Download audio

Brandyn Speckman (right) with Brittany

Fearless – Outline

Fear can paralyze us. The things we do to move past the fear is what matters. How should we live our lives so that we can fear less? We need to live lives of courage, surrender to God, humility and righteousness.

False
Expectations
Appearing
Real

-1 John 4:18 Love is an action (1 Corinthians 13). Perfect love comes from God and has no fear.

1) Courage. Mark 5:24-33 The woman freed from bleeding had to have the courage to leave her house. The courage to fight her way to the front of the crowd to touch Jesus.

2) Surrender. 2 Kings 11:1-3 This is an example of a woman who says, “I don’t like God’s plan. I’m going to make my own.” Are you in danger of thinking that way? We need a fearless surrender to God’s will.

3) Humility. Luke 7:36-47 Those forgiven much, love much. Like this woman, we need to view ourselves with sober judgement, and cultivate a fearless humility. There is no other way to God other than humility.

4) Righteousness. Judges 4:16-21 Jael was fearless in standing up for righteousness. The man she killed stood for wickedness. Even inviting him into her house took courage. We need to know how to stand up to sin in our lives and drive it away through righteousness.

Challenges: Are you willing to fix your eyes on Jesus to make him Lord in your decisions?
Are you willing to surrender your plan to God’s plan?
Are you willing to weep at the feet of Jesus?
Are you willing to be open about who you are?
Are you willing to put to death any sin that gets in between you and God?

Luz Vazquez (center) with her daughter Theresa and granddaughter

Woman of Faith
By Luz Vazquez

I will go wherever you go
Your family will be my family
Was Ruth just talking the talk?
Was she trusting Naomi, with her life
Or was she trusting in God?

I will go wherever you go
A decision to follow God
A conviction there is
A better tomorrow
Not to run away but to stay and grow

Hope and commitment
Loyalty to God
God’s family will be mine
Daughter of God royal princess
Of noble heart and incredible love

Love without commitment
Or conviction will not endure
Faith will keep you going
Faith will make you get up
When things are soo… bad

Faith makes you strong
Abraham was a man of faith
He listened and obeyed
Mary was a young woman of faith
She listened to the angel of God and obeyed
I will go wherever you go

I want to be a woman of faith until I die
Jesus died for my salvation
He was crucified, died, and resurrected
To give me hope and to give me salvation
I want to be a woman of faith

Download audio

Lucy Mejia (3rd from left) Preaches at Campus Women's Day!

- Writers all over the world have written so much about the mysterious idea of love.

- We often ask ourselves the following questions about love:

Will I ever be in love?

Will someone love me back?

Will I love him forever?

Will we always be in love?

Why do people fail at love so much?

Why do some people fear it knowing that it is from above?

- 1 Corinthians 13:8 The Bible tells us that love never fails. We hear about so many love stories that fail, but God’s love is different from the world’s.

- 1 Corinthians 13:4 -7 Love has so many benefits, but we don’t want to make sacrifices. Through the Bible, we can have a love more amazing than we can imagine.

- 1 John 3:16-20 We know what love is by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. God wants us to have the same love for our Christian brothers and sisters. He is greater than our hearts and knows everything. He wants to teach us to be successful at love by loving with actions and in truth.

- 1 John 4:16 God wants us to know His love for us and rely on it. He himself is love. When we live in love, we live in God, and He lives in us.

- 1 John 5:3 We reciprocate God’s love through obedience to Him.

- Matthew 22:37-40 Jesus tells us that the first and greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. If everyone in the world obeys this, everyone will be taken care of.

- Growing up with a distant relationship with her father, Lucy was determined to find love and happiness. She tried to find it in her academic accomplishments, career, and relationships, but she did not find it until she studied the Scriptures and learned about God’s love.

- Mark 10:17-27 The rich, young ruler was religious and knew the law, but he was urgent in asking Jesus how to enter the Kingdom because he did not understand. Jesus looked at the young man with compassion, loved him, and told him the plain truth. He asked him to sell everything he had and give to the poor. The young man was saddened by what Jesus asked because he was enslaved to his lifestyle and did not want to give up his possessions.

- The call to discipleship was too great for the young man for he loved his possessions more than God.

- What will I choose today? Will I be sad to give up everything in my life like the rich, young ruler? Or Will I respond to God in love and obedience?

- World-wide churches, discipling with women, and disciples willing to give up everything to plant churches are living examples of love.

- John 8:1-12 Jesus loved the woman by asking her to repent from her sin of adultery. Repentance is the only requirement for us to be with God and have a personal relationship with Him for eternity. It is the change of heart, mind, and attitude that result in change of actions. God’s perfect, unfailing love is what moves us to repent from sin.

- Loving actually means loving the way God expects us to.

- We will never be happy without knowing the truth about God’s love for us, which can only be found in His Word.

Download audio

The Sisters Are Fired-Up at Campus Women's Day!

3 testimonies from 3 sisters that convict you no matter who you are!

Sparkle Leonard:

- Impatience, unkind, rude, and selfish were what Sparkle thought love was before she studied the Bible and became a Christian. She grew up in a religious household but was never convinced that God could be her true love. Even though her parents taught her about Jesus and brought her to church on Sundays, Sparkle grew up with a lot of bitterness towards them because of the abusive way her father treated her mother and her mother treated her and her siblings.

- When she was older, she began to look for love in the wrong places. She thought she would be satisfied by having a decent career and doing the things she loved. At the time, she was dating a guy who was controlling and did not trust her. She thought she loved him and was fine with the way he treated her, but as she stayed with him for four years, she began to lose sight of the true meaning of love.

- Sparkle was filled with hurt, bitterness, and insecurities inside, but she denied them. Psalm 10:4 describes who she was. In her pride, she did not seek God and never even thought about God.

- She began to feel empty about her life. She was becoming more and more envious of others and self-seeking.

- She saw the woman she was becoming and hated it. She wanted to change and began to see her need for God. She prayed to God to help her find Him and lead her to true Christians. God was merciful and led her to women who invited her to church. She studied the Bible with them and saw the true meaning of love in Jesus’ love for us. She made the decision to commit her life to Christ in baptism in October 2009.

- Before finding God, Psalm 116:10-11 describes who she was, “I believed; therefore I said, ‘I am greatly afflicted.’ And in my dismay I said, ‘All men are liars.’” After finding the true definition of love and trust in the Bible, she began to have the heart of David in Psalm 16:1-2, “Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge. I said to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.’”

Eileen Mengis:

- 2 Timothy 3:1-5 describes who she was before finding God and falling in love with Him. She had a form of godliness but denied its power. She grew up attending church on Sundays and was actively involved in her youth group, but she never felt connected with God and other people in the church.

- As she matured, she began to see how prideful, insecure, and hypocritical she was. She felt far from God and began to see that she did not really have a personal relationship with Him. She realized her need for God in her life. She started to study the Bible in her senior year in high school and was baptized after seeing the truth about God’s love.

- Like the seed described in Matthew 13:21 however, Eileen quickly fell away from the faith when trouble and persecution came into her life. She accepted the word of God with joy, but because she was not deeply rooted in God’s love, she gave in to the troubles and persecutions she faced as a new Christian.

- Eileen went back to her old ways. Her heart hardened, and she started living a life consumed with herself again. She did whatever she wanted and faced the consequences.

- After getting herself into a lot of trouble because of her sins, she saw herself farther from God more than ever. She saw how sin’s deceitfulness had hardened her and made her unhappy. She realized she had to come back to God and change.

- Eileen reconnected with the women who studied the Bible with her and got the help she needed to be restored to the Lord. She was grateful for the second chance God had given her to be with Him. Once again, God had shown her that his love was all she needed.

- Isaiah 43:1-4 God proved this Scripture to be true in Eileen’s life. Eileen saw how much God loved her by finding a way for her to back to Him and found true love in Him.

Nikki De Barras:

- Matthew 15:8-9 (The Message)

“These people make a big show of saying the right thing, but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they’re worshiping me, but they don’t mean it. They just use me as a cover for teaching whatever suits their fancy.” This Scripture describes Nikki’s heart before studying the Bible and finding true love in Jesus.

- Nikki grew up religious, claiming she loved God, but she lived a life of whatever “suited her fancy” and only really came to God for her needs.

- Nikki thought she would find love in people by doing great in everything she did and impressing them. She was always determined to prove herself to others with her academics, social life, and having the perfect boyfriend.

- She used her religiosity and involvement in church to look good to others and feel fulfilled.

- Nikki moved to the United States from the Philippines with her family in 2003, and God worked through this big change in her life to humble her. She had a difficult time adjusting and faced many struggles with her family. She began to have bitterness towards her father as she blamed him for their struggles. She also had a proud heart towards God and other people in her life.

– Nikki saw how lonely she was becoming as her bitterness and pride grew, even when she had the approval of others and got what she wanted. She realized how empty her life was and how much she needed true love.

- She began to pray earnestly for God to lead her to Him and guide her life. God was gracious to her for leading her to women who was willing to teach her God’s Word. These women helped her understand the message of the cross.

- After seeing God’s love for her, Nikki decided that she had to start being completely real with herself and God about her heart. Moved by Jesus’ love, Nikki was baptized into Christ in September 2008 and vowed to live a life of true love for God from then on.

Lisa Has A Great Victory In Chemical Recovery Ministry

At the age of 13, I began a habit of sneaking out of my parents’ home with a whiskey bottle in hand, stolen from my father’s basement. This would start a vicious cycle of heavy drinking and many unfortunate consequences that followed with such a lifestyle. I mastered the art of leading a double life. I continued to fool people into believing that my life was all that it had appeared to be, but when night would fall, I would proceed to engage in the abuse of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs in a manner not usual for a girl so young.

This lifestyle went on for 12 long years. I became a single mother at age 21, had my share of physical and mental abuse-filled relationships, as well as participated in immorality in shameful amounts. I managed to continue the façade of the professional and successful life, as I had graduated and began my career in the court-reporting field, a dream I had aspired since the age of 12. Although I was successful in that aspect, the failed relationships and stresses of life led me further into more persistent drinking binges, which led to more severe consequences.

At the age of 25, while a part of many of my business endeavors, a bright young woman shared her faith with me, which led to my becoming a disciple in 2003. Immediately I quit smoking cigarettes and drinking completely. After three years of being a disciple and after having married in 2004, I had come to the point where I thought I could handle having a casual glass of wine with my husband. I justified it because I was aware that one drink was not a sin, but there was something inside of me, when I would drink just one glass, that would scream for me to drink the whole bottle. I allowed myself to live in denial and drink a few glasses here or there for the next two years.

Within the first year of being on the mission team to Chicago, I joined the first Chemical Recovery (CR) group that was started. It was a long six months of intense emotion, personal growth, and a development of very deep convictions. I had realized that when Jesus said in Luke that if we do not give up everything, we cannot be his disciples, that what He considered my “everything” was to finally give up all form of drinking any alcohol at all. Although permissible, it was not beneficial for me. Not only could it be physically damaging to me, but it could and would have become the spiritual death of me.

I have since joined the CR ministry as an assistant and have decided to share my convictions and story with many young women who struggle with the enslavement to this form of sin that can ultimately take not only physical life, but spiritually lead the whole world astray. I have been fortunate in the last three years to see many CR graduations and lives “saved” from this horrific epidemic. The CR ministry has been a large contribution to my personal working-out my salvation with fear and trembling, and I believe that without this powerful ministry, I would not be here to tell my story today.

Women’s Day 2010: One God - Outline

Born in Havana, Cuba, Elena’s father had the “privilege” of knowing Fidel Castro. They attended a boys high school together, but didn’t see eye to eye, especially about God. Castro was an atheist and when he got into power Elena’s father knew that they must leave the country. The whole family came to the US. Today Elena is grateful for these events because she has come to know the one true God.

Mark 12:28-31 – The theme scripture for our event is this command to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourself. But how do we do it?

1. Gotta Clean it out to be Devout
Mark 7:20-21 – All these sins are in our hearts
- They keep us from being able to love God with our whole heart
- We need to get them out of our heart in order to love God
- How do we get them out? First we need to realize how they hurt ourselves, the people closest to us, and God himself

2. Need to Believe (and forgive) to Receive
Mark 11:20-25 – prayer is one of the greatest gifts we have as Christians
- Prayer is powerful
- God knows best, but his answer isn’t always yes
- We need to forgive ANYTHING whether big or little because bitterness will make us (and those around us) miss the grace of God (Hebrews 12:15)

3. Loving your Neighbor brings God’s Favor
Mark 12:31 – Love your neighbor as yourself
- One problem is that many women don’t love themselves. We are so critical of ourselves, and we end up being critical of others
- We can love ourselves because God loves us… not because we are so great and deserve it

John 13:34-35 – Love as Jesus loved
- Need to honestly evaluate our love for one another, does it look like Jesus’ love?
- This is hard to do, even in the church. Make the decision to do it
- Jesus loved Judas. He called him friend while he was being betrayed
- Examples are powerful: Jesus was an example of God’s love, we need to be an example for one another
- Love is powerful, when we understand and practice it God’s way