Living the Journey

In the beginning of July, I was blessed with the privilege of attending my fourth Journey to the Heart. The Lord used those ten days of self-examination and time alone with Him to reveal Himself to me in great and powerful ways! I found myself asking the first day, “Lord why am I here this week? What are you going to teach me? Why is Your Word not coming alive to me today like it should?” It was as if I took a step forward, and threw all my burdens before Him in a huge tangled mess. He spoke to me in a quiet voice that morning. He said, “Ye receive not, because ye ask not…” Such a simple answer!

God is not a God of intellect or human reasoning. He doesn’t care how you word your prayers, or if you sound “put together” when you come before Him with all your worries. He much prefers a child that is desperate for Him, lost without Him, and no longer concerned about anything but Him. He wants you in your lowest, weakest state – the REAL you – void of all human strength, empty of all self. That is when He draws near and whispers in your ear the perfect answer; that is when He fills you up with Himself and provides a solution that heals every problem and destroys every burden.

My Father taught me to pray at Journey. He didn’t whip out a gigantic list of problems that I had and tell me to fix them all. He simply said, “Ask, and ye shall receive from my hand…”

So I asked!

Prior to the Journey, our family had been in Pennsylvania visiting relatives. During our time there, the Lord had placed on my heart a tremendous burden for some of our unsaved relatives. That first day at Journey, I felt the Lord leading me to ask for their salvation again. I knelt by the bed in my room and found myself pouring out my heart before the Lord. He gave me peace as I laid it all at His feet! I was able to cast my cares upon Him and spend the remainder of the day rejoicing in His love and feeling a new awareness of His presence!

It was just the next day that I was talking by phone with my younger sister Bethany, who is 12. She shared excitedly with me how they had decided to stay in PA one extra day for no reason at all. That day, our cousins came by to visit. (This was the same day I had prayed). Bethany poured out her story of the conversation she had carried on with our cousin Emily, who is very close to her in age, and how the Lord had led her to share the gospel with Emily. She told me that Emily had received the Lord as her Savior and had dedicated her life to Jesus!!! “Ask, and ye shall receive…”

Perhaps the greatest lesson God taught me at Journey is this: Solutions to my problems do not come by a method, but by a relationship with Him. On Friday evening in the Northwoods, 6 teams (64+ girls) had gathered to pray in the upper prayer tower. For the first time, I witnessed one-accord power in prayer throughout an entire group of girls and not just a single team! I watched as young ladies committed and re-committed their lives to Jesus, confessed hidden sins, cried out for freedom, and laid their requests at the feet of their Maker. During this time our team cried out for salvation for lost friends and family, healing for the sick among us, and various other needs. The Holy Spirit was present among us that night!!! Others who were far beyond the walls of the prayer tower testified that they had heard us crying out to Jesus – a noise like thunder.

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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…

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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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Rebecca’s time alone with God each day was nourishing, but dry. She had heard about others who delighted in God’s Word and prayer like “peaches and cream,” but wasn’t really sure if she would ever feel that way. On her recent Journey to the Heart she experienced God’s presence and developed a greater delight in God’s Word than she ever had before. The important truths she discovered took her relationship with God to a whole new level.

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~ Rebecca
July 2009 Girls Journey

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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.
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I wanted to come to the Journey to the Heart so that I could get to know Jesus more intimately. What I didn’t realize is that God wanted to know me and He desired to pursue relationship with me. I had been meditating on this verse in the beginning of the week: “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24). I asked the Lord to remove anything from my life that would hinder me from being completely free to love Him with my whole heart.

Sure enough, the Spirit of God spoke to me and pointed out to me the things that I needed to make right. I have returned home with a list from God of people I need to ask forgiveness from, things I need to talk to my parents about, and other people I need to talk to. Now I am discovering how to walk in the light, have a clear conscience, and to be a mighty man of God.

More than that, the Lord is revealing Himself to me in ways I could not have imagined. He is opening up my eyes to His word and showing me insights by His Spirit. I am learning how to communicate with Jesus and how to recognize His voice. It wasn’t until I went to a quiet place and honestly opened myself to the Lord that I began to hear from Him. He answered my questions and responded to my requests. And above all, I found a God who wanted me and wanted to fellowship with me.

Now I am learning what it means to live in Christ; exchanging His life for mine. I no longer live for Christ, but Christ is my life. I am asking Him to live in me and through me to accomplish His will and His purposes. Instead of trying so hard to be a Christian, I am trusting Christ to be my all in all. Now God can do through me what I think is impossible because He is free to be all that He is. As I die, Christ lives.

God used “Journey to the Heart” to rekindle my relationship with Him. I am encouraged to daily meditate on His word and seek His face. Thank you, Jesus!

~ Timothy
July 2008 Guys Journey

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