SPRING Cleaning!!

This entire past month we took time to travel across country. We started in Statesboro, went to Atlanta, then to Wyoming, Denver, New Mexico, Las Vegas, then finally California.  It was so wonderful to spend the extra time with the kids and allow them to see the countryside. We got to visit old friends, and reconnect with family that we hadn’t seen in years.  We also just enjoyed Gods creation.  We went through the Rocky Mountains and marveled at the Waterfalls, we saw deserts, plains and valleys. We experienced rain, hail, and extreme heat, sometimes all in one day!  The experience showed us that God may eventually move us again, or require us to go outside of our ‘Comfort Zone’, but we are to be okay with that. We have discovered over this past year that we are more adaptable than we ever knew, and so are our children. As long as we are doing His work, it doesn’t matter if we are called to go to the North Pole. Our furniture and things have been in storage for a year, and now we are accustomed to living out of boxes and in small spaces.  We have prayed for a home, but he won’t let us get comfortable. He wants us to go out and touch the world and change lives.

Genesis 12:1-3

¹ The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

 ² “I will make you into a great nation,
   and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
   and you will be a blessing.^[a]
3 I will bless those who bless you,
   and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
   will be blessed through you.”^[b]

 

Abraham was instructed to go away from the land that he lived in with his family, and find a new place to settle.  A place where God would bless him, and his family, and make his name great.  I can relate to the fear and anxiety of being called to a new environment, (maybe even one less favorable than the one he was already in), and having to uproot your life and family and step out on faith.  It’s the story of our lives.

Over the past year, our lives have changed dramatically. On a word from God, we went from a comfortable life in Atlanta, to a cramped, financially strapped existence in Tennessee. Our initial purpose was to come here and start a Youth Program, called LOL (Light of Life) Youth Empowerment Organization. Of course, that project had its complications due to greed and bad choice of partners.

The breakdown of the program caused us to even question whether God had truly called us in the first place. ‘If he did, then why are we struggling?’ we asked ourselves.  Never before have we been in such a position of needing others, and even people that we once supported turned their backs on us and laughed at our misfortune, not even understanding or believing that God called us to this place.  Like Israel upon leaving Egypt, we found ourselves taken on a ‘Wilderness’ experience… to be cleaned out and used for His purpose.  It hurt and confused us, and at the time we didn’t understand it.  But now, as we are seeing everything coming together,  it is obvious to us that if we would have immediately gone out and started the program with the people and in the condition that we were when we left Atlanta…we would have probably hurt more people than we helped!!  

2 Tim 2: 20: “ In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for noble purposes and some for ignoble. If a man cleanses himself from the latter, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.”

Make no mistake: it is important to God that when you are ministering to others that you are cleaned out on the inside so that you can effectively witness, and not cause Him shame or embarrassment.  Too many people are teaching and working with helping others, and they have problems of their own that they have not overcome.  In our case, God was not having it.  Too many ministries come crashing down and harmed when the leaders were out of line and not living right behind the scenes.  It makes all Christians look like hypocrites.
God has shown us we have a job. A job so BIG, that he has set us aside to do a full force ‘hose down’ inside and out.  This is what I call an internal and external ‘Spring Cleaning”. Cleaning us out, so we can SPRING forward and do his WORK!

^{Matt 23: 5} “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. ²⁶ Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

Matt  23:   ²⁷ “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. ²⁸ In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.


Within 2 months of us leaving Georgia, we experienced a life-changing spiritual awakening where God allowed us to see evil spirits and an exorcism. He also gave us several spiritual gifts, among them the gift of prophecy and discernment, given to our children.   It was amazing to have so personal an experience, and it changed our lives and outlook on our purpose.
We still have a lot we had to work on, as we are still now the ‘Wilderness Experience’; barely having anything more than what God provides us with to sustain ourselves. We are provided just enough to live, but not much more. Gerald is required to travel and be away from the family all week, and we don’t have much by way of transportation.  Even through all this, we have grown closer to God, and learned how to lean on Him fully. In Atlanta, we served him by going to church, we spoke to youth, and we spoke to people about him, but our lives still lacked the FULL commitment from all family members that was necessary to have a close walk with Him.  In Atlanta, our children were becoming more and more rebellious as time passed and probably headed for a downfall. Now, we pray together, read the bible together, study together, as Christian families are supposed to do. 

This year we also developed several programs, including LIVE Ministries Bible Study for Teens, WOW Studies for Women, as well as The Heartwood Project™ .  I have also decided to go forward with writing a book.  Had we stayed in Atlanta, these things would not have happened.  We were too caught up in maintaining our lifestyle, and hanging out.  We didn’t know or appreciate it when we came to Tennessee, but God was preparing us for the Next Level!!

He has truly shown us firsthand how ‘Godly Provision’ works.  By allowing us to get to our lowest financial point, and having no one that we could call and get help from, we had no choice but to totally look to HIM. It was a humbling experience, but necessary. When you are raising a child, the goal is to take them from dependence on you, to independence in the world. It is the exact opposite in God’s Kingdom. He wants to take you from Independence in the World, to total dependence on Him. That’s what He calls Maturity.  Funny how that sounds! You aren’t grown up to God until you are just like an infant!! The world can never understand that way of thinking.  But God wants us to totally depend on Him to meet our needs, and whenever we start to look at ourselves, or even look back, it becomes worse.

A NEW THING

Isaiah 43: 18-21

“Forget the former things;
   do not dwell on the past.
¹⁹ See, I am doing a new thing!
   Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
   and streams in the wasteland.
²⁰ The wild animals honor me,
   the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the wilderness
   and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen,
 ²¹ the people I formed for myself
   that they may proclaim my praise.

So we have to know that God has great and wonderful things-New Things- for the Williams Family.  We want to look back, but are instructed not to, and like Lot’s wife, whenever we are tempted to, something tragic happens!! I am starting to see that He does this only for those who are called.  He MUST do this to fulfill His purpose. We don’t need to bring the junk, problems, and sins of the past into our upcoming ministries.  After that, when we are ready, He promises to give us the same blessings that he promised to Abraham.

Galatians 3: 7-29

Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.  The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ…

^{26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith,   for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.9 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.}

In other words, we have the same promises due to Abraham, because of our relationship with Christ! And we are now seeing the fruits that are being produced, and the blessings that are beginning to trickle in…the bible study is changing lives daily, women are coming to God through the WOW Ministries. God shows us that all of it will tie into LOL and become our World changing ministry.  We don’t know how far he is going to take us with this, but we are open and obedient to do whatever is required.

On the last day of our cross-country journey, in the final hours, as we were headed home, I was called to visit a friend in the hospital. She was a close friend of mine from high school. At one point about three years ago, God called them to live in Georgia. We were all supposed to do ministry work together, but she grew tired of struggling, and convinced her husband and children to leave and go back to Cali. She didn’t tell them that God warned her not to go.  

Once they left, she immediately got ill.  For three years she had battles every kind of sickness, and recently had to have a hysterectomy.  She has a virus, she has cysts, PID, nerve damage to her breasts,  her husband now has heart problems and anxiety attacks. She is constantly on pain meds, and all of the children are spread out and live with family.   She told me right away,  “I should have never ignored what God told us to do. Now I am paying the price for my rebelliousness. God is punishing me. I know this for a fact. He told me not to leave, and I didn’t listen.”  That hit home for me.  Any thoughts I had about leaving Tennessee left me.  There have been times when I wanted to turn around and head back to where I came from, but couldn’t. I didn’t feel like God released us yet. There is no way that I want to experience the consequences of walking out of God will.  I have seen it firsthand… It’s just not worth it!

From what God has shown us, we may endure suffering right now, but in the long run, we will be overwhelmingly blessed.  It’s a promise. ~This is temporary…The book says we win in the end!!

Revelation 3:21 “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.