Living the Journey

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

6 Comments »

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…

8 Comments »

The bondage began when I was 14 years old. I fell into looking at wrong magazines and wrong pictures on the computer. This greatly damaged my relationship with the Lord because my sinful desire for these things was competing with my love for Him. I tried and tried to live right but I was not able to overcome this secret addiction.

Two years later, in July of 2008, I was able to go on a Journey to the Heart. God spoke to me in a quite but amazing way. He told me that I needed to put my trust in Him and receive His grace instead of putting my trust in myself to be strong enough to overcome temptation. I realized that I needed to renounce the lies that I was believing, such as the lie that "I will never be able to overcome this sin." God showed me what a long-lasting relationship with Him was all about—it is about living in truth and walking by His side!

After renouncing Satan’s lies and openly confessing my sin, I have had a whole new sense of freedom. Now I am seeking God first with all of my heart and not letting the things of this world compete with my love for Christ!

~ Jordan
July 2008 Guys’ Journey

4 Comments »

Harboring inner rebellion and entertaining a secret relationship with a guy I knew my parents would never approve of, I made plans to move out the day I turned eighteen. Deep inside I knew what I was doing was not right and God would not bless me for this, but I stuffed it down for a false hope that I would be satisfied with my boyfriend rather than the Lord. However, I was hurting my family and myself by refusing God’s best. After the third month of this horrible lifestyle, my parents told me to pack my bags and then they dropped me off at the IBLP Headquarters. I was so upset and determined I would not change, but God had different plans.

After working on staff for three months, I attended my second Journey to the Heart. I seemed fine to everyone around me but inside that battle was raging. I wanted my own way and my own plans, but I couldn’t argue with the genuineness of those around me. Their love for the Lord, their surrendered lifestyle, their true joy that only comes from the Lord, and their satisfaction in Him placed before me a choice: me or God. I couldn’t go any longer! I broke and surrendered. I confessed everything to my parents, which was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life! But it was worth it because the strength of sin is in its secrecy!

Confessing to my parents and turning away from my sin gave me a new humility, which I wouldn’t trade for anything! I have a new freedom and joy I never knew and now I love the Lord more than anything and am willing to serve Him with all that I am. I am truly satisfied, because He is all I need or could ever want!

~ Anna

4 Comments »

In my last post, I wrote on how the Lord had cleansed me from worldly music. He did. However, it was only another step through the door of true understanding. Although there was a new found resolve in my heart from the vow I made to the Lord, I felt as though I was still putting forth most of the effort in every area of my life and spiritual maturity.

It was like a shadow on the wall of my heart. No matter where I went, I couldn’t get away from it, and trying to wipe a shadow from a wall doesn’t work. This shadow was not specific unconfessed sins, but rather the core of who I was illuminated by God’s Word. Stopping the Light of God from purifying me completely, this darkness of self led me into deeper and deeper misery.

In my outward life, things were actually going the best they ever had. The Lord had cleansed me from a stronghold, I was striving for righteousness, and I felt confident that I was doing what the Lord wanted me to do. But there was still the shadow. When I wouldn’t get up for devotions, a sweep of hate would fall upon me—a hatred of myself. I wanted to kill myself. “Either Christianity is miserable or it isn’t real.” That is where my thoughts often directed themselves. When the ever-looming fact of my inadequacy to please God would continue to present itself, I would continue to run back to what I believed, to what I had done to prove that I was God’s child.

Truly, everything good is the work of the Lord. It comes only from His mighty grace which flows from His heart of love—the Life of Jesus. In my pathetic state of strong-willed iniquity, God still sought me. The Lord kept knocking—calling to me tenderly. All He wanted me to do was open the door, see who I really was, confess my absolute inadequacy, and let Him and His goodness fully into my heart.

O how we are blessed with a God that pursues us diligently! On my knees—powerless, hopeless, and defeated—I opened the door. When the genuinely evil motives of my self-righteous heart were revealed, God poured down His grace from heaven and glory filled my soul.

At first I felt no different, but knowledge of the truth of His Word in my heart grew. By that night I couldn’t sleep for the joy that was burning in me. In the morning, when the pure excitement of true salvation began to sink in, I noticed something else. No shadow. I had it all backwards. This was never my own journey to my heart. It was God’s journey to my heart! And now, “It is finished.” He has won and cleansed me. I am His. And now the journey of Christ in me, which I knew nothing about, begins.

~ Tim
June 2008 Guys’ Journey

4 Comments »

I didn’t have any real sense of God’s power. I didn’t read the Bible very much and strongly doubted its infallibility. Dabbles in systematic theology and Christian philosophy had left me cynical toward Christianity—God wasn’t a power in my life, merely something to be put into a logic formula or defined by a set of verses.

At the Journey to the Heart, away from all the noise and distraction of the world, I began to see God’s power through the individuals around me. They could pray with such power! Speaking blessings to each other and crying out to God had real meaning! At first I thought it was showy, extravagant zeal—as if like the priests of Baal, we were dancing and cutting ourselves on an altar for a god who wouldn’t really work the way we asked him to.

But when our group started to talk about secret sins and several of my teammates gave testimonies about how freeing it was to talk to their parents about their struggles, I felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit and called my father to repent of something I had hid from him for three years. The freedom I felt was amazing! I couldn’t describe it, yet it was so real.

The next day our team got with another team to pray for a young man who felt he needed to call his parents concerning a secret sin. As we prayed together in one accord, I felt God’s Spirit pour out grace, humility, and strength, not only on the young man in the center of our circle but on all of us. I began to cry as I realized what I had been missing: God was real!

Over the next few days the Word of God became living to me. I now understand how easy it is to trust God: His Word explains the world better than any human reasoning and gives our lives principles to live by that are so true and cannot be found elsewhere.

I am so thankful for the opportunity to discover the power of the God of my Salvation at this journey!

~ Tim
August 2008 Guys Journey

3 Comments »