Season 2, Episode 38

A Fifth Grade Story of Faith in Action

Jenni Krippner recalls how sharing one Bible verse in the fifth grade helped a bullied friend — and changed a life forever. She encourages listeners to boldly and authentically share their faith, reminding us that even small seeds can bear big fruit.

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Show Notes

Host Barry Meguiar is a car guy and businessman who hosted the popular TV show, Car Crazy, on Discovery Networks for 18 years. He loves cars, but he loves Jesus even more! Learn more about Barry at IgniteAmerica.com.

Get your copy of Barry’s book Ignite Your Life: Defeat Fear with Effortless Faith at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and other online booksellers.

Learn more about:

– Why obedience matters when sharing the Gospel
– How we can work God into any conversation
– Why 80% of Americans are looking for God
– When we can use humor to share God’s message
– How the Holy Spirit gives us a voice

Check out Why Share? on IgniteAmerica.com to learn why it is important for every believer to share their faith. Then visit First Steps which provides practical ways to get started in your faith-sharing journey. Sign up to receive emails that will bring you solid faith-sharing tips and powerful inspiration.

Episode Transcript

00:03
Hi, I’m Jenni Krippner, and I’m here today to share with you one of the most important things, no, the most important thing that you need to know in life, and that is spreading and sharing your faith with those around you. I’m going to start off with a story when I actually very first shared my faith, and this is how easy it is. You guys. I was in the fifth grade. I didn’t always go to church. We weren’t one of those families that went to church every single Sunday, but my mom took us to church off and on, and we’d have little spurts of time we went to church, and I went to children’s church, and in children’s church,

00:44
I usually was bored in children’s church when I went, but this time we had this certain pastor, and he was teaching us memory verses. He was practicing memory verses back and forth, and he taught us a few memory verses. And it worked. I memorized them. So, I’m in school. And as I’m in school, I have a really good friend. She’s, you know, on the chubby side, not miss popular, and she’s being bullied. We, we grew up on the east side of my town, and it was pretty rush, rough neighborhood, and my friend, she was being bullied at her bus stop. There was a gal that would, would pick on her and threaten her every time she got off the bus. And she came to me, and she told me this story about this, this bully, and how she was afraid. She said, can you ride the bus home with me? Because I’m afraid that I’m going to get beat up. And I said, Denise, I want you to know that there’s a God that can protect you. And I found out about all of this at church, and there’s this scripture that you can say, and if you say this scripture, He will protect you from getting bullied. And so Denise is like, okay, tell me the Scripture. I said, just, just all day long, wherever you go, whatever you’re doing, she says, I said, just say this scripture, no weapon formed against me shall prosper. That was my fifth grade knowledge of the Bible. I didn’t know all the stories. I didn’t know how to save a soul or preach the gospel, but I knew that no weapon formed against you shall prosper. And so I didn’t even know if you had to be a Christian for that to work, but I did know that that was a scripture, and I said, if you will say this scripture, God will save you from that girl. And so she, I didn’t know if she would do it, and you know, I was just telling her the story. Well, she did it, and it was probably one, maybe two days later, she comes back to me and she said, she says, Jenni,

02:35
it worked. She says, just makes you want to run around in circles. She says, Jenni. I said the Scripture. I said it over. I was on the bus. I knew that she was gonna beat me up, but I kept saying, no, no weapon formed against me shall prosper. No weapon formed against me shall prosper. She said. I got off the bus, and I don’t know what happened, but suddenly my bully started being nice to me, and we actually became friends and walked home together.

03:04
Now, years later, let me tell you about Denise. A lot of times you don’t really know what happens when you plant a seed. Years later, I find her. She has a master’s in ministry. She’s married to a pastor, and her whole life is dedicated to serving the Lord. I mean, wow, what God can do in a person’s life through a small, little seed that is planted by a fifth grader. Any body can do this. You guys, I am nothing special. The only thing that’s different is that I’m hungry for God, and I love him. If you just love God, and if you’re just hungry for him, it comes out of you all the time, wherever you are, and it inspires people. Let it show, let it glow. Let that love for God come out of you. Don’t suppress it. Don’t hide it. It’s not hard. You can do this. We have got to do this. We need to bring souls to Jesus. We’ve got to pull them out of the fire. We don’t have to make it scripted. We don’t have to make, make it methodic. We need to make it real. We have to be real. That’s the only way it works. It’s got to be authentic. So I challenge you guys to go out and to be real. To be authentic. Do not suppress your faith. Do not suppress your passion. Let it out, and I’ll tell you what passion is caught. It’s not taught. So if you will go out and walk in passion, it will be caught. And you mark my words, you’ll see it happen.

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