Grabbing Hold of God

Taken: their lines and even their trombone to let them forget their Bible there is enough to bring your across the nation and encourage your kids to carry their libel and empower them with Joshua 19 them to let God's word honored held and heard and never forgotten your voice heard. Sign up for your Bible. All I knew was in that moment there was a pop in my heart and ignition of hope from that little tiny flame came a voice that said will get through this will survive to meter encouragement for any difficult circumstances today on Focus on the Family your hostess focus. President Jim Daly and I John four many of our listeners are familiar with commuter been on this broadcast several times and she always has fascinating stories to share from her ranch where rescued horses and hurting children find hope and healing.

Today we have a speech from Kim that is very powerful.

She's going to share a terrible trauma from her childhood and explain how the Lord used those circumstances to equip her to minister to others in addition to her work at Crystal PQ French Kim is a top-level Nordic skier by athlete and outdoor adventure and is the author of six books on the #starting to do all including hope rising stories from the ranch of rescued dreams, and we have that book here at Focus on the Family get your copy when you call 800 K in the word family or you find the details in the show notes right. Here's Kim meter speaking at Hope Fellowship in Frisco Texas Mother's Day service so to focus on the welcome to the Mother's Day service and so in my time praying over what Jesus Christ would wish for moms to hear today. His answer came back unequivocally.

What he desires to give to moms today is found in Galatians 51 and it simply says this is for free that Jesus Christ to set us free, is for free.

Jesus Christ did not come to this earth and endure the cross so that any one of us would live outside the power of his loving freedom. There is not a man or a woman here today who is not experiencing right now and attack from the enemy. If Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life. You are under attack.

That's how that works in the enemy wants to move into the land of your heart, a heart that Jesus Christ gave his life to redeem any comes in and so many insidious ways comes in through fear and he comes in through anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, doubt, frustration, anger, bitterness, forgiveness, know what they did to me. I give them unforgiveness rocks the container that holds Jesus did not endure the cross so that you and I would live in a no man's land of lukewarmness for him. He is not going to share your heart with anybody. He doesn't want to heal part of your heart when you only give God part of your heart. The only part he can heal by giving a part of your cancer. He doesn't want to heal part of your cancer. He wants to heal all of it doesn't want to lead part of you. He wants to lead all of you. I can tell you with certainty as a rancher unless all that horse decides to come with you, you're not going anywhere and it's a lot like us in Jesus Christ. He doesn't want to lead part of us. He wants us to be wholehearted for his glory in that whole heartedness everything that he is.

He wants to fill our hearts with him on this Mother's Day is good as flowers and brunch are.

He wants to give you his best and that is the full freedom of his presence in you. Happy Mother's Day and so when it comes to freedom. Freedom happens the same way in every heart. Jesus Christ says, and in John 832 that that you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

You want more freedom, no more truth. It's right here and that he is the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but through the love of Jesus Christ and a lot of people have trouble with that will ask our exclusive and God in his grace has made 8 billion ways to know the love of Jesus Christ that so many people there are in the world today. He loves us that much, how his freedom enters a life is when we ask the author of freedom and hope to move in and become the Lord of our hearts. That's where freedom starts and that journey started in this life when I was nine years of age and at nine years of age.

I would look at my mom and think I just want to grow up and be just like her and my dad was a wild child of the wilderness and he was a downhill ski instructor on Mount Shasta which is the biggest volcano in the lower 48 and we would go to the top in ski right off the top and he would hold me under my armpits and I would just hang onto his kneecaps and be like, and we would just go and I was never afraid because my dad had me in my young heart I just knew that my dad wore a cape and could fly. He was a superhero and there was nothing that he couldn't do and I grew up in the combined castle of their love for me. It was during that season that my dad's best friend came to my low grade school and picked me up and put me in the backseat of his car along with my two older sisters, and he wouldn't speak to us and I knew that something horrific had happened, and no one will tell me what it is and we started to drive in silence this long familiar road out to my grandparents house.

I just felt like I was being choked by unseen hands around my throat that I can pre-I can't breathe. I just know something terrible has happened and as we drove down my grandparents driveway. There were just cars parked everywhere in you could feel grief just coming from the house and for the first time in my young life.

I did not want to go into a home or I ever only felt love because I was afraid his freight house is taken by my shoulders and just pushed into the house and it was full of all these grieving whaling people and I was pushed into the arms of a woman that II recognize I didn't know her name. She was crying so hard that she sounded like she was choking.

She just kept going around and around in this nauseating vortex of very very sorry sorry say so sorry your dad is just murdered your mom and he's taking his life. Sorry, sorry. I remember thinking, wait a minute.

My deadline is my mom and he loves me and he would just popped off her chest and ran out the back door in a child's effort to out run will just ran and ran and ran. In this child's effort to just escape and I had been running through an orchard that had just been overturned and and I remember just falling facedown in the dirt and the soft earth and was screaming and gasping and inhaling dirt and choking in retching and and I could hear what I thought were animal sounds and I didn't even recognize the sound of my own voice and I could hear myself say Jesus uses. Will you help me I need you now Jesus will you help me even know who Jesus was, I wasn't raised in the church and the church maybe twice in my life. All I knew about Jesus.

As I think he's the guy on the cross and what I now know I did. I didn't understand the power of Romans chapter 1 that declares every human heart has within it the capacity to know the God who created it, and when our heart is being crushed by pain. We know intuitively to turn to the only one who can heal it. It doesn't matter who you are what you were taught to believe or what culture you were raised in when our heart is being destroyed. We know to turn to the only one who can heal it. And that's the one who made it. I did not know the power of verses like Romans 1013 the declares war on everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Everyone Jesus is done everything so that you and I can know his freedom. I didn't know any of that. All I knew was in that moment there was a pop in my heart and ignition of hope and from that little tiny flame came a voice that said, you will get through this, you will survive everything's going to be okay. You'll see. And I knew in a way that I cannot explain that I was no longer alone so I knew on that day, my sisters and I moved in with my grandparents, three broken little girls moving in with parents who just lost a child broken broken broken and right now I just need to taken aside and say all you grandparents thank you thank you that you've not only raise your kids and your kids kids and your friends kids and everybody's kids. You are the glue in our imploding nation of going after the orphans that are falling through the cracks and I just want to say thank you to all of you. Your love matters more than you'll ever know. Please receive that encouragement from a former orphan who is redeemed by the love of grandparents. Thank my precious little grandmother was about this big and I used to carry her around under my arm and the older I get, the wiser she becomes and she had the wisdom to buy a little horse for me and I would run all the way home run through the front air out the back door running to get to this horse because I knew that there was no better place than to cry than on my horses and I would just get on her back bareback this with a rope around her neck and just up and galloped jumping over creeks and logs and ducking under limbs and how I didn't die I'll never know, and that I always envision my pain was never fast enough to keep up and when I finally felt safe is when we would pull down to a walk and that's where the truth of God's word started to find its way into this while child's heart and just for clarity sake. I was not saved by a horse. I was saved by Jesus Christ on the back of a horse. Big difference. Big difference in what I didn't know is finding hope in Jesus Christ, in the presence of a horse that the Lord was at work.

If he was building something beautiful you're listening to your meter on focus on what you think Kim's book rising along with a CD of this entire presentation when you call 800 K in the word for 800-2326 45 can donate Christmas resources at our website focusonthefamily.com/brought let's go ahead and return now to more on Focus on the Family from Kim are pain has a purpose. All of that God will use every single day of the pain that you and I endure, and when were in pain.

We just can't receive that.

It just makes us mad.

You don't know what I'm going through.

How do you tell me everything to be all right. You don't know, but he does and what we feel doesn't change the power of what's true verses like second Corinthians 13 enforces, don't you know that God's going to comfort you in your time of need. So when others go through something similar you can give them the comfort that he's given you. You are pain has a purpose.

When you give it to him. God of the phenomenon of Genesis 5020 what Satan meant to just by take that very thing and have that be what I give you life and not only you but everyone you give it to.

That's how that works. If you will trust me with your pain and keep walking through that valley of the shadow of darkness. Nowhere in here does it say to camp out and live there. Nowhere in here does it say to go find yourself everywhere and here it says fine Jesus and that's the shortest journey you will ever make because he is with you right now offering you everything that he is all his. Hope all is joy all his love. If you and I don't have those things in abundance in our heart.

It's for one reason only one we are believing a lie. We have been lied to and the enemy has moved riot in and is setting up a camp in this heart and our focus is no longer on him. It's come around like a black boomerang and now I'm just caved in and focused on everything that hurts and I'm never going to be more than this. I never get to get through this guy can't fix this friend if I knew who you were. I would look right in your face and say I love you, but how you feel is not what is true.

Jesus Christ can heal everything that is broken and hurting in your heart today. He can heal everything except one thing and only one thing and that my friends is the pain that you will not give him. And that's just pain that kills. And that's on us. The Lord of all creation is reaching for you now beloved. Matthew 1128 come on, you can give that to me and I will take it and I'm getting heal your heart but you have to want to give that pain to me and I will transform it for my glory met and married my husband. We moved to the eastern slope of the Cascade mountain range. I live on the Ring of fire on a volcano and we bought ridiculous broken property.

I literally had a hillside 8.9 acres of rock pit the whole upper half is been mine for cinders which is volcanic glass. I bought a hole in the ground. My husband and I did and it was so destroyed. No one else wanted it no trees, no grass, no dirt that's pretty poor.

If you don't own dirt. We didn't end and that we feel this broken property with all these broken trees. My husband was a landscape contractor at the time he started bringing them home and then we rescued the first two broken horses.

One was missing 1/3 of her normal body weight. If you did the math on you, you would die and the second horse from the same location.

I saw the former owner beat her so badly that he needed to call Yvette to come in so up her face. My horse has an 8 inch scar between her eyes. To this day, and that was the beginning of the ranch which is a hole in the ground broken property with this broken life filled with broken trees and broken horses and has only Jesus Christ can. He took all those broken pieces and said now watch this and you refit them together to become the perfect place to heal the hearts of broken kids and the kids started coming and they were coming for what they could get the horses work train. They weren't strong enough they want writable. These kids were coming for what they could give, and we started seeing in their efforts to make the horses better that the kids themselves started getting better and one day in a sideways snowstorm I saw a mute young woman speak freely to horse years and years of words ever heard this horse could go where no one was allowed and that's when I heard the voice of my Savior say do you see what I'm doing down there. She's finding me just like you did. Now, does it make sense why I allowed you to walk through that valley of the shadow of darkness because I'm calling you to help others find their way to that was 24 years ago and in 24 years God has been so hard at work in 24 years we rescued more than 300 horses. We serve about 5000 visitors a season, mostly kids, all free of charge, because God's not poor, and when God is in something. He's the one who lays it on the hearts of been to provide only God can do that. That's a version of what is freedom can look like through body who just gives him everything he doesn't want her parts and our pieces are hokey Pokey got my heart and I know my hearts out on that okay night and I don't trust you. He wants us to be all in for him, all in. If you are suffering today and you got pain, anger, grief, guilt all that hold black list. Everyone is honest would raise their hand.

You are under attack and I came today to tell you there is freedom.

How do we gain that freedom in Jesus Christ. Ephesians 51 says that we are to imitate Jesus in everything we do. When Jesus was confronted by Satan through Peter in Matthew 1623. Here's what he said.

Satan get behind me, because our Lord has no backup in him at all. He is moving forward deeper into the will of God and he's taking back the land that Satan has encroached on that's what our Lord is doing.

How do we do that again we do exactly what Jesus did when Jesus fasted for 40 days and he was in the wilderness.

Of course, that's when the enemy came when he was at his absolute physical weakest, and here's what Jesus didn't do well here's my vast experiences. Here's my amazing education in all my certifications and degrees.

Here's my logic and for women here's what you really didn't do this is how I feel Lee's our feelings lie to us every day our feelings have no bearing on the power of this.

This is the same yesterday today and forever and you can build a life on it.

Here's what Jesus did do. He quoted God's word. He quoted his dad and that instantly defeated Satan then and it instantly defeats him now you want more freedom.

We need to know God's word. John 832, says he will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Need more freedom, no more truth. That's how that works to know more truth. I've often thought. I'm so visual in learning. I've often thought would be awesome to just tattoo God's word all over your arms and then you can be like that one today and let me know honey as good as that might be. I really want my words to be tattooed here and here, because then it's gonna come out here and here. I want my word to be tattooed in you because that's what transform the world around you and of the verses God's word is so powerful. Single lines can change everything. When we apply them.

One of those it's just rocking my world is first Corinthians 1613 and it simply says this stand guard be on guard stand true to what you believe the courageous strong and loving.

They just file like hammer blows you want to defeat the enemy in your life. Start practicing that and tattooed on your forehead. Be on guard stand true to what you believe the courageous strong let everything you do be done in love time we're to stop this message right there from computer but later in this presentation she shared a story about a hike she took right here in the mountains of Colorado and she had a face-to-face encounter with the mountain lion. It's a remarkable account so stop by the website to hear that I will of the link in the show notes. Kim is an amazing storyteller is initiated, and she always brings a spiritual application that is spot on. We are really grateful for her friendship and support of Focus on the Family over the years. What an incredible woman of God and what a great reminder that our Lord can redeem any situation, such as the tragic murder suicide of Kim's parents and use it for his good Kim is living proof of that. And if this message brought up some painful memories for you. Please give us a call. Our staff would count it a privilege to hear your story and pray with you and if needed, they can set up a call back from one of our current Christian counselors and help is just a phone call away. It's 800 K in the word family 800-232-6459. You know, our counselors are very talented and many of them are specialists in specific areas like childhood trauma, addiction, marital issues, and so on. And we are able to provide these consultations for free thanks to the generosity of our donors.

Here's a success story we received from Bonnie she wrote or started listening to Focus on the Family is a lonely and overwhelmed young mom and found the parenting tools I needed. At one point I was really struggling in our marriage and reached out to a focus counselor. What a great service to help in prayer went beyond what I imagined. I'm happy to say that now my husband and I are celebrating 40 years of marriage. Because of that one desperate phone call that I made. God gave me the tools to lead a Bible study encouraging women to seek God and heal their marriages. The impact of that outreach continues today. Praise God for his work through your ministry. Hearing stories like that and how God takes what little bit we can do and make such a big change in someone's life. That's wonderful. And if you have a heart for this ministry.

Let me just say you can do ministry through Focus on the Family.

We already have the staff in the Bible-based materials.

We just need your financial support. What I call the rocket fuel to continue the work we are a nonprofit organization and we rely on your participation and contributions.

The best way to help us is by becoming a monthly donor doesn't have to be a large amount.

It's the consistency that really helps us month to month and when you make a monthly pledge of any amount I'd like to send your copy of commuters book hope rising stories from the ranch of rescued dreams. It's a fascinating read about the work she does at her ranch with wounded horses and troubled children if you can't commit to a monthly gift.

Right now we get that will send you the book for one-time gift of any amount at all helps join us as we partner with the Lord to help families thrive and you can reach us when you call it hundred 80 family 800 the letter in the word family or donate online and request the book hope rising got the link in the episode notes next time on Focus on the Family Drs. Les and Leslie parent offer some life-changing insights how to have a stronger, healthier relationship, best gift I ever get my relationship to work on.

I then I change the transformation is in a private line, it begins to ripple out every bond I dealt half of Jim Daly and the entire team. Thanks for joining us today for this Focus on the Family podcast if you would please take a moment to rating you get your podcasts and help us spread the word help people discover great content were off and I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time. Provide more trusted advice and your family thrive