Living the Journey

In April of 2010 I went on a Journey to the Heart, where I dealt with many issues of the heart and learned a lot about who I am in Christ. One of the things I learned about, was that God wants us to share our faith with others instead of keeping it to ourselves. Since a very young age, I kept my faith to myself—mainly because of my reserved nature. In fact, I used that as an excuse. When I went on the Journey, I realized how weak that excuse was. I was basically blaming God for making me “shy” and telling Him that’s why I couldn’t share the Gospel with others. The truth of the matter was that I was scared to take a chance; scared to do something in faith.

After the Journey to the Heart, when I came back home, I started seeking to reverse my past weakness and start sharing the Gospel with others. When that didn’t happen as soon and as easily as I had expected, I was tempted to get discouraged. But instead, I remembered that God will only use us when we’re “hot”. Last week, I was asked by a leader at our church to lead devotions at our weekly staff meeting. I felt led to talk about Revelation 3:15,16 and I was making the point that God will only use us as long as we are spiritually “hot”. So in order to practice what I preach, I made an effort the rest of the week to remain usable and “hot” for God.

The very next day, I was at my church when I saw four kids, around 8-10, playing around in the fountain. It turns out that they were from nearby apartments and had never heard about God’s plan for salvation. When I asked them to get out of the fountain, they asked me what the empty tomb (a replica of the tomb Jesus was supposedly buried in) was for. So I had the amazing opportunity to share the story of Jesus’ life, death, burial and resurrection with them. And after I finished telling them about the way to be saved, they all wanted to ask Jesus to be their Savior! It blew me away that God could use me to impact those kids’ lives!

What also blew me away is that I did none of this on my own. When I put aside my weakness in speaking to others about God, I was able to be used by God to advance His Kingdom! God says in Exodus 4:12 “I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you are to say.” Regardless of the fact that I did not know what to say, God spoke through my mouth to those boys. When I rendered myself usable for God, only then was I able to share with those boys.

~ Luke
April 2010 Guys Journey

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Luke didn’t think that he was believing any lies of Satan. But after he watched Paul and Jenny Speed’s video on Exposing the Lies of the Enemy during his Journey in April, he suddenly realized that there was a lie that he had been believing ever since he was young that was holding him back from being an effective warrior in God’s Kingdom.

He briefly shares this testimony in the following audio clip.

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~ Luke
April 2010 Journey

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When Henry heard the message on Exposing the Lies of the Enemy by Paul and Jenny Speed while on the Journey, he realized that a painful memory from the past had triggered a lie that was controlling his life.

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~ Henry
April 2010 Journey

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About a month before the Journey, God began dealing with me specifically in the area of humility. He kept bringing me back to James 4:6-10: “God resists the proud, but gives grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. . . . Draw nigh to God . . . cleanse your hands . . . purify your hearts . . . humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord.” Humility is something I periodically pray for, but really don’t want to go through the process of learning. So this time I prayed for humility, and the willingness to accept the means by which God wanted to answer that request.

It started at home, checking with my family members to see if my conscience really was clear toward them. It went to a new level at the airport when obstacles started coming up. Two other girls and I were traveling together and when one of them couldn’t go through security because of ID, she wanted to stop right there in the crowded security line and pray. Okay, Lord, I asked You for humility . . . . Seeing Him work in everyday circumstances was not new to me, but praying out loud in a public place was. Though several more problems came up, we watched the Lord answer prayer and smooth them all out.

At the first session, someone spoke about the sin of the fear of man. Fear of man has always been a problem for me, but I don’t remember ever hearing it classified as a sin! The next morning I was reading my Bible in the living room, and one other girl from my team was seated on the far side of the room doing the same thing. God suddenly laid on my heart that He wanted me to confess the sin of the fear of man—out loud. So I whispered a prayer of confession. “Louder,” He said. I tried again, still in a whisper. “Louder!” “But she’ll hear me!” I answered. It was a struggle that lasted several minutes.

I knew if I didn’t obey in one thing, then the whole week would be wasted. Anything I hoped to learn about loving God would mean nothing if I wasn’t willing to obey Him in everything. So at last, with His grace, I went over and asked the other girl to pray with me so that I could confess this sin with my mouth out loud to the Lord.

Listening to a sermon by Paul Washer later that week, God convicted me about some forms of entertainment that had become idols for me. That night when the team met, we experienced an amazing time of prayer, and only the first of many. There is nothing in this world like praying with a group of believers who all just want to be honest and open before God and to know Him more than anything else. It is worth the humbling, the confessions, and the tears.

During the Journey, I was given a great deal of time to just get alone with God—and I do mean alone. No telephone, no laundry, no computer, no work or church schedule, no little children (as much as I love them, they are distractions!) There just aren’t that many opportunities for quietness and aloneness in this world, and that was a great blessing.

Most importantly, I learned all over again that loving God takes complete dedication. You don’t add loving God to your list of things to do—that is the one thing to focus on, because it takes all of you. That means approaching my daily responsibilities and opportunities with the attitude of “how can I do this thing unto my Lord?”

~ Kelli
March 2010 Journey

Listen to Kelli share part of her testimony:

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In September of 2007, I boarded a plane headed for Chicago and a Journey to the Heart. It was there that God did a work in my heart that changed my life. He showed me just how fearful of a heart I had. I had a fear of what other people thought of me that would control my words and actions when I was around them. This became the controlling force of my life, rather than what God thought of me. The Lord helped me to see the severe consequences of having a fearful heart, and what a hindrance it was to being an effective soldier of Jesus Christ

One night, our team experienced intense spiritual warfare and we sensed that Satan was attacking us with fear. I got on my knees with the rest of my group and earnestly cried out to God to take away my fear. The amazing happened. I immediately felt a peace, a freedom, and a joy inside! I was thrilled! I felt so free from that bondage!

I did not at all expect the tremendous results that would come. In the days, months, and years that followed, God opened up so many opportunities to make an eternal impact in the lives of others. I was able to reach out to others and talk to them without fear of what they thought of me. It was incredible! I was free to do God’s will. Free to be used for His service. Free to obey the Holy Spirit’s promptings. It grieved me to see how, for so many years, my fear had hindered me from being used of God; from being an available vessel for Him. How many opportunities I must have missed to reach into the lives of others, all because of my fear of man.

Never would I have dreamed that exactly two years and one day after I attended the Journey, I would board a plane for Oklahoma to spend ten weeks making an impact in the lives of many children there. During our heart preparation at Eagle Springs, God again convicted me of my fear of man. I was challenged to live AUG – Approved Unto God. (See Proverbs 29:25, II Timothy 2:15.)

One day before Bible club, I noticed a girl sitting alone while everyone else was playing. Upon going over to talk to her, I asked what the best thing was that had happened to her that day. Without missing a beat, she said, “When the church people came.” (We would go door-to-door picking up the kids for club. This girl evidently viewed us as ‘church people’.) I was caught by surprise as I was certainly not expecting that as an answer! For some of the kids, we were their only hope of something better. We were the bright spot in their day. We were the ones that cared enough to love and reach out to them with the love of Christ. Had I had a fear of man, I would have pushed away the Holy Spirit’s prompting and would have lost an opportunity to share His love with this girl.

As I further talked with her, I discovered that she was rejected by her friends at school and was very hurt by that. I was able to share with her from personal experience how I had found a true Friend in Jesus. The very next week, this little girl was gloriously saved! Through all the training, the work, the loss of sleep, and inconveniences, nothing can be compared to the rewards of investing in these young lives. I can truly say it was worth it all!

My time in Oklahoma teaching truth in the public schools and doing after-school Bible clubs was a growing time and a stretching experience. When I stop relying on God and fail to look to Him alone for approval, I soon fear man rather than the Maker.

God is continuing to do a work in my heart. What I experienced on my Journey was not a one-time thing. It is an on-going process. My Maker is continuing to mold me and develop in me His perfect love that casts away all fear.

~ Sarah
September 2007 Journey

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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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Ever since my baptism last August, I had been striving to draw closer to God on a daily basis. Yet, at that point, I didn’t realize that I had allowed some affections to creep into my life and compete with my love for God. It wasn’t until this past September when I went on a Journey to the Heart that I was able to get alone with God and hear His voice as to what He had in mind for my life.

In Bill Gothard’s Basic Seminar, he describes a new perspective on fully dedicating your life to Christ. He uses the illustration of a room with everything inside representing the things that you do in your life. This might include each activity you have become involved in or every subject that you’ve mastered. In this illustration, when you become a new Christian and dedicate your “life” to Christ, it is like you are  inviting Him to come into the room and allowing Him the freedom to have control of all the aspects of your life. Let’s say there is a box in the room for each of your accomplishments. If there is something that you want to hold on to and don’t want you new Roommate to know about or take away, you might build a closet, put the box on the top shelf out of reach, and lock the door. Then, you really aren’t giving God everything because you are still withholding that one little box in your closet!

As I was searching my heart, trying to figure out if there was any particular area in my life that I had not yet surrendered to God, He revealed to me an area where I had allowed myself to be in control. At first, I was unwilling to give this up because it wasn’t all bad. Just some of it was, so the good outweighs the bad and makes it ok to live with, right? Wrong!

I argued back and forth with God about it, and finally agreed to give it all to Him. I was able to discover that God wants to be the center of my life, and I need to be willing to let Him be in control of all aspects of my life, including my future.  The Lord showed me that He is my fulfillment; He is all that I will ever need to be happy. He also revealed to me that now is the perfect time for me to focus on serving the Lord through my current responsibilities.

I Corinthians 7:34-35 says – “The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. And this I speak for your own profit; not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction.”

These verses prompted me to rededicate myself to focus on serving the Lord rather than pleasing myself. That alone has been life-changing for me, and now I am able to fully trust God to care for everything I will ever need or want! As challenging as it was, after I completely surrendered everything to God, I was finally able to experience true peace in my spirit.

In closing, I will just share one of the verses that suck out to me during this time of my life: Psalm 126:2-3: “Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with joyful shouting; then they said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad.” Yes, God has done an awesome work in my life, and I am very glad!

~ Grace
September 2009 Journey

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