Living the Journey

Hey! I’m Katie and I am preparing to go on the September girls Journey to the Heart!

For three nights in a row last week, I would wake up having dreamed about being attacked by someone or something. One night, I woke up startled from one of these dreams and gripped with a fear of my future as well as a fear of pain or getting hurt. I knew that God did not want me to live in or sleep with these fears and dreams, but how could I get rid of them? I didn’t know.

The next morning, Mr. Gothard called a few of us into his office for a time of prayer. He asked around the little group to see if any of us had any prayer requests. For a moment, I didn’t want to say anything. I thought, “Hey; these people would hear what I was struggling with!” But God prompted me to go ahead and ask them to pray for me.

Mr. Gothard seized the opportunity to impart some wisdom and explained several simple truths. He first asked if I had ever dedicated my life to God, to which I answered “yes”. He then explained that because my body belonged to God, Satan could not attack me in any way that God did not allow. He also mentioned that if I ever were to be attacked, that I should just cry out to God, and He would protect me according to Psalm 50:15: “Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.”

Mr. Gothard shared how when he was younger, he purposed to die for God. He didn’t care how or when, but knew that when he died, it was going to be God’s appointed time and way. He encouraged me to do the same thing.

That night I knelt down beside my bed and rededicated my body to God. I told God that I was willing and ready to die for Him. I also prayed out loud and completely gave God my sleep. Then I prayed that if it was His Will, I would be able to rest well and wake up whenever He wanted me to. And finally, I prayed that I would be able to get something good out of my Bible time the next morning. With that, I rolled over and fell into a deep sleep.

I woke up with my alarm at six ‘o-clock the next morning . . .  refreshed! And I don’t remember even waking up at all after I asked God for sleep. I got out of bed, and started reading through a part of Psalm 119. As I was reading through the verses, one stood out to me which I took for my rhema that day. It was Psalm 119:37 and says, “Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me in thy way.” My challenge now is to live out this rhema by looking continually towards the Lord instead of being distracted by anything that does not bring about an eternal impact!

When I cried out to the Lord, He answered me. It has now been over a week and none of those fears have come back!

I now know that if I am ever struggling with doubts, fears, or anything else, I can bring it to Him in prayer. The well known and deeply loved hymn, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, expresses this so well:

“What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

~ Katie
September 2010 Girls’ Journey

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What am I going to do with my life? This may be a question going through your mind right now. It had been ringing in my head since before I was 12!

I wanted to do what God wanted me to do, but I let God know that there were a few things I’d never do, even if He asked me! Not surprisingly, for the next 5 years I didn’t hear a thing from God about what I should do.

Then, sitting at the 2005 Sacramento ATI Conference, “Total Surrender for Total Success,” I finally did what God had wanted me to do all along—surrender everything to Him. Walking out of that auditorium, I could feel God’s pleasure.

Then I just “happened” to walk right up to the Oak Brook College of Law booth. The person handed me some information. I said, “Thanks”, and kept on going. Later that same night, I just “happened” to meet two awesome Christian guys who just “happened” to be Oak Brook College students. On the 35-hour drive home, God revealed to me that He had given me a dream: Law and Government Policy.

I was so excited to start that first year! After some initial challenges, I figured I had it cased with a few A’s on midterms. I was glad God had led me into Oak Brook, but I figured I could take it from there. That pride deadened me to God’s conviction in my life. By the time I got to finals, I was one very (over)confident law student. But when the grades came back, my pride was crushed. I began to hear God’s gentle convictions again, and I began to obey.

I had limited my relationship with God to “finding God’s will” instead of actually finding God Himself. Realizing how much I’d missed out on, I now wanted to seek and know God Himself. So after taking the First-Year-Law-Students-Exam (a mini bar exam), I came to the Journey. And I met with God! Continuing in my relationship with Him, God directed me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Strange things happened. I got a full-time job and my grades improved, big time!

So God has used Oak Brook College of Law in my life already. Now, getting set to take the bar exam in less than a year, I look out and see that God continues to use OBCL in the lives of the graduates, as they practice in many different fields in jurisdictions across America and even in Canada.

So what are you going to do with your life? Have you totally surrendered yourself to God, allowing Him to reveal all the blessings He has for you? If you have, check out Oak Brook College and talk to God about it. OBCL may be in His plan for you!

~ Marty
November 2007 Journey

For more information on the Oak Brook College of Law, check out this post on the Family Support Link.

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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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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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This past week concluded my second Journey to the Heart. God met me unexpectedly the first day. I suddenly became aware of what had been holding me back from fully experiencing God’s power! As a young child, I had been rejected/pushed away by my parents, and although they had confessed and repented of this many times, I had harbored a lot of bitterness towards them and many others who had hurt me deeply over the years.

When I was younger, there had also been a struggle between my parents in their marriage, which had caused me to cut off my spirit from them, to build up walls of defense, and to suffer asthma and nightmares from my fears. I had sought acceptance in other people and possessions, which had caused me to not only lack the trust I needed for my parents, but to hold back from fully trusting God.

The Breaking Point

As this realization dawned upon me, I broke down and wept on the floor where we had all knelt to pray in groups of 3 or 4. My team leader, sensing that God was doing a work in my heart, led me away to talk in private. Over the course of the next 2 hours, she helped me identify 30 lies I believed, 20 painful memories I was suffering from, and 5 different fears that were affecting my health.

That day my eyes were opened to the bondage that I had been in for so many years. I experienced a new freedom as I prayed asking God to take back the ground I had surrendered. I was able to fully forgive my offenders and to develop a new love for them, and a desire to serve and bless them!

Dying Leaves are More Beautiful

This amazing event set the stage for the rest of my Journey! I found that my heart was open to examination as I studied the different heart conditions. I was able to pray for others with a whole new love for them! I saw God use me to encourage and disciple many other girls throughout the time there, and to cry out to Him without fear of what others would think. There was a whole new awareness of His promptings, and the ability to hear His voice like never before! Most of all, I learned to understand the pain of others who were in similar bondage to what I had been in.

God showed me how to understand the hurts of another and to care for them! He broke me one night as I was spending time alone with Him under the stars. I wept for a girl I had known who was experiencing much more than I had ever experienced, but was held by the chains I had been in.

Throughout the week, as I observed the beauty of the colorful leaves on the trees, I was reminded continually by our team leader that the leaves were beautiful, yet they were dying! I saw that just as dying leaves are more beautiful than those that are alive, so we as believers are required to die to self and to be on fire for the Lord, in order to achieve the greatest beauty.
continue reading…

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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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