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Laura VeVers – Living In The Extraordinary
God chose me to go into the motorcycle ministry five years ago. Through various life events, He led me to this ministry. I would have never imagined this ministry is where I would be. Hearing the call “you will be an evangelist in the motorcycle community” made my head spin.
I have always felt like an outcast in the body of Christ. I would never be tall enough, blonde enough, smart enough to belong. The struggle was real.
My past, my present. How could God use someone like me? Why would He use me of all people? With all my scars, why me? He showed me why I kept my scars. The world, the Church, tries to cover up the scars that life has wounded me with. Jesus doesn’t cover the scars on His hands or the stripes on His backs. He wants to dance with me, cry with me, laugh with me––and most of all––minister through me.
I had lost my contract with a large remodeling company here in the Chicago area. I was panic-stricken with how am I going to take of a special-needs daughter paralyzed with fear. I started looking for jobs and was considering marketing for Harley-Davidson dealerships. I ventured out to see how Harley marketed to the community. Harley in Shorewood, Illinois, had a season-opening event at their dealership. There I found an organization called the Christian Motorcycle Association (CMA). A man whom I had known from a church I had attended in Elmhurst was there. God broke through. It was by no coincidence that he was there. He referred me to a chapter closer to my home.
I went to a CMA meeting in a restaurant located in Arlington Heights, where I witnessed to someone for the first time in 1989. Down in the same basement of that restaurant, where I was told 25 years earlier it would take me 25 years before God would use me to evangelize, I was at my first CMA meeting. “You want to come to this place, expecting a place of transformation for the glory of the Lord to break out in your life” (Jakes, T. D., Potters Touch, 2019). The breakout has now begun!
I have felt like an outlaw and outcast from the church and society. I did not know where I belonged or that I could be used by God. The question loomed like a dark cloud: How can or why would God want to use someone like me? A broken sinner like the woman at the well, the woman in John 8, and the woman who bled for fifteen years touching the hem of His robe and crying at His feet? I was mockingly called the “preacher lady” by those in the church. In the motorcycle community, I found a place where the “outlaws” of society live, eat, drink, cry, and love. These folks live and breathe the honor/shame code. Like me, they are not welcome to belong in the “big C” church. I can go on a mission trip at any time, even while pumping gas in my car at Costco. God will use me. I do not have to cover up my scars to make someone else happy or feel more comfortable. I did not ask for these scars, but Jesus said He will bring beauty out of the ashes and peace for despair. God’s call is to gather the outcasts: “And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled’” (Luke 14:23 ESV).
How many folks now feel like the one percent of society? Not being able to belong anywhere because they are constantly told they are too messed up to serve. The Christian worldview is the reflection of this world: Your life needs to be put together before there is room in the inn.