Testimony Tuesday: The beauty in letting go

By Bella Agnello

Evangelism does not always mean preaching on the streets or going on mission trips. Often, it is simply sharing personal stories of seeing God’s glory and sovereignty.

Ellie Binger, a sophomore Exercise Science major, knows just how important it is to share testimonies. This past summer, Binger shared her story in front of over 100 people at a Christian college group.

When sharing what God did in her life, Binger’s message of hope is that there is beauty in letting go and letting God work. And this is something she continues to learn as she reflects on the life God gave her as well as the truths he continues to teach her.

“When I share my testimony, it shows what God is doing, and it’s beautiful,” Binger said.

The second oldest of four children, Binger grew up as a pastor’s kid in Colorado. Though her life revolved around the church, she never felt like she had a strong faith, let alone a faith as big as a mustard seed.

Binger grew up doing gymnastics, and did club gymnastics throughout her four years of high school. Because of her commitment to her team as well as the hour drive to practice, community became a foreign concept to her.

Gymnastics also formed how she viewed herself, as people only spoke over her their hopes that she would become an Olympic gymnast.

“I loved it because it was my life, but it became who I saw myself to be,” Binger said.

During her junior year of high school, Binger began considering joining the Air Force Academy during her high school recruitment walk. This plan also got put to the test when she began struggling with retaining information. So, she entered a rigorous program for seven months, six nights a week, to train her brain to store information once more.

Nine ACT tests later, Binger made it into prep school. With college rapidly approaching, she wanted to find a school offering good scholarships for gymnasts. After a long search, Ohio State University reached out to her, offering a full ride scholarship for a spot on their D1 gymnastics team.

Though Ohio State appeared to be promising for Binger, she soon experienced isolating toxicity on her team. As a Christian, she did not want to participate in the things her teammates did on the weekends, so she developed a sense of spiritual pride and dishonesty.

“I wanted to show myself to people in a better light than I was,” Binger said. “Even in making it seem like my faith was better, I was in this spiritual pride situation.”

Binger talked behind her teammates’ backs, all the while puffing herself up about her capabilities as a gymnast.

“I was drowning,” Binger said. “The only thing that was filling me up at this point was myself. I tried to grasp it, but my pride kept me from the Lord.”

Binger’s pride not only isolated her from the team but prevented her from participating on it, too. After a rough practice, Binger’s coach told her that she did not make the lineup for the upcoming meet. While she practiced her floor passes, in her anger, Binger misstepped and dislocated her right ankle, placing her in a boot and with crutches for several weeks.

Life outside of gymnastics proved difficult, too. Her faith created a divide between her and her roommate. At one point, her roommate saw Binger’s Bible open on her desk and threatened to throw it away if she saw it out again.

In the midst of her school chaos, Binger also struggled keeping a healthy relationship with her boyfriend, whom she relied heavily on for comfort and strength.

“My capacity to love someone was in him,” Binger said. “And that brought my faith down.”

Her life changed drastically when she walked into her coach’s office one day and saw everything from her locker sitting there. Her coach said that, though she did not know how to help Binger, she knew she needed to dismiss her from the team to get the help she needed.

Binger’s past flooded back to her.

“Every single person from my past knows me as the college gymnast. What am I going to tell them? What am I going to tell my parents?”

Practice started fifteen minutes after that meeting, so to avoid the rest of the team, Binger hid behind a truck in the parking lot and watched her teammates walk into the gym.

As she waited for the campus bus to bring her back to her dorm, Binger’s shame and condemnation overwhelmed Binger. In her room, she sat and stared at a wall for hours, not knowing what to do next.

Life continued to get more challenging when, one week later, Binger’s boyfriend broke up with her over the phone because of her unhealthy dependence on him.

Then Binger felt God posing her a clear and nearly audible question: Are you willing to give up your desires for the God who promises greater things than you could ever imagine?

“The Lord turned my circumstances into a place where it was absolutely necessary for me to rely on him because he broke down every single wall that I had built up myself,” Binger said. “I had built up my idolism of my sport, my idolism around this person who I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with and my idolism of what I wanted to be seen as. The Lord tore all of that down so I had nothing to boast about anymore.”

In the spring, God brought Binger the sense of community that she had longed for her entire life. She got plugged into a church near school, and attended the church’s conference talking about God as a father.

Binger again felt God speaking over her: You’re my daughter, and that’s enough. Finally, God had revealed to Binger that only he could give Binger her identity.

“I finally got a radical understanding of who God is, and that gave me so much more peace for everything that happened,” Binger said. “I finally was in full devotion to God. Paul talks about how we are slaves to Christ. We have nothing to fully fulfill the calling he’s put on our lives, so all we can be is his. And that’s beautiful.”

Binger then felt a growing nudge to consider transferring to Cedarville.

“I had seen God working in other people’s lives but I never thought he’d actually do that for me,” Binger said. “It was a huge leap of faith for me to say, ‘God, I give this to you’ because I never believed he could before.”

She continued to think about Cedarville for the rest of the semester, but she needed more confirmation from God that she should transfer. And God confirmed Cedarville in several different ways.

Three weeks before school ended, God answered Binger’s prayers when six Cedarville students visited her college group one Thursday night. In this group of students, Binger also met her best friend.

Then, Binger’s sister also felt called to Cedarville and is a freshman this year.

Finally, Binger went on a mission trip to Nicaragua with Cedarville in May of 2024, which opened her heart to the other students at Cedarville and excited her about the potential things God would show her on a regular basis if she attended Cedarville University.

“I was so afraid to let go,” Binger said. “But there’s a beauty in letting go and letting the Creator of the universe, who knows my heart, take control.”

Over the summer, God also blessed her with the opportunity to share the story of what God did in her life the past year.

In Parker, Colorado, Binger’s friend from high school started a Christian ministry for college students in his backyard, which met on Friday nights. People from two hours away drove just to attend and hear the sermons and testimonies being shared.

When Binger shared her testimony, she stressed that her story is not complete and is far from over. Through her story, she encourages others to surrender their hearts to God in light of the truths found in Psalm 139.

“‘You discern my thoughts and you search me and know me,’” Binger said. “Holy is he who created my heart and wants me and searches my heart and knows me.”

At Cedarville, Binger is involved in intramural soccer and a discipleship group on top of her Exercise Science major.

In the future, she wants to go back to Colorado to be an obstetric sonographer and an ultrasound technician for a pro-life clinic. Her life mission is to show women their worth and tell them how beautiful God made them to be.

No matter where she is, whatever stage of life she is in or whatever she is doing, Binger lives zealously for Christ, letting God use her life as a testament of his goodness.

“You don’t have to be on the front lines to do good works,” Binger said. “You can be zealous in the space God has provided for you.”

Bella Agnello is a junior Broadcasting, Digital Media and Journalism major with a concentration in Journalism. She enjoys thrifting, listening to records and reading classic Russian literature in her spare time.

*photos courtesy of Ellie Binger