Living the Journey

Rachel had a serious car accident thirteen years ago. Her skull and cheekbone were crushed and a hundred pieces of glass were embedded in her head. This caused her to suffer many headaches. However, four years ago, she experienced a traumatic event in her marriage, and since then she has had a splitting headache every single day!

During the hour of prayer on Thursday evening of the Mother’s Journey to the Heart, she discovered a cause—a root of bitterness toward her husband. She confessed it to God and her husband and asked God to deliver her from all of its consequences.

The next morning she woke up without a headache. This was incredible! She felt her head to see if it was really true. All that day there was no headache. However, she was afraid to tell anyone, because she thought it might return. Sunday morning she again woke up with no headache! She realized that God had healed her. Her joy was inexpressible!

Rachel’s enthusiasm and excitement grew as she told everyone about her healing. A week later her husband affirmed that no headache had occurred since that day!

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On the Thursday of my Journey to the Heart we had a day of delighting in the Lord and I went out on the lake in a kayak by myself. I had finally worked up the courage to cry out to God to remove from my heart all of the wrong affections that were there.

It was a dark, dreary day, but at the moment I cried out I truly felt God’s peace quieting my soul. As I looked up, a bald eagle flew right over my head and the clouds parted. Beautiful, golden sunlight fell on me. It was as though God was saying, “My face is shining upon you, I will give you peace, I will give you the grace to overcome this.” And for the rest of the time that I was on the lake, I was underneath the sun whenever the clouds parted. A beautiful blue sky guided me back to shore.

I vowed to God that I would never play a video game again, listen to rock music, or look at pornography. It was so freeing! Even though I’ve already had a great love for the hymns of the faith, God has increased it much more. When we were singing them on the way to the Northwoods and together as a group they sounded so beautiful to me.

When we had the hour of prayer on Thursday, myself and the other two guys with whom I was praying ended up praying for three hours. To me, it felt like maybe half an hour at the most!!! Near the end, I felt as though  it was just God and I, Him looking down on me with His pleasure.

Throughout the week, as God revealed things I had between members of my family and myself, I called them, and felt load after load being lifted from my shoulders. I called my father, and asked his forgiveness for leaving him out of my life, and I told him I truly wanted a closer relationship with him. I asked both him and my mother forgiveness for having a bitter spirit toward them, my brother for having a prideful attitude toward him.

And come Saturday night, when we were all praying together, I sensed God’s presence in a way I never imagined possible! continue reading…

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Nicole closely guarded her secret for a whole year! Three times a day she would eat a meal, and three times a day she would purge it from her stomach. At first she felt guilty, but soon it became a normal part of her day.

When Nicole heard about the Journey to the Heart, she wanted to go. However, she purposed that she would not get rid of her eating disorder, nor would she forgive the trusted family friend who had deeply offended her a year earlier and triggered her food addiction.

During the Journey orientation, she learned how to have a whole new response to the one who had offended her. This included asking God to bless that person with the qualities that he was obviously missing, such as repentance, truthfulness, self-control, genuine love, etc.

While on the July 2009 Girls’ Journey, Nicole was impacted as she learned about a fearful heart. She learned that the power of sin is in its secrecy, and she had to call home and confess to her parents what she was doing and why she was doing it.

She was fearful because she did not think that her parents would understand. However, the very next day the one who had offended her called up and confessed what he had done—a year earlier. This was an amazing evidence of God’s response to the verbal blessing of Nicole.

Since the Journey, Nicole has not only experienced great freedom in being open with her parents, but she no longer has the urge to continue her eating disorder.

A doctor interviewed Nicole and exclaimed, “To the medical world, it would be a miracle to instantly stop the kind of eating disorder that Nicole had.”

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August 19th one year ago marks the largest turning point in my life. It was on that day that, while on a Journey to the Heart, God pulled on my heart and convicted me to call my earthly father about a sin I had been hiding for years. In my journal that day, I wrote two sentences:

“August 19th, 2008: On this day, I begin a new path towards moral freedom.”

“O God who made these trees, let this moment be the title page of a new beginning.”

Little did I know how much God would fulfill those two statements of my heart. His method was simple: take my life, flip it upside down, and shake me out. Then flip me back over and fill my cup with His presence—His continual presence. Here are the three major areas He has affected the most in my life.

God’s Word is Living

Prior to Journey to the Heart, I never read my Bible. Never. I didn’t want to. I felt nothing when I did, and seriously doubted its inerrancy. I read many books on why the Bible was reliable, but the more I read, the more I doubted it. I liked Aquinas and Plato better, who gave logical reasons for what they stated, as opposed to the Apostle Paul’s way of stating spiritual matters as facts without any backing but Jesus’ work on the cross.

While as Journey to the heart, I discovered why the Bible is trusted by so many: it speaks to man’s heart. Read the Psalms and the words of Jesus, and one sees a depth that touches the weaknesses of man’s humanity like no psychologist ever could.

God’s Way of Life is Freedom

One year ago, I could have written St. Augustine word for word:

“But I was an unhappy young man, wretched as at the beginning of my adolescence when I prayed you for chastity and said: ‘Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.’ I was afraid you might hear my prayer quickly, and that you might too rapidly heal me of the disease of lust which I preferred to satisfy rather than suppress.”
(Confessions, VIII. vii)

Yet right now, comparing now to a year ago, I cannot remember the last time I lusted like I had before Journey. I cannot take any credit for this at all. It is an uphill struggle every day, and it takes but a moment to fall. But most of all God has remained faithful to me, in turning my heart towards Him and away from the lusts of the flesh. He has taught me His way of freedom, to live for Him and not for myself.

My father calls this concept the “spit-in-the-face theory” while the Apostle Paul calls it “dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” The concept is the same: what I do is not conditioned upon what others do to me or what I want to do, but only upon what Christ has said is best to do. If someone shows me love, I show them love back because Christ commands it. If someone spits in my face, I show them love back because Christ commands it. My identity, and therefore my actions, aren’t circumstantial to this world, because my Master isn’t in this world, only in me.
continue reading…

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The house was in an uproar. Two gold chains lay atop a dresser in the master bedroom on the second floor of the house. The usual wearer of those chains was nowhere to be found. Something was wrong, very wrong. The person to whom those two necklaces belonged to never ever took them off, unless she absolutely had to do so. The woman was a single mother of four: three daughters and one son.

I was the youngest daughter of Joanne, the owner of those two gold necklaces.

The police were at the house questioning my two oldest sisters, Jessica and Amy. I can’t recall what my brother was doing, but I know what I was doing. I was sitting in her room, crying. My mother was gone and I didn’t know where she was. I had just turned 11 one week prior and I could not understand the chaos in my young life.

Finally, my oldest sister, Jessica, told me that I had to go to bed. Jessica was crying, but she was trying to be strong, if for only the sake of me. Everyone in the house was worried about one thing: Mom had done what she’d been threatening to do.

I cried myself to sleep, in fear of what would happen in the morning. When morning came around, I awoke to the heart-wrenching sobs of my sisters. continue reading…

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The anger, bitterness, depression, and thoughts of suicide that Ben experienced, along with narcolepsy and related medical conditions, were traced back to physical abuse that he experienced in his childhood.

Wrong Responses

Ben responded with anger and bitterness, along with closing people off and not trusting anyone. He built up skills in fighting so that he could fight back.

Then came the lies: “I am a failure. God hates me. I am worthless. Life is not worth living.”

Deepening Stresses

At fifteen, Ben began to have a problem with lust. Because it was left unchecked, this led to secretly listening to rock music. He then got caught up in pornography.

Depression set in and he struggled with thoughts of suicide. One day when he was twenty, he loaded a gun and walked out to the back pasture to end it all. His father stopped him, but he continued to listen to rock music whenever he could.

Ben’s desire was to be free, and he tried many things in his own flesh. However, he could not find freedom, because he was too proud to tell his father everything about his past failures. Soon things started going wrong again and even got worse.

How the Truth Set Him Free

When Ben arrived at his Journey, he had two goals: to conquer lust and to deepen his walk with God.

He writes: “The very first day, some of the fellows from a previous Journey shared how sin’s strength was in its secrecy. God really spoke to me through these guys and their willingness to confess secret sins to their parents. Finally, I called my dad and told him everything. At that point, I was free!

“I then realized that I had to take away the things that were influencing me toward the world. I thought my music was OK and the movies that I watched were OK. I was so wrong!

“Now, as I’m home, I am able to flee when temptations come. God has given me His grace. I’ve had a new boldness to witness. I also made a vow to remain pure until marriage and to never look at pornography in any form. It has been amazing to be so free!”

~ Ben
March 2009 Guys Journey

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