and like, study the Word individually, and it was just so beautiful to see.

Katie Tootle: 8:03

And I was not happy to see the beauty, I was mad and I told my brother off and there were days, so many days, where he would physically drag me. I can remember him grabbing my hand and yanking me into the car and saying you need to go because you’ve not left the house all week. So at least just come here, talk to people in this huge circle on a parking garage and hear about God. And the Lord stirred something in my heart and I did it. Um, so I kept doing it and eventually I noticed that these people weren’t ignorant and they had something that I was missing and they could view God with something that I hadn’t seen before.

Katie Tootle: 8:43

It makes me think of Psalm 34. It says I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant and their faces shall never be ashamed. That Psalm really struck me at the beginning of knowing Christ, because these kids who I had talked to were changing my perspective of Jesus Because they wore their love for God on their faces.

Katie Tootle: 9:09

These people, I could tell them my deepest pains, I could sit there and call them awful names and say awful things, which I did, and they were still kind and they were still gracious and they still shared the same gospel. Their gospel never changed, their identity never changed, their honesty never changed. They were with so much love and so much joy. They wore it like a glow on their faces and I wanted that so bad. So, yeah, my brother dragged me to hang out with the Sunrise crew and then I asked them. I said why are you so happy all the time? Because I’m not happy and my world was in shambles. And I began this exploration of asking them all individually, and all of them individually. Their first answer was Christ.

Brystol Beatley: 9:56

We’re about to approach Katie’s coming to Jesus. Instead of it taking place in a single moment, like many testimonies, we’re about to experience her transformation as a gradual process. Listen in.

Katie Tootle: 10:13

They said that they had loved him and that he had loved them first. And they just, yeah, they just made him sound so attractive and so lovely and so filling. So I started to spend time in the Word and I started to hang out with them and not just call them names. I started to get to know them and the more that I got to know them, the more I got to know Jesus. And the more I got to know Jesus, the more I was fascinated with Him and I just needed to know more and more.

Katie Tootle: 10:40

It was like eating after starving for years. You know, you just can’t get enough and every bite is just as good. So, yeah, I was drowning in the word, I was drowning in community and it was like he just bathed me in blessings that I didn’t ask for and I think that’s such true, deep love and compassion from a father that knows us. I had a father that knew me and he met my needs.

When I denied him, he continued to. So, yeah, I got to know him and there wasn’t really a big point where I was like I’m all out, christian, I’m for it. Um, it was more of like making a friend, where one day he was someone I didn’t really know and now I can sit here and say he’s my best friend and we talk every morning and every night and between each meal, and there’s not a moment where I’m not thinking about him or loving him. And when I’m not loving him, he forgives me and teaches me to do it again, because he’s a good leader and a good friend.

Katie Tootle: 11:39

But I think something that sums that well just a passage that’s been really a point to me in this past walk of life is John 15, 12. It reads this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my father, I have made known to you you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, that your fruit should abide, so that, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command to you so that you will love one another. I love that piece of text. So that really stood out to me at the start of my faith for many reasons. But I think the big thing is that God called me a friend and I just continued to really soak up the word.

Katie Tootle: 12:38

After this I worked my way through all the Gospels. So some people turn around and it’s like whapow, I’m a new person, or total turn of a car. But other people, god kind of moves your soul like a door slowly opening, and I think with me he really moved it like a door slowly opening. So it’s hard to look at any point in my faith and say, ah, that was my big moment where it all became real and it all set in. I distinctly remember one day where it was like 4 am, I think the morning of Easter, and I knew I had to go in the Word and I got up and I just started reading through the book of Matthew and I didn’t end until I was done. So I was really focused on the four Gospels at the start of my faith. I just kept rereading those over and over and, yeah, I got a lot more serious about my faith.

Brystol Beatley: 13:28

Here, Katie talks about her new life in Christ with their small group and their trip to Israel.

Katie Tootle: 13:34

And so at the end of my life group so I went for the final trip, which was a trip to Israel, and that was just transformational for my faith. But going and seeing that I could step the same ground that Christ himself did was shocking and vastly amazing. I was baptized in the Jordan, so that was really cool and I think there a lot of my faith really came to life. I could see my faith in this truth that had been stored in a book for me. So after Israel I came back and I went to Moody where I was pushed to read the Old Testament, which I hadn’t done before. I didn’t see it as relevant to my faith. Now that I have taken classes on it and read through it, it is very, very relevant. It is the root of our faith. But yes, I think it was definitely starting in the Gospels and just eating them as fast as I could.

Brystol Beatley: 14:30

Next, Katie shares her new and improved view of God after studying His Word.

Katie Tootle: 14:36

I had only seen him as this moral figure and I’d only seen him as this creator that I was so angry at because his creation was destroyed. And now I can look and say, well, the creation was destroyed when we denied him. You know, creation was destroyed when we sinned and sin is turning away from a holy God. So it’s just so fun to look back and see that this whole time God has looked at me as a child and said I, I called you, I called you mine and I call you friend, you know. So not only am I child but I’m friend, and that just, oh, it’s like looking into light, knowing the gospel and going all into the faith brought me many places Before I had really fallen into the gospel and the church.

Katie Tootle: 15:18

I had planned to go study at some high Ivy League college and make a lot of money and rub it in people’s faces because I thought, hey, that could be the point of life, just getting rich and having fun. And then you know, you meet Christ and you’re like there’s a lot more to do in this world. And I went to Moody and I made even more amazing friends, with more people that were flawed and they loved Jesus and I loved them for it and it was just like true rich community. You can’t get enough of it. These friends that I’ve made have showed me so much of what it is to know God’s word and to live it out. So studying God’s word has changed the way that I know him and that’s changed my behavior as a person.

Katie Tootle: 16:01

I used to be so angry and I used to think things were pointless and I’d want to give up fast. And that’s not true of me now. I used to be mean to people just to laugh, and that’s not true of me now. And I don’t say these things to say that knowing the gospel has made me a perfect person, because it’s not. And I will continue to be sanctified until I’m gone. But I am happy that I get to say I am being sanctified, not that I’m becoming a better person, but I’m becoming more like Christ. Life is beautiful, there’s pain and it’s not all resolute, yet I can still look to heaven and say things will be so good there there won’t be a single tear. So that’s why I find it relevant to the testimony just because there’s so much hope to know that this world is so broken, but God is so powerful, he can fix it.

Brystol Beatley: 16:49

For the last question, I simply asked Katie if she was happy now.

Katie Tootle: 17:02

I am happy to know the God that I do, I’m happy to know His church, I’m happy to know that I get to be a representative of this faith and of this love that we fostered together. I’m eager to see what the rest of my life will look like, because I’m young, I’m 20. I hopefully have so many years ahead and I want to see what God does with all of them and I’m glad I can. I’m glad that I know the end, that I know there will be a day where tears shall be no more and there will be a day where every tribe and tongue and nation is going to come and worship this God we all love, because how good he is. It’s hard not to just walk with gladness and joy, even in the worst of times, knowing that the God that created all of this I can look at and say you’re my friend and you’re my friend because you love me. And I said yes, so I am glad.

Brystol Beatley: 17:54

Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed today’s show. To learn more about the One Way Intern program and the amazing experiences you could be a part of, check out our show notes.

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