Tuesday Testimonies – Ashley Copeland
As we travel on our spiritual journey, it’s always encouraging to hear from others how God has worked in their lives. Periodically we’ll share testimonies from our NAOBC Women on how God worked in their life. Today’s testimony is from Ashley Copeland.
Ashley and her family began attending NAOBC the end of 2020. She and her husband, Jonathan, are in the IC6 BFG. You can read more about Ashley here.
I was raised in a tiny little Southern Baptist church in East Tennessee by a single mom who did her best for my younger sister and me. Our church was very rooted in old school tradition, and when I was five years old, I did what I thought I was supposed to do—I walked up to the church altar one day with the mission of “getting saved.” I remember just standing there looking up toward Heaven and not knowing what I was supposed to do, before my pastor came and told me to squat down and repeat a prayer after him. Two years later I was baptized, again, like I thought I was supposed to do.
It wasn’t until I was 12 years old that I really, truly felt the nudge of the Holy Spirit. I remember laying in bed one Sunday night wrestling with doubts and struggling to fall asleep. I knew that I hadn’t understood salvation back when I was just a little kid and that if I died that night I wouldn’t be spending eternity with Jesus. I prayed right there in my bedroom for the Lord to forgive my sins and come into my life in a real and authentic way, and with tears streaming down my face I remember walking to the living room to share my news with my Mom. I stayed at that little church until I moved away for college and although it wasn’t a perfect church—none of those exist—I am thankful for the lessons it taught me and how it shaped my upbringing.
In college and adulthood, my husband and I attended a handful of churches where we were discipled by fellow believers and grew in the Lord. We made the move from Tennessee to Louisville in 2019 so that my husband could attend Southern Seminary and we attended NAOBC for the first time at the end of 2020. Thanks to the warm welcome of Tommy Sims, among others in the church, we made NAOBC our new church home during our seminary years.
Throughout my life I’ve experienced childhood trauma, anxiety, depression, deaths of family members and friends, infertility, marriage trials, family relocation, job loss, and cancer. I’ve also experienced love from family and friends, a lifetime of amazing memories and experiences, the wild but wonderful journey of motherhood, and the restoration of relationships, health, and joy. Through it all, the Lord has been faithful every step of the way. It is on the other side of the various trials and experiences that I can look back and see God’s sovereignty and goodness guiding my whole life—the good, the bad, the messy, the glorious, and everything in between. One of my favorite verses in Scripture (other than the entire book of Romans!) is Lamentations 3:21-24, “Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness! I say, “The Lord is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in Him.”” I hope that in reading this today, it’s a reminder of God’s love and faithfulness to all his children. No matter what you may be going through, He is already on the other side of the story. Nothing is ever a surprise to our great God, and He is victorious in the end! Be encouraged today!
