How to Share Your Faith Using Kelly Clark
With David Crowder's Oh Praise Him blaring, US Olympic snowboarder Kelly Clark fought hard for her dream of a second Olympic gold medal to match the one she landed in the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. But the dream slipped away when she caught an edge and fell short in her effort to land a 900. Was she devastated when she missed out on a spot on the 2006 Olympic podium? NO!! In Clark's words, "I love Jesus, [being a Christian] is more joyful than all this snowboarding stuff."
"I found out there is a lot more joy and hope and eternal things in the world than snowboarding," Clark said in a recent news conference. "Having a relationship with God has been more joyful and more fulfilling than anything snowboarding ever was."
Have you ever wondered what happens to the Olympic athletes after the games are over and the glare of the media disappears? Does winning gold buy you happiness, fulfillment and meaning? American skier Ted Ligety summed it up the day before the Torino closing ceremonies, "To tell you the truth, it kind of all seemed anticlimactic to me. I dreamed my whole life about winning a gold medal at the Olympics. When it happens, you kind of expect more out of it."
Ligety is already on to something that it took snowboarder Kelly Clark many months to discover after she won her gold medal in 2002-fame and success are fleeting and don't satisfy that deepest of needs inside you that only God can fill. Looking back on her experience, Clark observed in a recent interview on CBN,
"I achieved the highest in my sport. I was famous. I had money. I had an Olympic gold medal. Everything that anyone could have wanted, and I found out that wasn't what I was looking for."
In response to the emptiness inside her, she got into some "pretty bad things." "I strived to drink the most. I strived to be the rowdiest...all this silly stuff. That didn't seem like a very good idea, but at the time that was what I thought was gonna make me cool. I wanted people to like me."
"I had spiraled into this depression and into this place that was just real dark. I was at this contest, and I was staying by myself. I spent the morning writing about how I didn't want to live anymore and how it wouldn't even matter. Snowboarding's still going great from the outside perspective. My life's great. I've got it made. I'm living the dream, but on the inside I'm dying. I'm standing at the bottom of the pipe."
Clark goes on to describe the events that transformed her life that day. "This girl comes down, and she's crying 'cause she fell on both of her runs and she didn't qualify. This other girl goes up to her, [and] I'm standing there. They didn't know anybody was listening. She was like, 'Hey, it's all right. God still loves you.' I was blown away. If there's a God who loves me, like, I need to know Him."
"She was staying in my hotel, and I found out what room number she was in. So that night I went to her room and knocked on her door. So she told me about having a relationship with Jesus, and she started telling me that was what it was about. My Creator wanted a real relationship with me, and He loved me very much."
"I gave my life to the Lord that day. It was pretty cool. The Lord really apprehended me at that point."
Even when your friends appear happy and successful on the outside, you never know what kind of pain and hurt they're struggling with on the inside. It only took an overheard casual comment about God's love to pierce Kelly Clark's darkness and reach into her heart. When Jesus is the most important thing in your world, he's love and truth will overflow in your life and your words! You never know who might be listening. Someone's life might be changed forever by the overpowering truth of God's love!
