Welcome to The Ultimate Journey!   

You are about to embark on an incredible adventure where you will discover truths about who you really are, who God really is, what it means to have the life of Christ indwell you and how you were created to be a point of entry for the Holy Spirit to this world.

THE ANCIENT JOURNEY

This journey is not something new. It is, in actuality, an ancient journey that happened thousands of years ago. God had promised Abraham that he would Father a people and that people in time would be enslaved. Those were the Israelites who became enslaved in Egypt.

Years later, God spoke to Moses as recorded in Exodus 6:6-8. “Therefore, say to the Israelites: I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD. “The phrase I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God” is the same language used for a wedding proposal from a man to the woman he wants to marry.

In keeping with his promise, God sent Moses into Egypt to “set his people free so they could worship him.” After a series of 10 plagues to show that the Living God was greater than all the gods of Egypt, Pharaoh relented and commanded the Israelites to leave Egypt. God put it upon the hearts of the Egyptians to give them riches such as silver and gold and other valuable items, items that would later be needed in the wilderness to build the tabernacle. Had God not equipped them with these items, they would have not had them when it was time for the tabernacle to be built. Not only does God call us but he equips us for what He has in store for us and his kingdom.

Imagine for a moment that you were one of the Israelites in Egypt. All you would have known your whole life was slavery. Your parents were slaves, and your grandparents would have probably been slaves. Scholars are not exactly sure how many Israelites were in Egypt at that time but Exodus 12:27 says that there were 600,000 men, not including children, and other sojourners with them. Imagine you lived in a city with that many people and one night on the news the announcement comes that everyone is to prepare to leave the city and you can only take what you can carry. Along with a huge mass of people, you leave the city and begin traveling down the closest interstate. You are not sure of exactly where you are going and you are not even sure what freedom looks like.

Moses begins to lead the Israelites across the desert and soon after they left, Pharaoh changes his mind and decides to go after them to take them back into captivity. His army begins to come upon them as they approach the sea that lies in front of them. What would you be thinking as you saw the sea on one side of you and Pharaoh’s army coming upon you on the other side? I know what I would be thinking. “I knew this was too good to be true. Nothing good ever really happens to me.” And then much to our surprise through an act of God, Moses parts the sea with his staff and the Israelites are able to cross safely to the other side. As Pharaoh’s army chases after them through the parted waters, the waters go back and all Pharaoh’s army is drowned in the sea.

While previously you thought you were free, now you really are free. This is because the enemy has now been totally defeated. Next God leads Moses and his people to Mt. Sinai where he gives Moses the 10 Commandments. A cloud covered the mountain much like a wedding Chuppah covers the Jewish bride and groom on their wedding day. These commandments were given in the form of a Ketubah which is Hebrew for a wedding covenant. This wedding covenant contract was the preamble to 613 instructions that God gave as to how he and his bride would live together. In Jewish culture a Ketubah would be nailed on the wall in the center of the house.

Likewise, God and His people built the tabernacle where He would dwell with them and have relationship with them. The ketubah was put in the center of the house or tabernacle in the Ark of the Covenant as a reminder of the covenant he made with his people.

Moses knows his mission is to take God’s people to the Promised Land, so he sends in 12 spies to get a report about the land. All the spies report back that it is a land flowing with milk and honey and that there are giants in the land and fortified cities. 10 of the spies were very afraid. When they saw the people of the land, they declared “we were as grasshoppers. What happens to a grasshopper? It gets squashed. Are people with a grasshopper mindset and identity going to possess a land? You see, there were two problems.

First, while God had called the Israelites his chosen people, instead of seeing themselves through the eyes of being his beloved, they saw themselves through the eyes of their old slave mentality. Secondly, they did not see God in truth either. He promised them he would take the land, but they didn’t believe him and trust him. They could only see their circumstances through the filter of what they could be and do in and of themselves. Only two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, saw their circumstances through God’s eyes and believed he would fulfill his promises.

What ends up happening is God had to send the children of Israel back into the desert for 40 years, partly to punish them and also to teach them some things. They needed to come to know their identity as his chosen people and they needed to know how trustworthy he is. The entire generation over 20 years of age died off during those 40 years. If this next generation didn’t follow him, they too would die in the desert.

After Joshua ends up leading the Israelites to the Promised Land, where does he take them first? Jericho: a fortified city. They were not going to be able to sneak into their promised land. They were going to have to face their fears and see that God really can be trusted. God tells them to go in and march around the walls of the city. What’s not wise about marching around the walls of a city? High on the walls is where the guards are with their weapon waiting and watching. If you march around the walls you are like sitting ducks. But, all the Israelites know is to do what God says. So they march around the city for seven days and seven times on the seventh day and they shout and blow trumpets and the walls fall down and they are “IN”; Was this because they had great weapons and were great warriors? No! Was it because they had a great God and they trusted Him? Yes!

The journey God calls us to take is much like that of the Israelites. All of us in our own way have been slaves. We were born as slaves to the enemy and we were conformed into the patterns of this world. We have all been in our own Egypt. If you have repented of you sinful, self-life of slavery and acknowledged Christ as your savior, then you have been freed from bondage. You may be out of Egypt, but the real question is, is Egypt out of you? Do you listen to the voice of God and what he says about who you are, or do you listen to the voices of your past experiences and what they say about you? Often, we intellectually acknowledge our freedom, yet we are still enslaved to the old patterns and mindsets that keep us from talking and behaving like free men & women. Many people can say, “I know God loves me intellectually, but I don’t really feel it down in my heart” Or, “I know intellectually that I am forgiven, but I don’t feel forgiven. It’s not enough to know it in your head, we need to be able to experience it in our hearts. It needs to be woven into the core fiber of who you are and become the glasses through which you see life. If you know in the core of your being that you are loved by God, then when a trial comes your way, you will not wonder if this is happening to you because God doesn’t love you. Or, if you get hurt in a relationship, you will not take on the belief that it happened because you are unlovable. If you know in the core of your being that you have been forgiven, you will no longer carry shame or guilt over things God has already forgiven you for from your past.

You will not be able to possess the life God has for you until you see yourself for who God says you really are and until you see God for who he really is.

THE ULTIMATE JOURNEY

The Ultimate Journey is a process, and just as for the Israelites, it will take time. You too have been chosen by God. You don’t have to remain a slave in your own personal Egypt, you don’t have to continue to wander in the desert, and you don’t have to settle for less than the Promised Land God created you for. He created you for himself and while he promised the land to the Israelites, they had to possess it one step at a time by his authority and power.
So what can you expect as you travel The Ultimate Journey? This process has three phases.

Phase 1, Unpacking Self-Deception answers questions like, “Why do I feel spiritually stuck? Or, I have arrived at where I thought I wanted to be and now I am wondering, “Is this all there is?” or, Maybe you find yourself saying something like, “The things I want to do, I don’t do. But the things I don’t want to do, I find myself doing.”
Perhaps you are carrying around the gnawing pain of inner hurts from your past. Or perhaps you’ve been struggling to escape some underlying guilt and shame. Maybe you are caught in the cycle of addiction or have been thinking something is wrong with you. Or that no one else has such thoughts and feelings. But the truth is most everyone struggles with these questions.

Phase 1 is a safe harbor where you’ll unpack the lies you have believed that have weighed you down, held you back, tripped you up, and even derailed you at times. As you do this, you’ll be freed up to chart a new course that will lead you into an incredible love relationship with your Creator.

Phase 1 is an honest evaluation of where you are. By looking at the past events of your life, you will be able to heal the pain from the hurts you experienced and identify the roots of your current thinking patterns that may be dysfunctional or damaging. Often times we have developed patterns of thinking that are such a part of us that we do not even recognize how they are impacting us and our relationships. When you can see where they came from, and then what the truth is, you can finally break away from them and bond to the life God has for you. This is the process of unpacking self-deception that Phase 1 addresses.

Phase 2 is about Abandoning Self-Reliance.

Have the pressures of performing and “running your own show” taken a toll in your life? Are you tired of constantly comparing yourself to others? Does it always seem that lasting peace and rest are just beyond your grasp?
Perhaps you don’t yet see how God is involved in your life. Or maybe you gave your life to God in earnest, yet what he wants to do with it is unclear. The world tells us we need to be self-reliant and in control. But what if you were created to be dependent upon someone far greater than yourself? What if the Living God, Creator of the universe, wants to be your source for everything?

Through Phase 2 you will come to trust God with your life because you will know him for who he really is rather than who you may think he is. As you live out this intimate, bonded relationship with your Creator, you will be able to draw everything you need from him. You will explore the depths of God’s unwavering love and unlimited provisions, as you learn to trust him in everything.

Through Phase 2, you will identify the pattern of thinking that God wants you to have. We accomplish this through an in-depth study of the airtight, Blood Covenant relationship that God wants to have with each of us. You will experience God’s Solution to your guilt, shame, fear, anxiety or pressure to perform. You will explore the incredible love relationship He wants with you. God is a God of truth. As you learn more about what God thinks, you will get a clearer picture of how you should be thinking. The target we are shooting for is to view life through the truth of God’s eyes and to begin to think as He thinks. As you see as He sees and think as He thinks you will experience dramatic life-change at the very core level of who you are, and it will permeate every area of your life.

Here is where we will learn deeper who God really is, what He has done for us, and what He wants from us. Christ died so that we could live. Now we die to ourselves so that He can live his life in and through us. In order for this to happen we will need to learn to trust Him, just like the Israelites did in the desert. This took them out of their comfort zones. But for those forty years in the wilderness of transition, God proved faithful and provided for their every need day by day…manna for food, water from the rock, shelter and clothing that did not wear out.

Through Phase 2 you will learn how to give God control by realizing how airtight and trustworthy He is! This will take you out of your comfort zone, but once you realize how deeply He loves you, you will be ready to exchange your life for Christ’s life.

Once you have abandoned reliance on yourself, it is time to bond to the life God has for you and become one with him. Phase 3 is Embracing Self-Surrender.

During Phase 3 you will learn what it means to abide in Christ and experience the blessings of a life surrendered to him. Do you ever feel like a child on a trip that keeps asking, “Are we there yet?” or, “How much farther is it?” Perhaps you don’t realize that you’ve already arrived. What you are searching for is not a place, but a person. You have arrived because the person you are seeking, Christ, is already here—in you! In Christ you are free from the futility of trying to fix up your life using the latest self-improvement techniques.

What does someone look like who really believes the Living God, Creator of the Universe lives in them. Is that someone whose life is characterized by fear, worry or stress? Would that person feel alone, rejected, abandoned or not good enough? No, it doesn’t match up. While we have had our spirits renewed, our soul; which is made up of our mind, will and emotions still need to play catch up to that reality.

Through Phase 3 you will be able to remove the old thinking and put in the new. This phase is dedicated to learning how to restructure your mind and life by allowing Christ to live through you. In this phase, you will be given practical tools that will allow you to take the power of God beyond head knowledge and into the reality of your everyday life with Him. You will learn the practical meaning of Romans 12:1&2 where the Apostle Paul says “I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. We learn that sacrifice does not mean torture and misery as we attempt to deny ourselves of certain things. Rather it means choosing daily to exchange our old thought patterns for His ways, thereby allowing Christ to change our lives from the inside out. As a result, we will be transformed by the renewing of our mind and experience real life-change.

God will transform the former desert of your life into a beautiful oasis as you learn to renew your mind by sowing good seed. Instead of being at the mercy of other people, you’ll choose how you react and respond to life’s circumstances. You may not be able to control what is going on around you, but you will be able to choose what is going on inside you. And it’s all because of who is living in you! You will be able to abandon your self-life ship and let the light of Christ in you become a beacon of hope to the rest of the world.

Let’s look at another way to explain these three phases. Imagine with me for a moment that your life is like a house. However, there seems to be a problem. When you ring the doorbell, the light goes on. Somehow, things aren’t working out the way they are supposed to. In Phase 1 you find out how your house is not wired properly. In Phase 2 you will be given a blueprint for what the wiring should look like and how it should operate. Finally, in Phase 3, you will learn to install the new wiring so that when you ring the doorbell, the doorbell actually rings instead of the light going on like it used to.

In Phase 1 you will get free from your baggage you smuggled in from Egypt so that in Phase 2 you can get free from your self reliance through learning to trust God in your wilderness, so that in Phase 3 God is free to live his life in and through you so that you can possess the promised land he has for you.

THE PHASE 1 LEG OF THE JOURNEY

In Phase 1 you will begin to identify and process any unfinished business from our own personal life. This includes any unfinished business from the past which continues to contaminate your present activities and relationships with yourself, others and God. Unfinished business stems from what we call the 6 H’s. These are
HURTS – The deep emotional wounds that still fester and hurt because they have never healed.
HORRORS – The fears that still grip us because we still can’t face and outgrow them.
HUMILIATIONS – The chronic sense of inadequacy and shame that we carry.
HATREDS – The unresolved anger, resentment, rage or bitterness that poisons our souls.
HUNGERS – The unmet emotional needs that drive us to indulge in compulsive, addictive, codependent, sinful behavior.
HONORS – The accomplishments that make us feel we have to continue to perform well to be loved and accepted.

If these wounds are not healed, they will not be able to develop into scars. They will continue to hurt, ooze, perhaps get infected and make us hypersensitive to everything and everyone around us. When you look at the physical scars on your body, they are reminders of the things that caused those scars, but they don’t hurt anymore because your body has done what is necessary to heal them. It is time for your soul to be able to do what it is designed to do to take care of your soul wounds.

Through this process, we learn to “get real about our lives and develop healthy intimacy with other people. We overcome shame and outgrow the compulsion to control and abuse others. We become consciously aware of the areas where old, destructive patterns still control us at the subconscious level. Then we are able to learn to “garden,” or take care of ourselves and learn how to develop new, healthy patterns.

We will be looking for events that happened in your life that relate to the 6 H’s we just discussed. For each painful event you experienced there were also feelings associated with it. You will have an opportunity to feel what you felt when you were going through those experiences.

In many homes feelings are not accepted. For example, It is not okay to cry or okay to be angry. As a result, those feelings get stuffed and come out in other unacceptable ways. One way to describe this is emotional constipation. We know that if we eat all week and our bodies don’t properly digest and process the food as they are intended, it won’t be good. Well, some of us have been emotionally constipated for years. So, it is not only important to share what happened but to have permission to feel what happened. Phase 1 is a safe place for you to just be where you are at, feelings and all.

In addition to the feelings that are associated with each painful event, there are messages that we receive from those events. There are things we come to believe about ourselves because of what happened to us.

For example: A child that gets molested. That is a very painful event. It is also something that the child is not responsible for. But, unless a child has an opportunity to process that event in a healthy way, that child will probably come out of that experience thinking they are bad, dirty, shameful, and wondering if something is wrong with them.

All of those lies enter their thoughts when in fact, the person doing that to them was doing something bad, dirty, and shameful and something was wrong with them. But children do not have the filtering capability like adults. Children by virtue of being children are at the mercy of the things that happen to them and the people that exploit and hurt them.

Many people think there is no point in going back to the past because you can’t change the past. Your right! You can’t change what happened to you, but you can change what you believe about yourself as a result of what happened to you. The molested child will likely believe lies, based on an event the child wasn’t even responsible for.

What if the adult that was molested as a child was able to see the truth? The truth that the child they used to be was really innocent so they don’t have to carry the shame of someone else’s behavior? That would change that adult’s life dramatically. Unfortunately, many of us are still viewing our lives through the eyes of a helpless, wounded child. You see, children are at the mercy of the way things are, but adults get to decide the way things are going to be.

When you grew up and left home, you took with you a mental suitcase. All throughout your childhood it was packed with the clothing that your caregivers and other authority figures put on you. Maybe they thought you should wear plaid. After all, that is what they wore growing up, and so they handed it down to you. You probably didn’t even think of questioning them. Or if you did, it didn’t get you anywhere. But now you go out on your own as an adult and you open that suitcase. It is full of plaid clothing. Even though you didn’t really like plaid on you, you instinctively put on the plaid clothing. It doesn’t even occur to you that you can wear something else…something that reflects who you really are and how you feel about yourself. During Phase 1 you are going to be able to see that now that you are an adult you do have choices. We are going to help either other “put on” the truth about who we really are. You are going to be able to clothe yourself with how God sees you.

Sexual abuse along with physical and emotional abuse cause great harm, but there are other types of hurt and wounds that we experience that may not seem as damaging on the surface but the messages we get from them can be just as destructive.

For example, Mary went through the Phase 1 process when her two daughters were 10 and 8 years old. During phase 1 she was able to see a lot of things she was doing as a parent that were hurtful to her kid, that she wasn’t previously aware of. Her major bondage was perfectionism. She thought that she had to be perfect and do everything perfectly to be acceptable. Subconsciously if she had to be perfect then her kids had to be perfect because she saw them as a reflection of her. Phase 1 enabled her to see herself as God sees her. GOOD ENOUGH. Good enough because of how well she performed? NO. Good enough because when he created humankind he said, “Very Good.”

After going through Phase 1, Mary shared with her oldest daughter that she knew there were things that she had done that had hurt her and she wanted her to be able to share those with her so she could ask for forgiveness. Immediately Mary’s daughter began sharing and as she did, she began crying like a little girl would cry. She shared how when she was three years old, she had tried really hard to make her bed so her mom would be proud of her. She reminded her mom that she came into her room and said, “That’s not how you’re supposed to make your bed!”

Mary had no recollection of that event at all. But does that sound like what a perfectionist mother would say to her child? Yes. So she took her daughter seriously. Mary was able to tell her that she was so sorry and that she should have been grateful that she was even trying to make her bed at three years old. She told her that she didn’t do anything wrong. She explained that as a mother, she was wrong for being critical of her little girl and not encouraging her for the job that she did. It was a beautiful time of healing.

Let’s look at that event more closely. Was it the event of being scolded for not making her bed the way her mother thought the most traumatic part, or was it what she came to believe about herself because of what happened to her? You see, her mother’s response gave her the message that she wasn’t good enough, that she couldn’t measure up to her, and that she couldn’t do well enough to get the acceptance of people that love her. The “bed event” will stay in the past, but the feelings of not being good enough will be the glasses she wears the rest of her life that she filters her circumstances and the actions of others through, unless she gets new glasses that says she is good enough and acceptable.

We have a saying in the Ultimate Journey. Your brain only listens to you! In fact your brain listens to you before it listens to God or anyone else. Imagine if someone you knew said to you, “You are an awesome person and anyone would be blessed to get to know you and be your friend.” When you hear that, your brain says something to you. It might say, ”Thank you, you’re right.” It might say, “What do you want?” or it might say, “That sounds nice but if you REALLY knew me you wouldn’t be saying that. In fact, 100 people or even 10,000 people could say that to you and if you didn’t believe it yourself, it wouldn’t matter.

In Phase 1 your brain is going to learn the truth about yourself and then you are going to be able to tell that truth to your heart. When it gets into your heart, it will finally become real to you.
Let’s look more specifically at what the small group process for Phase 1 will look like.

You will be a part of a small group of approximately 4 people which will include a trained facilitator. Safety, transparency and acceptance are of utmost importance. All group members will be required to sign a covenant that includes among other things, confidentiality of what is shared in the group meetings.

During the turbo you will go through different time periods from your life. These time periods are broken up into Early Childhood, Elementary School, Adolescence, and Adulthood. You will have an opportunity to share what you have discovered about yourself. Although you will be encouraged to share since that is the purpose of this process, no one is going to make you share anything you don’t want to. Also, no one is going to suggest to you that things may have happened to you that you cannot recall. What you come up with to share will be between you and the Holy Spirit.
Doing the reading and writing assignments will be an important part of the process. If at any point, a group member is not able to comply because they are not taking the process seriously, they will be asked to leave the turbo and take it at another time when they are able to participate in an effective way. When all group members are not fully involved in the process, it is a detriment to the whole group.

If you are willing to go the distance, there is so much waiting for you as you travel The Ultimate Journey. It is a deliciously scary adventure that will take you out of the cave you never thought you could get out of, lead you to heights you never thought you could experience and give you peace and hope and faith in the Living God that you didn’t know was possible. It is exciting as you take the first steps of The Ultimate Journey and join the thousands of others who have discovered real life transformation.