death has NO hold on me

GOD IS GOOD!   

This past week I laughed and cried and sang like a crazy person. I was a counselor at Camp Undignified (a.k.a. the most awesome camp around) and it changed my life! I'm giving my testimony on Sunday so I don't want to completely ruin the riveting tale of my complete spiritual turnaround (thank you Jesus!) and I'm only going to share a tiny story. My cousin and one of my closest friends, Katelyn, passed away on September 23 of this year. It broke my heart and I still miss her so much, but I thought that the worst was over after we got past Thanksgiving, Christmas, and graduation with her being gone. But then at camp, people started getting healed all over the place. Ankle, finger, back, stomach, and leg pain was healed. Color blindness was healed. Asthma was healed. I found myself getting progressively frustrated as more healings came up. I had no idea why, so I took it to the Lord. As soon as I started praying I burst into tears. For those of you who have seen me cry, it's not cute. And this was the all out, 100% ugly cry (complete with snot and tears and no tissues anywhere in sight) and it was a cry of sadness and of anger. If God could heal these kids in a time span of 5 minutes, where was He when Katelyn was sick for all those years? Didn't my prayers mean anything to him? I got angrier and angrier, my crying got uglier and uglier, and some people came over to pray for me. I told them what was going on and they prayed that the spirit of confusion and anger would be gone and...it was! As I started to feel more and more free, the worship team began repeating the phrase "Death has no hold on me, Sin has no hold on me, You have the victory..." and I really felt like Katelyn's death has no hold on her, and it shouldn't have a hold on me. She is happy now, healthy now, in a perfect place where there is no such thing as pain and no such thing as the ugly cry, so I needed to be experiencing joy rather than unending sadness. I really feel like that's what God wanted and what Katelyn would have wanted as well. So I stood up and decided I needed to let go of my anger and enter into worship. I was able to let go of all my sadness and replace it with joy and for that, I am eternally grateful to Jesus Christ. At the beginning of the week, I got a word that said "it's time to let go of unnecessary burdens" and I truly feel like I was able to do that with the help of God. 


I got home, feeling free, and opened my devotional book to do a quick devotion. Someone had randomly stuck my bookmark in it when it had fallen out, and they put it right on September 23 (the day Katelyn went up to heaven). I glanced through the devotional for that day and it literally was saying that it was time to be relieved of all burdens and be free in Jesus' name. I was so excited that I ran out and showed it to Dad who said: "I think God likes you a lot," with a fatherly smile on his face. I am so grateful to Jesus for showing up and for never giving up on me and giving me the freedom that I need to live out the rest of my life. 


Also, I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING NEXT YEAR! I shall announce it soon, for those of you who don't know. Have the best weekend, kids. Don't get too crazy. 

Love,
Christie xoxo

YOLO // don't waste it

Check out this story.

There was once an old man white white hair who was always on the side of Main St. in Sydney, Australia. He tried to get the attention of every passerby walking down the street and handed out brochures that outlined the Christian faith. "Have you surrendered your life to Jesus Christ?" He asked over and over again, all day long. One day a man (we'll call him Sam) was walking down Main St. in Sydney, Australia and he passed by the little old man. He had gotten countless numbers of Bible tracts in his life and this annoying brochure was no different. Sam sighed and took it while he let the man's words go in one ear and out the other: "Have you surrendered your life to Jesus Christ?" He went on his way, trying his best to forget the encounter. But the words of the old man were ringing in his ears, tugging at his heart, essentially driving him crazy. A few weeks later, Sam gave his life to the Lord. 

Fast forward three years and he was a leader in a church in Texas. He met new people everyday and he had heard multiple salvation stories. On this particular day, Sam was talking to a man about his salvation story. The man smiled and said, "Oh, it's a story like any other. I was walking down Main St. in Sydney, Australia, and this old man gave me some kind of Bible brochure. I didn't really care much for street ministry but that encounter kept nagging me, and I actually gave my life to the Lord later that week. I wish I could go back and thank him, you know?" Sam stood there, mouth agape, eyes wide. He couldn't believe it. 

Throughout the next several years, Sam encountered several different people with the same story. "I was walking down Main St..." "There was a little old man with white hair..." "A few weeks later I just gave in and went to church..." "Pretty stereotypical story, I guess..." "I wish I could thank him." It was at a conference at Sam's church that Sam finally decided to step up onto stage. "How many people here," He said into the microphone, "were walking down Main St. in Sydney, Australia, and encountered a little old man with white hair? How many people here were led to Christ because of this man?" Hands all over the room went up. Sam broke down and couldn't believe his eyes. 

He needed to get back to Australia. He found Main St, and broke into a jog, searching for that white haired old man. He got to the place where he had seen the man, and asked a woman nearby if she had seen the man, going on to describe. "Oh, he used to come here everyday. He's gotten old though, he lives alone and doesn't come out much anymore." She said carelessly, giving him the address. Sam finally made it to the man's home and was invited in by a much older looking man with the same wispy white hair and bright blue eyes. Sam had no idea how he remembered the color of his eyes, but he did. They sat down and starting to talk, and ended up talking for hours. The conversation eventually came to the man's street ministry. 

"I went out there, Sam, every single day for hours on end." The man took a deep breath and tears gathered in his eyes. "It was my life's work, all I wanted to do was lead people to Jesus, but nobody stopped. Not a single person stopped and talked to me. It was my life's work, and none of it even mattered." The tears were making their way down his weathered, wrinkled face by now. The disappointment and sadness that Sam guessed that the old man had been trying to hide for years was now obvious on his face. Sam took a deep breath and began to tell the old man about his own salvation story, and the hundreds of hands that went up in that room during the conference. By the time Sam was finished, both the men were crying and the old man had a look of shock and joy on his face. The old man died two weeks later, with the knowledge that his life's work had mattered after all. 

I heard this story one day and it resonated with me. Our lives are so full of doing the little things that nobody notices. Just because nobody notices never means that we should stop doing them. If you have a passion for doing something, then do it and do it with all of your heart. You never know who is being inspired by your music, words, writing, dancing, sports, or art. You might be changing lives. 

I'm just saying. 

Love, Christie