She Surrendered Her Life to Christ. He Changed Everything.

Published: September 20, 2024

She Surrendered Her Life to Christ. He Changed Everything.

Movieguide® Contributor

Oneka McClellan, author of “Born Royal: Overcoming Insecurity to Become the Woman God Says You Are,” is sharing all about how she came to Christ and found her calling.

“I was raised by a single mom, grew up believing in God and having a fear like a reverential fear of God in a healthy way, but I did not grow up knowing my identity in Christ,” McClellan explained on a recent episode of Sadie Robertson Huff’s “WHOA That’s Good” podcast.

“I did not grow up knowing that God had a plan for my life. I didn’t grow up knowing that I shouldn’t settle in my relationships,” she explained. “I didn’t know that my body was a temple and that God had something so special in store for me.”

When she went to college, she met a co-worker who shared Christ with her. She would often invite McClellan to attend church with her, but she would always cancel.

“I felt intrigued that someone that was so fun, so fresh, so full of life, could live a surrendered life, and because I had already admired her and heard her story, it made me want to know what would make someone want to live that way,” she explained.

“Finally, one Sunday I said, ‘I’m coming.’ So I went to church with her. [The] pastor gave the message, and the whole time I felt so at home in that room, and no one judged me. No one made me feel like they know how crazy I am,” she recalled.

She felt loved “unconditionally,” and when the pastor asked if anyone wanted to start a relationship with Jesus, her hand shot up.

“I had one of those…moments where like the scales fell off of my eyes,” she said, referencing Acts 9:18, “and in that moment I felt true freedom. In that moment I felt this overwhelming love of my Heavenly Father, and from that moment, it was one of those moments where I literally laid down my old life and I picked up this new life.”

After that, she realized that she needed to put a stop to her lifestyle. She didn’t go to any more parties and broke up with her boyfriend, but it was difficult.

“It felt like I was exchanging this huge pile of like chips — like I don’t like play poker or gamble — but I just imagine this big pile of chips and I was just cashing them all in,” she explained. “But what I didn’t realize on the other side of this was this freedom and this abundant life and this like peace and this wholeness and this purity, and so I laid down that relationship. I broke up with that guy.”

“I started to learn the things that now I’m able to equip other girls with, which is like your body is a temple,” she said. “It doesn’t belong to you. I stopped partying. I stopped hooking up with guys and just completely laid down my old way of living, and I just want to tell the girls that are listening that if there’s anyone…who’s stuck of like ‘I want to live. I want to follow God, but I’m also stuck in these old patterns of the world,’ it’s so freeing when you choose God.”

McClellan’s book, Born Royal: Overcoming Insecurity to Become the Woman God Says You Are, is all about how girls and women can flourish as daughters of God and not only build their own characters and confidence but other women’s, too.

God “restored my purity, and here we are all these years later and I’m still obsessed with Jesus and married to my best friend…When I stopped dating for a season and I just hung out with me my girlfriends and the Lord, that was when I understood that I’m a daughter,” she explained. “Because I was raised…by a single mom who was amazing, but I didn’t have a present father figure who was like, ‘You’re my daughter. I’m proud of you…”

“I felt this unconditional love that was first modeled by my friend. She modeled this unconditional love for me, this acceptance and loving me on the journey and not this, ‘I’m mad at you. I’m disappointed in you. You’re not good enough.’ She modeled that like, God loves us all along our journey,” McClellan explained.

She feels like God fills his role as her Heavenly Father, as well as earthly one. And for her, his “unconditional love” means the world.

“The more I read scripture, which I also feel like is this love letter from heaven, I was able to step into my daughtership and receive. I feel like God has this inheritance for us and…when we push all the chips in we think we’re only going to get two chips back, but what he gives us is abundantly more than what we sacrifice or surrender to him and so I feel like I became his beloved daughter and just like all the girls who are hanging out with us today, we are all his beloved daughters.”

God “is so obsessed and so proud of us, and I think sometimes because we live in such a performance society and some of us have parents that put pressure on us to reform and to be our best, which is so good to be your best, but I think sometimes that can skew how we see God,” she explained. “… So I learned early on that He just loves me and He died for me and He has a plan and purpose for my life.”

McClellan devotes most of her time ministering to girls and women. Her aim is to lift them up and help them know who they are as a daughter of God.

“I’m just so passionate about girls fighting for each other and not fighting against each other,” she said. “So I feel like on social media like that’s the perfect place to be each other’s hype girls…We should be like, ‘Yes! Yes! You Go!’ instead of like, ‘Why’d she wear that? Why is she doing that?’”

She continued, “We should be more like Jesus, where we speak life. We speak the truth in love but we speak life and we cheer each other on.”

McClellan also reaches out to women through her “The Girls Podcast,” where she talks about things like singleness, motherhood, identity and much more.

Sadie Robertson Huff also has a ministry for girls called Live Original. Movieguide® reported about a song that she wrote under the organization’s worship group:

Sadie Robertson Huff revealed the heart behind her new song “Mirror” which helps listeners combat the lie that their body is unwanted.

“When we sat down to write that day, I said, ‘Let’s try to write out testimony, but in a way that leads other people to their testimony!’ I was not planning on writing based on my own experience that day. I thought I would help tell everyone else’s story — until someone mentioned writing on body image,” Huff said.

“As we started talking about what girls need to hear, I sat there quietly, thinking, ‘That’s actually what I needed to hear,’” she continued. “I opened up to my friends that day about how hard my teenage years were regarding body image and how much that held me back. I remember that, as I was being seen by many, all I wanted to do was hide. I was telling everyone to live original but struggling to do so myself.”

“I’m grateful now to say I don’t feel the need or desire to hide!” Huff proclaimed. “I know our lives are SO much more significant than we look like…our physical beauty is fleeting, but if we are so insecure that all we want to do is hide, how can we fully live what God has for us?”