Dorsey Ross Show
Hello, my name is Dorsey Ross, and I am the host of the Dorsey Ross Show. I am a minister and itinerant speaker. I started the Dorsey Ross Show to interview people of faith who have stories of faith and overcoming trials and difficulties. In this podcast, you will hear stories of all kinds. Some will make you laugh, cry, and even say I can connect with that story or that person. I would love to encourage you to check out these stories of faith, encouragement, and inspiration my guests share on the show. I hope these stories give you hope, to get you through your week and your life. Please share them with your family, friends, co-workers, and anyone who needs a little touch of encouragement today.
Dorsey Ross Show
Lena’s journey from internet marketer to learning God’s purpose.
What happens when everything you've built suddenly crumbles? For Lena, the collapse of her successful internet marketing business and the end of her marriage became the catalyst for extraordinary spiritual transformation. Her story reveals how God redirects our paths when we least expect it.
From dreaming of Hollywood stardom as a girl in Arctic Norway to becoming a top-producing internet marketer, Lena had achieved what looked like success. Yet beneath the accolades and material comfort, she recognized a spiritual emptiness—her relationship with God had become secondary to her ambitions. When her business unexpectedly collapsed in 2013, everything changed.
Today, Lena leads community outreach at her Los Angeles church while traveling to maximum security prisons in Mexico, providing eyeglasses and sharing the gospel with inmates who find profound joy despite their circumstances. Her approach to sharing faith is refreshingly practical—focusing on "seed sowing" rather than pressure, helping people move just one step closer to God through authentic conversation.
Perhaps most powerfully, Lena shares the life-altering experience of helping her severely autistic stepson recover from a debilitating swallowing disorder that nearly claimed his life. For nine months, she and her husband quit their jobs to spoon-feed him 12 hours daily, witnessing a miraculous recovery that culminated symbolically on Easter Sunday when he took his first bite of solid food.
Through these crucibles, Lena discovered a formula for unshakable joy: Jesus first, Others second, Yourself third. Her upcoming book explores living the abundant Christian life Jesus promised—finding peace, purpose, and strength regardless of external circumstances.
Ready to discover your unique spiritual gifts and calling? Visit shelivesabundantly.com for Lena's resources and join her journey toward purposeful Christian living. What unexpected detour might become your divine destination?
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Free audio post production by Alphoniccom. Top internet marketing producer and multiple award-winning marketeer, she transitioned to Christian speaking and ministry. She runs an inspirational blog and is working on a Christian book. As the director of Evangelism Outreach at her Los Angeles church, lena teaches in-person evangelism classes and leads an outreach ministry. She also belongs to a prison ministry that travels to maximum security prisons in Mexico to share God's love with inmates. She is married to Don Lena's bonus mom to his three sons. One son, with severe autism, nearly died from a swallowing disorder a few years ago from a swallowing disorder a few years ago, deeply impacting Lena's resolve to live intentionally for the Lord. Lena, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Speaker 1:Sure thing.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited. Thank you for having me. It's an honor, absolutely. As I always ask my guests, I always open with an icebreaker question, and today's icebreaker question is what's your favorite book and why does it resonate with you?
Speaker 1:no-transcript and enjoy the Christian life and not just be so stressed out all the time. So this particular book that I was telling this person about is called Growing Slow and is written by a wonderful woman by the name of Jennifer Dukes Lee and she talks about what it looks like to trust God's purpose or trust God's process rather well, purpose and process and just kind of allow yourself to to do things a little slow, not like super slow, but, you know, not rushing and stressing through life and not feel like you always have deadlines to meet, and you know just, uh, just kind of take things a little bit slower and the rewards that you reap from that. It's a really great book. It's just very well written and it greatly impacted my life and just helped me see that I was, you know, definitely one of those people that stress too much and try to you know. Just, you know you always feel like there's so many things to do, right, and you just can't keep up with everything. So that's the book that gives you a good perspective.
Speaker 2:So that would probably be the one, yeah, okay, how did you go from a content creator to speaking about God?
Speaker 1:Wow, you know how can I answer that question in a nutshell?
Speaker 2:And you, don't have to answer in a nutshell, you can give the long version of it.
Speaker 1:Okay, sure, well, you know, I've always kind of had an entrepreneurial spirit and always been very creative, very artistic. You know, I'm actually from the country of Norway, hence the accent, and I grew up in the way up in the north of Norway, above the Arctic Circle. And you know, even as a little girl, I love to create and teach and just, you know, anything that I could do to just express myself creatively or artistically, I would do it. And I had this dream about becoming an actress. I wanted to move to California as soon as I was old enough, because, you know, that little hometown that I grew up in, my hometown in the north of Norway, was very, you know, very quiet nothing ever really happened there Beautiful, but you know, I thought boring and I wanted to get out and explore the world. And actually, when I was 12 years old, I told my grandma that I wanted to move to California as soon as I was old enough to become an actress. And I remember she, you know she looked at me and she just she's. I remember her exact words. She said why do you want to move to America? It's so dangerous there. So of course she had never been outside the borders of Norway. But long story short. You know, when I was old enough I think I was about 22, I moved to California and, yeah, I didn't listen to my grandma, I wanted to do my own thing. So I moved to California, to Los Angeles more specifically, and I doubled in acting for a while.
Speaker 1:I graduated from college with a degree in theater and then I guess you could say that's when I officially became a content creator, because you were asking about, specifically, content creation. So then I became a content creator. After that, in the context of being a internet marketer, I decided I was going to, you know, move away from acting and start my online business. I wanted to see if I could figure out how to make money online and after some trial and error, yeah, I got started with an internet marketing company and I would market coaching packages, informational products, conferences, and I became very good at it and started training others to do the same, and I became the top female producer actually with that company, very successful. I felt like I was on top of the world. But I didn't realize it at that time, Dorsey. I realized it later, looking back, that I drifted away from God in the process. Now I became a Christian shortly after coming to California. The year after I came to California I arrived in the summer of 1995. So it's going to be 30 years next year, 30 years since I came to California. The following year I gave my. I came to California. The following year. I gave my life to the Lord. I became a Christian.
Speaker 1:It was very difficult to be a Christian in Hollywood. A lot of temptations in the film industry, a lot of just, mostly just expectations from people to compromise your convictions, to being willing to do whatever it took, you know, just to achieve fame and fortune. So that was one of the reasons. You know just kind of backtracking a little bit, that was one of the reasons why I felt that God was calling me to move out of the acting world and do something different. And that was when I started looking at ways that I could build an online business, learn to market online. It became very successful and, yeah, I trained other people to market, spoke at events around the country, even around the world, and coached clients and received many awards. And yeah, it was like I felt like I really made it. You know, all my dreams had come true. I finally made something of myself. All my dreams had come true. I finally made something of myself, but what I was getting at was that I didn't see it at the time was that I had become very lukewarm in my faith, which is the same know also part of the reason he showed me I needed to walk away from it, to put him back on that as number one in my life. And the same thing happening with marketing.
Speaker 1:As I became very successful and was making really good money and traveling and bought my dream home and, by the way, I was also married at the time. As I was experiencing all this success, my relationship with God suffered. I became very obsessed with my business, just as I had been with acting. I became very obsessed with success. I became very materialistic and prideful success. I became very materialistic and prideful and again God was speaking to my heart about getting my priorities straight. He was very clearly speaking to me about how he wasn't number one in my life anymore. And then, in an unexpected turn of events, the company that I represented it was a direct sales company that I marketed for it suddenly collapsed Unexpectedly, practically overnight. It was just the biggest shock and, as a result, I lost almost all my customers and clients and income sources, and this was in 2013. And you know, in the midst of it all, I actually I lost my marriage, so I went through a divorce, on top of losing my business.
Speaker 1:While I was in this very dark and difficult season, that's when God really started speaking to me in my heart about how I needed to stop allowing myself to get sidetracked and start using my gifts and passions for the kingdom. So that is when I started to really become convinced that this experience that I have create content, writing, teaching, speaking and so on I need to take this and start using it for God's glory. Not that you can't do that with marketing, but I wanted to more specifically focus on teaching women in the things of God and also get back to sharing my faith, because that is something that I was very passionate about as a new Christian. But as I became very obsessed with success, I kind of drifted away from that. It was no longer a priority for me to share my faith with people. I was just talking to people about marketing instead of you know Jesus.
Speaker 1:So I felt like that was something else that God was putting on my heart that you know. You need to get back to that. You know you need to get back to that. You know I gifted you in this area and I want you to use your gifts, you know, for me. So that is, you know kind of how that transition happened. I, you know, from being a yeah, an internet marketer, a content creator in the internet marketing world, you know, starting instead to create content, talks, written information, trainings, different types of content for, you know, christians and specifically women who are looking to grow in their relationship with the Lord. Yeah, I know that was a long answer, but you said I could just make it long.
Speaker 2:That's what I did. How did you get connected with the? You said in your bio and on your site you mentioned that you ministered to the prisons in Mexico. How did you get connected with that and what is that like?
Speaker 1:Yes, so in addition to the local outreach ministry that I lead at my church here in Los Angeles, I'm the director of evangelism outreach, so I teach and train people on how to share their faith and we have a program where we reach out to people in the community.
Speaker 1:We can maybe get back to that later if there's time. It's pretty extraordinary how God has used that program to actually double the size of our church in two years just from sharing God's love with the people in our community. It's just extraordinary. But so in addition to that, there's another ministry that is very close to my heart and that is a prison ministry, and that prison ministry is something that I got involved with. Let me see, I think it's probably about six years now that I've been part of that ministry, and that ministry I got connected through the church that I was attending at the time. I lived in a different part of LA at the time, so I had a different church not where I attend now who told me about this ministry and I was like, wow, that sounds fascinating, interesting and super scary. So let me try it out. I love new challenges and I love stepping outside of my comfort zone, and that was just another opportunity to try something new and see how it went, and of course, it was pretty intimidating.
Speaker 1:The first time it was quite a surreal experience to walk into a maximum security prison in the desert of Mexico. You know there's like nothing out there and you walk in and there's, you know, all these inmates with shackles on their hands and feet and tattoos. You know gang related tattoos all over their heads and faces and arms. And you know, and then we share the gospel with them. Sharing the gospel with these men. It's part of a vision ministry. We actually we do a vision test on the inmates ministry. We actually we do a vision test on the inmates. We are trained to do that to, you know, to test their eyesight, to see if they need glasses, which most of the men do. They don't really have access to eyeglasses. They have very little like. I mean, not even like the bare necessities. It's really it just gives you some perspective to go and see how these men live. It's like it teaches you to be grateful about little things. But yeah, so they don't have eyeglasses. Many of them need it. So we are trained to do vision tests on them and then we provide them with free eyeglasses and we use that little act of kindness to share the gospel with them, to talk to them about God's love, and they are so open. It is absolutely incredible that the openness that we are met by in these maximum security prisons.
Speaker 1:I'm going again in the middle of December and really looking forward to that because I haven't been able to go for a little while because of the local ministry that I lead and just obligations that I have with the kids here at home. But I'm really looking forward to going back and you know it just empowers you to see how God's at work in these prisons because I mean, people are getting saved right and left. This is a ministry that goes back. I think it's about two decades now, so long before I started. They go this ministry. I don't go every month but the ministry, this vision ministry, is called Into Focus Vision.
Speaker 1:The ministry group, the team, travels actually every single month to the prison. So you can imagine you know all these years of doing that and just you know God working through this team and to share the gospel with these men who have so much time you know to read. I mean we give them Bibles, of course, christian tracts. There are so many of these men that have gotten saved as a result of this ministry, working in the prisons now for two decades. And then these inmates go ahead and pass it on, so they share the gospel with other inmates and even with the guards. So the gospel is spreading like wildfire in these prisons and it's just extraordinary to see Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:In these prisons and it's just extraordinary to see.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's awesome and yeah, I think it really strengthens you so much in your faith to see God do stuff like that in dark places, to shine His light in the dark corners and see men who are. You know, many of them are never going to get out. They are there for life but they have hope because they have Jesus. So you talk to them and you see that they have true joy. In spite of the hard, hard life that they lead and in spite of the fact that they are maybe never going to get out of that facility. They have a sense of purpose and joy and many of them get involved. They have in prison ministry, they have church in the prison, Some of the men sing, they have Bible studies. So it's amazing to see that you can be in such hopeless circumstances and still have hope, and these men do, the ones that have gotten to know the Lord.
Speaker 2:Why are you so passionate about ministering to women?
Speaker 1:Yes, you know that is a great question Ministering to women. Well, I think that as women, we really often we struggle to understand our identity in Jesus and feel that we are enough. You know, we just always wear so many hats. We're always needed somewhere. There's always, you know, something to do for someone right, and I feel that teaching women how they can grow in their relationship with the Lord is one of the most important things that I can do as a Christian woman myself. I feel that there is just really nothing more worthwhile. I feel that the experiences and gifts and passions that God has given me for speaking and teaching and writing, that I feel that he's expecting me to put them to good use and to not waste any more time chasing after things that really aren't important, eternally speaking, and that's what I did for many years of my life and so, yeah, so it just makes sense to help other women and I am passionate about it also because it's so meaningful. It fills my life with purpose, just like sharing the Lord, talking to people about Jesus, sharing the gospel same thing. It just gives me so much joy and satisfaction, so much joy and satisfaction, and to know that I am finally focusing on something that has eternal value and that, you know, maybe, you know, with God's help, I'm making a little bit of a difference. So, yeah, that's why I'm passionate about teaching women, helping them grow.
Speaker 1:You know, like I myself, you know, many years ago, when I was, you know, new in California, struggling to kind of, you know, find my place, didn't know many people, I was always well, I was a new Christian and I was always, you know, looking for resources and looking for, you know, like a strong Christian woman that I could follow and learn from. And I didn't really have it. Back then we didn't even have the internet, you know this was, you know, pre internet. So I know how important that is, you know, to have like a strong woman leader that you can follow and learn from. And I think that's what we're supposed to do with our experiences is to pass them on, you know, to others. And, yeah, you know to others and, yeah, you know, help others to make things a little easier for them by sharing what we have gone through, good or bad.
Speaker 2:How would you encourage someone, whether male or female, to you know tell others about seizures or witness to someone you know about seizures, but without becoming too pushy or too governmental?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, a lot of times we have kind of a fear about that. We think that we have to know all the Bible verses and know how to present the gospel, you know from beginning to end, and we think it's this scary you know scary experience and for sure it's going to go wrong and we're going to get rejected, and so we don't do it. You know we have these fears and I think that you know a lot of the time that's the enemy. He wants to put fears in our mind, make us think that it's so difficult and to keep us from doing it. And I like to look at myself not so much of an evangelist, as a seed sower, and this is what I always tell my team when we go out and do outreach. We have this program that we run that I mentioned earlier. Every Saturday morning we go out and talk with actually anywhere from 200 to 350 families that line up on the sidewalk outside of our church here in Downey, california every Saturday morning to receive food items from the church's food bank and what my outreach team and I do is that we go and strike up conversations with these families that are waiting in line. Some of them stand there for hours and we go on and talk with them while they're waiting in line for their food items from the food bank, and just chat with them. And so I have a team that I lead. We do this Saturday morning and, as we mentioned earlier, I also teach evangelism classes, and so what I always tell the attendees or my team members is that when you just look at yourself as a seed sower, it takes almost all the pressure off.
Speaker 1:If you picture a person being, you know, on the scale from like zero to 10, say, zero is the hardcore atheist, right, who just doesn't want to hear about God at all, completely closed. And then a person who said a 10 is the passionate Christian who sold out for the Lord and just loves Jesus, right. So if you picture the people you talk to being anywhere on the spectrum right from between a zero to a 10, okay, let's say a person is a number two. Don't feel pressure to try to take that person from two to 10. That's very, very unlikely that that's going to happen. Praise God if it happens, but don't expect it. Just focus on taking them one step closer to God. Maybe your task is just to take the person from a two to a three, or maybe from a seven to an eight. You know, a little bit closer to Jesus, help them open up a little bit more, because God uses a number of people a lot of the time to save someone and you know it's not up to us to save people anyway. You know we can't make it happen. That is God that saves people.
Speaker 1:So if you don't think so much about closing, you know, oh, I have to get them from zero to 10, from being a hardcore atheist to being sold out for the Lord, and get them to pray and receive Jesus. You know, if you don't think like that and you just think, okay, you know what I'm just going to love on them, I'm just going to. You know, listen to them. Listening is such a big part of it. You know, when you're willing to listen and people notice that you truly care about them, they open up and you start, you know, building that relationship, and then maybe you don't, maybe you don't even get to say that much the first time you talk, but next time now they're going to be like super open because you show that you were open to listen to them. So now, next time, they're going to be open to listen to you, right, sometimes it may take several conversations. So when you do that, when you're just willing to listen, show love and compassion and just focus on yeah, maybe just getting them a little bit closer to Jesus than they were before, then it's not very difficult at all.
Speaker 1:And you know, when I do trainings at my church, I also teach on how to go from the natural to the spiritual. That's a way to do it. It may sound complicated, or you know like if you've never done it before, or you know like if you've never done it before, but you basically it's a way that you can transition from talking about natural topics, which not natural would be anything that is not spiritual. Right, you transition from natural topics to spiritual topics. You don't usually walk up to somebody like you know a stranger and just start talking to them about Jesus right away. You know some people can do that and do a good job at it. That's not how I do it. That's not what I teach my team. I teach it more like it's just a natural part of the conversation.
Speaker 1:As you progress, you go from talking about natural that is, non-spiritual topics to talking about spiritual topics and it's just a natural part of, you know, of the conversation. It's really not difficult at all, and when you listen and you pay attention and you just kind of pray internally and like keep your spiritual antenna up, you know God will show you like, he will like steer the conversation in a way that, oh, wow, it seems natural to you know to talk about God here. So let me introduce the topic of God, for example. Just to give you a quick example, if I'm talking with somebody and they tell me, oh, I was, let's say, you know, I was raised in Mexico, okay, we're talking about just non-spiritual things and they tell me they're from Mexico and I'm like, aha, okay, now I can easily transition to a spiritual question.
Speaker 1:I go from asking them where they were raised the answer is Mexico to asking them what the main religion is in Mexico. Now I'm asking a spiritual question. I go from a natural question to a spiritual question. So I ask them yeah, is that or what is the main religion in Mexico? And they say, let's say they say Catholicism. Then I'll ask them the question oh, is that your background as well? Are you a Catholic? You see how easy that is. Now, suddenly we're talking about spiritual things and from there now, the door is wide open and it's not pushy at all. It's not pushy at all. It's not pushy at all. So, yeah, so that's what I tell people Just listen carefully, show compassion for people and just try to transition from the natural to the spiritual as God leads, and don't think too much about the outcome of the conversation. You know, just sow those seeds.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of the bottom line I would say when you were talking about you know the growth and going you know from like a 3 to a 4 or 7 to an 8,. I thought about a Bible verse that someone told me one time it's either Corinthians or 1 Corinthians or 2 Corinthians and it talks about you know we water, you know we sow, but it's God that gives the growth.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly right, it's very biblical, it's a biblical way to look at it, for sure. And, yeah, I think we have to get away from this idea that it's all up to us, you know, put all this pressure on ourselves. It's up to me, you know, for this person to get saved. No, you know, god will use, like I said earlier, very often, a number of people to you know, to get a person saved. And I just, you know, I was saying this even last Saturday to one of my team members, as we were out sharing the gospel.
Speaker 1:I said to her I had a conversation with a man who was very close. He didn't even want to hear about church at all, but he was friendly, he was just very firm and, you know, I just kind of listened. I didn't try to argue with him, mostly I just listened because I realized that he wasn't open and I just tried to be kind and polite and respectful. And I said to my team member after that conversation, just kind of, you know, giving her a little recap of how that conversation had gone, I said you know, my main goal, as I was talking with this man, was really just to give a good impression of Jesus, you know of a Christian, or you know of a Christian as a representative of Jesus, I should say right, and I wanted him to walk away, just feeling like he wasn't being pushed, that I wasn't trying to cram my beliefs down his throat that's what people sometimes will say, that we do and I didn't want him to feel like that. I just wanted him to feel respected so that, even though he clearly wasn't open at that moment to hear about the Lord, maybe at some point in the future he will be and then hopefully he will have a good impression of at least, you know, he will hopefully have a good impression of the Christian that he spoke to me that morning.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, because, again, that was just really my goal was to try to make him feel like, yeah, I was just there to listen and I wasn't there to try to push anything on him, and I think that's very important, as we realize that God has a different timing, you know, a different time for every person. Not everybody's going to, you know, go from zero to 10 at that moment, but just maybe, even if we can just be good ambassadors for Jesus, the way that we come across, that will leave the person with a feeling that. Oh yeah, you know, these Christians are actually okay. You know, they're nice people.
Speaker 2:I was wrong about them, so yeah, how do you get through hard times with your glory intact?
Speaker 1:all times with your joy intact. Yes, that is a wonderful, wonderful question. It's funny that you asked that because I was actually earlier today. I was sitting here, I was polishing an article for my blog article for my blog and that article is actually titled how to Spell Joy this Christmas. How to Spell Joy this Christmas I don't know if you've heard this acronym before, dorsey, but J-O-Y.
Speaker 1:It said that it stands for Jesus, others and you, jesus, others, you. That spells joy, and if we can really just try to keep Jesus first and other people and focus a little less on ourselves, I think that we are going to experience joy and we are going to realize that we can have tremendous joy even when life is difficult. When I say to put yourself last, you know, of course I don't mean to be a doormat, I just mean that you know we naturally have a tendency to put ourselves first. You know it's just what we do as humans. You know because we are, you know, self-centered. Just what we do as humans. You know because we are, you know, self-centered. But I can tell you wow, you know, I could talk about this, you know, for hours. Obviously I won't, but I think these days I will say whenever I have a tough day and I focus on, you know, jesus, just drawing close to Him. You know, really just get alone with God, just try to quiet myself, you know, stop rushing and running around so much. It's especially easy to do right now in the holiday season Everybody's rushing and running. But I just try to get quiet, quiet with God and just, you know, seek Him and ponder Scripture, not just read it, but really meditate on it and pray to God to just open up my spiritual eyes, to understand what he's wanting to communicate with me. I find that it gives me a lot of joy and I feel this is not just now difficult things that I've been through in the past. The answer is really always, you know, to draw close, closer, always, you know, to Jesus. And you know now I am so blessed also to be a bonus mom, as you said in your introduction, to three wonderful young men, my husband's three sons. I mentioned earlier that I was married a number of years ago and got divorced, and I was blessed to get remarried now come four and a half years ago. So I don't have my own biological children, but I get to be a bonus mom to my husband's three sons and, as you also mentioned, one of the boys has severe autism and he almost died in the summer of 2021.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was a miracle that he survived. He had a debilitating swallowing disorder and he just to put it in perspective, he lost 80 pounds in six months. It's a lot of weight and after his life was saved at the ER, this was the third time we took him to the ER. You know, we, by doctor's orders, we rehabilitated him at home and his name is Christopher. My stepson's name is Christopher.
Speaker 1:We had actually to quit our jobs, my husband and I, to care for Christopher full time, and we spent 12 hours a day spoon feeding Christopher to try to train his throat to start working normally again. And there were many days, for a really long time, when we thought, you know, wow, this is not working. And we thought, you know what if we have to put him on a feeding tube for the rest of his life? That was the last thing we wanted. But, you know, we realized he couldn't live like that. You know, he couldn't eat, he couldn't drink. It would take him, you know, 30 minutes to swallow a tiny spoonful of minced foods nutrition-rich minced foods that my husband had spent an hour preparing chopping just to so Christopher will get, you know, the nutrients that he needed. And he had to gain weight. You know, every hour, every day, centered around to help Christopher get the strength back in his throat and train himself to eat and drink and so he could start gaining some weight back. And you know it was a nightmare but, to say the least, horrific. But it was a nightmare but, to say the least, horrific. But you know, god worked a miracle and after nine months of working with Christopher and helping him train his throat and you know every waking moment of every day nine months later, christopher took his first bite of solid food, and that was actually an Easter Sunday of 2021. So it was incredible. And from there he transitioned to solid foods. Christopher today is healed.
Speaker 1:And your question was about joy. But it's just impossible for me to talk about joy without mentioning Christopher, because these days I have to tell you I just look over that kid I mean he's 23 years old now, but you know he's always going to be a kid and I just look over at him and I'm filled with joy. It's like I cannot not have joy. You know, when I got Christopher in my life and I think about what, you know, god did for our family. And in the same time period nine months, you know, not only did Christopher go from you know not being able to eat to eating solid foods or eating, you know, from eating minced foods just barely being able to swallow it and get it down to eating, you know, a hamburger on Resurrection Sunday down to eating a hamburger on Resurrection Sunday. But he also went from being so weak that he could just barely sit upright, let alone walk or move or anything, to walking, to jogging, to running, to swimming, to lifting light weights at the gym, to dancing. He goes to school. Now he goes to art school. It's incredible, you know, the recovery that God brought about in this young man's life, and to see what God's done.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so I think you know my point is that everybody's got hard times. Sometimes we have excruciating times. You know those times where we feel like I don't even know how I'm going to get through this. All we can do is cling to God, cling to Scripture, cling to His promises, you know, and then we can find this unspeakable joy, this supernatural peace that the Bible speaks about. Joy and peace both in these situations. And then for me, on top of that, just speaking for myself, christopher is my joy too, and the more I can focus on him and just being there for him, pouring myself into him, just spending time with him, looking at him and seeing the miracle that God's done, the more joy I also can have, even when I have days that are not as good. Everybody's got bad days, right.
Speaker 1:So for anybody who's listening to this, I would say what are God done for you? What memories, what reflections, what experiences in your life do you have that really just showed you know God's hand in your life, and I think when we go through difficult times, we can think about that. You know we can think about how God has been faithful to us in the past, and the Bible says that God is the same today and tomorrow. You know he doesn't change right, and you know if we're going through something hard right now, well, you know what God came through for us in the past, so he's going to come through for us again. You know he's faithful, he's not changing All right, he is the same always.
Speaker 1:So, and I think you know the Bible is a great place also to go to to see how God has worked in the lives of His people. You know, we read about, you know Joseph or Abraham or Moses or Paul or whoever it may be, and we see how God proved himself to be so faithful in their lives. And we, you know. This is why reading the Bible empowers us, right. It just gives us spiritual power and just gives us the ability to get through difficult times Because, yeah, we open the pages of Scripture and we say this is the same God that we serve today. He came through for His people. Then He'll come through for His people. Now He'll come through for us. So, yeah, focus on Jesus, others first before yourself, and that will give you joy and draw close to God and reflect on the times that he's come through for you.
Speaker 2:Amen. Can you tell us about your upcoming book the Blundie Christian Life?
Speaker 1:Yes, my upcoming book. It is simply speaking. It is about how to live the abundant Christian life that Jesus promised to those who follow him. Now, of course, Jesus said in the Gospel of John he said I have come to give you life, life abundantly, and by that he meant spiritual abundance. He meant that he came to give us peace, inner peace and strength and joy and confidence and purpose. You know, jesus came to give us all those things.
Speaker 1:So what I do in my book, which I'm working on you know we're working towards a release date in the early summer of next year and what I do in the book is that I, through stories, illustrations, examples from my own life and my own journey and stories of people that God's put on my path through life, I talk about how to have more of these things Joy, peace, strength, confidence and purpose strength, confidence and purpose and really just kind of try to make it relatable to the readers so that they can walk away with something both to reflect on and take action with. So that's what I do in this book, so I'm looking forward to getting it out there. But I do have if it's okay to, maybe I could mention that I do have some resources that are available right now for anybody who might be interested. On my blog you can go and find many articles, inspirational stories. The link is shelivesabundantlycom.
Speaker 1:That's the website shelivesabundantlycom. Not only do I have a blog there, but I also have some downloadable resources. I have a outline that takes you through how to share your faith in just a very easy and hands-on way, and this is the same training material that I teach when I do evangelism trainings at my church. I have a brainstorming log that helps you discover your calling well, discover your spiritual gifts as well as your calling and I have a list of biblical affirmations that you can help to train yourself to think more biblically. So these resources are available as of right now, so any listeners can access that if they are interested.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's great, and I'll have those links on the show notes as well. Yeah, very good. What is an encouragement that you would give to my listeners?
Speaker 1:An encouragement. Well, you know, I believe that you know we all have a very unique purpose in God's plan. You know we all have a very unique purpose in God's plan. Me personally, I was like all over the place, you know, before I finally found what you know. I believe that my purpose Well, let me put it like this Okay, very simply, our purpose is to love God and love people. You know, that's what Jesus said is most important. That's what we're all called to do as followers of Jesus. And then, you know, we all have various callings in life, and my callings one is to teach and train people in how to share their faith. Another calling is to speak to women about how to grow in their relationship with God. I have another calling, which is to be a bonus mom and play a role in the lives of my husband's three sons. So we have these different callings and you know some last our entire lives. Other callings are seasonal, but we all have callings and we have a purpose. And that is truly one of the most incredible and encouraging experiences you can have when you figure out how you get to play a role in God's plan.
Speaker 1:And God's gifted us in so many different ways. You know he's gifted you in a particular area, doris, and me in a different one. Maybe we have some of the same gifts, but you know we all have, you know, different, not all the same opportunities, but God has a way for each and every one of us to use the gifts that he has blessed us with. So I would say, if you feel discouraged right now, if you feel that maybe you're not really tuned into God's plan for your life, that maybe you haven't quite discovered it yet, what His calling or callings are, you know on your life, I would say you know, wait no longer. You know God wants to use you, your gifts, your experiences, your passions, your personality, to bless someone else. And again we're going back to the acronym joy, right, jesus, others, you, you are going to experience tremendous joy as you get to be used by God to bless someone else.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, I would say, take a spiritual gifts test and go through the process of discovering your calling. Again, I just mentioned that I have a worksheet for this on my blog and you are going to be amazed. Do that prayerfully, ask God to open some doors for you and you'll see that he's got for all of us. He's got so much more for us than we are, even you know, able to imagine Like we limit ourselves. You know, dorsey, we do that all the time and God is like, no, you know, you're going to do so much more.
Speaker 1:Are you willing to grow into your calling? Because sometimes we're so afraid, you know. But if we're willing to just trust God and take that step, he will grow us and we'll see that, yeah, with His help, I can do this. And then just that feeling of you know, strength, that you know how it strengthens our faith, you know, when we see God work through us to you know, whether it be to share the gospel with somebody or just serve somebody, do something for God, you know, to build the kingdom. It's just that spiritual strength that he gives us is just nothing like it. You know, yeah, so yeah, hopefully that's a good word of encouragement, god, and start, you know, doing the things you need to do practically to step into your calling and God will work it out. God will work it out and he will use you. It's always him working through us, even when we feel like we're not qualified. The most important thing is to be available, to make ourselves available, not so much ability as availability.
Speaker 2:Well, Lina, thank you so much for coming on the show today. We greatly appreciate having you. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. We greatly appreciate having you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. It was wonderful to be on the call with you, and thank you so much to the listeners and I just say God bless you everyone and we'll talk to you again soon. Take care.
Speaker 2:Well, guys and girls, thank you so much for coming on and listening. Take care. Well, guys and girls, thank you so much for coming on and listening. As I said, I'll have Lena's links to her blog and her website and please go and check out this interview, share it and like it. And please like my website and my podcast as well, and listen to previous episodes. And until next time, god bless.
