One Kentucky high schooler started a TikTok trend by creating a prayer wall to encourage herself and other students.
“Our school, along with the middle school, has struggled with suicide,” Sophy Jones, who attends Whitley County High, told WKYT-TV. “And, a lot of people struggle with their mental health.”
According to Faithwire, Jones started the prayer wall after watching a popular trend on TikTok. She said the walls were created to help “spread God’s Word” and provide encouragement to others.
She shared that most Bible verses on sticky notes inside the girls’ bathroom wall helped her personally.
“God saved me,” she told the local news outlet.
“People can just write down a Bible verse or, like, ‘Jesus loves you,’ for example, and you can either take it with you if you want to keep it as a note or repost other ones,” she explained. “They could take that verse and say they want to read it, or we do have Chromebooks at school so that they can Google the verse.”
She started the ministry of sorts late last year, and it’s already positively impacted.
“Over the year, my love for my Lord has saved me more and more. My message is to spread his word,” Jones wrote on Facebook last month.
“I’ve put up in every bathroom a prayer sink, wall, or mirror. People can write a Bible quote, message, or prayer in each spot. I hope to spread this across more schools, and I hope people understand just how much Jesus loves us!
Evelyn Philpot, one of Jones’ classmates' friends, helped start the prayer walls.
“The other day, I had seen a young female student who had one of the yellow sticky notes with a Bible verse on it that we had written, and it just really like made my day to know that this is something that people are loving and it’s actually helping them,” Philpot said.
Both students are members of First Priority, a student-led Christian organization with a Whitley County High School chapter.
Todd Lawson, director of the organization, told the outlet that he’s proud of both girls for creating the prayer wall.
“With prayer and God, that’s the only answer we got — that’s our only hope,” he said. “I may feel not important at home, I may not feel important to a teacher, I may not feel important to somebody, but God loves us and ain’t nothing more important than that.”
“Prayer, to me, is just — it makes me feel loved,” Jones added.
Although both girls will graduate this year, they hope the prayer wall will continue spreading and encouraging incoming students.
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.