Consider Your Ways

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 (going4aride.com). 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.