Day 12: Just get it on Paper!

The challenge is going decent so far.  I have not done good at calling and praying for people.  So Today I called one of my friends who lost a daughter at 8 months.  They have modeled so wonderfully what it means to trust in God.  The funeral had so many people they had touched and impacted.  I had the privilege of praying for him and it was such a blessing.  He shared a tough situation that I could pray for him with some friends of his.  God is giving him and his wife such a platform through this hard time to share Jesus too so many.  The other challenge today was to write out your testimony.  So beings that this is also our challenge when we get together for discipleship group I would throw an initial one on paper.  So here it goes:

“I grew up in a good Christian home and went to Christian School.  This was a blessing in my life but I thought the blessing was for me.  I also thought the Christian life was more about the list of do’s and don’t’s than following after God.  I had Christ in my heart from a young age but I did not start truly following after Christ until about 8 years ago.  On our way back from a vacation with my family we had heard a story of a man hearing God’s voice and acting on it.  It was a crazy story but it got us asking “Why don’t we hear God’s voice?”  We realized one of our first steps should be making room by clearing out time.  We realized one of our biggest time suckers was TV so we got rid of Dish and put the TV away.  Those next  years we dove in the word like never before, I read 52 books in one year, we joined a house church and really grew like crazy.  We also heard God’s voice and he lead us on some crazy adventures that have gone through these last 8 years.  6 years ago we found ourselves helping lead a perspectives class on world missions and taking foster classes at the same time.  We wondered why we were taking both because for the foster license to be valid we would have to live in Iowa, and in taking the missions course we had thoughts of moving overseas.  But like always when God asks us to something we just do it without trying to look too far in the future.  After getting done with perspectives we had an opportunity to possibly move to Turkey and do business as missions but that fell through.  2 weeks later we got a call for our boys to live with us, we then had a baby 3 months later, and had a 17 year old foster son move in with us.  We went from 1 to 5 kids in 6 months.  God was really stretching us.  But through the combination of foster classes and perspectives God gave us a different perspective on foster care and life in general.  Through opening up our home to our kids along with other people through these last 5 years we have learned that nothing is our own and that we truly need God because we can’t do good on our own.  We have had many different people live with us including our boys mom, another gal who struggled with addiction, and 4 college guys.  God has taught me so much about myself and how I need him.  God also has challenged me the reason he has blessed me is so that I can bless others.  After I started following God he has written a story far better than any story I have written.  He transformed me from a self-centered, pious “Christian”: to a broken Jesus follower who is in need of him daily.”
This is the first draft.  I am going to try refine this more as the challenge moves on.  It isn’t great but you gotta start somewhere.