Go a little deeper
After a host welcomes her, Stephanie Fast prays that the Holy Spirit would awaken what has grown dormant, that listeners would align with the Holy Spirit rather than their own reasoning, and that everything in their lives would be used for God's glory. She emphasizes that believers have been recreated, identity is not built from origin, family, achievement, or titles, and a testimony begins with God's knowledge of a person from the womb. She insists there is nothing in her life she would be better without, because the cross took what was meant for evil and turned it for good.
Stephanie shares her personal story and connects it with her message about entrusting one's story to God, including her time in an orphanage where she first heard the gospel and identified with the story of David and Goliath. She frames her experiences as evidence that God rewrites a life.
She applies this to listeners who feel trapped in shame, accusation, or the past, urging them to hear God's claim over their lives and to be reborn today. She closes by calling the room to forgive those who have caused harm, to release expectations of wounding people, and prays for God's blessing and fruit in barren places.
The conversation,
in their words.
Transcript from the recording’s captions. Select any timestamp to hear the original audio.
so today would you welcome with me our friends Stephanie fast come on everybody let's go you can do better than that let's welcome her to Journey Church praise God praise God Stephanie we're honored to have you here today we're grateful we're thankful for your ministry Stephanie she's spoken all over the world uh can I tell your story okay here's here's her story all right she was born in South Korea y all right but she was adopted by Amer Americans but she married a Canadian and had kids in Japan did I get it right so I'll tell you we have a God for the Nations thank you for being here thank you thank you what an honor for my husband and I to be here with you my husband is the one that has a shiny head
over here on the side is s has the same you know head decoration as Pastor Keith does I truly believe only anointed men are bald yeah so uh and he has been my husband for 51 years he he probably could get up here and tell you his testimony that for the first 10 years of our married life he used to have a conversation with god and say God I don't know what to do with this woman I know I'm married to her but there must be something in this word that says I can get out of it but the lord gave him the spirit of
perseverance and I am so thankful can we just take a moment I know there's been so much prayer that has been done before this morning and this morning but I truly believe that each one of us that's here even including myself today the spirit of the Lord wants to awaken something in us that has been dead he wants to awaken something in us that has been so slumbering that you don't even realize that you're still bound to the father of
lies that you've been slumbering so long that even when you hear the truth of the word of God that you don't allow allow the spirit that is the gift that he has given to you to come alive and instead of the Holy Spirit you've allowed your human Spirit to reason to think to come up with resolutions and solutions and as long as we he listen to our human spirit that is not aligned with the holy spirit that spirit will always lie and we do not want that lie to become the
truth so father God through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that gave everything for every one of us in this room so that we could have the freedom of knowing what it is to be saved and to belong to your family but we take this time to say human spirit I step out of the way and I align with the holy spirit so that I'm in cooperation with the Holy Spirit 247 that we don't just call on your Holy Spirit when we're in desperation that we don't just call on
you Holy Spirit when we're broken that we don't only call on your Holy Spirit when we feel lost but every breath that we take we know it is because of you and everything that happens in our lives God can use for his glory in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ we thank you we thank you we thank you I believe for every one of us there are three things that we need to remind ourselves continuously one is we have been recreated our destiny is not because of where you come from who your parents are
what you've accomplished who you're married to how your children behave the titles that are so important to you that is not you your re created in him and when you're recreated in him he takes your story and he rewrites your story a testimony should not be for the first 35 years of my life I lived in sin I met Jesus and I'm trying to figure my way out for the rest of the time your testimony needs to be this from the beginning of time from the time I was created in my mother's room womb he
breathed his life into me and he knew that I was going to be born into sin but he was there all the time for my story is this there's nothing in my life that I would be better without nothing now I know if you're like me because I have a story and I'm going to share it with you you're going to say well there's a few things in my life that I would be better without no as long as you believe that as long as you believe there's too many things in my life that Satan has stolen from me and I can never get it back that is the greatest lie that you're living with the truth is this from the moment that Jesus said you belong to him he knew the
choices that you were going to make and because of Jesus he was there with you I there's no event in my life I would be better with without because the cross of Jesus Christ the cross of Jesus Christ the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus took everything that the world meant for evil and he turned it around and he used it for good the key is will you give him your story you could tell by looking at me that I was Asian could you s tell what I don't understand why are you laughing the first confusion I had in my
life is I thought I look just like you for the first nine years of my life I didn't have a mirror that I could look into the mirror to my soul was what was spoken to me and what was spoken to me is you are a mistake you were not meant to to be you don't belong see because although I was born in South Korea I was never a citizen of South Korea I don't know where I was born I don't know who I was born to I don't know what day I was born all I know is this that for nine years I was told I was a mistake there was a name that they called children like me Tuki which means
child of dust and nothingness so if for the first nine years of my life what the message that I received was you are a child of dust and nothingness I was born in South Korea during the Korean War don't try to figure out how how old I am by that okay to a Korean mother but to a western father I found out four years ago that my father through through DNA was a British Diplomat that came to Korea during the Korean War I think I belong to the royal family I know I belong to the royal family but I think I have a little bit
there yeah so anyways I know nothing about my father except when I did my DNA but I lived with my biological mother for the first few years of my life remember I don't know how old I am see I have an advantage over you I can lie about my age and I'm not lying but you know gray hair wrinkles and other things say I'm not 29 [Music] anymore but I realized doing research that she had two choices plac one she could sacrifice and keep me and have a life of misery for the rest of her
life or she could give me up and maybe she could have a life her family pressured her every day to make that choice so my memory actually begins with my mother coming to the little room that she and I shared and saying to me we're going to going to go on a train ride well when you told a little Korean girl that she was going to go on a train ride it would be like you coming to your children and saying guess what I'm going to take you to Disney World only rich people got to ride on a train and I'll never forget that day here I am even today if I close my eyes I can see the little me holding on to my
mom mommy's hand and skipping down the road because I was going to go on a train ride she put me on the train she got down to my level she put a little parcel on my lap and she said I can't go with you you're not going to go with me mama why I can't go with you but don't worry she said when you get to your destination my brother your uncle he's going to meet you and he's going to take care of you but when you're a little girl you trust the adults in your life right and as a train was pulling out of the station now again back in Korea in
those days we only had steam engines and steam was just covering the platform and I leaned out of the window and I can still hear the little me saying mama mama you come for me right and the last time I heard my mama's voice was don't worry I'll come for you but that's the last time I saw my mom I don't know what she had plann land I have no idea if she knew that when she put me on that train that she would never see me again or what she told me that someone would be taking care of me would be the actual truth but when I got
to my destination there was no uncle and this is just after the war the nonprofits had not even come into Korea yet to set up the orphanages there were thousands of children that had been that had been abandoned during the war because they had lost their parents or they had been separated by their parents but I was a toy even the other Street children did not want me I thought I look like those carvings outside of the Buddhist temples that had bulgy eyes and big noses and tongues that hang out because that was the only way I could identify what I look like and the response that I got from the people is there's something definitely wrong with
me so here I was at the station trying to figure out how to go back home the first night I slept under an oxen cart and I opened up the little parcel that my mama had put together for me and it was a little rice ball pickled and a hardboiled egg and I ate that and I took the cloth that my mom had wrapped this lunch in and I put it over my head just so that I could smell her and I remember crying my heart out in the world of mental science it says when you have a trauma like that you have what you call fractures in your life where you get stuck in that place now that's what the world says
right but what the Lord says is there's no event in your life that you would be better without that if you give that memory to the Lord if you give that pain to the Lord if you give that re fracture to the Lord he is a god of miracle and it does not take 30 40 50 years to get healed you get healed when you give it to him and say God I don't want to hold on to this fracture anymore it's yours you take it and you make something out of it and what he did is when he wrote my story rewrote my stories he took me back to that memory and he said little girl I was so proud of you you had so
much resilience you didn't give up and roll over and die you got up the next morning you went to the railroad track you looked at it and said hm how am I going to get home I gave you that Spirit Stephanie that Spirit of resilience kept you going and I did keep me going day after day after week after week month after month and because I was a t Tui the people that saw me did not see me as a human being I was lower than a pig pig was about as low as you could get in South Korea and I was lower than
that so they could do what they wanted to me because I was not a human being and in my book I tell one story after another where I should have died and yet the God that was writing my story allowed me to live I cannot tell all the stories but let me just tell two or three stories with you one was I don't know how long I had been wandering in the streets in the mountains in The Villages and I did whatever I could to survive so I stole food stole it from the farmer stole it from The Market Place stole it from the fields whatever I could and one day I was caught for stealing their food now you need to understand that in South Korea it's
still a third world country it is not like what South Korea is today and these Farmers whatever they harvested that was their food until the next Harvest there there was no grocery stores there was nothing so when a little Tui came and stole their food it would be like someone going into your bank account and stealing the money that you work so hard for and they wanted to get rid of me so the far Farmers caught me and one farmer said let's just get rid of her she's a nuisance and the other farmer said yeah let's take her up the wheel let let's take her up the hill and tie
on the water wheel in South Korea they had this amazing I don't think they have it anymore but they had this water wheel that the farmers would drag up to the top of the hill and they would release it and they had built the canal and as the water wheel came down it would fertiliz or irrigate the rice fields so they took me up there I don't know how old I was by now but I had lived couple of seasons in South Korea and I can still see the little girl as she's screaming and kicking and cursing and doing whatever she can to escape from these arms but they tied me face up on the Water Wheel up over my head and down at
my feet and they let go of that water Feld once twice three times to the point that the skin was starting to rub off my face my eyes became very swollen the sand was going into my mouth and I knew I was going to die and I should have died but for God but for God I'm a man came out of nowhere the farmers had left and he stopped the water wheel now I couldn't see him because my eyes were really swollen but I heard
him and by hearing his voice I knew he was not a farmer because again in South Korea you speak according to your levels of education and this man had a gentleman's voice he was educated what was he doing out in the country and he said this little girl don't fight me he took me off the water wheel he placed me on the ground and he took a really soft cloth and he began to rub the debris off my face and he said these words little girl these people have no idea who you
are but listen to me little girl you must live let that penetrate into your spirit if you've had tragedy in your life if you've had loss in your life if you've had death in your life if you've had abuse in your life if you've had rejection in your life and you feel like the father of Lies has tied you to a water wheel and said I declare death over you and your spirit has wanted to give up and just go and die but God
himself Jesus himself the Holy Spirit himself will come to you at that moment and say the world doesn't know who you are you are a special people people that have been called by God named by God chosen by God given his name given his family you are a special people people don't know you you are a peculiar person we try so hard to fit into this world do do we not it takes a lot of energy don't be that peculiar person that God has called you to Now put on the ordant
take a bath every now and again and if you need to put makeup on go ahead put makeup on but still know you are a peculiar person that has been called by God and he will take you off that water wheel you may not be able to see but you can hear his voice and you know his voice is full of love and gentleness and he'll say live my son live live my daughter live because you are not what the world says you are you are what the spirit of God says you
are there is some in this room you need to hear that now you would have thought that this man whoever he was I believe he was an angel but I cannot verify it you would think he would have taken me and rescued me at that point but that was not the story that he wanted to write in my life because he wanted me one day to stand up and say there is nothing in my life I would be better without so I walked more the Journey of abuse and neglect and rejection and hunger and cold to the point that one day I just
gave up my body just gave up and I guess I was going to die whoever found me in that condition took me to the edge of town where they were filling with garbage it was it was a landfill and they took me and threw me on that pile of garbage child of dust and nothingness had no identity no purpose just a piece of trash and if Satan had his way I would have died on that pile but remember God's the one that rewrites your
story a Swedish nurse with blonde hair blue eyes really tall had come to South Korea with World Vision World Vision was one of the first nonprofit organizations that came into South Korea to rescue children and she was a nurse she had been in an orphanage in a clinic and it was all time for her to go back to her clinic and she never ever travel through garbage Lane but that day for some reason her feet took her to garbage Lane she heard me she came over to where I was and this is a story that she told
me several years later she said I bent down and I realized that you were more dead than alive and the logic in me said I can't help her there's no room for her in my my clinic and you have to do that sometimes when you're a missionary overseas you can't help everyone that needs your help you have to go to the appointed ones so she got up and she was actually going to walk away and she said two things happened that changed her mind she's a very quiet Lutheran woman she said as she got up from examining me and was going to walk away to leave me there to die she said she heard an audible
voice it didn't speak to her in Swedish it spoke I mean it didn't speak to her in Korean it spoke to her in her native tongue which was Swedish and this voice said three things she is mine she he is mine in the garbage moment of my life when the world cried out and said she is nothing but garbage God came down and spoke his truth you are mine you may walk through the deepest river that you feel like you're going to drown in but you are mine I have a plan for that River in
your life even if you think the fire is there going to burn you to death it's okay because I have a plan through that fire you are mine as long as we hear the word I am his and we can be in the fires of life if we hear I am his we can be in the rivers of our life when we hear that I am his when your husband walks out on you God still says you are his you are not rejected when you find yourself your bank account is empty and you're wondering how in the world you're going to put food on the table for your children you need to hear him say you are mine and if you are mine he is not going to leave you
desolate that is a word of God we cannot take the word of God and say okay this is my situation and I know word of God says this but I don't know it takes faith it takes perseverance it takes resilience it takes work to say I am his and I am not going to be in the garbage anymore I believe there are some of you here this morning the garbage in your life is so deep you have such a hidden hidden shame and you're saying to yourself I can't get out of this garbage it's been a part of my life all
these years and I can't get out of it I'm here to say to you I'm here to say to you the spirit of God wants to speak deeply deeply deeply into your spirit right now and say don't believe the lie anymore don't let shame rule you anymore don't let that sin rule you anymore don't let that accusation rule you anymore I am your father I am your lover I am your friend I am your Redeemer I am your Transformer and if you're in that garbage hear the voice of God that says you are
mine you are mine she rescued me nursed Me Back To Life placed me in an orphanage and I was in that orphanage for about two to three years but remember even in the orphanage guess what I was a Tuki so my job I did not I was not allowed to go to school my job is I woke up early early in the morning gathered all the dirty diapers from the day before put it in a rickshaw on my back March down to the river that was about two miles down the road chisel the
ice out of the river took a little bar of soap and a flat stick and I beat those diapers till there was nothing left I put those wet diapers back on my back I brought it back to the orphanage I had to hang them up and that was my job day in and day out and for that I got to have a little bowl of cornmeal a little thing of greens and water it wasn't that World Vision didn't want to give you more they just didn't have enough there were just too many children and not enough funds but in that orphanage I heard about Jesus
[Applause] and I would go to church every Sunday and as orphans we had to sit in the back of the church and I would hear the pastor you know I'm short and how most Koreans are but the pastor was like this all you could see was the top of his head and he would shake his head and I would hear Sunday after Sunday for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall have life and have everlasting life and I'm sitting back there going for God so love the
world but I'm not a part of this world remember I'm a mistake I'm AI but it sounds good I like the story and I would hear songs like what a friend we have in Jesus all our sins and griefs to bear and I go I would like that I want Jesus to be my friend but he can't be my friend see because I'm a mistake the father of lies and accusations kept bringing me down to what he wanted and not what God wanted
but my favorite story was the story of David and Goliath i s identified with little David he was the outcast he was the Unseen he was the one that no one thought he had worth but God used that little boy to kill Goliath and so my dream that night was I identify I with David and I've got these gas in my life men that abuse me in every kind of way children that taunted me and bullied me a women that did not stand in defense for me story after story where I was just spit upon those were the gles in my life and
I want to Revenge one day the orphanage director said there is an American couple coming to the orphanage and they want to adopt a little baby boy please get all the babies ready so we went in the baby's Ward I pinched their cheeks you know I try to make them as healthy looking as possible if you've ever gone to a third world orphanage it's a pitiful pitiful sight but we waited for this couple to come and normally we use the little gate but we had to open up the big gate that day because I'm not exaggerating in came Mr Goliath
himself he was so tall But Not only was he tall he was really [Music] round now in South Korea at that time only people that had a little bit of roundness in them would be the rich people and there weren't that many of them there so I'm looking at him thinking wow he's like a [Music] millionaire and I'm watching this man and in behind him comes Mrs Goliath no one had told me that Goliath had a wife and I'm watching Mr and Mrs Goliath I see Mr Goliath go up to a little m's basket and pick up a little baby and he tucked it under his his neck
and here was this giant of a man crying over a baby that nobody wanted and I'm thinking what's going on I get a little closer I see him picking up another baby talking to his wife in this gibberish called English and they're both crying and laughing and being really silly and we're sort of thinking what is wrong with these people but I'm drawn by this see because I had been so abused used by men and he could have taken that baby and just squeeze the life out of it the third baby fourth baby eventually he saw me from the corner of his eyes by now I'm 9 years
old I weigh just a little over 30 lbs I have light so bad in my hair that it's more white than dark I have worms in my stomach that when they got really hungry they would crawl out of my throat I had a lazy eye that wandered all over my eye socket and I had scars from my this clear down to my chin I had boils on me I had scabs on me and if you could look beyond that there was nothing but a shell of a little girl my orphanage paper says we know she can talk because she goes into the baby's wings and sings to
them but I never talk to an adult he put that baby down and his huge enormous body came down down down down down now I'm a grandma and I can't can't get back up but he came down to my level where he could look into my lazy eye that was wandering all over my eye socket and he stretched out his huge enormous hand and he laid it on my face just like this I can still feel
it no one had ever held me like that and I knew that this was right this is how it should feel and I wanted to say don't take the hand away but I did what was natural and that is I yanked a hand off my face and I spit on him Jesus the M Almighty one his presence covers this earth and the galaxies but
Jesus stands in front of you scarred battered forsaken disappointed and he comes down to your level he doesn't ask you to come to his level he comes down to your level where you're at he doesn't care whether it's filled with filth or rejection or anger he comes down to you and he takes his Healing Hand his anointed
hand and he places it on your face and begins to love you in a way that you've never been loved before but you don't know how to respond to that you can't believe that there are some of you in this room this morning that you don't believe that can love you the way we're talking about this morning but he does he loves you he cares for you he's written your destiny he's Rewritten your story and he's saying to you this morning you can be reborn your old flesh can be wiped away
and you can be reborn and recreated because he wants to write your story and even if you've spit on him and I bet some of you have raise your hand if you're honest he came back for you this man and his wife had no biological children they were desperate to adopt the healthiest most intelligent child that South Korea had but when I finished spitting on him his wife heard she's the one for
you you take her home and you raise her as your daughter because I'm going to use her story for my glory [Applause] God wants to use your story for his glory Pastor Keith is talking about he believes for Central Oregon he believes that Central or Oregon's going to turn around for Christ but it has to start with you it has to start with you not being zealous but being truthful being truthful with who you are and where you're at and you might have said
well I accepted Jesus when I was five I don't know why you're talking to me about being reborn you need to be born again today you need to lay down any perception that you've had of yourself that God was not faithful to you in your past where God was not there for you in the past where God did not hear you in the past where God did not protect you in the past because yes the enemy can come and he can rob your flesh and he can try to take your mind but he cannot take your spirit from you and it is your spirit that at the end that will rise up and go up and be joined with him so if your body is broken God wants to heal you but that is not the ultimate goal
the ultimate goal is for your spirit to be healed if your mind is confused and you need to go to counseling that's okay if you need help that's okay but ultimately your help has to come from the word of God and the word of God will set you free and what he has set free there's never going back to captivity the enemy over the years has tried to take my story over and over to rob steal and destroy but when I made a commitment at the age of 17 I said I'm never going back I'm never going to let Satan take me back to my past and rob me of the inheritance that I have from this day forth so he took my broken story he
breathed his life into it and he made it into the platform to this day my husband and I have been able to rescue over 50,000 orphans [Applause] [Music] we have established homes for children in 14 different countries but he has taken my story from the White House to the prisons to The Runaways to the one to say my story is not different than any of your story and if you're willing to tell all of your story we wait till we think we
have a good story he wants all of your story and say there's nothing in my life that I would be better without because the cross of Jesus Christ says he came to take back to restore to transform and make new and what you thought was a tragic part of your story can become the most Victorious part of your story can we just close her eyes I want every eye Clos who in this room to this morning is
saying Stephanie I've listened to two to many lies if you've listened to too many lies raise your hand right where you are Stephanie this morning I realize I need to be reborn today raise your hands keep your hands up the ones that had it up before the ones that says I want to be reborn this morning I want to rededicate my life to Jesus I want to be born for the first time in him is there anyone in this room this morning that says I'm tired of the garbage in my life and I'm not going to allow the
enemy to speak into that part anymore I'm going to kill the giant in my life just raise your hand Right Where You Are and there's some in this room where you're saying I've tried so hard to heal from the past but it just keeps coming back over and over and over and haunting me but this day I'm declaring no more enemy God has Rewritten my story God has caused me to be born again God has recreated my story keep it up so right there father God we just come to you in
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and we just say today is the beginning of the rest of our lives today is the beginning where we say no to the lies where we say no to the accusations where we say no to the condemnation the shame and we declare that because you so freely have forgiven us we in turn can forgive those people that meant to hurt us that meant to destroy us that meant to bring us down because of what you've done for us we in turn can do it and because you've let go of any expectations from us but ask us to
follow you closely we let go of the expectations that we've had of people that have wounded us we cut the cord to those people and we just say we release them in the name of Jesus and I release myself in the name of Jesus and Lord because you are the god that blesses in in the barren land we just say this day would you come and would you bless and would you allow water to flourish in the barren land and may we see your fruit not our fruit but your fruit fruit in our lives we thank you we praise you father God May the words of my
mouth fall on soil that can say I will never ever ever be the same again in your precious name amen amen
