Jackie's Journey "Inexplicable Agony!"

Ralph and Christina teaching one evening in our rustic jungle living room…

 The word that Americans were living on the Pucuro River among an isolated tribe located near the headwaters was big news to the people in a tiny Choco settlement about a day’s journey downriver by dugout. Ralph and Jay Gunsteens were eager to take some of our new believing Kuna’s on their first missionary trip down river into this community.

 I remember the day they took off in the piragua and wondered how these remote people would receive the message God was bringing to them.  It was rainy season and the mud was deep as they arrived on  the riverbank.   This secluded  group of Indians had a few horses and cows and the ground was thoroughly contaminated.  Ralph, who had his combat boots for just such an occasion, was wearing his flip-flops and sinking deep into the wet ground.

The Choco village a day downriver

Darkness was closing in and the boys were invited to eat and spend the night.  The next day they were given an opportunity to open the Word and share God’s love, plan and provision.  Ralph and Jay were well received and some of the townspeople even returned a visit to Pucuro in the weeks that followed.

 About two weeks after returning to our village, Ralph began to suffer with excruciating abdominal pain.  We committed him to our healing God.  The limited medical resources available to us interior had been exhausted.  Since we were soon due to renew our visas, we decided to take the three-day journey early and leave for Panama City to see if the doctors in the Canal Zone could help us.

 The  medical doctors realized Ralph had picked up something rare and unusual and unable to find the source after a battery of tests, they sent us to Gorgas Laboratory,  the Center for Disease Control for the military in Central America. Ralph was becoming increasingly restless and powerless to cope with the intense pain.  He would walk the floor, day and night and had not slept for days.  His only few moments of relief came when he would drink a bottle of Coca-Cola!

 I knew I had been called to this ministry and I knew God was allowing this exercise for our good, it had divine purpose and would benefit others; yet, this was touching one of God’s most faithful servants and I was stymied!

 Have you ever wondered why it is so much more difficult

to watch the pain of someone else ??

 The Lab was our last hope.  We made an immediate appointment and to our surprise…they could take us in early the next morning!  After all, Ralph’s case was intriguing…it came out of the remote jungle! The Lord had opened up a home on the military base for us to use the few days we planned to be in the city and we were grateful for His provision.

 That night, Ralph stopped pacing and laid down sometime after midnight.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  About two hours later, we were jolted by someone breaking the glass on the back door!  Literally… breaking into the house!  The  frantic and hostile man was reaching through the shattered glass and unlocking the latch!

 Ralph was instantly on his feet yelling at the intruder!  As he left our bedroom, he turned and said, “Safety is in the Lord, Jackie!”  As he slammed the door shut, he told me to call the military police and stay with the girls. Panicked and processing, I did as I was told and listened to the scuffle in the hall!  There were loud voices and then silence!  My heart stopped!!

 In a few seconds, Ralph had subdued the man and tapped on our door to tell us we were going to be alright.  The intruder was a cocaine addict and knew someone that lived in this borrowed house.  He needed money and was desperate to get in!

 Have you ever had an intruder violently

invade your place of safety?

 This is Part One of this saga…

And Ralph’s prognosis?  You won’t believe it…

See you next week to find out…

~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America.  Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California.  My passion is mentoring and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights. 

Jackie's Journey "...Got Purpose?"

So often we think to be successful we need a sense that we are getting more out of life…more me time, vacation time, more quality time with our children, more opportunities to develop a more mature relationship with our husbands, more exercise, less weight…”It’s all about me!” 

 We are blinded by schedules and activities (work, practices, meets, tournaments, tutors, recitals, award ceremonies and more).  We moms live in a maze of taxi driving (pick-ups and drop-offs), carpools, careers, pickle-ball, parties, sleep-overs, play-dates, fears and circumstances that keep us from seeing the clarity of our designed purpose.  We are forever seeking balance…

This is the opposite of what God envisions for us.  We are to live life with a due sense of responsibility…not as(women) who do not know the meaning and purpose of life, but those who do…making the best use of our time, despite all the evil of these days…not being vague but grasping firmly what we know to be the will of God.  Eph. 5: 15-17

 True success in life is measuring what we are by what we could be (always seeking His purpose and meaning in life) and what we have done by what we could have done (by His grace).  “Faithful is He who called you who will also do it (is we get out of the way, relinquish our self will and yield to His!).  It is achieving the full potential God planned for us.  We are destined with His purpose on our life…”It’s not about me!” Col. 1: 28,2

 Are we focused on what God is focused on or are we hastily and thoughtlessly doing our own thing…running through life?  If we have not realized our life purpose and set eternal goals, our present priorities to reach that goal are short-sighted and superfluous!  Our focus is blurred by the demands of the immediate on the altar of the permanent.

 When I was a young Christian, I was challenged by Betty Stams Declaration of Purpose.  She was a missionary to China and was martyred by the Communists in 1949.

“Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes, all my own desires and hopes and accept Your will for my life.  I give myself, my life, my all, utterly to You, to be yours forever.  Fill me and seal me with Your Holy Spirit.  Use me as You will, send me where You will, work out Your whole will in my life at any cost, now and forever.”

 While at Bible School, I stapled that statement inside the flap of my Bible and it is still there today…a reminder of my commitment to my God, who gave His All for me, to die daily.  “If anyone would come after me (Christ), he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9: 23

 Taken from Philippians 1: 21, “For to me to live is Christ and to die (to my will, rights, ambitions, entitlements…) is gain…”  This has carried me through life and has been my comfort while serving in the jungles of Panama until this day…

 Where is your heart?

What is your Declaration of Purpose?

~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America.  Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California.  My passion is mentoring and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights. 

Jackie's Journey "What Does Your Future Hold?"

Life had become routine in the Darien jungles of Panama. The sounds of Howler monkeys, the screeching of magnificent multicolored parrots and the beauty of the bright colored Toucan had become commonplace.  One morning we woke up to find two little spider monkeys on the front porch crawling on the girls’ bikes!

I still could not reconcile with the colossal hairy spiders, the over-sized scorpions, the copious species of slithering snakes, the blood-sucking vampire bats or the jungle army ants!  Nor would I ever find harmony with the dripping humidity and the ever-present roaches, chiggers and mosquitos!  However, I did learn to appreciate the large Iguanas for their tasty eggs.

 Daily, the Kuna’s would greet us, early, looking for sugar or oil and a morning visit.  We had become part of the community and they had begun to accept us.  We had brought healing medicine, oil, and sugar after all!

 The Indians had, somewhere along the line, become part of our family and we had become attached to them and their way of life.  We had learned so much from them and were amazed at their physical strength compared to their small stature.  Their ability to take one bullet and return with a deer or two bullets and return with two deer was uncanny.  We, also, learned much from their survival skills in the dense jungle.  But their openness to listen to the truth of God’s Word after a year and a half of total mistrust and resistance was the most astounding of all! 

 Watching the young mothers with their babies and the respect and trust these women had for the older women in the village was heart-warming  We had grown to love these very special people and had developed a mutually fulfilling relationship.  As they came to know Christ, our hearts were full of gratitude for the privilege of serving the King in such a rugged and remote region.

 The women swept the village once a week during dry season and it was an opportunity for Sue Gunsteen and I to listen to the women chatter and hear the community gossip.  You didn’t want to miss the sweeping because you would then become the object of their conversation that day!  

 However, I was consistently on guard because of something my Uncle, an orthopedic surgeon, had told me while he was visiting us at Language School.  He spoke quietly: “Jackie, you carry the TB germ from your mother at birth; it lays dormant now but could activate in the right environment or as you get older”.  I was 25 at the time, so I only had to focus on the environmental issue, I thought to myself!  Then, a year or so later, during a Congreso meeting, we knew we had reached a level of tribal acceptance when they offered us a gourd filled with “Chicha” and everyone drank from that one rustic cup!  Needless to say, I did not want to offend by NOT drinking from it! 

 But for me the sweeping and the common drinking gourd became an act of faith because the sweeping stirred up the tuberculosis germs that blew in the village and of course, the tubercular women would contaminate that cup!

 The Lord had given me a promise while we were in missionary training. 

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord,

plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans

to give you a hope and future”.   Jer.29: 11

 The Lord used these powerful words of promise to banish my fear and sustain me as we swept the village, drank the “sugar cane-sweetened platano (cooking banana) drink” and treated the TB patients in their homes and the clinic. 

 HE knew my future and had it planned. There was, therefore, no reason to be troubled.  My focus was not on my fear but the need to keep in harmony with Him, His assignment and His will.

 Are you ever preoccupied with the future

and what it holds for your life?

 In a world full of uncertainties, it is easy to “roll into” the pattern of helping God design your future, rather than simply submitting to Him and His plan that comes with assurance and hope!

~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America.  Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California.  My passion is mentoring and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights. 

Jackie's Journey "Who's Got the Answer?"

“A while back, the clue on Jeopardy was “Jezebel’s husband.” None of the three contestants knew that the answer was King Ahab. About that same time, I was doing a crossword puzzle, and the clue was Samuel’s teacher. I happened to know that Eli was Samuel’s mentor. But it got me to thinking about how little the average American knows about the Bible.

A Gallup poll in the 90’s concluded that only half of the adults nationwide could name ANY of the four gospels. That same survey found that only 42% could name even 5 of the 10 commandments. The Barna Research Group reports that 12% of American adults believe that Noah’s wife was Joan of Arc. And 75% believe that “God helps those who help themselves” (a quote from Benjamin Franklin, not the bible).

In years past, the American education system was centered on the study of God’s Word. In the early days of our country, a child learned to read from the pages of scripture. Bible stories were commonly known and discussed in polite society. Writers drew inspiration from biblical characters.

Go back a bit further in history and consider how many references there are to the Bible within the pages of Shakespeare’s writing. God is mentioned in 30 of his 37 plays, for a total of over 700 times. Countless references, allusions and paraphrases of scripture can be found in his work. The pages of his work are so saturated with God’s Word that Shakespeare’s writings were referred to as the “Lay Bible.”

So, what has happened? 92% of Americans claim to own a Bible. They may own one, but they do not seem to know what’s in it! Truth is, we are more likely to be able to quote endless lines from a movie or rattle off song lyrics with ease than to know even the most rudimentary things about God’s Word.” (this was too good to not repeat…posted by Sherry Worell)

This is to our great shame!

Could I challenge you to get in God’s Word this week?

It is the heart and mind of God

and what He thinks about everything!

~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America.  Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California.  My passion is mentoring and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights. 

Jackie's Journey "Standing on that Promise!"

While living in the jungle, I was a notorious pursuer of the promises in the Word to ease the rigorous life required to live interior…Don’t you just love promises?  The circumstances of life, with its hurdles and opportunities, give us great comfort, if a promise comes with it.  “

 One day Ralph (who carried the heaviest load) in our jungle journey, gave me a promise after observing my daily activities with two little girls, the medical clinic with my missionary partner(Sue Gunsteens), the linguistic work, the washing of three dozen diapers (plus clothes) on a rock in the river, hanging three dozen diapers and clothes on a line in my back yard (at least twice in one day to avoid the rain clouds that threatened to soak it all again!), cooking meat and vegetables I had never ever seen or heard of, doing 4:30 to 9:30 hour days, and at the end of the day, with the house still full of people, putting Christina and Kim into bed with mosquito netting, carefully tucked tightly under their foam rubber mattresses…

 It occurred to me that these non-stop, long days in 95-degree heat with 95% humidity gave me an excuse to pause and do my own thing.  Just the thought seemed selfish and when I verbalized it, it sounded really wrong!  “To him that knows to right and does not do it; to him it is sin.” Jas. 4:17  My faithful watchdog, Ralph, had been pitching in to lighten my load and realized that was not my REAL need.

 Are you familiar with the promise that comes with that portion of Scripture that tells us not to worry becauseof God’s promise and provision for us. “Seek His kingdom (presence) and His righteousness and ALL these things (the list mentioned in the prior verses) will be given to you as well.” Matt. 6: 33  The… “all these things will be added unto you” sounded perfect!

 BUT…this promise comes with a huge condition!

 I was given a concise definition of what that condition meant and where I had dropped the ball.   It was clear that the promise was contingent on my seeking the Lord first and foremost. “He (She) did evil because he(she) did not set his (her) heart to seek the Lord.” II Chron. 12: 14   I was robbing God and myself by not living in a state of “seeking and setting my heart on Him moment by moment.” I was too busy sacrificing the immediate on the altar of the permanent!

 Evil is doing our own thing.  We have two choices: Seek Him and the wisdom from above or seek the wisdom from below…which is Satanic, selfish, proud, envious, and everything EVIL.  God’s will or Satan’s…there is no…MY WILLl!   My will makes the choice of which master I will submit to.

 Is your heart set first on seeking Him?

Let’s grab hold of God and ask Him for a passion to pursue Him…

 “If you seek me with all your heart, You will find me.”

~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America.  Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California.  My passion is mentoring and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights. 

Jackie's Journey "Evil?"

“First, we overlook evil

Then  we permit evil

Then  we legalize evil

  Then  we promote evil

   Then  we celebrate evil

Then we persecute those who still call it evil!”

 Woe to them who call evil good, and good evil.  Isa. 5:20a

 Life is simply a stewardship, not an ownership; a trust, not a gift.  With a gift you may do as you please, but with a trust you must give an account. Ephesians 2:10  One day we will be called upon to view evil, as God sees it!

 Wickedness in all its forms seems to dominate the culture on every level.  Instead of seeing trials and conflict serving as a continual process to personal growth, they are seen as an interruption to our walk because we refuse to view them through humility and His divine purpose.

 J.P. Phillips once wrote, “The real danger to professing Christians lies not in the more glaring and grosser evils but in the slow deterioration of vision, a slow death to daring courage and willingness to adventure.”  The adventure referred to here is in the context of our daring to stand alone against the throes of evil, in a world that is fraught with lies and deceit.

 Accepting truth with humility is a lost art!  Self-defense, self-esteem and rationalization are the resources used to confront conflict.  Our homes, children, communities…all of life is consumed by it.  Hence, evil takes control and prevails, with division, divorce and destruction. All in Satan’s plan to steal, kill and destroy us.

 Our challenge for our sake and the sake of our children, who are stepping into the print we leave behind, is to step up to the plate of maturity and receive “the meat” of His Word and respond to life’s situations from God’s point of view and act in harmony with it!

 In these days of uncertainty, “we renounce secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the Word of God.  On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.”

 God’s  Word calls Evil out…

 How often do you get in God’s Word?

 Is His Word dwelling richly in you?

~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America.  Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California.  My passion is mentoring and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights. 

Jackie's Journey "Ignorance is Bliss!"

The Darién Gap: What to know before you go.

Wait… Maybe don't go…too late…

We went!

Inside the Darién Gap,

one of the world’s most dangerous jungles…!

“Ignorance is bliss”.  I’ve heard that said all my life.  Reality struck this week when reading on line about our location in the jungles of Panama. I am  going to share now, what I am sooo glad I did not know…when we headed up the Pucuro river to our Kuna village near the Colombian border in the Darien Gap!

 It all started the day we drove the Pan-American Highway, which is an epic 19,000-mile route that starts in Alaska and terminates in Argentina.  It’s continuous except for a small section missing along the southern border of Panama, often referred to as one of the most inhospitable places on the planet — this is the Darién Gap.

 It’s 66 roadless miles of dense, mountainous jungle and swamp filled with armed guerillas, drug traffickers, and some of the world’s most deadly creatures covering the border of Panama and Colombia. 

Just to mention few:

·       Fer-de-lance pit vipers (killed regularly)

·       Drug traffickers and FARC armed guerillas ( FARC kidnapped and killed our three missionary men out of our Kuna village homes)

·       Brazilian wandering spiders (pictured above; one made its way onto my sheet hanging on the clothes-line and then was carried into my house!)

·       Black scorpions (it took Ralphs size 14 army boot to kill the one under our bed!)

·       Jungle heat and dirty water (95 degrees and 95% humidity!)

 It brings me great comfort to know that God withheld this information from me. The Gap is most famous for: Things that will kill you.!  Who knew??  The list of deadly things inside the Gap is lengthy, and dehydration and starvation are the least of the obvious concerns. Instead, there were very real threats.

 The lawlessness and lack of residents made the Darién Gap a perfect path for drug traffickers of cocaine, fentanyl  and etc.  They passed through our village, using the  trail about 18’ from our house!  We had no idea who these strangers were and  would  offer food, drink and a place to sleep the night. Always with the intent of presenting Christ in the course of the evening.

Active since 1964, FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces) armed guerillas dropped in by helicopter one day to terrorize us into leaving.  A backpacker from Sweden was shot in the head in 2013 and found two years later. Multiple others have been kidnapped for weeks or months after venturing into the Gap.

 Everything in the jungle is giant sized!  Spiders fill the jungles of the Darién Gap, but one of the most threatening is the Brazilian Wandering spider. “You’re going to have a really bad day if this bites you!”. This family of spiders (there are more than one!) has a leg span of five to seven inches. They wander the jungle floor at night and love to hide in people’s hiking boots, logs, sheets(!) and  banana plants. Bites from this spider can cause death in 2 to 6 hours.

Jungle scorpions look like they’re from another planet.  The black scorpion calls the Darién Gap home.  The one I killed under our bed was 9’-11’ long!  They live under rocks and logs and hunt for larvae and cockroaches at night.

The Darien Gap boasts of malaria carrying mosquitos, burrowing Botflies, Chiggars galore, an unreal volume of disease-carrying ticks, blood-sucking vampire bats, flesh-decaying trench foot, even undetonated Cold War bombs!  And let’s not forget the river crocodiles (I never saw one)…and snakes that hide in the massive tree trunks that grow into the river’s edge.

Even the trees teach a lesson to be learned, as the 8” spikes on the Chunga tree demonstrate. One brush against its spiny exterior introduces all kind of infecting bacteria, plus, a wound full of embedded spines.

So, the Darién Gap sounds downright peachy to visit, doesn’t it?

My husband used to talk to me, his “little much afraid”,  before our first trip to Panama,  about Jesus sending out the seventy-two with specific instructions to “count the cost” and then, he reassured me that they were “given authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm (them) you.” Luke 10: 19 

With that promise we went and it was better than “peachy”…

It was the beginning of a journey with God that changed my life…

~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America.  Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California.  My passion is mentoring and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights. 

Jackie's Journey "Storms May Come and Go...BUT!"

Do you ever feel like the bluster all around you is an indication of what the future holds?  The tornado is coming…what do I do?   There is no “stop” in the midst of the swirling tempest. At times, it seems like the downpour is all we can take.  We find  ourselves rushing into the wind, hopelessly grasping for some “relief”.  Sometimes it is hard to see the forest for the trees. 

 “Our God in heaven does whatever pleases Him. Psa. 115: 3  The storm that was sent to break us, is going to be the storm that God uses to make us!  When we come out of the storm, we won’t be the same person that walked into it.  That’s what the storm is all about!”

 “The river was  beating against the rocks in huge dashing waves.  The lightning was flashing; the thunder was roaring; the wind was blowing; but the little bird was asleep in the crevice of a rock, its head serenely tucked under its wing…sound asleep!  That is peace…to be  able to sleep in the storm!   In Christ, we are relaxed and at peace in the midst of the confusions, bewilderments, and perplexities of this life.  The storm rages, but our hearts are at rest.  We have found peace…at last.” Billy Graham

 My girls and I used to sing a song in the jungle when the rain was so fierce it came through the bark walls and half-way across our living room floor! The thunder was so loud our tin roof shook and the wind and lightning filled the whole Darien with light!  The river, eighteen feet from our front door, could rise 10 feet in a few hours!  We were on alert, in the event that the rivers rage would come over the bank and into our house…

 It was great comfort to lift our voices in song, as we cuddled together in the hammock that was hung from beam to beam in that little remote room. The “storms may  come and go but the peace of  God we will  know.” We were wet, but we were at peace.  God knew and directed the rain, the river and  our hearts when we surrendered our will to His.

 Maintaining the right focus makes all the difference.

 Stand up in the storm this week and in gratefulness,

Find peace by yielding to His will in your life…

~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America.  Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California.  My passion is mentoring and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights. 

Jackie's Journey "The Sureness of Uncertainty!"

Being sure of something is a forever quest because life is so full of uncertainties!  Knowing we can count on someone is a welcomed consolation in times of turmoil, shock and confusion, but the promise of its permanence is unknown. Having confidence in an outcome is a luxury we don’t always have, but we think our well-being depends on it. There is very little in life that we can be absolutely certain about; yet, it is the mark of the “common-sense” life that we find ourselves in.

 “Use your common sense, Jackie”, my Dad used to say to me.  I wondered about everything and the future was at the top of my list!  What if…or what happens next?  Then…out of nowhere, the day of uncertainty becomes a drastic reality!

 “Gracious Uncertainty” is the mark of the spiritual life.  The very nature of our spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty.”  We are uncertain of our next step,  BUT we are certain of God. Oswald Chambers 

 HE has the plan, direction and purpose. The unsure fades, as long as our eyes are focused on HIM and not our circumstances. We can be certain HE will take care of all the uncertainties. The simple surrender to His will over our own; the abandonment of self-preservation (trying to make it work and failing miserably),  “brings a spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectation”.

 Knowing God is sovereign and needs no help from me, apart from my intentional surrender and obedience to Him, is a certainty I can put my confidence in.  Understanding HE is not only in control, but HE has my best interest at heart and has divine purpose in it all, brings that spontaneous, joyful expectation.

 “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is my strength.”

Neh. 8: 10b

 Have a great week…

~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America.  Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California.  My passion is mentoring and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights. 

Jackie's Journey "What's Worth Dying For?"

During the reign of Maximian in the third century(A.D. 286), repeated persecutions were brought against Christians.  Yet the greater the persecutions, the more  the early church grew.

 One day Maximian ordered  all his armies to assemble near the city of Gaul.  Tens of thousands of soldiers were there.  They stood at attention to give a loyalty oath which included the killing of Christians.

 The captain of 6,ooo men, known as the Thebian Legion replied to this oath by saying, ”We  will fight and die for Maximian in battle, but we will not kill Christians.  We, ourselves, are all Christians.”  

 Maximian became infuriated.  He ordered their ranks to be decimated.  Every 10th man was killed by the sword.  The remaining legion still refused!  More men were killed until the entire legion was martyred for their faith!

 The tens of thousands who watched saw men who had something worth dying for.  Soon, thousands became converted, and in A.D. 313 the entire Roman empire adopted the Christian faith.

 These men were strong in God’s Spirit.

Their faith was grounded in conviction, not preference.

 We live in a time when our fear of God is at an all-time low and our love of the world and all it offers, is at an all-time high!  God wants us mighty in spirit, “’To be strengthened with might by HIS SPIRIT in the inner man.’”

 This means God’s Word is dwelling richly in us, we are sensing His presence and recognizing His promptings. We are alert to spiritual dangers that would draw us away from Him and His purpose in our life and we are discerning of wrong attitudes and ideas that would neutralize our ability to make decisions with godly convictions and His blessing.

If HE is worth dying for…

HE is worth living for…

~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America.  Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California.  My passion is mentoring and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights.