Trina knew from her last Journey what it was like to get away and spend ten days with the Lord. This second Journey ended up being even better than the first one as she came to an even deeper level of joy in her relationship with the Lord.
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~ Trina
May 2010 Journey
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
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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I thought I looked fine as a Christian homeschool girl—I wore the skirts, I read the books, I smiled—and I didn’t mind. In fact, I accepted those standards as my own, so I didn’t feel like I needed to change my heart in any way. I read God’s Word and liked it, I had dedicated my life to Him, and I spent nearly an hour every morning in devotions and prayer. I didn’t feel like my spiritual life was dry, and it certainly didn’t look like that to outsiders. I knew I was having some trust issues, and I knew there were areas in my life in which I needed to fully surrender to His will—but I thought I was able to deal with them alone.
From day one of the Journey I was challenged to examine my heart more thoroughly than ever before. I looked into my life and I saw . . . myself. It was like going into a library filled with one subject—me. Shelves filled with volumes on my experiences and articles on my talents; walls covered with pictures of the things I’d accomplished and detailed schedules of my future. There were a few notes on what God had done in my life and a couple of pictures of the gifts He’d given me, but that was all.
To tell you the truth, I was horrified! I looked into my life and saw few evidences of real humility, Christ-like grace, or genuine love—enough to get by as being a “good Christian,” but not enough to be truly Godly. You might not have noticed it from the outside, but after discovering it, I knew, and the knowledge made me rather uncomfortable. One morning on my prayer walk around the lake in the Northwoods, I stood chewing my nails at the door of the self-library of my heart. Then I felt Jesus come up behind me and ask, “Do you believe that I can do a great work in your life?”
I said, “Sure. You can do anything.” But then God revealed one big area in which I had not trusted Him—my future. I realized that through desiring my own way for my future, I was taking it out of God’s hands and saying, “Thanks, I’ll handle this.” By being afraid of failure, I was failing to trust that He had a perfect plan for my life.
So I told God I would trust Him, no matter what. I told Him how it would be hard for me sometimes, and I asked Him to come alongside me and encourage me when I felt like I couldn’t trust Him any more. I asked Him to make His presence and love first and foremost in my mind so I’d never forget. It was so freeing, handing my future back to the Lord!
Immediately, He brought to mind part of a message Mr. Gothard had given us back at Headquarters on what a blessing it can be to give God a period of years while you are still young and single to focus on serving Him without distraction. God said to me, “I want you to give me the next four years of your life and dedicate those years to single service. I will use you fully for me, and you won’t need to worry any more about how your youth will be spent.” At first I thought, “Why? I gave you my whole life—now you’re taking any possibility of marriage within the next four years!” (Now I realize how ridiculous that excuse was . . . I’ll only be 21, after all!) But He convicted me to give Him the next four years in which to remain single, with no reservations.
I did. Once I placed that area of my life in His hands, I was filled with joy! I wanted to sing! (It’s a good thing I was alone on my walk, because I don’t have the greatest singing voice… <g>) I realized that through giving God the next four years, He would be able to create in me the person He wanted me to be. Every decision, every thought, and every idea would be placed into His caring hands. It was among the most difficult decisions I’ve ever made . . . continue reading… 
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.
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 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:
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
Last year in June I attended my first Journey, during which I had suicidal depression and was in rebellion to my authorities. God used the first Journey to change my life . . . and this second one to help me to overcome several major fears. I have been petrified of people, rejection, public speaking, and standing alone for the longest time.
Last year I wanted to be on a team of rebels. This year, I wanted a team of girls who all wanted to be there . . . and of course, I found out on both occasions, that God’s ways are opposite to ours, and that He knows the best thing for us.
Through a series of discipleship opportunities and many different occasions of praying for different girls, God helped me to overcome my fear of rejection from people and learn how to make Jesus my best friend. Not only did I learn how to love Jesus as a friend that sticks closer than a brother, but I learned how to disciple girls. That has been my dream ever since last year and I never had the courage to do it. I was always floating along with the tide, unable to swim against it. God gave me freedom over my fear of man on this Journey and filled me with a greater joy than ever before. Not only could I stand alone, I could do it with great joy.
During the course of the week, God answered some major prayer requests that I brought before Him and my team. He also gave me a greater love for my family and I missed them all even though I usually enjoy time to myself.
I want to be able to have an impact on girls outside of my family . . . so God laid it on my heart to first work on my ministry at home so that I will then be prepared to do that. Upon arriving home, I was overjoyed to find that my parents were giving me and my sister permission to gather a group of girls and return to the Journey in March/April. I am now looking forward to what God will do, who He will choose, and how He is going to use my life.
~ Hannah
September 2009 Girls Journey
Journey to the Heart is a 10-day retreat founded by Rev. Dr. Bill Gothard of the Institute of Basic Life Principles. Each group of about 10-15 . . . 
A Journey to the Heart is 10 days to get alone with God and seek Him. It is an opportunity for young people . . .©2008 Robert Staddon. Design by Abundant Designs
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