The mission of Bibles For The World is inherent in its name. Based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the ministry believes in the power of God’s Word to not only transform individual lives but also to change the sinful and sometimes violent ways of people groups who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ.

John Pudaite, the ministry’s president and CEO since 2015, knows that full well, for it was out of his family’s tribal heritage in Northeast India that Bibles For The World (BFTW) came to be. Pudaite, an award-winning filmmaker with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and art history from Wheaton College, honored the work of his parents, Drs. Rochunga and Mawii Pudaite, by leading the ministry they founded.

Planting Gospel Seeds

The Pudaite family comes from Northeast India, an area that is now majority Christian, but in the early 20th century, the warriors in his Hmar tribe had a reputation that put fear in the hearts of their foes.

“Before the gospel came to our people, the British ruled across India, and they kept extending their empire across into our area,” Pudaite says. “Because of that constant encroachment of our traditional tribal land, our people went down and raided a British tea plantation, and in one night, they took 500 heads of all the plantation workers and kidnapped the tea manager’s daughter, so we had this reputation as one of the fiercest headhunting tribes in the entire British Empire.”

In 1910, a lone missionary defied government orders to present the gospel to the unreached Hmar tribe. Only 22 at the time, Watkin Roberts was a product of the now-famous Welsh Revival. Once the Gospel of John was translated and printed in the tongue of a neighboring tribe, Roberts sent one copy of it to Pudaite’s grandfather’s village. 

“Most of the people still couldn’t read, but they knew it was something important,” Pudaite says. “So they sent a message back to the missionary who had sent it and said, ‘Please, sir, come and explain the meaning of this book.’ So the missionary knew that was a call from God. That was his Macedonian call, so he trekked through the jungles up to my grandfather’s village more than seven days on foot, defying the British government authorities’ orders, so that he could share the gospel with our people.”

Although Roberts was able to spend only five days in the village, God used him mightily.

“In that time, the Holy Spirit spoke through him, and he was able to convey the message of salvation through Jesus Christ,” Pudaite says. “Five young men gave their hearts to Christ, and my grandfather was one of those.”

The missionary left the village and said he would return, but he had raised the ire of the British.

“They banished him from the area first, from the district and then the state and eventually out of India altogether,” says Pudaite, noting that the missionary tried to maintain contact with the tribe but was unsuccessful.

“But the seed of God’s Word had been planted among our people, and it spread like wildfire across our hills, from hut to hut, from village to village. My grandfather and those other early Christians shared the gospel message, the good news of Jesus Christ, with anyone who would listen to them. Within that first 30 years, before World War II when the Japanese invaded our area, almost every single village in our tribe had been reached with the gospel.”

Through the generations, Pudaite’s tribe bore fruit for God’s kingdom well beyond his grandfather’s jungle home.

“Our people have reached out to the neighboring tribes,” he says. “We now have missionaries in almost every state of India. We have missionaries in neighboring countries like Burma, Bhutan, Nepal, even as far away as Cambodia and South Korea. We’ve also sent a missionary to Japan. And you see this amazing transformation. It’s only by the power of God and His Holy Spirit that we can say God has transformed our people entirely from headhunters to heart hunters for Jesus Christ.”

Pursuing a Dream

After decades, Pudaite’s grandparents and their tribe still only had the Gospel of John in the tongue of a neighboring tribe. 

“My grandparents, in their simplicity, knew that we had to have God’s Word in our own language,” he says. “We were still working from a different language, a neighboring language. That was the only Scripture we had. And so, when my father was 10 years old, they dedicated him to get the education needed to translate God’s Word into the language of our people, into the Hmar language. In their own innocent way, they just knew this was something that our people needed, and that set Dad on a journey that led him out of our jungle hills into other parts of India and eventually to Scotland and to America as he pursued that dream of translating the Bible into our language.”

That simple dedication at such a young age went a long way. 

“God put people in his path along the way,” Pudaite says. “While he was a student and in junior college and college in India, he met Dr. Bob Pierce, who went on to found World Vision and Samaritan’s Purse, Dr. Bob and he became lifelong friends, and Dr. Bob helped arrange for Dad to go to Glasgow Bible Institute first, and while he was there, God brought another person to Scotland, a guy by the name of Billy Graham, for the All Scotland Crusade [in 1955].”

As Graham traveled from place to place ministering in Scotland, he took notice of this diligent young man from Northeast India.

“As Dr. Graham moved around that country for three months, Dad was volunteering at the crusade in promotion and counseling, and I guess he caught Dr. Graham’s eye,” he says. “So Dr. Graham called him up to his hotel room and said, ‘I’ve seen you around here. Tell me your story. Where are you from, and what are you doing here?’ And Dad told him that he comes from this little tribe in Northeast India, and he’s here studying God’s Word so he could translate it into the language of his people. And Dr. Graham said, ‘We’ve got to get you to Wheaton.'”

All it took was Graham’s phone call, and “Dad was accepted to Wheaton College Graduate School of Theology, and that’s where he continued his work in the translation with the guidance of the wonderful professors and colleagues there. That’s where he finished the New Testament in the early ’60s.”

In the late ’60s and early ’70s, Pudaite’s father went on to establish and organize the indigenous church as the Evangelical Free Church of India. He also led the indigenous Indo-Burma Pioneer Mission, which was later renamed Partnership Mission.

“The mission work included Christian schools and child sponsorship, health care, relief and development projects and more,” Pudaite says.

Through Bibles For The World’s child sponsorship program, Partnership Mission Society, as it was known in India, continues to run the schools in Northeast India.

“Dad registered Indo-Burma Pioneer Mission in Wheaton, Illinois, in 1958, and formed its first board of directors,” Pudaite says. “As the various programs were launched in the United States to raise funds from ‘partners’ in the ministry in the ’60s, the name was changed to Partnership Mission Inc. in the States. In India, the name was changed from Indo-Burma Pioneer Mission to Partnership Mission Society.”

After Pudaite’s father finished translating the Bible in Hmar, he prayed, “God, what is the next task? What is the next challenge that you have for me?”

“That’s when God spoke to him and said, ‘I want you to take my Word to people all over India, to send the Bible to people across the world,’ and that’s when the vision for Bibles For The World started. In 1971, God gave Dad the vision to distribute Bibles across India and around the world. That aspect of the ministry grew tremendously, and the name of the U.S. entity was changed to Bibles For The World, with the ministry operations of Partnership Mission becoming a division within BFTW. But the entity in India, Partnership Mission Society, never changed its name.”

Bibles For The World sent New Testaments to all of the telephone subscribers across India and then to neighboring countries.

“By God’s grace, 45 years later, we’ve been blessed to be able to provide God’s Word in over 120 countries,” Pudaite says.

Although the organization began out of a commitment to translate the Scriptures in Hmar, Bibles For The World now focuses largely on distribution.

“We try to focus on strategic distribution of God’s Word, especially where we see things happening, where the Holy Spirit is working,” Pudaite says. “We know that people, as they’re being reached and come to Christ, they need God’s Word. And so we will use our Scriptures both in evangelism, trying to provide those to people who are going out as indigenous national missionaries, pastors, ministries, churches, and also in the follow-up of that as new believers come to Christ. We like to provide them with at least a New Testament, sometimes the whole Bible.”

Contending for Souls

Instead of recruiting missionaries, Bibles For The World uses “nationals,” people who can reach their own people group with the gospel.

“We always focus on using the nationals, using the indigenous ministries, pastors, missionaries, evangelists, those who are working on the front lines,” Pudaite says. “And so as we go into a country, as God has placed it on our heart and we feel led toward exploring that, we try to build networks of those national partners. This is a strategy that we have used for years now, and it comes out of our own background in Northeast India because no missionaries were allowed in our area, yet our entire people group and so many of the neighboring people groups were evangelized by their own people.”

Bibles For The World also carefully stewards its support funds.

“We don’t have a single office outside of the U.S. and even have a little office [in the U.S.], and yet we have, in so many countries, developed partnerships and networks with the believers there and with missionaries who are working there,” he says. “We don’t set up an office. We don’t have a national director for each country that we work in. We find a partner that we feel we’re aligned with who has a real burning passion for evangelism, for reaching out to the people in his neighborhood, in his country, and so we partner with him. Sometimes these partnerships last for the season, maybe a couple of years. Sometimes it may go on for five, six, seven, eight years, but we never try to establish our own operations.”

The mission wants to strengthen nationals in the ministry to their own people.

“They can do it far better than we can,” Pudaite says. “They can do it more cost- effectively, more efficiently, than we can coming in from outside. But we’re there as we hear that God is working, the Holy Spirit is in action, and these people, this church, this ministry, is going out and reaching their fellow people, then we want to be there and provide God’s Word for them. So at any given time, we may have about five to eight countries that we are actively focusing on. We always have an ongoing focus in India. There’s such a tremendous need, the most unreached people groups in the world, are in the country of India.”

True to its name, Bibles For The World works with nationals in countries such as Bhutan and Cambodia in Asia; Malawi and Burkina Faso in Africa; and Cuba and Guatemala in Latin America.

The organization has also ministered in India’s neighboring country Nepal, “where we’ve put together a network of over 2,000 national frontline workers, pastors, evangelists and missionaries who are providing God’s Word across the country,” Pudaite says. “By God’s grace, we have now provided 2.5 million Gospels of Johns for them to use.”

Another focus is providing Bible portions at festivals and crusades where key partners—including Luis Palau and Franklin Graham—share the gospel.

“Everybody who attends that meeting will go away with their own copy of the Gospel of John,” Pudaite says. “We know that there’s been a tremendous amount of effort, a tremendous amount of prayer, that’s gone into those events. At the same time, in a lot of these cultures and countries, the decision to follow Christ is not something you can always make right on the spot. Of course, the Holy Spirit moves so many in those audiences to come forward and accept Jesus as their Savior, but at the same time, there are many who want to think about it. They want to take it home, they want to meditate on it, they want to share it with their family, they want to talk it over. For many people in these countries and cultures, it’s a family decision, and it has a lot of ramifications—social, community, family—and they need to think it through, and so we want to make sure that they’ve got a copy of God’s Word so that even if they did hear the message, they’ve got something written in their hands that they can share. They can read that, they can think over, and then God can continue to work in their hearts so that the Holy Spirit may speak to them as they read His Word.”

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bibles For The World has had to rework its outreach plans and events.

“We had projects that were planned for Turkey, reaching out to the Iranians who come there to celebrate the New Year,” Pudaite says. “But we’re also seeing a tremendous hunger for God’s Word in some countries where we had outreach events planned.”

On the positive side, there is a new openness to the gospel.

“All over India, people are searching now,” Pudaite says. “They need the truth. They need the hope that only Jesus can bring them. 

Blessing the Persecuted

Bibles For The World also does not forget those who are persecuted for the gospel’s sake.

Partners who are ministering in countries where persecution is rampant need encouragement, and along with the Scriptures, the mission comes alongside in support of these partners.

“As we provide Gospels of John, we bring them together for what we call a Seed Sower Seminar,” Pudaite says. “This may be a two- to four-day seminar where we will do, in essence, an intensive study on the Gospel of John. We may have pastors or missionaries. Sometimes it’s a multinational group that comes. We’ve had people come from the U.S., from Canada, from India, going to other countries, all sharing on the Gospel of John. In the process of that time together, we try to encourage them. We want them to have this time to just rest in the Lord, rest in His Spirit with us and get recharged to go back out.”

The gathering also allows time for those who need to be restored to share some of the difficulties they face, “the oppression, the persecution, even the hardships caused by natural calamities like the earthquake in Nepal,” Pudaite says. “Our heart goes out to them. We know these people are on the front lines suffering.”

Pudaite finds it exciting to see the gospel go forth “in the same way it spread from our tribe, from my grandfather and those early Christians to the neighboring tribes and now through the ministry of Bibles For The World literally around the world. God is going to do that over and over as these people reach out to their fellow Nepalis or fellow Indians or fellow Cambodians, whoever it may be. And we know that God is going to write another wonderful chapter in His story through these people who we are equipping and ministering to.” 

Christine D. Johnson is an editor at Charisma Media and host of the Charisma Connection podcast.

Many of us find ourselves trapped in the enemy’s lies. And we don’t always understand how to escape those lies.

Deliverance minister and seer Jenna Winston understands this problem because she spent many years believing those satanic lies about herself. But a divine encounter she had one day changed all that. On the Through the Eyes of a Seer Prophet podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network, she shares a series of questions God used to get her attention. “Jenna, when was the last time somebody told you that you weren’t beautiful?”

“I was like, ‘Whoa, never,'” Winston says.

“When was the last time somebody told you that you talk too much, you’re too detailed, and you talk way too fast?” God asked.

“And I was like, ‘Wait, does my family count when I was a little kid?'” Winston says.

“No,” God told her. “When was the last time somebody told you that they were tired of hearing your stories about the supernatural?”

“I was like, ‘Oh, whoa, never.'”

“When was the last time somebody told you that they were sick and tired of you sharing testimonies, because every time you shared a testimony of My goodness, you were only doing it to draw attention to yourself?” God asked next.

“Whoa, never,” Winston says she told the Lord.

God went on to take her through “about 40 lies that I was believing in my normal everyday life. … I didn’t even know I was believing these lies, they were so integrated into my natural thought,” she says.

After God walked her through all the lies, He had another question for her: “Who are you listening to?” He asked. “Jenna, you will sit there and replay over and over and over in your mind what you assume everyone around you is thinking about. When was the last time you replayed a compliment?”

To hear Winston’s full teaching on “Unlearning the Lies,” listen to the entire podcast at this link. {eoa}

Living for Christ at work can be a daily challenge, especially when one’s superiors or peers don’t follow Jesus or believe in the Bible. But Dr. Lewis Andrews believes it is possible to be a positive influence for Christ in everyday life, including where most people spend most of their time—in the workplace. His latest book, Living Spiritually in the Material World: The Lost Wisdom for Finding Inner Peace, Satisfaction, and Lasting Enthusiasm in Earthly Pursuits, points to America’s past to show the way to believers in the present.

Andrews says two themes have struck him in the last couple of years, the impact the early college presidents had on America’s growth and a new understanding in psychology of what makes for a happy and healthy life. These two themes dovetail in Living Spiritually in the Material World.

“From the founding of Harvard in 1640 up until the First World War, almost three centuries, every president of every American college was a minister, and they all taught a course on how to live spiritually in the material world,” he says. “So back then you went to college and you would study math and English and science, but then when you got out and started your career, you would know how to serve God in the larger world as a doctor, lawyer, business person or whatever your career. And this had an enormous impact on American history. It’s forgotten now, but it took the U.S. from a bunch of small colonies to the greatest power in the world in just 150 years.”

He believes the thinking of the college presidents, which he encapsulates in Living Spiritually in the Material World, paced the growth of the country.

“America’s success came from a keen awareness of God’s presence,” he says. In addition to “not treating God as a distant figure, the presidents’ teachings also included regarding one’s own intuition as a source of spiritual signaling from God and always remembering to be true to one’s values, even when no one else would know. So they had a list of about 10 principles, which I go over in the book, to discover God’s will and to live it in your life.”

Andrews, who is president of the Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation of Connecticut, has gained considerable experience as both a social psychologist, with degrees from Princeton and Stanford, and as a research fellow at Yale Divinity School. Bridging these fields in his speaking and writing, he has observed a radical change in modern psychology’s view of faith.

“Psychology, for many years, was very anti-religious, very anti-spiritual,” he says. “But in the last 20 or 30 years, there’s really been a turnaround because it’s been discovered that people who pray, people who try to serve God in their lives, people who keep true to moral principles—the things that the early college presidents talked about—these are what make for happiness and health.”

Andrews’ desire to help Christians be light in the world led him to write this book. The college presidents were successful in doing this, and so can today’s Christians learn to live this way as well.

“How you negotiate the real world and stay true to God has a huge impact on American history,” he says. “It’s really been forgotten for the last hundred years, so that’s what really inspired the book.”

The President’s Seminar

Biblical wisdom was once the foundation of higher education in the U.S. That’s because almost every early college in U.S. history began as a seminary. 

“The famous schools—Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Princeton—all started as places to train ministers,” Andrews says. “But then it became clear to the presidents of these schools, who were ministers, that a lot of the students weren’t going to become clergy. They were there for the education, and when they graduated, they were going to become doctors and lawyers or business people.”

The realization that students were using their theological education as a jumping-off point to enter other professions led to an addition to the students’ coursework—a seminar to help undergraduates learn how to live spiritually in the material world. Officially, the class was titled “Moral Philosophy,” but the students had a simpler name for it: “the president’s seminar.”

“This went on for about 300 years, from the founding of Harvard right up until the first World War, and it had a tremendous influence on America,” Andrews says. “When campus populations grew to the point where it became impractical to have one person teach the seminar to every undergraduate, the content was divided into a series of Sunday sermons, which students were required to attend right up until the middle of the 20th century.

At the same time, this teaching was published in self-help books for use both on campus and by the broader public—in turn inspiring the founding of many important social service organizations, including the YMCA and the precursor to groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. The presidents even had a strong international influence, as Andrews documents in his book.

10 Powerful Principles

The heart of Living Spiritually in the Material World is its focus on the 10 life-transforming principles developed by the early college presidents and their relevance for today. And while the book is certainly helpful to individuals in their spiritual walk, Andrews believes it’s a great resource for churches to use for small group studies.

“The chapters really lend themselves to a small group discussion,” he says, noting that each chapter focuses on one principle in depth.

“In every chapter, I use both examples from the presidents’ own lives as well as many modern situations,” Andrews says, noting that the book is written to be “digestible” without being oversimplified.

“It’s something that you really get the most out of by thinking about each lesson, and so I thought that for a church study group, it would be interesting because each lesson could be a topic for discussion,” he says.

Andrews, who has read every book the early college presidents wrote, worked hard to find quotes from the presidents that “drive home in a succinct way the point of the chapter,” he says of Living Spiritually in the Material World. And he ends each chapter with a Scripture passage that reinforces the presidents’ wisdom.

Among the lessons he culls from the teachings of the early college presidents are to “trust your intuition,” “to avoid being too wedded to your plans”; “to cope spiritually with adversity”; “to elevate the spiritual importance of daily encounters”; and “to expect moodiness and discontent.”

Indicative of its importance, the first lesson in the book is “to hold the greatest thought—namely, God’s ever-presence.” 

“In the middle of a busy workday filled with meetings, projects and email, it can be difficult to keep the presence of God at the forefront of one’s mind,” Andrews admits. “But the presidents show us how to do it.”

“Far more harmful than honestly questioning God’s existence is seeing Him as some remote being who long ago set the universe in motion, who occasionally intervenes to lay down some basic laws or perhaps perform a few convincing miracles, but who otherwise leaves us pretty much on our own,” he writes. “Such an outlook may allow the nominal believer to enjoy the occasional Sunday service and feel vaguely comforted at important life passages, such as weddings and funerals, but it deadens the mind’s sensitivity to everyday spiritual inspiration.”

Andrews describes those throughout history who were consciously aware of God in the world—”men and women who sustained the thought of a present God”—as “God’s companions.”

“They were not confined to any income group, class, occupation or educational pedigree,” he writes. “Nor were they identified by the supposed importance of their work. Some might appear stylish, while others cared little for contemporary fashion. 

“What they did have in common was the habit of valuing an activity, not according to its profitability, its social status or by any other external measure, but by its spiritual frame.”

In short, like Enoch of old (see Gen. 5:22), they “practiced the presence of God,” writes Andrews, illustrating this overarching lesson for daily life.

24/7 Theology

Many of the book’s 10 principles are especially relevant to today’s growing faith-at-work movement. Indeed, Andrews believes that what is increasingly called “workplace theology” is really just a modern extension of the wisdom of the early college presidents.

“What the early college presidents were very concerned about was that they didn’t just teach theology for Sundays,” Andrews says. “They identified—and this was the power of what they did and the reason it had so much influence in America—the core spiritual principles common to all Christian denominations which made one able to serve God in the larger world. Up until maybe 100 years ago, if you were running a business or being a doctor or being a lawyer or whatever profession, you were consciously serving God in the way you had been taught at school. Today, there is a renewed interest in this way of being from a growing number of organizations, including the Consortium of Christian Study Centers, Trinity Forum and Theology of Work Project.

“More and more people want to live their faith not just on Sundays, but where they spend most of their time, which is at their jobs or maybe in a service activity or some kind of nonprofit,” Andrews says. “But this is what the Christian college presidents really had to teach—how to apply your faith in the larger world, even if working with people who don’t share it.”

The “lost wisdom” he refers to in the subtitle of Living Spiritually in the Material World helps believers avoid separating their faith from the rest of life. Sadly, too many of today’s Christians have learned to compartmentalize their lives.

“They go to church, but during the week, they don’t think about God too much,” Andrews says. “But if you remember that God is ever present and loving and helpful, it not only changes your mood, it changes your life.”

The wisdom of the early college presidents found in Living Spiritually in the Material World shows that obtaining an education should not simply be about a career and a big salary, but rather about growth in character and service to society. Andrews believes strongly that these insights from another age are just as important to 21st-century life as they have ever been. 

Christine D. Johnson is an editor at Charisma Media and podcast host of Charisma Connection.

Successful businessman and financial coach Rob Saunders has come to believe certain truths contained in Scripture that he calls the “Divine Wealth Codes.” He loves sharing them with others and encouraging them to trust God for their future.

Saunders says on the Escaping the Hamster Wheel podcast on the Charisma podcast network that aerospace scientist Werner von Braun told President John F. Kennedy about the secrets of space. “Everything in space obeys the laws of physics,” said von Braun. “And if you know these physical laws and obey them, space will treat you kindly.”

The same thing is true, Saunders believes, with the Divine Wealth Codes. “God has a way of ordering the earth in the universe,” he says. “Everything has an appointed time and purpose, and he has his eternal purpose on his side. God thinks in eternity. Man and woman … think in short bursts of time.”

Saunders adds another truth: “God’s laws and His concepts are irrevocable. … That’s Romans 11:29.” He says that with the Wealth Codes, 95% of a winning strategy involves what you believe. Only 5% comes from your behavior. “It’s who you are. It’s what you think God will do for you, and believing that and calling it into existence, much more than hard work” Saunders says.

To hear more of Rob’s teaching on how you can win with the Divine Wealth Codes, click here. {eoa}

No true believer would want a curse or curses operating in their life. But how do you know if you are cursed?

Pastor Jim Kibler explains on the Receiving From God podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network, “The first thing we need to do is understand what a curse is. … A curse is continual permission for a demon to operate in your life.

“Curses and demons, along with everything in the kingdom of God, are subject to spiritual laws. There are spiritual laws. One spiritual law is the law of faith. Without faith, you get nothing from God. Without faith, it’s impossible to please God. We’re going to receive from God according to our faith. These are spiritual laws.

“Another spiritual law is, you must be born again to see the kingdom of heaven. If you’re not born again, you’re not going to see the kingdom of heaven, and you’re not going to be able to understand the things of God. … Well, curses and demons are also subject to spiritual laws. They cannot operate outside of the spiritual laws.”

So, how do you know if you’re cursed? Kibler shares Deuteronomy 28:15 (KJV), which says, “It shall come to pass, if you will not hearken under the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments, and his statutes, which I command the this day; that all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.”

To hear more from Kibler about how reading Deuteronomy 28 can let you know of the existence of any curses in your life, click here to listen to the entire podcast.

People who suffer from anxiety, depression or other significant mental health conditions often isolate themselves. They may not want to admit how they’re feeling or fear the stigma of being labeled “mentally ill,” and the church often doesn’t know how to effectively help them. Enter Churches That Heal, a digital program for churches designed by Dr. Henry Cloud, clinical psychologist, a pastor of pastors and a New York Times bestselling author who is perhaps best known for Boundaries, written with Dr. John Townsend.

Churches That Heal came out of Dr. Cloud’s foundational belief that God often wants to use the church directly as His healing agent.

“When we think of God’s healing, we obviously think of His direct healing because God does directly heal people,” he says. “We know that. I’ve seen it. I’ve experienced it. But what we don’t realize a lot of times is that His body—the church—is not only a place where He would heal people, but His body itself is a healing agent.”

He says this role is found throughout the New Testament.

“One of the clearest places you see this is in Ephesians 4, where it says the whole body, knitted and joined together by every supporting ligament grows as it heals itself in love as each part does its work,” he says. “It says it actually does this to itself as each member is doing its work. And what you see throughout the Scriptures is that God has put this body of people together through which He does His healing process.

“If you go to I Peter 4, for example, it says that when we’re using our gifts with each other, we’re administering the grace of God in its various forms. And as a psychologist, I can tell you when people need healing in various areas, like emotional issues, depression, anxiety, PTSD, all those kinds of things, a huge, huge part of the healing is the processing of that pain and the grief that’s involved and the brokenheartedness that’s involved, and all of that requires people to do all these ‘one anothers’ that are spoken of throughout the New Testament. There’s supporting one another, there’s grieving with one another. There’s healing one another through the various functions. There’s confronting one another, correcting one another, building one another up, helping the weak.”

Operating this way, the body of Christ “heals a lot of these issues that we call mental health issues,” he says.

Dr. Cloud developed and tested the program through the years in hospital settings, including the psychiatric hospital units and treatment centers he and Dr. Townsend owned and operated for a dozen years; through the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru) around the world; and in various church settings.

Views on Mental Health

Through the years, Dr. Cloud has observed four prevailing models in the church for caring for people who struggle with mental or emotional problems.

“The first one was the sin model, and that says if you’re hurting, then there’s sin in your life somewhere—that was a popular one,” he says. “The second one is a truth model. If you’re hurting, then you obviously don’t know the Word. And then you get more of the Bible in your head and memorize the Bible and so on, and that’ll heal all your hurts.

“The third one was kind of internal. I call it the ‘spiritual retreat burp’ model. You go on a retreat for a couple of days, and you kind of burp out all the pain and invite God into the pain. Certainly God does that as well, but it’s like that’s the way everything was healed. And then the fourth one was the supernatural model where if you’re depressed or something, then you need deliverance.”

While he doesn’t completely discount any of these models, he says, there is more to the story.

“There’s truth in all four of those, but none of those are the whole picture at all about how we’re actually healed from addictions and emotional issues and depression and anxiety and all these things we suffer from,” he cautions. “Early on, in seeing those in practice and watching some things happen but not the kind of transformation that the New Testament promises, I continued to search and to study, and I kind of started over and got a lot of the Christian models out of my head, then went back and read the Scriptures with some years of experience at that point.”

After reading the Scriptures afresh, Dr. Cloud had quite the revelation.

“The only way I know to describe it is I was ‘born again—again,’ because throughout the entire Bible, all of the processes that actually do heal people of all of what we call mental health maladies were right there in the Scriptures, and I was just blown away that we don’t hear that. What we hear are the four models, but oftentimes we don’t hear the actual processes that God has put into His Word for us to be walking in.”

He does qualify his statement and explain that he’s not talking about chemical imbalances and the like, but “about the dynamics and the woundedness and the characterological changes and personality shifts and all of those that need to be made in order for anxiety and eating disorders and addictions and all of that to be resolved.”

The church often tells Christians to get in the Word, but, Dr. Cloud says, there’s more to it than Scripture study. Active application and obedience are critical to the health of the church.

“The Bible says to be not only hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word,” Dr. Cloud says. “So, for example, you go memorize the Scriptures and you memorize the verse that says, ‘Weep with those who weep.’ Well, you actually have to put your Bible down and go sit down with somebody who’s hurting, or if you’re hurting, process your pain. And so it’s in the Scriptures. They show us all of these healing processes, but we actually have to go do them. 

“If you think about a body, the way that in Ephesians 4, it says the body heals itself as each part does its work. If you think you have an infected finger, then you don’t amputate the finger and put it in a drawer with a book on anatomy. That’s not how it works. The book on anatomy describes that that finger has got to be connected to the body, and it’s the whole body that does its work. … That’s how our bodies heal ourselves, and God’s designed the body of Christ in the same way.”

Who the Program Helps

From this Scripture-based foundation, Churches That Heal empowers the local church to truly help those suffering in their emotional life—and it may even be the pastor in need. Dr. Cloud designed the program to not only help church members get well, but also their leaders. He chose to include pastors in particular after receiving inquiries from pastors who lead churches and ministerial associations. The inquiries were really pleas for help.

“They were saying we have so many pastors who are dropping out of the ministry, they’re some sort of train wreck or they’re just burned out,” Dr. Cloud says. “And they have their own woundedness, and there’s this big dropout rate because it’s just too difficult, and they have their own struggles and pains. Can you do something to help the pastors?”

So along with addressing the mental health crisis in America, the program aims to help pastors.

“There’s a section in there for the pastor and the staff to come alongside them and help them heal in these areas of stress and addiction and depression, anxiety, overcoming past wounds, relational struggles, extended family issues because a pastor and the shepherds experience what the rest of us experience, but they experience it in a particular context, because they’ve got everybody else turned into them,” he says. Part of that context is “everybody sucking the life out of them all the time.”

But, he says, everyone needs some kind of emotional help sometime. 

“We come from a dysfunctional family. A lot of people say, ‘Well, I didn’t come from that.’ ‘Well, yes, you did. You came from the family of Adam and Eve, and that’s a dysfunctional family.’ I mean, it didn’t take long. In the first generation, you’ve got murder, right? So it is passed on through the human race through the generations. They’ve passed on these patterns.”

The Bible tells us “we’re also born into sin ourselves,” Dr. Cloud says. “So you could have a perfect family, and we would come out dysfunctional because we bring a fallen nature into it.” 

God brings people into His family through salvation, then grows them into healthy adults in healthy families. That’s what He intends and why Dr. Cloud believes in helping the church be a healthy family that can address and resolve emotional issues for better mental health.

How the Program Works

To help the church become a place hurting people run to, not away from, Dr. Cloud carefully designed the Churches That Heal program. The Church Program is comprised of over 30 videos encompassing a pastoral healing journey, pastoral mental health training and church kick-off event. Additionally, church staff members will have access to a 68-page Leader Workbook and live COVID-19 Crisis Leadership Coaching Webinars with Dr. Cloud.

All of the parts of the program can be run in a face-to-face or virtual environment, ideal during a time when many people are under stay-at-home restrictions.

Two series were recorded for the Pastoral Healing section of the program. One is a Staff Retreat Video Series with five sessions to help staff members discuss emotional challenges and the core elements of healing. Dr. Cloud conducted this staff retreat with pastors and their spouses from a large church. They went to Los Angeles to participate so the retreat could be recorded for all the participating churches to see.

Another is the Staff Small Group Video Series where each video lesson encourages intentional conversation to help leaders conquer their own mental and emotional challenges.

The Church Program also features a Mental Health Video Training Series. The series includes educational videos with practical answers to questions on the church’s role in issues of mental health. These videos address questions such as what to do if you’re depressed or what to do when someone has panic attacks or what to do if someone is suicidal. The series helps the local church become a place where hurting people feel welcome. It shows them how to set up programs and how to work with local mental health professionals as needed in serious cases.

When the congregation does its Church Kick-Off, leadership can roll out the program as a Half-Day Community Event or a Sunday Morning Message Series, so the Churches That Heal program allows the church some flexibility but also provides needed structure so that nothing is missed and no one is left out of the learning process.

Dr. Cloud did a citywide seminar with Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Florida, for the Church Kick-Off, touching on depression, anxiety, addictions, eating disorders, codependency and enabling in the family. He also addressed performance, “how we reach our dreams and goals and how we’re broken and why it doesn’t work and how to make it work,” he says.

In addition to the Church Program, there is an Individual Program for people who wish to experience the content by themselves or in the context of a small group.

Individuals who are not part of a Churches That Heal Church Program can participate on their own or give the program as a gift.

“Pastors and churches are getting it,” Dr. Cloud says. “But individuals are also getting it to gift to their pastor as a way of saying, ‘Thank you for making this a church that heals and for supporting me.'”

Overall, the program takes participants step by step through the four basic tasks of becoming a mature, healthy Christian: bonding to others, separating from others, sorting out good and bad in ourselves and others, and becoming an adult.

While using this program, the church will begin to see more clearly its role as a healing agent.

“Jesus said that the gates of hell will not prevail against my church,” Dr. Cloud says. “We’ve got the gates of hell prevailing in neighborhoods and homes and communities where there’s depression and addictions are ruling and when there’s broken, really, really hurtful, dysfunctional relationships. But if the body of Christ, as we move into that darkness with salt and light and the healing balm of who He is and His ways, then we can turn the tide on this.”

After many years of experience in ministry and clinical settings, Dr. Cloud still believes that, ultimately, “there is no more powerful answer in the world for these problems than the church.” 

Christine D. Johnson is an editor at Charisma Media and podcast host of Charisma Connection.

Elizabeth Beisinger lives an unusual life. An author, speaker and natural health practitioner, she founded a ministry in 2009 called The Land of Goshen, a name that seems appropriate considering her close-to-the-earth way of life in the Southern Missouri Ozarks. 

Her ministry name comes from the land where the Jewish people lived in Egypt (see Gen. 45:10-11a). God promised to nourish His people in that place as they were set apart as holy unto Him in the midst of Egypt’s flagrant sin and idol worship.

Goshen symbolizes a place of God’s blessing and abundance, and that’s what Beisinger wants her ministry to be.

But she’s not always serious. She describes herself with a touch of humor.

“I’m a Titus 2 woman,” she says. “I’m an old lady that knows stuff.”

Verses 3-5 of that chapter show women of God how to live in New Testament times as well as today. Titus 2 specifically mentions the need to be both “homemaker” and “teacher,” two words that describe Beisinger well.

Obedient to Direction

Beisinger has made herself at home in Southern Missouri Ozark Mountains, about 100 miles from Branson’s tourist activity. She has mostly lived off the land in a self-sustaining way since moving to a rural area 15 years ago.

About once a month, she heads into town five miles away for some necessities, including one particular item she deems a staple because, she says, “I can’t raise a coffee tree.”

Even when she lived in town in the northern part of the state, she had a speaking and writing ministry. She has maintained those aspects of her ministry and expanded it further in the area where she lives now. The way she moved, however, reveals just how quickly she responds when she believes God is leading her.

“I literally saw a pillar of fire from where I was living,” she says. “The next day for-sale signs were the yard, and I headed toward the direction of the pillar of fire. At the time, I was a fire chaplain, and there was no report of a fire other than what I saw. I had already heard from the Father in the late ’90s. He said He would be relocating me to land with a well, and sure enough, that’s where I am.”

Today she embraces the term “homesteader,” but she didn’t actually know it “until it got a little trendy,” she says.

“I wrote a book several years ago when I was doing a land radio show,” she says. “My book was entitled Simply Abundant, and it was just about living out of the supply that I’ve been provided. I raise milk goats and my own grass-fed beef, and I have a simple and a beautiful garden.”

Her interest in being close to the land comes in part from her focus on the end times and her drive to be ready for whatever may come.

“When we see these things come to pass, look up. Your redemption draws nigh,” she points to Luke 21:28. “We need to lessen our dependency on the things of this world. It’d be really easy to just climb the walls during the pandemic. I can’t imagine being in town right now just climbing the walls. And I’m thinking, people ought to start a little garden. If nothing else, plant something in a flower pot. Do something that gets us back to what humanity did for centuries. I’ve told folks ever since I relocated, ‘I knew I was born again, but now I’ve actually been redeemed back to the garden.'”

Beisinger knows she needs God to supply what she needs. 

“I just feel so blessed because my source is truly the Father,” she says. “If He blesses me with rain, I have a harvest. If I’m not blessed with rain, I need to find out what I’m doing. And I see that my life really does go along that line.”

Dependent on Him

Beisinger’s views on dependency extend beyond the natural world.

“We need to lessen our dependency on the things of this world,” she says. “Paul said the wisdom of man God called foolishness, so I feel like we really need to be seeking the wisdom of God. I truly believe that as far as getting through this life, we need to have our dependency on Him.”

As such, she believes in the power of prayer, but not just any kind of prayer.

“I’ve realized how much more of my prayer time I need to be listening instead of talking,” she says. “God already knows what’s going on. But instead of telling Him how I want it to turn out, I ask Him. I say, ‘I know we’ve got this problem. What do you want me to do to address it in this world?’ instead of just telling Him to fix it. I think a lot of us do that. We go in as advisors instead of servants.”

This also applies to what she sees happening in the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic and even beyond.

“I don’t know how it’s going to come out, but I know we’ve been heading a bad direction for a while,” she says. “There’s a lot of things that our society has accepted that we couldn’t have imagined 25 years ago. And I have listened to a lot of people vacillate on what they believe that, to me, the Scripture is very clear on. I feel like there are things we’ve chosen to be silent about, and I think we should go ahead and speak back up, or this country’s going to keep going downhill, because the actual answer to our Heavenly Father changing things is our repentance. I think for a long time, we’ve expected Him to just do whatever we asked for. He needs to bless it. And I don’t think that’s something He does.”

Beisinger also emphasizes walking in holiness, living a set-apart life for the Lord, but she sometimes feels that requires an explanation.

“There’s a big difference between being separate and being separatists among believers,” she says. “Maybe that’s just semantics to a lot of people, but I really believe there’s a difference.”

Each Christian has his own place in the body of Christ, so we’re not all the same. We each have our own gifts from the Lord and our own responsibilities, so, she says, “Instead of looking for common ground, we need to be sticking to holy ground.”

Most of all, she counts it as a privilege to call the Creator her God.

“We’ve forgotten or overlooked the privilege that He’s allowed us to call Him our God, the Creator of the universe,” she says. “We’ve committed more offenses than even deserve forgiveness. And His Son, Messiah, took on the limitation of humanity to pay the price for us.”

Beisinger fully submitted her life to Christ as an adult.

“I became a covenant believer at the age of 36, but before that, I was a casual Christian,” she says. “It wasn’t like I was robbing liquor stores or anything, but God was not the center of my life. I wasn’t following Messiah in my younger years. And when I really came to grips and He got a hold of me, oh my, I couldn’t go back to the old attitudes or the old way of life. He really changed my life.”

For Beisinger, accepting Christ was more than just lip service.

“To be ‘born again’ is a whole different lifestyle,” she says. “In Hebrews, it speaks of the blood of bulls and rams that just covered sin, but Messiah’s perfect blood washed it away. That’s the covenant I’m walking in. And I love the fact that we’ve got Instructions for life, maybe because I’m a writer, but I love to read the written Word. I didn’t walk on this earth when Messiah did, but I can read about how He walked. I’m very grateful for that. I like things written down and then there’s no mistake. I still think the 10 Commandments are very timely.”

The Sabbath is an important part of her spiritual practice as well. Her grandmother was careful to set aside Sunday as different than the other six, but today, Beisinger rests on Saturday.

“You didn’t go out, you didn’t buy and sell, you didn’t sew, you didn’t do any of that,” Beisinger says. “And so I came to that understanding and then realized the seventh day really didn’t appear to have changed ever. I just embrace the whole Scripture. I don’t consider a difference. If I follow Messiah, I have to look to the Old Testament because the New Testament wasn’t written then.”

Gracious to Others

While being mindful of the whole counsel of God, Beisinger is practical about her faith.

“We’re spiritual beings wrapped in a physical body, and so I really emphasize the practical application of the instruction in the Scripture,” she says. “Once we have been born again, I don’t feel like our spiritual life should just be a couple of hours in the week. And when we pray ‘Thy kingdom come,’ I really believe if we’re willing to walk it out, we can have a taste of that in this life.”

She teaches this kind of application to those who come for a three-day period to Bethesda, her holistic wellness ministry, for two or three people at a time to be discipled in the practical ways of faith and life. Rather than a “retreat,” she thinks of this time away as an “advance” in spiritual warfare.

“They can bring a friend or they can come for just one-on-ones of teaching them natural health and natural application of living a balanced life with Scripture,” she says. “Rather than sprinkle Scripture on top of our busy, busy lives, it’s a matter of putting Scripture in our spirit and then making the rest of life work around that.”

She also relays her Scripture-based and practical teaching through her books, her most recent being We Chose to Believe a Lie: The Legacy of Laodicea. 

“It really addresses the casual attitude so many of us have had regarding our spiritual lives,” she says. “I’ve been kind of casual, and I think a lot more people in this time of hunkering down realize it’s like, ‘Ooh, I need to spend a little extra time praying and a little extra time reading Scripture.’

As with the church of Laodicea, being neither hot or cold but lukewarm is an offense to God, but also, Beisinger cautions, “Everybody’s pretty satisfied in our own way of doing things. And we’ve used Revelation 3:20 for evangelism for a long time, ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock.’ But the reality is that was said to the church at Laodicea. Messiah was saying those words to the church. We’ve gotten so busy with our plans and our programs and our agendas that sometimes we have forgotten the real point.”

Another one of her recent books is Grace Is a Superpower.

“We’ve received grace, so it should be flowing out of us,” she says. “We should be overflowing with graciousness. Especially when it comes to trouble, like what we’re facing right now, we have the grace to get through this—and the grace to extend His grace through our lives.”

Although Beisinger wrote the book before the pandemic hit, she finds its message timely, especially in its emphasis on the fruit and gifts of the Holy Spirit. 

“Grace is the seed of the fruits of the Spirit,” she adds. “The more we just realize how wonderful His grace truly is, the more it will just overflow through our lives and out of our lives. I compared it to living water. It just flows. And then, of course, I’m a big believer that the gifts of the Spirit are still for us today.”

During this difficult time when we especially need to exercise grace with each other, Beisinger has a simple word of advice and encouragement.

“People should ask the Father, ‘What’s the next step?’ Not too big a leap, but ask, ‘What’s the next step I can take as a servant of the Most High?’ I believe the first step needs to be spiritual, but I believe that will be manifested in the flesh. We’re promised the mind of the Messiah. We could think like Him. If we’ve got our spirit surrendered to the Holy Spirit, we can actually think like Messiah.” 

When the Holy Spirit moves in Ginny Marshall-Frye’s life, He alerts her through her physical senses. This can happen while running errands, shopping in a store or at work, so just about anywhere. That’s how she knows God has assigned her to minister to or to pray with someone in need.

“Sometimes God will just show me to go talk to somebody,” she says. “I was driving home from work one day, and I got this surge of energy going down my right leg. I saw this guy on the road, and I looked at him and said, ‘God, he looks really sad.’ And then I felt this surge of energy go through my leg, and I said, ‘OK, God, you must want me to go talk to him.’ And so I turned around, and I looked for him. I was a little apprehensive because he looked a little scruffy. I stayed in my car, and God didn’t give me any words to say to him, but I rolled down the window and said, ‘Well, hi. You must be pretty special because God showed me to come talk to you. Are you doing okay?’ And he said, ‘Well, you know what? I’ve gone through a lot of stuff over the last month. I lost my mom. I had cancer. I dealt with this, but I love God with all my heart.’ I just said, ‘Well, can I say a prayer?’ And he almost started crying, and I prayed with him. And he said, ‘You don’t know how much this has blessed me because I was really down today.'”

Something similar has happened to her in grocery stores.

“I’ll just get a sense like I’m supposed to say something to somebody, and sometimes it’s like, ‘Oh, Lord, I don’t want to go talk right now. I’ve got to get back to work’ or whatever, but it’s a blessing when you can bless somebody else. I would like to talk to more people. I would like more opportunities to share what I’ve learned about who God is and encourage people to to be all they can be for God.”

Healed and Whole

Marshall-Frye also has prayed for others in need of healing and seen positive results. She prayed for a friend who was about to have neck surgery. Afterward, “she texted me and said, ‘My doctor cut my surgery by four hours because my neck was completely straight,'” she says. “I prayed for her right before her surgery. God gets the glory, but I know that’s a gift God’s given me.”

Marshall-Frye’s day job is in a cardiology practice where she puts patients through the paces in diagnostic testing. On occasion, God leads her to pray with a patient. One time while at a Youth With a Mission event a year after doing so, she discovered that God had healed the woman on the spot at the cardiology practice.

“I was talking to the young kids about getting out of their comfort zone and speaking when God tells them to do something,” she says. “This young girl came up to me and said, ‘You prayed for me at the doctor’s office last year, and I got completely healed,’ and I didn’t even know that happened. I was so glad that I spoke up and said something because I didn’t know that. She came in as a patient, I felt the anointing, and I started asking her questions. I ended up finding out she was a believer, and she was dealing with some health issues, so I just took it upon myself and prayed for her there because I thought the Holy Spirit was showing me to do that. And I found out a year later that she got healed.”

The two went up to the platform at the YWAM event and testified of what God had done as she prayed for her patient even when she felt out of her comfort zone. She was able to point the young people to a real living example of what God can do when you obey even when it’s uncomfortable.

God continues to open up opportunities for Marshall-Frye to use her call to share the gospel and lift the burdens of people in need. This may be in her church or at work, in a healing room or homeless camp, in the county jail where she served as a chaplain or in the street ministry she started.

Saved and Surrendered

Marshall-Frye is a Spirit-led believer who knows the importance of not being so busy with life’s demands that she cannot be tuned in to God’s leading and be able to respond at a moment’s notice. Her heart is to follow in the footsteps of her Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Saved at age 12 at a Nicky Cruz crusade, she realized later in life that she needed to give her all to the Lord.

“I really hadn’t given my life completely over to God,” she says. “You can have Jesus as your Savior, but is He Lord of your life? I had not completely surrendered, and surrender is totally a process. It’s like a full-circle thing because I got saved at a Nicky Cruz crusade, and I thought it was kind of cool that God birthed in me a street ministry. When I went up, when I made that commitment, I thought, This man can change from a heroin addict to somebody going around talking about Jesus Christ. That’s the kind of God I want to serve. And so it just spoke to me so dramatically at such a young age.”

Later, in her early 30s, she fully committed her life to Christ. Now, she says, she’s gone through a “spiritual evolution.” God woke her up “to get me out of myself,” she says. That came with a powerful altar-call prayer that broke off problems, including depression, in her bloodline.

Marshall-Frye wrote about her spiritual journey in Going for a Ride: A Journey to Your Heart’s Calling (). In the book, she tells how she found her true purpose in life and felt an irresistible call to step into her destiny. 

In this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, she believes it’s time for a reevaluation for every believer on life’s journey.

“As time goes on and our relationship grows deeper with the Lord, it changes us and it changes our thinking processes,” she says. “It changes how we may view life. And so I really believe, especially in this time and season, the true call is for people to wake up, as far as what is going on in our world, what is going on in our society. What is God’s purpose for people to do and to act and to be like? 

“We are so bombarded with how the world says we’re supposed to live our life. To be in the world but not of it takes a real discipline, to look at what God is saying, who God is saying I am, not who the world says I am, and that we can be life-givers. We can help people in this time because those who don’t have God’s mind or heart or Spirit are probably walking in fear and need hope.”

She is calling believers to more fully follow the Holy Spirit.

“I try to encourage others to especially be open to the Holy Spirit because I think sometimes people can have a dry walk if they’re not filled,” she says.

She says the church must be open to the Spirit to influence society.

“To be impactful, we need to let the Holy Spirit come and have His way,” she says. “Why did Jesus say to wait and tarry till the Holy Spirit comes? Because the power will come from on high. They had to wait for what the Holy Spirit was trying to show them, what to do next, how to be.”

Rest and Reevaluate

During this time of protecting one’s self from COVID-19, we must understand that God is in control.

“God is sovereign, and He allows things to happen,” she says. “Our whole world system has shut down. We need to leave our routines and learn from this. We need to ask God, ‘What are you trying to do here? What’s the purpose? What are we supposed to learn?’ As we are forced to slow down, we must ask ourselves, “Has this caused me to be more aware and awake? What can I change in my life moving forward? Is this a purposeful pause?'”

She believes it’s time to leave our routines and ask, “OK, God, what are you trying to do here? What’s the purpose? What am I supposed to learn from this?” 

She has done the same thing in her life even to the point of asking some significant questions: “Do I believe in that? Is that what I believe is truth? Do I do it just because everybody else does it, or am I doing it because that’s what I’ve been told to do?”

During this season, Marshall-Frye has been focused on three things.

“I’ve been praying a lot more than I have in the past. I also have been getting outside a lot more. I’ve been gardening a lot more, so I’ve been focusing on God’s purpose for me right now in this time. By being more introspective, I’ve been a lot more reflective about things, like what’s important to me. What do I value? How has the busyness of life tended to maybe take time away from the simpler things in life?”

She has been looking to help others, not only spiritually but also practically. 

“That’s what I’ve been doing, really looking at ways I can grow from this time and season instead of being fearful, and being wise about what I’m spending my time doing and how I’m expending my energy.”

She has been resting and reevaluating the way she lives her life.

Care and Conviction

Her concern for practical needs doesn’t stop with humanity. She also has a love for the rest of God’s creation that only grew as she volunteered with an animal rescue group.

“It really changed me,” she says. “I always had a love for animals, but not like I do now. I learned to care for those that don’t have a voice for themselves, the animals. It was a very rewarding experience. The rescue I was involved in took animals that most likely would be euthanized, and we saved their lives. Many of them were misfits or came from hoarding situations or shelters that euthanized their animals if they were sick, pregnant or not getting adopted.”

She cautions that the way we think about pets and other animals “can transfer to humans as well.” After watching some documentaries, she took a big step out of her newfound convictions.

“I made the choice to become a vegetarian and speak up for those who don’t have a voice, the animals,” she says. “I began rethinking why I lived the way I did and changed how I lived my life. I woke up and saw different needs while working at the shelter, and it expanded my heart.”

“Many people believe animals were made for us, but God said we were to steward creation and take care of the animals. He said in His Word that a good man cares for the needs of his animals [see Prov. 12:10]. In fact, there are many instances in the Bible where God used animals, including Baalam and the donkey, Jonah and the whale, Daniel and the lion’s den. It’s about caring for all those who have breath and life!”

Beyond caring for others, including animals, she’s taking seriously God’s original intention in the garden to take care of creation.

“Look how we have destroyed our planet,” she says. “One of the benefits of this pandemic is reduced pollution. I was just reading there has been a 30% reduction in pollution from the start of the lockdowns. This isn’t to diminish the lives that have been lost, but it has changed our planet for the good with the lockdowns. It has caused our planet to slow down and renew itself.”

Overall, she says she has learned that the simple things “give our lives fullness and meaning!” That includes serving humanity and stewarding creation. She sees this time prophetically when “we are at a pinnacle of society, and this virus is a wake-up call to slow down and get back to the basics, what is truly important to us.”

Although she thinks it’s important to stay informed about what’s happening in the world, she doesn’t want the news from overseas or her own community to consume her.

“I’ve just said, no, I have to trust that God sees everything that is happening in the world and look at it through the eyes of what I feel in my heart and my spirit,” she says. “I also think it’s a time for people to repent and really go, ‘OK, God, where am I falling short? Do I need to make different decisions with my time? Do I need to spend more time with my family and those I love? Hopefully, it will bring people to a place of a decision if they haven’t made a decision for Christ. What does it really mean to make a decision for Christ? Is He your Savior and your Lord? Who is Christ, and what are His ways? What about people’s souls and where are they spiritually? Your neighbors, your friends, your loved ones?”

As a “people person,” Marshall-Frye hopes that social distancing soon will be a thing of the past. She’s ready to get back to her ministry in the healing room of Bellingham, Washington. In the meantime, she continues to look for balance in her life. Rather than being busy all the time, she looks to sense where and how the Spirit is leading. 

She also takes responsibility for her health so God can use her for many years to come.

“We have to be healthy—body, mind, soul, spirit,” she says. “I’ve heard people say, ‘Well, God’s going to help me.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, of course, God’s going to help you, but you’ve got to help yourself too.’ I’ve got my master’s degree in exercise physiology with an emphasis in cardiology. I work in the cardiology field, but my minor was in health education, so I’ve always been interested in healthy kinds of things.”

She wants believers to stop merely “going and doing” and being caught up in their own lives.

“Part of being believers is standing up for righteousness, standing up for holiness,” she says. “We first have to take care of ourselves. How can we help others if we don’t even know the God that we serve and know what His heart and His mind is about things? So I think it’s about waking up to what’s really happening in our world and waking up to what our true purposes are on earth at this moment in time.”

Christine D. Johnson is an editor at Charisma Media and podcast host of Charisma Connection.

Once a Jehovah’s Witness, Dionne Cameron is now a Spirit-filled Christian dedicated to making the true gospel known far and wide. With an evangelist’s heart, she shares the good news of Jesus Christ through her Scripture-based apparel and accessories, social media and film.

Formerly a home care nurse, Cameron never thought she’d have her own apparel business, but, she says, it was God’s idea for her to start the Wear Scriptures company. 

“Two years ago, I went to a women’s prophetic conference, and this lady gave me a prophecy that she saw me in business,” Cameron says. “I said to God, ‘You know, I think she got it wrong.’ I never saw myself in business. I’m a nurse, an LPN, and that was what I was doing at the time. But I felt led, and there was a burden there, and I stepped out in obedience, and here I am.”

Bringing Glory to God

Wear Scriptures sells products ranging from beanies, shirts and jewelry to mugs, totes and home decor. She has collections for any age, from infants to adults, and also has a Spanish-language line. The designs are meant to help believers be witnesses for Christ.

Cameron sees her company as a kingdom business God created to bring honor and glory to His name. Her company is dedicated to spreading the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ with Christian clothing and accessories. The mission statement of Wear Scriptures is “Be a voice for the gospel.”

Speaking up in this way is not only for evangelists like Cameron, but, she says, “all of us as Christians have been given the Great Commission to spread the gospel all over the world. I feel that Christians are intimidated at times. They don’t know what to say, so I thought I would give people this idea: How can you be a voice? We can be a voice by wearing His Scriptures.”

Cameron always uses Scripture on her apparel and accessories.

“That is the basic premise of the business,” she says. “That is what God said to me.”

Because of her understanding of the power of the Bible, Cameron is quick to speak the Scriptures.

“That’s how God created the heavens and the earth. He spoke a word, and words are quite powerful. The Bible says, ‘Death and life are in the power of the tongue.'”

She also points to God’s promise that God’s Word will accomplish its purpose.

“For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there but water the earth and make it bring forth and bud that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Isa. 55:9-11).

“As God’s Word goes out there, it convicts. It heals. It’s very powerful,” she says. “There are things we can see in the spiritual realm when God’s Word is proclaimed, and so definitely, I will always use God’s Word because it is the final authority.”

Cameron follows Jesus’ example in the way He used the Word, and she finds this approach necessary at the present time as the world battles the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It protects, and we are declaring Psalm 91 over ourselves now with the coronavirus. When Jesus was tempted by the enemy, He didn’t quote where the Scripture was. All He said was ‘It is written.’ As Christians, we don’t have to know where it is exactly. Once we’ve said, ‘It is written,’ it is quite powerful.”

Cameron believes Christians must shine a light in a dark world during these difficult times.

“There is so much fear going around, and we know that God is not the author of fear,” she says. “He has not given us the spirit of fear. This is a great opportunity. God did not create this, but He is definitely going to use this to bring honor and glory to His name. So I think this is a great time for Christians to stand up and to arise, to speak out in the public square. You know, we can’t get together out in public, but we have social media, which is the new public square.”

Influencing for Christ

Cameron calls on Christians to boldly influence all segments of society, in government, education, in religion, in the family, in science and in entertainment. She also includes traditional and social media. She calls on believers to “put God’s Word out there, to be influencers in society.”

Beyond her apparel company, she is moving into film starting with a pro-life short film on her website.

“She changed her mind,” says Cameron of the young woman in the film from JRated Productions. “She chose to keep her baby.”

Cameron makes it clear through her Wear Scriptures blog at that she does not condemn those who have had abortions, but she encourages women to choose life.

“Now I am not judging women who have had abortions,” she writes. “Because abortion is legal, many women have been sold the lie that a fetus is not a real human being. God still loves them and He is calling them to Choose Life, to Choose to receive His Son Jesus Christ, so that their sins can be covered under His blood that was shed for them.” 

She teamed up with JRated Productions and plans to work with the company on an even bigger project.

“The J in the company’s name stands for Jesus, and we came up with a script for a pro-life short film, a movie,” she says. “It got some great reviews out there on YouTube and on Facebook. Our ultimate goal is to create probably an hour to an hour-and-a-half-long movie talking about abortion.”

This is one way Cameron plans to exercise her kingdom influence. 

“We have many influences out there who promote a particular product,” she says. “Well, God is calling His church to be influencers for His kingdom, to bring His Word out there in the public square.”

Wear Scriptures also has pro-life products, including buttons, tees, sleeveless tanks and sweatshirts, with its Choose Life and Choose Life 2.0 designs.

Cameron says her holy boldness comes from the Lord because she wasn’t always that way. Now she speaks not only to the unsaved but also to believers to separate themselves from the world.

“There is a great apostasy in the church,” she says. “I see many churches that are saying that homosexual marriage is OK. That is totally against what the Bible teaches. I think that’s why our nation has gone the way that it has because the truth has not been taught. It has been suppressed. And we have leaders in the church who aren’t born again, who don’t have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. So how can the blind lead the blind?”

But she is thankful that God always has a remnant.

“He always has His people who He wants to raise up to speak truth because God loves His creation, and He wants His people saved,” she says, citing 2 Peter 3:9. “He does not want any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”

To address Western culture’s view on homosexuality, Wear Scriptures offers a shirt design with a rainbow cross and a verse.

“The meaning behind that design is that God is the author of the rainbow,” she says. “He created the rainbow. And then the cross symbolizes Jesus’ death and resurrection and that if we call upon the name of Jesus, we shall be saved. And also, the reason why I did that was, there is a homosexual Bible out there, and it just angered me so much that I felt like I had to have the cross in a rainbow to show that the cross belongs to God, and the rainbow belongs to God. The rainbow is also in God’s throne room.”

Cameron is purposeful about being a witness for Christ and advancing the gospel around the world. Click here to see how God set her free from the Jehovah’s Witness false gospel on her Wear Scriptures blog. Now she is aiming to share the true gospel around the world and inspire others in their walk with God through her devotionals (available at her website), apparel and more.

“God has given me a prophetic voice to speak to the nations,” she says. “Wear Scriptures is going all over the world. That’s where I see it going, so my sphere of influence is the nations and also to encourage the body of Christ, to be courageous and to be bold, to stand up for truth and righteousness and to be a voice for God.” 

Christine D. Johnson is an editor and Charisma Connection podcast host at Charisma Media.

Pete Buttigieg reportedly told his supporters Sunday he is suspending his campaign, according to Fox News. The move comes after former Vice President Joe Biden took South Carolina’s Democratic primary by storm yesterday and after “Mayor Pete” only won the Iowa contest.

Voters in 14 states will head to the polls March 3, known as “Super Tuesday,” when one-third of all delegates are at stake.

The first openly homosexual presidential candidate, Buttigieg is married and is Episcopalian. The South Bend, Indiana, mayor drew controversy for his pro-gay stand.

“My marriage has made me a better man,” he said earlier in the campaign. “And yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God. If being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far above my pay grade. That’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand, that if you have a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”