That’s my clock. Okay, we’re going to do it. We’re going to do it this morning. I’m going to share a little bit of my story with you and then I want to give you a life changing, truly life changing tool for transformation because a story is powerful. We know that we overcome by testimony, but I’m a tools teacher. I’m a how teacher, you know, sometimes I found in my Christian walk that things would get a little conceptual and people would say things like, Oh well just surrender all. Just trust in the Lord. You know, just focus on the cross. And I would think, well all that sounds good, but what happens when you’re really struggling? Like how do I do that? Do I just stand there and look at the cross? Like does that, you know, what’s the, how to. So I’m a how to teacher because it’s the biblical principles that show us how to overcome what the world is overcome by Mt. Carmel Illinois Church .
So I’m going to, I’m going to release a tool to you today and not only teach it, but we’re going to activate it because the acts church is all about extubation. So we’re not going to just learn about it, but we’re going to get activated in it. Does that sound good? Okay. So as I talked about last night, movies can be so impactful Mt. Carmel Illinois Church . I mean, they can shift culture, they can change our own individual lives.
I saw a movie as a young girl that completely changed my life. And that movie is called flash dance. Yes, it was a life changer. Those of you that are young might not even know what we’re talking about, but those of us that were around in the 80s remember flash dance, right? So I was that little girl like so many girls who danced around the house and put on shows for my family.
And it wasn’t until I saw the movie Flashdance that I realized, Oh my goodness, you could actually do this for a living. So my parents, I wanted it to look like Jennifer Beals, the actress in the movie. My parents actually let me go get a big old pur and there’s me with permed curly hair ladies from the 80s come on. You know Mt. Carmel Illinois Church , I wasn’t the only one. I was not the only one. Can we just have a moment of silence and thank the Lord that that is no longer in style. I mean, that picture is tame. My hair got big. Did your hair get big?
So I trained very seriously as a dancer. I was passionate about it. I became professional at 16, started traveling around the world, started doing all sorts of dance shows, and it was a few years later that I was discovered by Prince. He had an album called diamonds and pearls and he had two girls that he wanted to be twins, one named diamond and one named Pearl. And there’s me on the left. I’m the Pearl half of diamonds and pearls from the 90s. So that, Oh, walk down memory lane. Okay. Still the big hair couldn’t get away from it. I finally got away from it. Okay. So after prints we can, we can lose that picture. Okay. We don’t need that. All right, thank you. Uh, so after Prince, that was an incredible time in my life.
It really was. Uh, I was dancing on stages in front of 60,000 people at a time, traveling the world with this musical genius. Um, I retired from dance. After that I had had a pretty good career. I felt like Prince was the pinnacle, transitioned into acting, started doing TV shows like Beverly Hills nine Oh two one and then I was on a God fearing show called Buffy the vampire Slayer Mt. Carmel Illinois Church .
There was me with Buffy and my love interest Giles. And now this is the time. This is the time I was not a believer at this point in my life, but I always believed in God. I always believed in God, but I didn’t have that connection to God. I definitely didn’t know what it meant to be a Christian or a born again Christian. Um, it was during my time on Buffy that I started really seeking God in a deeper way because although I was really at the top of my game, I was in my twenties I was living the dream, traveling the world on TV, making a lot of money. I mean, I was the epitome of success. I gave off an image of confidence and like I had it all together. But the image that I was portraying on the screen was very different than where I was living internally Mt. Carmel Illinois Church .
Because the truth is if you don’t have God, you cannot have true success. I believe that God wants us to be financially prosperous, but financial prosperity is the lowest form of prosperity. It’s great to prosper financially, but if you’re not prospering emotionally, mentally, spiritually, relationally, you’re not prospering. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, if you’re tormented, you lay your head down in that mansion and you’re not doing well. Right? So I seemed successful, but inside I knew I wasn’t really successful Mt. Carmel Illinois Church .
I did not have God, and therefore I was struggling with what we struggle with. If we don’t know God, I was mentally tormented. I wasn’t at peace inside my own skin. I was a chain smoker and I hated my relationship with cigarettes. I was addicted and I couldn’t get free. I was fearful and anxious, but the thing I was struggling with the most, and you would never know by looking at me was my relationship with food.
I was mentally tormented all day long thinking about what I was going to eat, what I wasn’t going to eat. You know, we, women all get a bit effected in this area, but being a dancer and an actress just exacerbate, exacerbated that issue. So I looked thin, I never had a weight problem, but inside I was consumed, I would starve myself. Then I even got into some eating disorders, bingeing and purging, and I was not doing well. So because of that, I started looking for God. Now I’m from Southern California like I told you. And when you start looking for God in Southern California, you don’t usually bump right into Jesus first stop, right? That’s not the first stop in that atmosphere. Especially in Hollywood. You kinda hit a lot of things that are spiritual, right? Lot of spirituality, as long as it’s not Jesus Mt. Carmel Illinois Church .