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What determines the value of something? Is it not the price someone is willing to pay for it? Our theme for Easter this year was Ransomed. Thousands of people gathered at Victory this past weekend because of a Ransom story that they either believe or are interested in hearing more about. But, it’s amazing how millions of people gathered around the world to celebrate this story and never really get the depth of what actually happened!

In fact, when I really think about the Easter story, I’m not sure most of us really get the full appreciation or understanding of what it means to be Ransomed by God himself! So, for my Easter message this year, I felt led to discuss three key elements that help us fully appreciate what we’re celebrating:

1. THE COST – The value of something is always determined by the price that was paid for it.
2. THE CONTRAST - There is no recorded story of any other historical religious figure who actually died for the sins of humanity.
3. THE COMPASSION – The one thing that separates Christianity from all other religions is the constant theme of God’s love and compassion.

God loves you and wants to have a close intimate relationship with you. If you’re interested in that, whether for the first time or not, I encourage you to watch the video of this message. I think the Lord will speak to you through it.

God is so good! I am now 100% debt free! It’s been a journey but well worth it. I am an example that God will meet you when you do what you can.

I really messed my credit up during my college years. I had a repossession, credit cards maxed out, past due bills from the state that I had recently moved from. You name it; I had it. I was young and wasn’t concerned about what bad credit meant for the future. I wasn’t thinking of buying a house one day or low interest rates. I didn’t know Christ then, so I didn’t understand the bondage that comes along with bad credit.

It was about 3 years before I came to Christ that I started to develop a plan of attack on my credit. I started with the small bills and worked my way up. After coming to Christ, I stuck with my regime and my credit score went up and up.

But then, a family member came to me and asked me to co-sign a car loan. Although I felt in my spirit that I should have said no, I didn’t. And, of course, this person defaulted on the loan. So, after working so hard and diligently to get my credit right, I was almost back where I started because of a stupid decision. I had no other choice but to take responsibility for that loan, and so I started making payments on it along with my car.

At this point I had 3 major pieces of debt left…. my car, the “other” car and my student loan. In two years, I was able to pay off those two cars all because of God’s favor. The last thing to was my student loan. In March, I received a bonus from work, and I wanted to just put it in the bank and save it. I didn’t want to use it to pay off that last piece of debt. I had a momentary loss of focus, but God brought me back.

You see, I am currently taking Crown, and at that point in the class, we where studying debt. Also, my budget coach told me that I needed to pray about what to do with this bonus. So, while doing the study on debt, I came across a Scripture that says point blank, if you have the money to pay a debt you need to pay it. So that’s what I did, and now I am part of the Debt Free Club and it is an awesome feeling! Now I am working on my budget in Crown and working on being a good steward over what God has entrusted me with. ~ Kristina G.

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Hey, what’s God done in YOUR life as a part of Victory World Church? Please tell us about it. There are so many others who need to be encouraged in their faith by your story. Please, click this link to Share Your Story today!

This past weekend, while I was speaking at Destiny Church in Destin, Florida, special guest Christine Caine of Equip & Empower Ministries was blowing up our Resilient Women’s Conference, as well as our regular services here at Victory. She brought a great message, challenging us to step out in great faith for God’s Kingdom. I loved this quote of hers: “You cannot change a world you’re not in, you cannot change a world you’re the same substance of.”

If you missed it (or even if you didn’t) and want to have your faith challenged and increased, make sure you watch Christine’s message from Sunday morning here! But be careful, this word might really shake up your life! But I promise it will be in a good way!

Well, I’m not sure where to start, but I would like to share how God delivered me and healed me from homosexuality. This journey started the first day I went to Victory World Church during theElephant in the Pewseries. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 is the scripture that convicted me to get saved. At that time, I was in a same sex relationship with someone and we had gone to that service together. But, by the time we got in the car, we mutually decided to end our relationship and pursue getting right with God.

I began regularly attending Sunday service and reading the Bible a lot. I had the privilege of reading at work and took full advantage. While aggressively reading the Bible, God began to change my view on how I had been living before to what His truth was. As a result, my identity, which I thought I had found in same sex relationships, now became rooted in Christ. I also read a book about leaving homosexuality and God spoke to me through it as well.

As God began to peel back the layers, he began bringing incidents to mind of sexual abuse from my childhood involving both men and women. What with having an absent father and a mother who was co-dependent on men, it all began to make sense how I ended up where I was at 22 years of age. I didn’t understand why I liked women over men and had the desires I had. All I knew was that it was wrong. All I wanted to be was happy, but I being happy was to disobey God, so I had a constant mental struggle knowing that.

I allowed God to mold me and gave up trying. I had to just go back to nothing…no thoughts…no previous opinions. Pretty much everything I knew, I had to forget, and I let God fill me with the truth. Most of my life I had dressed like a guy, but one day, when I was supposed to be getting dressed, I began hating the clothes in my closet. As God changed the inside of me, the outside changed as well. I got rid of my entire wardrobe and began to buy women’s clothes, and for the first time in my life, I felt feminine.

I never thought I would be the woman I am today. I give all glory to God. It wasn’t an easy or overnight transformation, and God is still changing me into the woman He intended me to be, but I COULDN’T have done it without God. I thank God for all I went through and how He is being glorified through my life. I’m living proof that God can and does heal homosexuals. I am a new creation! ~ Jocelyn M.

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Hey, what’s God done in YOUR life as a part of Victory World Church? Please tell us about it. There are so many others who need to be encouraged in their faith by your story. Please, click this link to Share Your Story today!

I think when we look at the world unfolding around us these days it’s pretty apparent that life can be quite overwhelming for a lot of people right now…consider all the bad news about the economy, natural disasters (Japan), terrorism, etc. Yet with all of this going on, I believe if God took the pulse of those who identify with Christ, he would find that a majority live most of their lives without a sense of urgency when it comes to fulfilling the Great Commission!

Have you ever wondered what would cause a person to give up their cushy life in America and go to a third world country to do missions? What about people who dedicate themselves to 24 hr. prayer? Why would someone give a large sum of money to the church with an economic uncertainty like we have today?

One word: URGENCY

Think about Paul’s words to the church in Corinth: “But this I say, brethren, the time is short, so that from now on even those who have wives should be as though they had none, those who weep as though they did not weep, those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice, those who buy as though they did not possess, and those who use this world as not misusing it. For the form of this world is passing away.” (1 Corinthians 7:29-31 NKJ)

Now, I certainly have my own fair share of struggling to live with a sense of urgency. There’s so much in our lives and in our culture that tries to keep us from living this way…but we have to remember that, first and foremost, this is designed by our enemy to keep us from sharing our faith with unbelievers. I just can’t get away from the final thoughts and words that Jesus left us with concerning the Great Commission. These were Jesus’ last words while with his disciples on earth. I’m sure he didn’t mean for us to just take these words nonchalantly. No, I believe he said them with a sense of urgency…an urgency we all need to get a hold of.

So, in an effort to increase this sense of urgency in my own life, I have studied others who already live this way. In the process, I have discovered two key revelations that people who live with URGENCY have:

1. The revelation of God’s judgment.
2. The revelation of God’s love.

There must be a balance of understanding God’s judgment with God’s love. There is a real problem that can occur when we minister out of God’s judgment rather than connecting with God’s love – we become religious and judgmental. This is what causes the great disconnect with the unbelieving world! Instead, we must learn to be like Jesus, who connected with others through love.

Now, I have a lot more to say about living with urgency, including what I believe God’s judgment looks like. So, let me encourage you to watch the teaching I gave this past weekend on this topic during our services. There are way too many people – our friends and family members – who desperately need us to get urgent with sharing the Gospel.

I believe one of the primary signs of a true conversion in Christ is that something happens in a person’s heart that shifts from selfishness to generosity. Over the past few weeks, we’ve talked a lot about being a good steward, but what ultimately makes a person the kind of steward God desires is this thing called GENEROSITY! And, because I want to be generous myself, I’ve made it a point to study what’s behind a generous heart. I’ve often wondered why are some people generous and some people aren’t.

In my studies, I discovered the following principles of generosity:

1. Generosity is based on TRUST.
2. Generosity is motivated by LOVE.
3. Generosity is guided by PURPOSE.

Just as God has been so generous with us, so we ought to be generous with others. There’s so much to accomplish, so much to be gained – for others as well as ourselves. This is something we can’t afford to dismiss lightly. In this day and age, we need to develop generous hearts. Click here to get the full explanation of these principles by watching my teaching on the Pocket of Generosity from this past weekend.

My husband, Lynn and I began attending Victory World Church shortly after the first year of our marriage and continued faithfully for 12 years. This was a crucial foundation-building stage for both our marriage and our walk as Christians. It was exactly where we needed to be. We gravitated toward Pastor Dennis’ teachings on biblical finances, which included responsible financial stewardship as well as living a life of sacrifice, simplicity, and significance. We also paid close attention to his teachings on marriage and family. We wanted to make sure we knew God’s plan for how we should live.

During this time, we also heard another couple’s testimony of paying off their mortgage within 3.5 years and we wanted to experience that for ourselves. How radical! It was a seed that was planted and nurtured as we attended Crown classes to learn even more about Christian financial stewardship. As a result of all the financial teachings, we eventually bought our next two cars debt-free. We saved $40,000 towards a 20% down payment on our house, which we had custom-built after living 8 years in a 2 bedroom townhouse we had purchased for $32,000. We lived within our means, tithed faithfully and gave of our time and resources.

Around this time, we started our family with the goal that I would soon leave my corporate job and its annual salary of $60k to become a full-time mom. It was a big step of faith since my husband had started his trucking business the year before my transition to come home. But we knew we were ready and knew this was God’s perfect will for our family. We had saved and prepared, with no debt other than our mortgage. We had practiced good financial stewardship by purchasing a home we could afford, not one the bank said we qualified for well beyond our means. I could stay home and enjoy raising my children without any hesitation. I was amazed and humbled by God’s faithfulness during that first year!

Business was good; home prices rose, and within a few years, we had over $100,000 equity in our home. We decided to use it to start investing in real estate. We started by buying a house for my husband’s mom (a long-time dream of his) and a townhome for his sister, who had lived their entire lives in government housing. We wanted to break that generational cycle of poverty by placing them in a new environment and allowing them to have something they could truly call their own. We gave away a car to a single mom with 3 boys and let her live with us for two years in our new house while she saved for a down payment on a home of her own. We counseled other couples on financial stewardship and spent eight years leading a small group in our home. We both graduated from the two-year discipleship and ministry program at Victory’s Ministry Training Center. Life was good!

Nevertheless, the season came to an abrupt end within a few short years. Fuel prices sharply increased; our trucking business took the hit; and then a traumatic tractor-trailer accident made matters worse. My husband would not get back in a truck for almost a year. Since we had a large cash reserve and were doing great with the real estate investing, we were not overly concerned. However, things were about to become even more difficult than we could have ever imagined! The real estate bubble burst and we were left with properties we could no longer sell and not enough rental income to cover all the mortgages. We managed for a while using our reserves but within a year it was all gone.

Our businesses went bankrupt, as the U.S. economy plunged downward amidst the mortgage crisis and failing banks. We were devastated financially as well as ashamed and humiliated that we had gotten into this position. Yet God is a God of restoration and He would not only see us through this terrible trial but with His grace and compassion He has begun restoring everything that we lost. When things hit rock-bottom, God gave us a life-changing Word. After two years of not wanting to look at real estate again, He led me back to that place. I did not want to go there, so I had to question, “Why, Lord? I really don’t want to just be looking at another house.” Boy was I surprised when He told me, “You’re not just buying another house, YOU ARE BUYING YOUR FREEDOM.” Now that was something I could dance to!

I shared this Word with my husband. After a few weeks of prayer, God gave him the confirmation he needed, “Start looking”, He told him. So, we started looking at the many foreclosures with ridiculously low prices as a result of the mortgage crisis. We found homes that were half their previous value. Houses that formerly sold for $200,000 could be bought for under a $100k. Many homes were going for less than $50k – unbelievable! We agreed together in prayer and my husband wrote out our vision for our mortgage-free home. Within a few short months, we purchased a $210k stucco ranch on a full basement for $55,000 cash with NO MORTGAGE!!!! Our very own home – debt-free!

We had started with only a couple of thousand dollars in savings and God supernaturally released money to us from a variety of sources. For instance, we received an $8000 income tax refund we had been waiting over a year to receive – with interest! After closing on the house, we received a check for $5500 from the government as part of their repeat buyers’ incentive program. We used that money to put in new carpet, paint the house, and make other changes to make it ours – which it truly was! When you have a mortgage the house actually belongs to the bank until it’s paid off, regardless of how you look at it. Plus, you have to pay them roughly three times what you actually paid for the house. No matter how you work the numbers, you never really have any equity until it’s paid off. This one was all ours! Praise God!

Through this entire experience, God showed us how we had previously bought into the world system when it came to mortgage debt instead of using the financial system of His kingdom. There are many instances in the Bible where God supernaturally provides resources for those who are obedient and step out on faith. Prior to this, we believed mortgage debt was “good”, not realizing we were supporting the world’s economy and its way of thinking. All of our previous real estate holdings had mortgages, so the rent money we collected went straight to the bank.

Yet when we first started investing in real estate, God had given my husband a vision that we would own four properties that would produce enough financial resources to support four different missionaries on the mission field. That’s hard to do when you have a mortgage where the bank is the only one being supported! It seems even harder after we had lost it all and were starting all over again. Yet, we believe that NOTHING is impossible for our God and we continued to stand on His Word for our ministry.

Well, it’s been a year since taking our first steps towards financial freedom and God has shown us His favor in many ways. Besides living in our own home mortgage-free, He gave us favor in purchasing two townhomes debt-free for $5000 each from the bank; true income properties. The best news is a major highway is being re-routed through this townhome community and the Georgia DOT will be purchasing these properties in the summer for fair market value, currently $50,000 each! God is good – all the time!

The good news is it’s not just meant for our benefit but for the benefit of His kingdom in order to reach others so that they may experience the freedom of knowing Jesus. Over the past year, we have continued to cheerfully give what we have to the LifeLink International team in Nicaragua, but we cannot wait to write them that first $10,000 check!

God’s vision that He gave my husband a few years ago for debt-free properties to support missionaries is surely coming to pass and many who do not know the love of Jesus will benefit from His faithfulness and our obedience to His Word! We are walking out His promise and searching for our 4th debt-free property at this time.

Through it all our family has learned how to live a life based solely on trusting in God’s faithfulness. We have learned true contentment and sincere gratefulness for all we have. We stand on His word and know that it will happen just as He spoke it. Instead of our family being ripped apart over financial stress, our marriage is stronger and our love is deeper. Our trust in God is greater than ever. He walked with us and never abandoned us, even when we felt the world crumbling all around us. In turn, we never abandoned each other or our marriage vows. Our initial freedom experience happened when we realized in the midst of our trial that we could walk away from it all as long as we had the Lord and each other – nothing else matters.

His Word has given us so much wisdom in the area of family and finance; with financial peace, not burdens or stress. He has shown us that His economy is REAL and will never fail. It is not based on the ever-increasing bondage of debt called the American Dream – which is really an illusion based on materialism and is a trap that will destroy families and steal God’s joy from our lives. Without wisdom and diligence, it is easy to become ensnared in the spirit of bondage (debt) controlling and enslaving the people of the U.S. today, including Christians. Only God’s kingdom will endure and those who put their faith in Him will experience TRUE FREEDOM.

Throughout history, the Lord has always rescued His people from their places of bondage and He did it for us! We are no longer bound to this world’s system but walk freely as God intends His people to do. Regardless of the circumstances around you, His desire is for you to experience freedom in all areas of your life. Jesus came to set the captives free – I am so thankful! The window of opportunity is open for this season and for God’s people – NOW is the time to buy your freedom!

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Has God shown himself faithful in an amazing way in your life as a result of the ministry and/or teaching at Victory? Please tell us about it – Share Your Story today!