Do For One

Well, good morning, awakening church.

Great to be with you.

You can go ahead and grab your seat.

And thank you for all of you who did brave the parking and you made it your year.

Way to go.

Some of you parked, I know, all the way across the street at the offices, circled around, and there are still people circling, searching for spots.

So actually, probably a pretty good time to bring up that we are in the process of negotiating and trying to get a long-term facility and building.

Yes! So that is exciting.

We love Del Mar.

Love it here.

We're always gonna support Del Mars.

And uh we are excited about what God has for us as we can have a strategic uh training center to raise up this generation of world changers, a lighthouse for our community, have a 24-7 footprint.

So would you be praying for that uh as we step into the season?

And parking is always a good reminder.

Oh, it yeah, there's some different challenges we see here.

Okay.

Hey, we um are as a church, we every year we have a theme uh and we go, this is what we want to be about, a word of the year 2026.

Our word of the year is pursue.

Would you just say that with me?

Pursue.

Yes, great.

And we asked simply this question: what does it look like to passionately pursue the heart of God?

Like, what would it look like for you for an entire year to passionately pursue the heart of God personally?

Maybe uh uh passionately pursue the heart of God in your dating or in your marriage or in your friending or in your work, uh, your school.

And then as a church, we're wrestling with this like, what does it look like for a church to passionately pursue the heart of God?

Like, I wonder what God might want to do through a community that says, we want to run after your heart together for an entire year.

Uh and we launched the year with a series called Awakening Vision, that inviting God to awaken a fresh vision in our life, and kicked off this uh next series called Messy Spirituality.

Like we were gonna pursue the heart of God, but it's kind of messy, isn't it?

And how does God work in the messiness of our lives?

And we're doing a couple things this year uh that are a little different.

One, we're having invite Sundays, and so you know, not just like um Easter and Christmas Eve, which are fantastic, but key Sundays where, you know, like I have these friends, coworkers, neighbors, uh, classmates, and uh like when is a good Sunday to bring them?

I would love to invite them, but I want to make sure that it's it's an awesome Sunday, and Ryan, you're not like preaching on finances or something like that, right?

Uh we did our very first really invite Sunday.

It was kicking off messy spirituality.

It was fantastic, by the way.

We had uh 30 plus people respond to the gospel in our services.

Yes, and just story after story of people who I heard like invited their friend or coworker, classmate, or even family members.

It was fantastic.

And so, invite Sunday, we're kicking off a brand new series next Sunday, March 1st, called Knowing God.

One of the most incredible realities of the on the planet is that we can know God personally.

That God is not just knowable, but he wants to know you and be known.

So, how do you actually really get to know God personally?

That's what we're gonna be talking about.

Uh, and how do you grow in this relationship with God?

So join us next week, and you have these cards.

Oh, this different card.

That's actually your card.

Um uh invite cards.

Who's your one?

Take that card with you.

Write down a person that you're gonna be praying for this week.

Who is your one that you're inviting here, or maybe it's not uh not even to hear, maybe it's just out to coffee to hear their story next up, that you would just be um involved and engaged of like we're gonna pursue God together, which means pursuing those that God's heart is for the people around us.

All right?

We good?

All right, hey, we're concluding today our series, messy spirituality.

Uh, and to do that, we we've talked about this that life is messy, right?

Um following Jesus is messy.

And the world around us is really messy.

Week one we had this confession of messy spirituality, is simply this.

I'm a mess.

I can't unmess myself, only Jesus can.

That's the foundation of spirituality at its core.

I'm a mess.

I can't unmess myself, only Jesus can.

Would you say that with me?

I'm a mess.

I can't unmess myself, only Jesus can.

And as we look around, and you scroll TikTok or the news or just your personal experience, the world's a mess.

And no amount of education or technology can unmess the world.

Only Jesus can.

Only Jesus can.

And so as we close our series, Messy Spirituality, we want to talk about the messiness of the world, the brokenness around us.

And what are we as followers of Jesus?

How are we to respond and be the hands and feet in a deeply messy, broken world?

To do that, what we want to do is actually shine a light on one particular area of brokenness, messiness, that so hides in the shadows, but is happening all around us, that I just want to shine a light on it.

Because that's what Jesus people do.

We're the light of the world, so we shine a light on things that are evil to bring about justice and goodness and beauty.

And today we want to shine a light on the area of human trafficking.

Uh human trafficking, uh, nearly 28 million people worldwide are trapped in human trafficking.

More than at any other point in human history.

One out of every four victims is a child, and has become one of the largest criminal industries in the world.

It's not just a global thing, it is a national and it is a state thing.

California consistently reports more trafficking cases than any other state.

And tragically, the Bay Area is identified as one of the largest trafficking regions in the state.

Because where there's wealth, mobility, technology, and vulnerability, there's opportunity for exploitation.

Uh, today, another thing that we're doing in our services is we call them testimony Sundays.

We're having a testimony Sunday.

We want you to hear the testimony of the power of God's grace and work in each other's lives.

We get an honor of hearing the story of survivor leader Alicia Baker.

Thank you so much for being with us.

I'm going to share your intro so you know a little bit about Alicia.

Alicia serves with an organization called Love Never Fails.

She'll share more about that.

But first, Alicia is a faith-driven life coach, re-entry case manager, speaker, author, and survivor leader.

After overcoming years of trauma, addiction, and human trafficking, Alicia encountered the life-changing grace of Jesus Christ, shifting her journey from survival to purpose.

Today she walks alongside women and families through Christ-centered healing, trauma-informed care, and practical restoration.

Alicia is passionate about guiding others from brokenness to wholeness, reminding them that their past does not define them, God does.

Through coaching, speaking, writing, and community outreach, Alicia brings a message of hope, healing, and freedom, pointing others toward lasting transformation and purpose in Christ.

Because of the nature of her story, she'll be sharing her experiences relating to sex trafficking and trauma.

Wants you to listen with both compassion and open hearts, but also wants you to know if at any point you need to step out or take a moment or simply sit quietly, pray.

That's completely okay.

Alicia, we are thrilled and honored to have you here.

Thank you so much.

Would you please give her a warmth?

Sheesh, I don't have to say anything else.

You just said it all.

Good morning, church family.

My name is Alicia, and I want to ask you something before I say anything else.

Have you ever walked into a room and wondered if the real you, the full you, would it still be welcomed if people actually knew?

I spent most of my life answering that question with silence because I was afraid the answer was gonna be no.

But I stand before you today, not as a victim of what happened to me.

I stand here as a daughter of God who was rescued.

I was saved by Jesus Christ.

And I am living proof and a walking testimony that no story is too broken for God to rewrite.

My life has included things I spent years trying to outrun: maternal abandonment, childhood sexual abuse, addiction, sex trafficking, domestic violence, mental illness, grief too heavy to name.

For many years I believed those things were my identity, but here is what God showed me.

Trauma is not your identity, it is the battlefield where your identity was tested.

Genesis 50, 20 says, What the enemy meant for harm, God meant for good.

I want you to hear what that verse does not say.

It does not say God called the harm good.

It says he called himself redeemer.

There is a difference.

This is not just a story of trauma, this is a story of rescue, a story of surrender, and a story of redemption.

And Isaiah 61 declares he gives beauty for ashes.

Church, I was ashes.

And he is still turning ashes into beauty.

Before I continue, as he already said, I do want to remind you that my testimony is does include heavy truths.

Um I won't go into unnecessary detail, but I know these topics can be tender, and I want you to take care of yourself.

Breathe.

If it feels overwhelming, step out if you need to.

I want you to take care of your heart.

But please hear me clearly.

There is hope in the story, so stay with me.

My story begins at two years old.

I was left at a babysitter's house.

That house became the place of my first molestation.

From ages two to ten, the abuse continued.

Family members, people who were supposed to protect me, people I was supposed to trust.

Repeated trauma does more than hurt a child's body.

Developmental neuroscience shows us that early chronic trauma literally rewires the brain's architecture.

It recalibrates what feels normal.

It distorts trust at its deepest level.

It confuses love with exploitation.

I learned early that love meant exploitation.

By age three, I was acting out what was done to me, not because I was evil, but because trauma distorts innocence.

Hurt people, hurt people.

That is not an excuse, that is a diagnosis.

Someone in this room needs to hear what I wish someone had said to me.

The shame that was handed to you does not belong to you.

Shame is a spiritual weapon, it does not stay on the surface, it attaches to identity, it rewrites your internal narrative, and it whispers things that sound like truth but are actually lies.

It whispers, you are dirty.

It whispers, you are unwanted, it whispers you are disposable.

But Ephesians 1:4 speaks a different word.

Ephesians 1:4

Church.

That means before the abuse, he chose you, he chose me.

Before the addiction, he chose you, he chose me.

Before the shame, he chose you, he chose me.

At eight years old, my adopted mother passed suddenly, and I carried guilt for 25 years.

If only I had told her that I loved her.

That thought followed me everywhere because grief that is not processed turns into a story we tell ourselves about who we are.

And the story I told myself was this I do not deserve a mother because they all kept leaving.

My father married five times, there was chaos, there was enmeshment, there were secrets, and through all of it, I was raised in church.

I knew the songs, I knew the scriptures, I sat in the pew, but I believed that God was punishing me.

I want to ask you something.

Have you ever been in a church building and felt completely alone?

Have you ever sung worship with a crowd and felt like the words only applied to everyone else in the room but you?

That was me.

Trauma was telling me lies, and I did not yet know the voice of the one who had already spoken the truth.

By 12, I was desperate for validation.

Male attention became my drug before drugs ever did.

And I want the church to understand something we don't say out loud often enough.

Addiction does not start with substances.

It starts with pain, trying to find relief.

I drank in middle school, snuck out, chased the adrenaline, chased affirmation, chased anything that made me feel less invisible.

By 18, the substances had names meth, cocaine, heroin, pretty much whatever I could get my hands on.

And I was running state to state, city to city, always moving.

Because if you stop moving, the pain will catch up to you.

Survival mode became my normal.

And eventually, survival turned into something I couldn't name for a long time.

Las Vegas, New Orleans, strip clubs, hotels, backrooms, it's called trafficking.

Bondage felt familiar because when you have been exploited since the age of two, exploitation starts to feel like a relationship.

That is the cruelty of trafficking.

It is not just physical captivity, it is identity captivity.

It tells you that this is all you are and this is all you will ever be.

John 10 10 says the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy.

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

The enemy tried to steal my innocence, kill my purpose, destroy my identity.

But the rest of that verse does not belong to the enemy.

I did not know abundant life yet, but heaven already knew my name.

In 2012, I met my best friend was murdered.

I identified her body, and something inside of me broke in a way nothing had broken me before.

Because this was not abstract pain.

This was not something that happened in the dark that no one could see.

This was my person gone.

And I stood there thinking this could be me.

In 2013, I was kidnapped and held hostage for three days, dope sick, terrified, and completely helpless.

And in that darkness, in the back of a vehicle with nothing, I whispered the only prayer I had left.

God, please don't let me die like this.

Psalms 3418 says, The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

He met me in the back of that truck, not at an altar, not after a worship set, not when I had cleaned myself up at rock bottom.

That is mercy.

But I have to be honest with you about something.

God rescued me more than once.

He rescued me from overdose.

He rescued me from violence.

He rescued me from death more times than I can count.

And I kept going back.

Because here is what nobody talks about.

Rescue changes your location, surrender changes your identity.

Rescue pulls you out of danger.

Surrender pulls the danger out of you.

Rescue says, I will save you.

Surrender says, I will change.

The hardest prayer I've ever prayed was not God get me out.

It was God change me.

Because I had prayed, get me out, a hundred times, and he had answered, but I had never fully prayed, God change me.

Because change requires releasing control.

And for a woman who had spent 30 years trying to survive by controlling what she could, that prayer was terrifying.

Romans 12, 2 says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Transformation is not modification.

God is not in the business of touching up old patterns.

He is in the business of renewal.

I tried sobriety, I relapsed, I tried again, then came my lowest moment.

One hour before my son was born, his heartbeat stopped.

There are no words in any language for that kind of grief.

This was my second stillborn and my fourth pregnancy loss.

And here is what nobody talks about in church.

Grief is not a lack of faith.

Grief is the proof that love was real.

Jesus wept at Lazarus' tomb and he already knew he was about to raise him.

The grief was not a malfunction, it was the evidence of love.

But grief does something dangerous when it is not given a safe container.

It turns into shame, and shame medicates.

When a human being has never experienced consistent safety, the nervous system is perpetually on alert.

Fight, flight, freeze.

Those are not character flaws.

That is a biology protecting what was never protected.

But when safety is introduced, when the environment finally matches the promise of God, the truth surfaces, walls come down, and healing truly begins.

I wrote my full testimony timeline.

I faced what I had spent years numbing.

I walked into celebrate recovery week after week.

Honesty, scripture, steps, community.

2 Corinthians 1.4 says, He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

That verse changed how I understood my story.

It is not just that God comforts the wounded, it is that God intends to deploy the wounded to comfort others.

He wastes nothing and he recycles everything.

Your testimony is not just your story, it is someone else's survival guide.

Step four of Celebrate Recovery broke shame off of me.

Step eight helped me restore what was broken in relationships.

I apologized to my brother for harm I caused in childhood.

I made amends with my father right before he passed away.

I lost both of my parents in June of 2024, month before I graduated the Love Never Fells program.

My mom, who my stepmom, who had been my mother since I was 16, passed from cancer.

Six months later, my dad, who raised me all my life, passed as well from cancer.

And by the grace of God, I have not picked up that is beauty for ashes.

Let me read it slowly.

To give beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called oaks of righteousness.

Planting of the Lord that he might be glorified.

Ashes represent mourning, but ashes also represent something that burned.

And if something burned, it once had life.

You do not get ashes without fire, and you do not have a testimony without a trial.

But watch what God does.

He does not just remove the ashes, he exchanges them.

He does not offer you a patched-up version of what you lost.

He offers beauty in its place.

And he calls you oaks of righteousness, not saplings, not survivors.

Oaks strong enough for other people to take shelter under.

Ezekiel 37 says, God can breathe into dry bones.

If he can breathe into what is already dead, he can breathe into what burned.

Today I serve as a re-entry case manager.

I help trafficking survivors.

I also am a survivor leader at Love Never Fells Women's House.

I facilitate celibate recovery at the church that I work at here in San Jose.

I mentor women.

I just published a book that will be for sale tomorrow called Unsilenced.

I completed life coaching certification.

I stand clean and sober two years and eight months.

Revelations 12, 11 says, they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.

Your testimony is a weapon, not against people, but against the principalities that tried to silence you.

I was told I was disposable, now I know I'm chosen.

I believed I was dirty, now I know I'm cleansed.

I believed I was abandoned, now I know I'm adopted.

I believed I was broken beyond repair, now I know I'm redeemed.

God did not improve me, he recreated me.

2 Corinthians 5.17, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

I need you to hear me before I close.

If God can reach into trafficking, into addiction, into abuse, into grief, into mental illness, into 25 years of shame, and still pull out purpose, then no one in this room is too far gone.

You may feel like ashes, but ashes in God's hands are raw material.

He is not overwhelmed by your story, he is not shocked by your secrets, he is not intimidated by your trauma.

He is a father who runs towards his children.

Luke 15, the father in the parable does not wait at the door.

He runs while the son is still a great way off.

He runs and he is running towards you right now.

I'm gonna go ahead and close in prayer and then I'll talk about love never fails.

Father, we release control, we release fear, we release pride, we release shame, we release secrets we have held for decades, we release addiction, we release the trauma labels we have let define us.

We give you the pieces, we give you the ashes.

We thank you that you are not intimidated by broken stories, you are not shocked by secrets, and you are not overwhelmed by grief.

You are not afraid of addiction.

You are a father who runs.

Draw near to the brokenhearted in this room right now, interrupt cycles that have run in our families for generations, break chains, restore identity, silence shame, and remind every person leaving this place today that the cross already covered it.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So let me tell you about this awesome program.

So Love Never Fails is uh they're an anti-trafficking organization.

Um they uh have all kinds of stuff going on.

There's outreach, there's um IT biz, there's um there's the women's house, they have men's house, they have a um uh uh re-entry house, um, we have uh uh an engagement center where we help um and serve the the homeless and the community.

Um we we do so much.

We have an educational department that comes and teaches in schools, things like that, that teaches what the signs are and what to watch out for with the internet.

It's crazy.

There's so much that in a slip of a moment you could answer one DM and have and be end up trapped in something crazy.

You never know.

And so they they have educational um pieces that that will come out and teach that to the schools.

The IT Biz um program is uh I a graduate of the IT Biz program.

Um it's 12 weeks, it's tech, so you can pretty much get a certification in whatever you want with tech.

Um the first 12 weeks, you'll get some cybersecurity, you get IT tech support and customer service, you get a little bit of project management, a little bit of entrepreneurship, and then the following 12 to 15 weeks, you get to choose what pathway you want to go to.

So if you want to go cybersecurity, if you want to go tech sales, if you want to go um, well, I chose entrepreneurship and I actually created a business sort of like where I got a job afterwards.

Um I the job that I have now, I'm I'm salary.

And so I don't have to worry about finances.

I'm I'm blessed, so blessed that I don't have to ever think about going back to the life that broke me.

And um, I'm just so thankful.

Um we do outreach, we do street outreach.

I join Love Never Fells all the time, go out on the blade where women are still being trafficked, pray with them, offer them a bracelet with our number on the inside, and and they just love us.

They love it when we come out there.

We hand them a bag of chips, and that bag of chips is not just a bag of chips, and that's from somebody who's been handed a bag of chips while out there.

And um, so it's just very important.

So y'all can join link arms with us.

There's a table outside where you can sign up to um join the church.

The church is gonna help give back.

We have um walk-a-thons, we have a gala coming up on April 11th.

We always have something going on, it's always always amazing.

And you can also donate if you want to help.

So there we go.

That's love never fails.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for sharing your story and speaking uh the rescuing hope of Jesus over us.

I think as we take it in, the question is, what do we do with what we just heard?

How do we hold that?

And for some quite frankly, the response is just really deeply personal.

You walked in feeling like damaged goods, like um your past or your present, and this moment defines you, and nothing could redeem you, and that is a lie from the pit of hell.

So don't suffer silently anymore.

Bring it to Jesus.

And we'd love to walk alongside you, and there's great, great people who have experienced his healing, redeeming work like Alicia that want to walk with you.

The second thing is really simply the idea for us as followers of Jesus, who we're called to be in a deeply messy, broken world.

We're doing something pretty old school.

Um, we have a Bible memory verse.

Every week we have a Bible memory verse, and the verse this week is Micah 6.8.

Uh it's one of those core ones about who we are to be.

And our hope is that you would, you know, we post it on social, on Instagram, and that you'll put it as a screensaver, and that you just first thing in the morning is God's word, last thing at night, let him have the first and last word.

Micah 6.8 says this He has shown you, O mortal, what is good and what does the Lord require of you.

But to act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.

Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

But Jesus, when he walked on the planet, he gave special care and attention to the mistreated, the marginalized, the oppressed, the broken, the sick, the diseased, the ostracized.

I encourage you, if you aren't in a reading plan right now, then read through the gospels and just pay attention to every time Jesus either speaks to this or acts towards this.

And then he says, follow me.

And what this means is that Jesus people are justice people.

That's not a political thing, that's a biblical thing.

Justice, the Hebrew word mishpap, uh, carries the sense of true religion.

It's the proper personal response to God that manifests itself in social concern, equity, and the well-being of all God's creation, especially the poor, the powerless, and the voiceless.

This is woven throughout the entire scriptures.

Old Testament, New Testament.

Isaiah says it this way Wash and make yourselves clean, take your evil deeds out of my sight, stop doing wrong, learn to do right, seek justice, defend the oppressed, take up the cause of the fathers, plead the case of the widow.

James, the brother of Jesus, would say it this way.

Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion's worthless.

Religion that God or Father accepts is pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

The Proverbs.

Talk about the righteous, those that are walking with God, care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.

That idea of righteous, uh, Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke says it this way: he says, the righteous or the Sadiq are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community.

The righteous are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community, whereas the wicked are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.

The calling of a Jesus follower, the first step is just recognizing we're all a mess.

I can't unmess ourselves, only Jesus can.

And then we get to be a part of meeting people in their mess and stepping into the messiness of the brokenness of our world.

I loved how you said it, Alicia.

Hurt people, hurt people.

We've heard this and it's a diagnosis.

It's so powerful.

And the same thing is true.

Rescued people, rescue people.

And this is what you're doing with your life now in such a beautiful way.

Thank you for that.

That when you recognize the rescuing work that Jesus has done, you can't help but go, I want to help anybody else the way Jesus has entered in my life.

I want to share him and his love with them.

Colossians 1, 13, 14 says, For he rescued us.

For he rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son.

He loves.

And so what do we do?

The needs are overwhelming.

We don't know where to begin.

There's a line from a pastor Andy Stanley that's always stuck with me.

And it's just been such a helpful thing for me, is just this line do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.

I think so often we hear needs, we hear about things, and we our heart, it's not that we have a care issue.

We care a lot.

We just don't know where to start.

Or the the problems, the messiness, the brokenness of the world feels so overwhelming and too big.

I can't do anything.

Yeah, you can't do everything for everyone, but you can do something for someone.

For us, for us, justice just begins with this moment of I'm gonna do for one what I wish I could do for everyone.

It may look like having a conversation afterwards with Love Never Fails, the table.

There's a list of resources on the back.

Uh, both Love Never Fails, Foster to City, our food pantry, ways that we step in and practically bring the love and hope of Jesus to a hurting and broken world.

But I invite you.

What is your next step?

Would you lean in?

Would you allow Jesus?

Like, how do you want to use me to bring healing and wholeness to this world?

Uh as we close, what I really want us to do is we're gonna close with communion.

It's just a reminder of Jesus' rescuing work for us.

His body broken for us.

A Savior that moved towards us, stepped into this messy world, and took on all of our shame, our pain, our sin.

His blood poured out for us for the forgiveness of sins so that we stand completely forgiven, fully loved, adopted daughter, son.

And just invite you, just a simple prayer.

Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, would you just show me what's the next thing you're wanting me to do?

What's that next step?

Maybe it's you've been struggling silently and you need to share it with someone.

Maybe it's that idea of surrender Alicia talked about, like you've never really surrendered.

God, I surrender my hope, my future, this pain, my grief, my trauma to you.

Maybe it's taking a step of justice that could feel a little scary or intimidating, but today I'm gonna step in the same path with my Savior.

Jesus, I pray for my friends.

Thank you that you meet us.

Thank you that you are the God that does bring beauty from ashes.

You redeem what's been wrecked.

You bring life from death.

I ask in this moment that you would breathe an awakening.

An awakening of our hearts, a quickening of our spirits to your activity, to your work, to your what you say to be true of us, that we might live in it.

And be your hands and feet to a hurting and broken world.

In Jesus' name.