Portraits of Grace – Lisa Hammill (part 1)

I was saved when I was a young girl in first grade. I attended a Christian school and remember our teacher talking to us about salvation. The Holy Spirit began to draw me to Him, and one day in the school office I knelt and asked the Lord to save me, and I believe He did!

Unfortunately, as a teenager I strayed away from the innocence I had known as a child and began to live a life contrary to what a child of God should. The Lord had my number though. Even though I was in the world, I never truly felt I belonged there.

After college I came home and was offered a chance to go on a mission trip to Jamaica, which I accepted. I had heard the stories and the testimonies of how the Lord changed lives on this trip. I knew that life as I knew it was over and begged the Lord to give me a chance to live like a true Christian should. He did.

On this trip, the Lord showed me that being saved is just the beginning. I had no idea how alive the Lord could be in your daily life. I began to look to Him in every decision and allowed Him to use me like never before. He birthed in me a love for missions and a great desire to be in the ministry. A year later, I met Nathan and soon after we were married.

We began our life in the ministry just three short months after we were married, becoming houseparents at our church’s boarding school. We were barely in our twenties and had no clue how to care for the troubled teens we now lived with. This forced us to depend wholly and completely on the Lord for guidance which set a strong foundation for our marriage.

The Lord has taken us down some crazy paths but we have always trusted His hand to lead us where He wants. If we follow our own hearts and do what WE feel is right, we will end up making a mess of things. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us how our heart cannot be trusted, even though we may choose things that we feel is right.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9

In 2009, the Lord led my husband to accept the pastorate at Open Door Baptist where we are now and hope to stay for many years. We are so thankful for providing for our needs, time and time again, and also granting us personal desires as well. He has blessed us with three wonderful, healthy children, and the privilege to care for my special needs brother since my parents’ passing.

My prayer is that I would be found faithful to the grave or until His return whichever should come first.