God's Strength Is Unlimited: Keaton Mash Testimony

From the Archives: 2010

Written by Keaton Mash

As the pitcher on the Ashe County All Star baseball team, I was at practice when my Papaw Lawrence picked me up to go to a revival service at our church, Bald Mountain Baptist. Evangelist Neil Hatfield was preaching. He used his cinder block example to show us how God would give us strength in our lives. As a young boy, it really portrayed to me what kind of strength God could give me throughout my life.

From that point on, I started developing my relationship with God. I continued going to church and started digging deeper into God’s Word.

Soon afterward, I went on a mission trip to Philadelphia with a youth group from my church. It was on that trip that God showed me there are people in many places who need the strength that God gives. Philadelphia is only one of the cities where the need for God is great.

College Life: God’s Preparation

I went to college at App State and had a very heavy academic load, but I did attend Baptist Campus Ministry meetings sporadically. In my second year at App, I was approached by the campus minister and club president who shared with me that they saw leadership potential in me and encouraged me to attend the meetings more regularly.

It was at that time I began going regularly to the Campus meetings, attending the small group Bible study and later in the year was picked to be on a selection committee, which focused on choosing students for leadership positions for the upcoming year. I also participated in the Baptist campus team, which is designed to minister to in-coming freshmen. Little did I know that all of this was preparation for a bigger plan God had in mind for me that coming summer.

My brother and I have a lawn-mowing business, and one day, I mowed the lawn of a lady, Joyce Breland, who used to be my day care worker. She asked me if I had ever considered going into youth ministry. Their church’s youth ministry had dwindled from attendance in the 90’s to only a few members due to the church being unable to hire a full-time youth minister.

She and her husband, Bob, recommended that I talk to their pastor, Reverand Steve Leashomb. After meeting with him, he asked me to go through the application process, which I did. As the LORD would have it, I was selected to serve the church’s youth.

God’s Hand in My Life

Over the past year, serving at Midway Baptist Church, God has made Himself real to me in two very evident ways.

After attending a youth ministry meeting in Tennessee, He showed me that it was going to take time to establish a group of young people. He showed me that He is increasing the group according to His will.

Secondly, He showed me the spiritual growth of the youth group when we went on a summer mission trip to a small town in Pennsylvania. Their attitudes were one of excitement, flexibility and a willingness to do whatever the LORD wanted done.

The girls gladly taught a backyard Bible school and the boys re-sided a house for a widowed pastor’s wife and her family. We were far more blessed by serving the small community church in Hazelton than the people receiving the ministry. As the LORD would have it, the numbers of the youth are increasing and even adults are joining us to get in on the joy of ministering to individuals both in Ashe and distant places.

As I look back now on the impact of the “cinder block” lesson the visiting evangelist demonstrated to us, and to an impressionable young boy, that evening at church, I can see how the weight of it has continued to reveal to me how much strength God can and does give to those who desire it and how much that can be accomplished in His name because of it. By God’s strength and grace, I hope to continue leading others to live a life that will glorify God.