It starts with a prayer

In the fall of 2009. The 1st semester of my Junior year of college. I was at war with myself. I knew what I had been taught my whole life; Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love Your Neighbor as yourself. Luke 10:27
But I was not living that way.
So I prayed, ”Here I am God, SEND ME TO THE WORLD.” Isaiah 6:8
Then God began to answer that prayer.

You see I was not Loving God, I was loving myself but did not even see it. Sure I looked like I was following Christ, I walked it, I talked it, but there was still a part of me that did not love God.
Not only was I not loving God, I was not loving my neighbor.
Who was my neighbor? the countless women trapped in the pornography industry. Women who are somebody’s daughters, somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother. For nine years I had been a slave to the sin of this age. It was a free drug; a hidden addiction.
In that fall of 2009 I looked at myself and saw that I was addicted to pornography, leading a homeless ministry, going to church, praying, and reading my Bible. But I was still falling into sin.
I was the me I did not want to be. I was falling and had no way out. I was on my knees and yet still sinning. I tried everything I could do on my own to stop sinning. But it was never enough.

Romans 7:18-19
I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing.

But God said “Enough! My son, Follow Me! Leave your home, your family, your school, your future career and Follow me, I will get you out of this pit. Its breaking my heart to see you do these things. No longer!”
Come Follow Me.

So I left. I obeyed. I confessed. I pleaded,”God forgive me for I have sinned.”
I was ready to go right then and there. The day I left college after withdrawing from school which represented a life I could have lived. I was ready, I wanted to just run out my front door and go!
But God had a different plan.

God had to teach me. Purify me. Humble me. God had to take out every last part of my flesh that longs for anything that is not Him.

I. Purity
God sent me to Miami, FL in 2010 to aid with Haiti Earthquake Relief
But that was just a blessing God used myself a best friend and many others to be his hands and feet to Haiti in their time of need. Once I arrived in Miami the test was living at a Spanish Rehab center.
Pastor Obe, was simply allowing God to use his church and rehab ministry to aid Haiti relief and gave us a place to live while in Miami. It was here with everything I knew stripped away that God spoke to me to surrender to him. To give up my dreams of adventure, and learn to follow God daily.

II. Identity
God had to give me a new Identity, he had to rename me. No longer would I be an addict and slave to my flesh. Now that I was away from my home, God had me right where he needed me so that I could come face to face with myself and wrestle. Much like Jacob back in Genesis, I too had to wrestle with God. So I wrestled night after night, I would not give up. Even when it felt like I was winning, when I was pure, far from the addiction I once knew, far from the images that used to poison my mind, then and only then was my prayer genuine and from the very deep of my soul.

Then God touched me. I was reborn.

Death.
Burial.
Resurrection.

My new name was Child of God, Disciple of Christ, Set free from sin, a slave to righteousness. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. The Life I live in this body I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

III. Living
Living in the World but not of the World. It is one thing to be Holy on the Mountain top, but it is completely different thing to live it out day to day engaged in work, school, and tedious life.
I left Miami feeling the call to finish school. From May 2010 – July 2011 I was taking classes. By the strength of God, and perseverance from leaning on Him I was able to walk with my class, then receive my diploma in August after finishing summer classes. I was an entire semester behind but God provided a way.
But then I found myself, not living in the joy I had been given.
I had a new purity, a new identity, but I was still afraid.
Afraid to live out who God created me to be. I was not truly living as an heir to the Kingdom of God. This time through an “In Between Trail” that few people other than myself could see, I was again purified of any last thing that was not what God had created.

These words had to be spoken to me,
Psalm 16:2 You are my Lord apart from you I have no good thing
I could not move on from these words until God had his way in me, until He truly was the only thing Good in my life.

And now I wait...
For there is something on the horizon, God has answered my prayer...

He is SENDING ME TO THE WORLD as he has from the beginning, this time to India.