Set Apart For His Service | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Set Apart For His Service | Previous Challenge Entry
By Marilyn Meiners
02/20/26
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I grew up in Freeport, Illinois on what some people called “the wrong side of town.” As a child, I didn’t know there was a wrong side. The sun shone just as brightly on our little house as it did anywhere else. But by the time I reached high school, I discovered there was an invisible line dividing the “in” crowd from the rest of us. I stood firmly on the outside.

My family attended the most affluent Methodist church in town. The well-dressed, well-known families filled its pews. It was a respectable church, active in social causes and good works. I learned to be polite, helpful, and morally upright. What I didn’t learn—at least not clearly—was the Gospel. But I felt like “somebody” as I mingled with this elite crowd.

If you had asked me then how someone gets to heaven, I would have answered with confidence: “Be good.” So I tried. I shared what I had. I respected my elders. I obeyed my parents—most of the time. I attended church faithfully and joined the youth group. I even owned a beautiful King James Bible. Unfortunately, the “thees” and “thous” felt like a foreign language, so the Bible stayed mostly on the shelf.

I was a good girl.

But I didn’t know Jesus.

At eighteen, I met a blue-eyed, blond-haired boy named Paul. When he asked me out, I tried to remain calm, though my heart had other ideas. Paul attended a Baptist church and invited me to go with him. I agreed, mostly because I wanted to be where he was.

What I heard there surprised me. The Bible was not only read but explained. The Gospel was presented clearly: salvation was not earned; it was a gift through Jesus Christ. I had never heard it put quite that way before.

In August of 1959, I bowed my head and asked Christ into my life. I cannot say I fully understood the theology of that moment. I simply knew I wanted the Jesus I saw in Paul and in the people at that church. Something changed in me that day. I later learned the word for what had begun: sanctification—the process of being made holy, set apart for God’s purpose, and transformed into the image of Christ.

Paul and I were married in 1960. We immediately became active in the Baptist church. He served as a deacon; I began teaching Sunday School and helping with youth. I thought I was teaching children Bible lessons, but in truth, I was the one learning. Preparing each week forced me into Scripture. The dusty Bible on my shelf became a living book in my hands.

In 1966, God began stirring our hearts toward something more. After prayer and counsel from our pastor, we left our hometown and moved to Chicago so Paul could study for ministry. He attended Moody Bible Institute and later Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Those years required sacrifice, but they deepened our faith and clarified our calling.

In 1974, after graduation, we accepted the call to pastor a church in Staten Island, NY. What we imagined might be a short season became twenty-one years of ministry. There were sermons prepared late at night, hospital visits, weddings, funerals, youth events, and countless cups of coffee around church tables. Through every joy and every challenge, God continued His work of shaping us.

Sanctification is not a single dramatic moment. It is the steady, faithful work of God over time. It is learning to trust Him in small obediences. It is allowing Him to refine motives, strengthen faith, and redirect plans. It is discovering that being set apart for His purpose is far greater than fitting into anyone else’s group.

When I look back, I see how God took a girl from the “wrong side of town,” who thought heaven could be earned by good behavior, and graciously showed her the truth of the Gospel. He joined her life with a young man who loved Christ and called them both into service. For more than fifty years, we have served side by side, continuing even now in the church we attend.

I once worried about which side of town I belonged to. Now I know the only place that truly matters is in the will of God. And there is no better place to be than exactly where He has set you apart to serve.

story is non-fiction

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