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Point of Grace: Getting the 'Point' Across

By Zsa Zsa Palagyi
The 700 Club

CBN.comPoint of Grace has been topping the Christian music charts for over 10 years and continues to release songs that stir the soul and encourage listeners to press into their relationship with Jesus Christ.

Lisa Ryan got a chance to hear the heartbeat of this incredible band in Nashville a few months back, when three of these four encouraging artists were pregnant.

LISA RYAN (reporting): Every Christian girl knows who they are, and many women would like to be a little more like them. They’re the Grammy-nominated, Dove Award- winning Point of Grace. Would you like to know what’s behind these four beautiful faces?

SHELLEY BREEN: Right now, a lot of the girls may go, 'Oh, they look like they’ve got it all together. They have their perfect little picture on the front of the album.' But that’s not really us.

HEATHER PAYNE: I truly wanted to be married. I wanted to have a baby. I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to be a wife. For some reason it wasn’t happening. I wasn’t meeting anybody.

DENISE JONES: I still struggle with comparing. I can sit and I can watch my friends and go, 'Gosh, they do that so much better than I do.'

TERRY JONES: It’s kind of a female tendency to be insecure about yourself and to need that affirming, whether it’s from your husband or your friends or whatever.

LISA RYAN (reporting): Despite their fame, Point of Grace struggles with the same issues that women everywhere face. How do they overcome their problems and insecurities? They know who they are in Christ. They actually learned this lesson way back when the group first got together.

SHELLEY: My favorite story was when we were out singing at a summer camp a long, long time ago. This one little country bumpkin, this little boy wrote us this little letter, and it said, 'Dear Point of Grace, I love your music. Thank you for coming to our camp. Denise, you’re the first prettiest. Heather, you’re the second most pretty. Terry, you’re the third prettiest. Shelly, you’re the fourth prettiest. I was like, 'That would make me the least pretty, little boy.'

LISA RYAN: Does that ever make you compare yourself with each other or bring up those female jealousy things that are kind of natural and normal for women?

DENISE: I still struggle with comparison. Terry’s a much better teacher than I as far as her children are concerned. Shelly is so much more organized than I. Heather is so laid back. I feel like there are two major sins in life: pride and unbelief. I think mine is unbelief. That’s my unbelief; I don’t believe God can make me the mom I need to be. Those are issues that I struggle with every day. It’s a constant thing that I have to go to the Lord and remind myself, I am not an orphan. I am His daughter and I inherit everything He gives me. So that’s where I am.

LISA RYAN (reporting): Denise knows that believing God’s promises is the secret to surviving in a world that’s focused on success. Point of Grace has set-out to share this secret with today’s young women through a conference tour called Girls of Grace.

LISA RYAN: What’s the message you want to get across to young women through these conferences?

HEATHER: Well, I think that the Scripture that we have that we’ve kind of set as the theme of Girls of Grace is in 1st Timothy 4:7 or 4:12. It says, 'Don’t let anyone look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.'

SHELLEY: If we can cause these girls to contemplate their friendships and contemplate their sexuality and what being a pure girl really is and really looks like, and if we can have them contemplate their relationship with God and how they treat their parents and maybe make them think about some things that maybe they’re doing flippantly and haven’t really thought about and think about their decisions and how they’re going to effect them later, that’s really what we want to do. We just want to be real with them.

LISA RYAN: What age group are you targeting?

TERRY: It’s ages 12-18, seventh- to twelfth-graders.

LISA RYAN: Do you feel that’s a critical time for young girls?

TERRY: Absolutely, I mean I know for me, those were my foundational years of the person that I am today. I know that 8th grade is where I really found out that you know you could have a daily relationship with God, that you could have daily quiet times. Those are foundational things to the way that I am today, memorizing Scriptures and knowing things in you head so that when a crisis comes up, God can give it to you and give you peace about things. We really want to come alongside what the parents are trying to teach the kids at home. We’ve had so many moms come up to us desperate, saying, 'Help me with my teenager. I don’t know what to do. They’re not listening to me. They listen to y'all.'

LISA RYAN: As Point of Grace, what would you say to the young woman who feels like she’s ugly, no one likes her, she’s not pretty, nobody loves her. How would you encourage a young woman like that?

SHELLEY: I think that on different levels, all four of us have felt that, and everybody has. I didn’t get to go to the prom because I just didn’t get asked when I was a senior in high school. I mean, I didn’t really go on dates and stuff.

TERRY: We are really trying to encourage girls to look on the inside, to look on the matters of the heart. Honestly, when God looks at you, He does not see your outward appearance. He sees your heart.

LISA RYAN: What about the single woman who is watching all of her friends getting married and feeling, 'Is there anyone for me, God? What’s wrong with me?'

HEATHER: I have totally been there. I totally have. I was 29 when I got married, and I’m sure there are people that are older than that even right now that are still single. It was always a struggle for me. It came to the point in my life that I just said, 'OK, Lord, I’m going to be honest. I don’t trust You. I just don’t trust you, and I confess that. That was a turning point in my life. It was truly a turning point in my life. I was just honest with Him and just said, 'I’m giving this over to You because I can’t deal with the fact that I don’t trust you anymore because I know that You are worthy of my trust. I finally did, and I cannot tell you, the Lord gave me the desires of my heart in such an amazing way in the man that I married. He is everything that I needed, more than I even knew that I needed.

LISA RYAN: How do you balance it all? I struggle with how to balance the ministry God’s called me into, being a wife, and being a mother. How do you balance everything?

TERRY: It’s just a daily thing. I really try to prioritize my life and put it into perspective. If God is going to be first in my life, how much time am I going to spend with Him today? Then if my husband is second in my life, what am I doing to make Him second in my life, to make him the priority He needs to be? Then my children are my next thing. Then after that comes my job. Once those things are in line and we have our time slotted out correctly with each of them, then it kind of falls into place.

SHELLEY: So we are fourth.

TERRY: You all are fourth.

SHELLEY: I didn’t know that.

TERRY: No, maybe you all are the friends after my job.

LISA RYAN: Do you think women need to learn to say no?

DENISE: I’m telling you, Christians have it hard. I mean we have a lot of extra pulls. Then there’s that whole guilt thing of I’m not doing enough. The thing is we can’t do enough to please God. He loves us where we are.



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