All right now, if we're honest, reading the Bible consistently can be a challenge, but it's never too late to start and we're in this together.

This is the Join the Journey podcast.

Thanks for joining. I'm Lauren Atkinson on the Join the Journey staff team and today I am in the studio with another Watermark staff member. It's Hannah Spence.

Hey guys, happy to be here.

Hannah, so fun having you on. And today, we're studying Second Chronicles and we'll get there in a second.

But before we jump in, Hannah, I'd love for you to just share a little bit more about your story, how you came to know the Lord.

And I also know you've worked in student ministry the last four years at Watermark. So we'd love to hear what God's been doing in students over the last

four years. Absolutely. excited to share about both. So I grew up in a Christian home and knew about

God from a young age, but my idea of God was a bit distorted and influenced mainly by how I watched people who

claimed to be believers lived their life, and oftentimes didn't watch them follow God well.

And so in my mind, I was like, God must not be that good because I'm viewing him in light

of broken humans. And so it wasn't until I was about 10 years old that I did understand the true gospel of I am a sinner in need of a Savior and what Jesus has done for me.

And at that time, I placed my faith in him, but I was not actively following Jesus in the sense of a relationship and letting His Word transform my life.

I leaned more towards just the approval of man and people pleasing and trying to

be anything and everything that others wanted to be. And that marked my life through all of high

school, which just resulted in a lot of anxiety by me trying to control my life when I actually

had zero control over it and just build my kingdom. And really, even as Romans talks about, if I exchanged the truth

about God for a lie and worshipped the creation over the creator. And by the creation, I mean,

I was truly worshipping self. Like, I was living for the glory of Hannah. And that just didn't

satisfy. And that clicked in college. When I got around a group of girls who were actively running after Jesus and understand what a relationship with him looked like.

And I was like, I want what they have because they seem happy and satisfied.

Circumstantially, their life isn't much different from mine, but they have a hope that I don't really have.

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