Set Apart SPOTLIGHT: S'ambrosia Wasike

I always knew I was different, set apart. I didn’t fit in with the other kids at school, and I didn’t really care to. All I wanted was God. Now that may sound overly religious to some of you, but it was my reality… at least I thought it was.

At the age of 4, a major crush on the Italian heartthrob known as Carman and fervent prayers that he come to my hometown in Kansas brought me to the day when God answered my prayers and I accepted Jesus as Lord of my life. Under the tutelage of my mother, I grew in the knowledge of God and began to excel in biblical studies. Throughout my teenage years I engaged with the Lord often through dance and song and spent hours beside the lake just soaking in His goodness.

Even when my mother passed away my freshman year of college, though grief weighed heavily on my heart, my faith didn’t waver. Yes, I questioned God, but it was from the perspective of a child that was curious to understand a parent’s reasoning as opposed to a hardened heart that blamed God for making decisions I didn’t understand.

On top of that, I had committed to abstaining from sex, so to that end I dated very little. I was the queen of celibacy and a self-proclaimed dateless wonder. For a time I even had a “Dateless Wonders” blog site dedicated to encouraging single women and a monthly pampering session for my single friends. When people looked at me they saw a young woman with a heart for God and young women, and that’s exactly what I wanted them to see.

What they didn’t know was that I had been hiding secret sin for over ten years.

Behind closed doors and under the cover of darkness, I struggled with sexual fantasies and masturbation. Refraining from dating may have portrayed an appearance of purity, but in my mind I was a slave to lust. With my mouth I proclaimed that Jesus sat on the throne of my heart, but gratification of my flesh was the real king.

All this time I was still pursuing God, but the guilt that came after every time I fell into temptation began to compound, and by the time I was a senior in college, it had solidified into a blockade between the Lord and me. I could throw my prayers up to Him, but they would hit the wall and fall right back at my feet.

That was my wake up call.

I finally reached a point when my relationship with God exceeded the importance of my reputation, so I confessed. To all of my friends on Facebook, I confessed. It was one of the scariest things I think I’ve ever done in my life, but it was also the most freeing. With that confession and my heartfelt repentance, the Lord miraculously delivered me from the power of lust, and by the strength of the Holy Spirit and the choices to abstain from certain triggers (i.e. any movie rated R or certain types of music), I was completely free.

Confessing my story to people didn’t only set me free, but it set so many other women free. From that initial post I received a lot of messages from friends who were dealing with the same thing. These were people I had known for years whom I believed to be pretty “holy”, but here they were sharing that they had the same struggle.

This experience has changed my perspective not only on my personal interaction with God, to have a heart that cries, “Search me, oh Lord, try me and see if there are any worthless affections in me,” but it has also cause me to seek transparency with my sisters in Christ instead of pretending like I have everything together. If only more people were transparent about their problems, there would be more opportunities to do as Galatians 6 encourages us to do and carry one another’s burdens.

Confession brings freedom not only to you, but to many others. Little did I know, the day that I confessed on Facebook, but that was just the beginning. Shortly after that I was invited to moderate a website where my testimony led even more girls to come clean, which led to a book I wrote with the website’s founder called “A Christian Woman’s Guide to Breaking Free from Pornography: It’s Not Just a Guy’s Problem.”

Through my confession and transparency, the Lord showed me what it truly means to be set apart: to not just be devoted to Him in word and deed (i.e. remaining celibate, leading Bible studies, hosting prayer meetings, etc.), but to have an undivided heart that’s wholly His. Temptations still come even now that I’m married, and there have been times that I have stumbled, but as long as I allow the Son of God who has overcome the world to reign in me, I am able to overcome.

I pray that whether you have the same struggle I had or not, my story encourages you to share your story. You’d be surprised at how much freedom the Lord can bring from one confession. If you’d like, feel free to leave a comment below or to email me (sambrosiac@gmail.com). Thanks for reading. Much love and many prayers.

S'ambrosia Wasike is a published author and singer-songwriter with a heart to see God's people experience deep levels of intimacy with Him. She is a former middle school teacher currently living in Kenya with her husband where they are beginning a ministry called The Joshua Blueprint, which aims to come alongside existing children's homes to teach children various expressions of worship. You can read S'ambrosia's blog, listen to her worship album and find her on facebook and twitter.