Living the Journey

Hi, my name is Kyle. I am currently teaching English as a second language (ESL) in Chaojhou,Taiwan through IBLP. This past year has been the most exciting year of my entire life!

I grew up in a Christian home, but for me Christianity was just a front that I put up every day so that I would be accepted by my Christian peers. I knew all the “right” words and actions, but inside I wanted nothing to do with God. I was a man filled with bitterness, malice, rage, anger, hatred, and immorality. I was headed for destruction, and was blinded to a lot of things. On March 31, 2009 at a Journey to the Heart, God miraculously changed my life! I repented of my sins, accepted Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, and my faith became real for the first time!  If you would like to hear a short version of my testimony, listen to the podcast titled A Launching Pad for Life.

The Fulfillment of a Promise

After I got home from the Journey, I had many opportunities to share my testimony.  As I made it a point to give God the glory for what He did in my life, He opened the door for me to share my story again. At that time, I was less than three months away from graduating from high school. Honestly, I had no idea of what I was supposed to do with myself. However, the Bible says in Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

Each time I acknowledged God, He fulfilled His promise and began to show me the path He had for me after graduation. In other words, God did exactly what He promised: He directed my steps through circumstances and showed me which way to go. He “made my paths straight” and it was amazing!

The Planting of a Seed

One seed of direction was planted when my family and I attended the Regional ATI Conference last May in Big Sandy, Texas. At the end of the week, having heard my testimony a few times, Mr. Gothard suggested to my parents that I apply for the teaching trip in Taiwan. They shared his proposal with me, and at first, I had no interest at all. I thought to myself, “Me? Teach English?  I hate English!” Obviously then, teaching English hadn’t even entered my mind. In fact, I thought it was ridiculous and therefore responded, “No way!”

However, as we drove home, my parents and I discussed the opportunity and through those conversations, the Lord “watered” the seed. I actually began to ponder the possibility. I prayed about it. Having a new desire to walk in God’s will instead of my own, I decided to apply for the position. I trusted that if God didn’t want me in Taiwan, He would “shut the door.” Interestingly, the more I thought about this incredible opportunity, the more excited I became!

A few weeks after I applied, I was accepted to join the team of people traveling to Taiwan to teach English! I had seen God open so many doors . . . . I had just become a Christian, I had just turned 18, and I had just completed a Journey to the Heart. The timing for me to go was perfect. My parents were at peace about it; in fact, they were encouraging me to faithfully pursue this opportunity. At that point, I had all the required prerequisites completed, except one. The last thing I needed was my TESOL certification . . . and $1,300 to pay for the course! My parents prayed. I prayed.

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This group of young ladies is up in the Northwoods seeking the Lord this week on the first Journey of the year!

“Shew me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day” (Psalm 25:4-5).

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During my personal interview with Mr. Gothard at the start of the Journey, he asked me, “On a scale 1 -10 (10 being the strongest) how would you rate your relationship with God?”

I replied, “It would be a 1.”

On the outside, I looked like a pretty nice Christian young man who had a fairly good life. On the inside, I was headed down a path leading to destruction. My life was a total mess. I had a lot of bitterness towards my parents and I was filled with anger, malice, rage, hatred, lust, immorality, and moral perversions. I believed the lie from Satan that I didn’t need anyone else . . . God or parents.  So it’s safe to say that even though I had said the “sinners prayer” before, my relationship with God was pretty much nonexistent.

To be perfectly honest with you, I really didn’t want to go on the Journey to the Heart. However, it was my dad’s desire that I go, so I submitted and decided to go with an open heart. I also determined that I wanted to find God on this Journey.

Fast forward . . . to Tuesday morning – March 31^st

This was the first day at the Northwoods, up in Michigan.  I was lying in my bed doing my quiet time and wrote a simple prayer in my journal.  The prayer went like this:

Dear God,

I want to find you!  Help me to forgive my parents, Lord.  Help me, give me the courage to confess my sins and competing affections out loud to you on this Journey!  Thank you Jesus for making it possible for me to come on this Journey.  Bless the rest of my family today Lord.  In Jesus name I pray.  Amen

I want to share a verse with you that is found in Jeremiah 29:13: “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” This verse is so true. Literally one hour later the Holy Spirit came upon me in a way that I have never experienced before and I just broke.  I was on my knees/face weeping before the Lord confessing every sin that I could think of out loud to God and to my other teammates. I confessed my pride, my bitterness, my anger, my lust, my immorality, everything I could think of I confessed to God.  I told God that I forgave my parents for the hurts they caused me.

I began rebuking Satan.  I told him that I didn’t want him in my life anymore and commanded him to flee.  Then I asked God to fill me with His Spirit.  Our team spent two hours of praying and confessing hidden sins to God and to one another.  I can tell you I felt a lot better after praying this prayer.  This all happened on Tuesday and it took me until Wednesday sometime to realize that God had answered every single line of that prayer that I had written down in my journal that morning.

Wednesday – April 1^st

Wednesday was a day of discussing how to get rid of the hidden sins and secret lusts (competing affections) that hinder us from fully loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Earlier in the week we had heard the phrase:  “The power of sin is in its secrecy.”  This means that once a sin is exposed, confessed, and repented of, the sin has no more power over you.  This is why it is crucial when we confess our sins that we confess every detail of the particular sin so that Satan has nothing to fall back on. It is like when someone goes into surgery for cancer and the doctors performing the surgery must make sure they cut off every part of that tumor. Otherwise, what happens?  The tumor grows back.

Our leader, Chad, told us if there was anything we needed to confess to our parents that would be hindering our walk with the Lord, and hindering the one accord between the group, he would make it possible for us to use the phones over at the main lodge.  God had convicted me of a particular sin that I had been struggling with that I needed to confess and ask for forgiveness.

After dinner, we went over to the main lodge and I called my dad.  He wasn’t there.  I left him a message saying I had accepted Christ as my Savior and that I needed to talk to him so I would either call them back later or to just keep me accountable and ask me when I get home.  Later that night, I called again and this time I got a chance to talk with my dad and my mom.  At first I only confessed it to my dad, but I eventually decided that I needed to confess it to my mom as well.  After confessing it to both my parents and asking for their forgiveness they both said they forgave me. I am on a quest of desiring to fully confess everything to my parents and cleanse my heart of all impurities.

Before I left, I sent out a massive email asking for prayer that I would:

1. Go with an open heart
2. Meet God in supernatural way
3. Come home loving God more then I ever have before

God answered every single one of those requests! It just goes to show that if we seek God with all our hearts, we will indeed find Him.  If we seek Him, He will make Himself known to us in ways we could have never imagined.

~ Kyle
March 2009 Journey

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In the fall of 2008, I began a Journey to the Heart.  God did a mighty work in my life during that week in the Northwoods, as I was a very proud, fearful, insecure, and obnoxious girl.  As I continue the Journey, God has slowly been taking my sinful heart and changing it into a “heart after God,” fully and completely reliant on Him. I am beginning to see God for who He really is.

After the official beginning of my Journey to the Heart, God led me to teach character to children for 3 semesters. My experience teaching character in schools and reaching out through Bible clubs has been nothing short of amazing.  To be on the front lines of the spiritual battle, watching God work in hearts, praying over souls, sharing God’s light in a dark world . . . I would not trade this opportunity for anything. I don’t want to give you a false impression, though, it is also a lot of work!

This is work that cannot be done alone!  Every lesson, every Bible club, and often each individual class, is bathed in prayer.  The best object lessons for a class I didn’t know what to do with came directly from the Master Teacher.  He is an everlasting source of ideas!  So many folks thought I had it all together, but I didn’t.  Only God and I were in it together, and He knows where all the pieces belong.

Interning with this character program also surrounded me with good friends: some that I knew for a season, and some that I will have for a lifetime.  God gave me the right kind of friends, who encouraged me to trust the Lord when life got rough, who made me do my best, and who even loved me enough to tell me when I was wrong. God bless those friends!

God used this opportunity to draw me to Himself and to allow more of His character to shine through me. The Journey to the Heart retreat was just the beginning of my Journey with God.  Stay in His Word, and keep talking with Him. God’s plan is simply amazing!

~ Barbara
September 2008 Journey

If you are interested in an opportunity to invest in the lives of children, please send a quick note to Chad Christiansen.

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Come and hear, all you who fear God,
And I will declare what He has done for my soul.

A month before I came to the Journey to the Heart, life at my home was falling apart. Problems that had been discreetly covered over in public life were causing so much anger and pain that life was almost unbearable.

I grew up in the Philippines. I loved the people, loved the ministry, and loved seeing so much of God. His hand was working in troubled lives through the testimonies we shared with one another. He was ever present and always sufficient. As I got older, the cares of living caught up with me, people and relationships became more tangled and I began to put God farther and farther down on my list. He became so common that I took Him for granted.

Then our whole ministry came crashing to pieces.

Ugly problems that had been working in secret finally surfaced. My father sat me and my older brother down and said: “We are leaving.” The only thing that came to my mind was that this was some king of cruel joke.  It could not be happening.  It was not possible.

It was true.

In one month our entire lives were packed into boxes and I found myself in a foreign country (but my passport said it was “home”) where I knew little more than the geography and the language . . . and little of that.

For You, O God, have tested us;
You have refined us as silver is refined.
You brought us into the net;
You laid affliction on our backs.
You have caused men to ride over our heads;
We went through fire and through water;

The next year I spent much time working on my own to survive. I waded through the morass of teen life trying desperately to salvage some sort of meaning. The mission climate I had been accustomed to made “teen problems” seem shallow. I buried myself in books to find some life wherein I could understand people, where life had meaning, and where my wounds wouldn’t hurt so badly. I sunk so deep into depression that I would wonder why I even wanted to remain alive.  Into my vortex of pain, God began to tenderly turn me toward Him.

Come and see the works of God;
He is awesome in His doing toward the sons of men.
He turned the sea into dry land;
They went through the river on foot.
There we will rejoice in Him.

In 2008, during a session with Teen Pact, they gave a time for personal prayer and meditation. For the first time in about 4 years, I was able to still my mind and I asked God if I could ever go back to the Philippines (my life goal, basically). Suddenly, almost like a physical touch, I heard the word “Here.” “Here?” I asked. “Why here? continue reading…

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Enjoy a panoramic view of the Northwoods Conference Center on this beautiful evening in early March! (Java required.) Thank you, Barak, for the photo.

Click and drag your mouse to pan and press ‘+’ and ‘-’ to zoom in and out.

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