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Month: November 2017

#134. Beautiful Brokenness

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Photo by Trevor Rapp

My life began from a chance sexual encounter between my mom and dad in between my dad’s prison sentences. He was already divorced from my mom at the time. My mom was addicted to drugs and my father was an alcoholic. My grandfather asked his brother to rescue me and my two brothers. He was dying and couldn’t take care of us himself. I was four years old when my great uncle obliged my grandfather’s request and adopted us. My grandfather had asked my great uncle to take us because he “loved children.” My great uncle was a pedophile. He had been caught on numerous occasions, but charges were never brought. 

After he adopted us, he moved us to a children’s home/school and he got a job there as a house parent. My great uncle sexually abused me from the time I was four years old until I was a teenager. While I suffered terrible abuse at the hands of my great uncle, the school was actually a wonderful place. God brought people into my life who genuinely cared about me and invested in me. 

My best friend’s mother was one of these people. She truly loved me and was very good to me. Another was the offensive coordinator at our high school football team. I was the quarterback on our team and this man mentored me. He was a great role model. He loved his wife and showed me what a healthy marriage looked like. He spent time with me, taking me hunting and fishing. He took me to church and provided guidance that helped keep me from going down wrong paths. These caring people played a significant role in God’s redemption in my life. 

God provided for me in other ways. I got a generous football scholarship to the Citadel. This was a full-ride scholarship that the Citadel provided specifically for someone from a children’s home. But this didn’t turn out as I expected. I redshirted my first year, but my second year I felt confident—I was playing well and had made the first team on many special teams. Citadel had promised to add me to their roster, but before the first game, I found out they had not added me to their roster and I was ineligible to play. This was so difficult for me. I felt rejected, betrayed, and sensed of loss of identity. I tried out for the baseball team and made it, but I wasn’t good enough to play. It was this dark season of my life that created fertile soil for the truth of the Gospel to grow in my life. 

My junior year, my now wife invited me to a Campus Outreach event. It was here that I heard for the first time about a personal relationship with Christ. I accepted Christ and was baptized. The Campus Outreach director began investing in me and mentoring me. When I graduated, I became a staff member for Campus Outreach. When I was a team leader at a Campus Outreach retreat in Florida, I found out my biological father was living nearby. I went to visit him. I hadn’t seen him for nearly 20 years. He didn’t recognize me when he answered the door. When I told him who I was he became nervous and started shaking. He smoked one cigarette after another and talked non-stop, telling me all the bad things he had done in his life. As I was driving away, I began sobbing. Years of pain came pouring out of me. I couldn’t stop crying. I drove to see the director of Campus Outreach and shared what had just unfolded. Until this moment, I hadn’t told anyone about the abuse in my past. I felt God opening my heart to come out of hiding and share the whole story. He listened without judging but with acceptance and love. He hugged me and he and his wife prayed for me. A new trajectory began for me this day. A journey of healing had begun. 

I went to see many counselors but none really connected. I was in seminary, married with a three-year-old daughter and a son on the way. Life should have been good, but I was falling apart. It was at this time that God provided a counselor that truly helped me. She forced me to wrestle with my story, voice my deepest fears, and access my rage. It was difficult, but over time God revealed important truths to me and empowered me to become a man. Through counseling, God brought great transformation. God has healed the brokenness of my past and brought restoration to my identity and my relationships. 

God is using the pain of my past to help others. I now serve as an associate pastor at an inner-city church. Because of what has happened in my own life, I have a special ability to sense pain in the lives of others. This sensitivity, combined with the empathy that comes from the deep knowing of pain in my own life, opens up conversations and creates connections with people. I can share my story… my brokenness and God’s plan of love and redemption. God can make the brokenness in our lives the most beautiful parts about us. 

A Million God Stories is a Christ-centered ministry which offers a platform for Christians from all streams of Christian faith to give praise for how God has worked in their lives. Christ heals in infinitely creative ways and we acknowledge that His way of helping may differ from person to person.

#133 Blessing with Zinnias

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Photo by Trevor Rapp

For years, my dad grew zinnias for me every summer at our family farm. Dad and I would go to the farm nearly every week throughout the summer and harvest the zinnias. I had bouquets of these colorful flowers in my house and in my office. The flowers made me smile. When I looked at the zinnias, I was reminded of my dad and also of my heavenly Father and His beautiful creation. My dad passed away the last week in October in 2016. It was the last week of the zinnia harvest. We cut a final bunch of zinnias to be displayed at the church at his funeral. He would have loved that.

My dad and I were very close. We were both dentists and practiced together for years. I have missed him terribly since the day he died, but as summer approached, my grief rose to a new level. The family farm was sold in June. My dad was gone, the farm was gone, and there would be no zinnias this year. But then our church announced the need for volunteers in the community garden. I asked if I might have a row in the garden to plant some zinnias and was permitted to do so. Two months later, hundreds of beautiful zinnias were blooming in the garden.  

There were so many flowers! We wanted to share! The church gave me permission to cut the zinnias to share with residents at a local nursing home. At first, I just made flower arrangements for the dining room and common spaces. But then I found out from our church care team that there were a few residents in local nursing homes that had requested visitors. The care team suggested that I take some of the zinnias to these residents.

My children went with me to take the flowers to the first nursing home resident on our list to visit. We walked down the long corridor of the nursing home with a beautiful bouquet of zinnias, looking for her room. We finally located her room and peeked inside. Sitting beside her bed was a woman I had known for many years. She was a dear friend of my father’s! She and her sister, who was the resident we were delivering the flowers to, grew up in the same small community with my dad. She was thrilled to see us! She introduced all of us to her sister. “This is Bobby’s daughter and grandchildren!” Her older sister smiled. She had suffered a stroke and was not able to communicate, but her twinkling eyes said it all. I put the flowers on her bedside table and held her hand. She smiled at me with a knowing smile. Her eyes locked on mine, and then with a frail hand, she reached up to touch my hair.

We stayed a bit and visited. As we left, I thought about what had just happened. The first person to receive the zinnias we grew in memory of dad was someone who grew up with him in his small community many miles away. Because she couldn’t communicate, I would have never known that she knew Dad if her sister, my dad’s dear friend, hadn’t been visiting her at the moment we arrived with the flowers. God was in that moment.

Since then the flower ministry has blossomed and God is blessing many nursing home residents with beautiful bouquets of flowers. But I will never forget the first resident that we visited and the connection to my dad. What a gift it was to me to give the flowers to someone who knew and loved my father. He would be so happy that this dear woman was the first recipient of the zinnias we grew because of him!

I am so thankful to God for providing the opportunity at our church community garden to grow the flowers and share with others as this has provided much healing for my grieving heart. I am also so thankful to my Heavenly Father for the gift of my earthly father and the hope through Christ of someday being with him again. 

A Million God Stories is a Christ-centered ministry which offers a platform for Christians from all streams of Christian faith to give praise for how God has worked in their lives. Christ heals in infinitely creative ways and we acknowledge that His way of helping may differ from person to person.

#132. A Beautiful Masterpiece

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 Photo by Ashely Rainwater Bilbro

In eighth grade, I started having terrible migraines. They lasted for months on end and I didn’t know what was wrong. Medication didn’t help. My parents took me from doctor to doctor—one even thought I had brain tumor, but I did not. Finally, a doctor determined that my migraines were related to hormonal issues. He told me that there was a new drug on the market, that it wasn’t FDA approved, but that he thought I should try it. He said that it caused weight loss but that I could afford to lose weight.

Perhaps I had blossomed a little more than the other girls in my eighth-grade class, and I did come from a big Greek family and we loved to eat, but I was by no means overweight. The words of my doctor about losing weight really bothered me. I thought, “Even my doctor is telling me to lose weight.” But I didn’t speak these things out loud. My doctor also told me to exercise more. After the first 5–10 pounds that I lost, I got some compliments. I realized the medicine was making me lose weight quickly, and things began to spiral out of control. I became obsessed with what I was putting into my body. By end of eighth grade I had gone from 120 pounds to 90 pounds. My parents attributed the weight loss to the medicine. But I was constantly restricting my food and over-exercising. By the time I entered high school, I had lost another 15 pounds, and eventually I got down to 65 pounds. My parents thought I was eating but I was giving food to the dog or hiding it. They didn’t understand why I was losing weight and took me to multiple doctors. Finally, when I was alone with one doctor, he said, “Is there something you want to tell me?”

I broke down and told him, “I can’t get ahold of myself. I don’t know why. I want to be smaller. I want to be beautiful.” This secret had been choking me and I felt great freedom in telling the doctor. He reassured me that he knew how to help. He connected me with another doctor who began meeting with me once a week. At my first appointment, he looked at me and said, “I am really not quite sure why you are alive, but there is a God up there and He has a big plan for you.” The doctor said he had never treated anyone in such a serious condition from an eating disorder. My heart rate was less than 30 beats per minute (normal is 72). My bones were brittle from malnourishment, but none were broken. When he related it to me like that—that my life was in grave danger, and in fact he seemed surprised that I was alive—I knew things needed to change.

I realized that I had a problem. I needed the Lord to give me peace. I needed His love to pour over me and change my life from the inside out. I recommitted my life to the Lord. I was raised in a family of committed, dedicated Christians. But I had been drawn away to earthly things. The number on the scale dictated my worth, not the fact that I am a child of God. We live in a world where we compare ourselves with others and it is very tempting to fall into that trap.

It took a few years and I had a few setbacks, but I am much better now. I am happy and healthy with no irreversible damage. I am now getting my PhD, and it is surreal to think of the change in my life.

But it is still a struggle for me. I can’t do this without the Lord. Every morning I still feel ugly and undeserving. But I start my day in prayer, and that changes me. The Lord is right there saying, “Your worth is in Me.” I know that God has a purpose for my life. I can use my experience for God’s glory to help other people who feel trapped. I am closer to the Lord than I have ever been. This is how God’s grace has worked in my life. I want to embrace His grace instead of questioning it. I want to embrace it and pass His grace and love on to others.

I have a Type A personality and it was hard to surrender, but this is what really saved me. I just let Him take over. I had to turn to the One that created my life and give my life to Him, surrendering to Him every day. Each day I say, “Okay, my day is Yours. Tell me how to go about it.” This can be applied to anyone’s struggles. Whatever it is, God can get you through it.

I have often meditated on the verse from 1 Corinthians and thought, “This is the least I can do for Jesus—honor Him with my life, and that includes my body and how I treat it.”

“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”

1 Corinthians 6:19–20

God has never forsaken me. He is always there. I feel like my life was a broken vase. God has glued it back together into a beautiful masterpiece and I never want to go back. 

A Million God Stories is a Christ-centered ministry which offers a platform for Christians from all streams of Christian faith to give praise for how God has worked in their lives. Christ heals in infinitely creative ways and we acknowledge that His way of helping may differ from person to person.

#131. Every Day Is A Gift

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 Artwork by Lily Murphy

I was raised in a loving Christian home and baptized as a young girl. The Lord was always part of our family. This was a great blessing, but I sometimes felt as though I didn’t really have a powerful testimony because I didn’t have a big conversion story where I could say my life changed in a moment.

All my life I wanted to be a wife and mom. My husband and I were blessed with two daughters. On my 30th birthday, I found out I was pregnant with our third child. We were very excited about it. When we had our 20-week ultrasound, I immediately could tell there was something wrong because the technician kept going over the heart of the baby. Then the doctor came in and told us the baby had something wrong with his heart. We were whisked to a high-risk OB who confirmed the diagnosis of the heart problem. Up to this point in my life, I had never experienced the anticipation and fear of the unknown. From the beginning of our son’s diagnosis, the Lord was teaching me—drawing me to Him in a way I had never been drawn. I had never really had to rely on the Lord before—never really experienced a tragedy or serious illness. I can remember thinking it would be easier to miscarry . . . then I wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of the baby being born with the heart problem. I shared this with my dad, and told him that I wished I could be the child and didn’t have to deal with the situation. I wished that I could climb into my dad’s arms and he would take care of it for me. I have come to realize that my heavenly Father WAS taking care of it for me—providing comfort, strength, and perspective all along the difficult journey.

The very next Sunday after we found out about our baby’s condition, we sang the song “He Knows My Name” at church.

I have a Maker

He formed my heart

Before even time began

My life was in his hands (by Tommy Walker)

God gave me this song at just this time to comfort and reassure me. It was almost as if my son was saying this to me. It gave me a great peace.

The doctors gave us three options for our son: compassionate care, heart transplant, or surgeries to repair. We chose the surgeries, all the while praying for a miracle. We knew that God could heal him if He would choose to. One of my friends gave me great perspective when she said, “No matter what, God will heal him—either on this earth or he will be in heaven where he will be completely healed.” I just had to trust God with him.

Our son, Jacob, was born September 5, 2004. He weighed 8 pounds 9 ounces and looked totally healthy—perfect. As the doctor had predicted, he did not have a left ventricle in his heart and some of the arteries that supplied his heart were much smaller than normal. His surgery kept being put off because they thought he had an infection. It was delayed and delayed—which gave us more time with him—and finally it was decided he would have the surgery on September 14. He was wide awake when they took him back. He looked right into our eyes before they took him, and it was like he was saying, “It’s going to be okay.” I believe he died during surgery. After surgery, he was attached to machines on life support—his heart and lungs weren’t working.

The next morning the cardiologist explained that our son’s heart was dead. After much information and prayer, my husband and I decided we would let him go. We called all of our family in, we surrounded him and held him, and we prayed and sang. The family left and my husband and I stayed. Jacob’s little hand was wrapped around my husband’s finger and they turned off life support. The decision to take him off life support was difficult—it was and yet it wasn’t—because of how we felt about his quality of life and because we weren’t afraid of letting him die. There is a mural at our church with the image of big hands with little children’s hands in them and the words, “Given to you, to be brought back to me.” In other words, our children are not our own. They are given to us by God who has entrusted us with their care. God gave us the gift of peace to release Jacob and not be afraid of his future. We knew he was safe. Nothing that this world has to offer can bring the kind of hope that God has given us.

It was a very empty feeling leaving the hospital knowing you should be leaving with a baby but you are leaving that little body there. You feel like life has just stopped and yet it keeps going for everybody else. Time just stood still. It felt like everyone should pause with us, but it was our grief, our pain—and life went on around us. I don’t remember those next few days very well. The choir sang “You Raise Me Up” at the funeral which had become the anthem of my heart. My husband wrote a song for Jacob and sang it at the service. I spoke and our dads prayed.

The comfort that came from the Holy Spirit and from fellow believers that He placed in our life was such a blessing. And eventually we were able to comfort others. About a year later, I shared my testimony about our son at church. There was a man who was visiting who came up afterwards and said his wife was pregnant and that their son had same the same heart defect our son had (what are the chances he would visit our church the day I shared about Jacob!). I gave him our phone number and said if his wife ever wanted to talk, to call. A few months later the man called and said their little fellow had been born and was not doing well. He asked if I had any words to help? Out of nowhere, I felt the Holy Spirit say, “You need to go see them.” In all of my life, I have never heard a clearer message from God. I called my husband and told him and we went. We talked with them and prayed with them and prayed over their son and then we left. We didn’t hear from them for a while—but then when their baby was 39 days old he died. They called and asked if my husband would do the funeral and a 12-year friendship began. The Lord connected us through loss—not expected, but a blessing. It was helpful for us to see a purpose in our pain.

In March of 2006, we were blessed with another son. He has been such a joy to us and I can’t image life without him. If Jacob had lived we might not have had him. I’m thankful that I was blessed to have them both.

I am a nurse and often my patients ask how many kids I have. I say “Three here and one in heaven.” This opens up conversations and allows me to witness and share our story. You just never know how your story will impact others. Because of Jacob, I now have a connection with people who have suffered loss. We can relate to one another and offer hope and encouragement to one another.

God got us through, and even though His plan was hard, there was goodness in it. I have come to know a loving heavenly Father who in our times of trouble wants to comfort us and let us know we are not alone. He doesn’t delight in seeing us in pain but he sees a purpose behind it that sometimes we don’t. He sees the whole picture and we don’t. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord (Isaiah 55:8). 

Sometimes even now I will just be hit with grief and I will be so sad but at the same time so thankful. It is true that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I would never want to have that time with Jacob taken away even though it was painful. I have learned every single day is a gift. Knowing that not a single one of us is guaranteed tomorrow, helps me appreciate all the beauty, love, and joy that each day brings. 

A Million God Stories is a Christ-centered ministry which offers a platform for Christians from all streams of Christian faith to give praise for how God has worked in their lives. Christ heals in infinitely creative ways and we acknowledge that His way of helping may differ from person to person.

#130 Seeing God in Stories

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Photo by Jordan Smith

I published my first book in 2013. In that story, a brother was mentioned who had served in Italy and was killed in World War II. My father served in World War II but didn’t see action. When he returned home, he learned that one of his friends had fallen in a battle at Anzio, Italy. The friend was buried there. My husband and I went to Italy and learned more about World War II history. We visited the cemetery where my father’s friend was buried. We didn’t find his tombstone but did find his name on a memorial listed under those who were Missing in Action.

In my second book, I really wanted to go deeper with the character of the brother who was killed in World War II in my first book. I wanted to use old letters to tell the story of the brother but I wasn’t sure how to go about this. During this time, I attended a dinner party. One of the dinner guests said, “I liked your first book. Are you going to write a sequel?” I told him I was and that I wanted to explore the brother who fell in World War II through letters in the next book. He told me that his great uncle had served in World War II and that he had the letters his great uncle had sent back from the Italy to his family. He also told me that his great uncle was a Kentucky farm boy, which is exactly what my character was . . . and he said he would share these letters with me! This was just what I needed. The letters were family heirlooms, so I carefully color copied them, read them all, and gave them back. The cover of my second book is actually a photo of these letters.

The gift of the letters was so helpful. The language was very different from what I would have imagined, and what he talked about in the letters wasn’t what I expected. Mostly the letters were about two things: 1) he wanted to know what was happening on the farm in Kentucky, and 2) he reassured his mom that he was okay. The letters were beautiful—poignant and sweet. I included several of his letters verbatim in the book. God brought these letters to me exactly when I needed them; the perfect timing was amazing. This also affirmed and encouraged me to write the second book. God inspired me to keep going.

Something similar happened when I was writing my first book and needed information about international flight attendants. My husband and I were staying at a bed and breakfast, and my husband asked the owner what she used to do. She said she used to be an international flight attendant! I asked her if she’s traveled to Rome (the character in my book traveled to Rome) and she said, “Oh, yes!” I asked if I could talk to her for a few minutes and she told me everything I needed to know—where flight attendants stay in Rome, what they do with their free time in Rome, what the crew room is like in the airport, how they got from airport to hotel, and how seniority worked with bidding flights. She was the perfect resource at the perfect time.

God has revealed to me that He is attentive to the details of our lives and that these details are important to Him. My books are Christian fiction. Even though I am not a pastor or a missionary, I want my work to be for God. In a way, my writing and my books are my ministry. Through seeing God work in the details of my story, I saw that He cares about writing and telling stories. I felt God’s affirmation that I was doing His work, and I saw that nothing is impossible with Him. 

A Million God Stories is a Christ-centered ministry which offers a platform for Christians from all streams of Christian faith to give praise for how God has worked in their lives. Christ heals in infinitely creative ways and we acknowledge that His way of helping may differ from person to person.

#129 Ten Second Miracle

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Photo by Abby Daughtry Photography

In the early 1980s we were planting a church in Jacksonville, Florida, and some friends had come to help us. They were living with us at the time and had an infant son younger than a year old. One morning my wife and I were in the kitchen and heard a frightening scream from the spare bedroom. The mom was screaming, “He’s dead, he’s dead!” Her young son had been laid on a high, antique Ginny Lind bed as she turned around to get a diaper and had fallen off. She said he landed on his head. When we arrived in the room he was laying on his back on the bed. She said, “He doesn’t move; he’s not breathing!”

I looked at him; his eyes were open and unresponsive. He was blu​i​sh in color, and when he was touched or spoken to there was no movement or response. All this took place in about 10 seconds. I just placed my hand on his chest and said, “In Jesus name, live.” No yelling or pushing—just a gentle touch and voice.

Then it was as if we had placed heart-shocking paddles on the boy’s chest. His body jerked and he regained consciousness. He began crying, turned a normal skin color, and was fully responsive to sound and touch, with no apparent injuries from the accident. We were overwhelmingly delighted to see that all the power is in the name of Jesus and not in how we do anything. There wasn’t a lot of fanfare and fireworks . . . just a great and powerful God doing great and powerful things. 

A Million God Stories is a Christ-centered ministry which offers a platform for Christians from all streams of Christian faith to give praise for how God has worked in their lives. Christ heals in infinitely creative ways and we acknowledge that His way of helping may differ from person to person.

#128. Journey to Jordan: John the Baptist

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 Photo by Pam VanArsdall

There is this man I have never met but heard often of his life and legacy on earth before he died.

It was on day seven that I found myself alone at the top of a place called Mukawir, a fortress belonging to Herod Antipas where John the Baptist was imprisoned and then killed. I had come to Jordan to help in the filming of a short piece on the Biblical sites of Jordan. Every day held some new adventure and it was the most I had ever been in the front of the camera. However, day seven proved to be the most memorable of adventures. Just me, on top of the ruins of a fortress and a drone filming me overhead. Somehow we had managed to choose a time in which there were no other tourists. Mukawir held an incredible view of the Dead Sea and on a clear day, the towers of Jerusalem. I had time to worship and be with Jesus after filming my scene. I stood looking out into the sea and down the hillside to the various caves that John the Baptist was believed to have been held. 

A cave wouldn’t have been unfamiliar to this man as he had been known to call a cave his home. Jesus called him, “the greatest of men.” A simple life he led and yet supposedly some scholars argue that he was treated well in captivity as Herod Antipas carried some fear/respect for John. But the thing I wondered most is not found in any document or Bible verse. What were John’s final thoughts before his life was taken? It was so quiet on top of that mountain. Just the wind was all that I could hear. As I reflected on the famous life taken at the very spot I stood, I was humbled. John lived and died for a cause greater than himself. I can imagine he suspected he would die and that he felt his cause and message worth the cost.

John the Baptist was a man who had been given the job of preparing the way for Jesus. This job had required consistent preparation, waiting, hoping and trusting. Finally, the day comes and Jesus walks down the hill and is baptized by John. Then shortly after this event, John is arrested and placed in prison (Machareus/Mukawir).

Once again, he is waiting and hoping and trusting. At one point, he even sends his disciples to check that Jesus is in fact the Messiah. 

In reflecting on this man’s life and important role in preparing people for one of the greatest gifts the world would ever receive, I was humbled. To be standing in the place where this man breathed his last breath made me realize how easy it is to become disappointed or disillusioned when waiting and hoping seem to stretch out longer than we anticipated. To trust as deeply as John did, to the point that he dedicated his whole life to the mission of preparing the way for Jesus, required sacrifice and absolute surrender to God. And maybe his final thoughts were on the deep hope he carried of a greater understanding of things yet to come.

“….we who have taken refuge may have powerful encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us, which we have like an anchor of the soul, both firm and steadfast, and entering into the inside of the curtain, where Jesus, the forerunner for us, entered, because He became a high priest forever….”

Hebrews 6:18-20

A Million God Stories is a Christ-centered ministry which offers a platform for Christians from all streams of Christian faith to give praise for how God has worked in their lives. Christ heals in infinitely creative ways and we acknowledge that His way of helping may differ from person to person.

#127. Journey to Jordan: Mt. Nebo Encounter

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 Photo by Pam VanArsdall

I stood on Mt. Nebo in the spot where God showed Moses the promised land that he would never enter. My heart was filled with wonder at the thought of Moses’ journey of faith in God and in the promise of a nation.

Moses has always been one of my favorite characters in the Old Testament. Perhaps it’s because I can identify with him in the fight against slavery. He was an abolitionist, used by God to free the Israelites from captivity in Egypt. Moses faithfully led the Israelites for years in the wilderness.

The Israelites’ journey and their struggle to trust God is often a great parallel to my own journey of faith. The children of Israel struggled to trust God. They complained, doubted God, and at one point thought that slavery in Egypt was better than freedom in the wilderness. Yet in all of that, God provided everything they needed to live.

So many times, I have found myself struggling to trust God in the unknown seasons. Fear has sometimes become more comfortable than faith, but just like the Israelites, God has always provided for my every need. He patiently leads me out of the wilderness of fear, doubt, insecurity, and discouragement and into freedom.

I wonder if Moses was disappointed to not enter the promised land? He fought hard to free his people, so maybe leading a great nation toward freedom was enough.

Looking out at the vast view of Mt. Nebo toward Jericho and beyond, the word freedom came to mind.

Freedom is a word that I feel I so often take for granted. Over the years, God has taught me the power of freedom when He called me to be a voice in the social justice movement.

I thought I had a good grasp of the word freedom, until I spent a day in Jordan visiting the baptismal site of Jesus and the place where Moses stood to look out at the promised land—two places representing promises made and promises being fulfilled.

To walk where Jesus actually walked and remember why He walked the earth truly captivated my heart. Bethany Beyond the Jordan and Mt. Nebo represent the journey of slavery to freedom.

To anyone reading this, do you feel stuck or enslaved to an idea or a lie about yourself or God? How has your journey from slavery to freedom been? Maybe fear has been your captor? I don’t know what point of your journey you might be in, but I do know this: He created us to walk in the freedom of the promise of being His sons and daughters.

As we pulled away from Mt. Nebo, tears came to my eyes as I realized that I had left a part of myself on top of that mountain. The encounter I had with God, looking out on the same vista as Moses did so many years before, changed my life. I felt challenged to surrender every fear and doubt to God.

In that moment with God, on the same mountain where Moses once stood, my heart was renewed at the reminder of the goodness of God. 

A Million God Stories is a Christ-centered ministry which offers a platform for Christians from all streams of Christian faith to give praise for how God has worked in their lives. Christ heals in infinitely creative ways and we acknowledge that His way of helping may differ from person to person.

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