Episode 79

Many Christians have been gracious with their time and have come onto the Removing Barriers podcast to testify of what lengths Jesus went to in order to find and save them. Some were saved in childhood while others were saved well into their adulthood. In this latest episode in the How Were Your Barriers Removed series, we encounter Claudia’s salvation testimony, a riveting story of God’s gentle and loving pursuit in the face of difficult and daunting barriers. Is there anything too hard for God? Of course not! Join us in this episode and be encouraged and reminded of the Savior’s mighty power to save. May it reignite our hearts to co-labor with Him in pursuing the lost all around us.

So I lived on the 26 floor of an apartment building. And in 35 years in that area of town, in 35 years, 36 people had jumped from that building. And so I used to fantasize about being the next one. I would open my window and I would look down and the railing down at the bottom still hadn’t been repaired from where the last person had jumped. And I was like, this is going to be me. I’m going to be next because there’s no hope. And so here I was, 20 years old, and I had no reason to live.Thank you for tuning in to the Removing Barriers podcast. I’m Jay and I’m MCG, and we’re attempting to remove barriers so we can all have a clear view of the cross. This is episode 79 of the Removing Barriers podcast, and this is the 21st in the series of How Were Your Barriers Removed? And in this episode, we’ll find out how Claudia’s barriers were removed when she came to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Hi, this is Jay, MCG and I would like for you to help us remove barriers by going to Removingbarriers. Net and subscribing to receive all things removing Barriers. If you’d like to take your efforts a bit further and help us keep the mics on, consider donating at removingbarriers.net/donate. Removing a Clear View of the Cross.

Claudia, it’s a pleasure and welcome to the Removing Barriers podcast. Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here. Great. Well, let’s dive into it and tell us a little bit about yourself. What state or country were you born in? Well, I was born in the true north, strong and free and your neighbors to the north. I was born in the great country of Canada. Wow, you sound so patriotic. I am very you can still be with all that’s happening up there right now. Oh, I don’t know if you’ve been following the truckers convoy. There’s about 50,000 trucks and about half a million people descending on Ottawa right now to protest the mandates and try to get our freedom back. I’m pretty proud. Great. I have some friends up there that send me a news article about it, but yeah. Incredible. Yeah. It’s exciting.

Yeah. What type of family were you born into? Was it a big family? Small family, religious, nonreligious. What type of family were you born into? If I was to describe my family, I would say I was born into a dysfunctional family. Not a large one, but a scattered one. I don’t know my birth father or his family. And my mother, she became pregnant with me when she was just turned 17. And so there was marriage and divorce in there and remarriage. All in all, we have four of us with three different fathers. Definitely not a religious family at all. As a matter of fact, my mom was more into the occult or New Age. That was the environment that I grew up in.

Tell us more about that. Is there any lingering effects on you from growing up in a dysfunctional family? Wow, that is a good question. I do have to say that after I got saved, it took a while for the Lord to work on me to get some of the wrong thinking out of my life. Because there were definitely certain things. Without having a father figure and then having several stepfathers and not having good relationships there, it was very difficult to think of the Lord as my father. And so that was really a challenge. Anyway, just after I got saved, the Lord took about a year of really working on me to try to get rid of some of those thoughts that I had and really to renew my mind in Christ and who I was as his child.

Wonderful. So before Salvation, before the Lord worked this wonderful miracle in your life where he saved your soul and he made you his own. What were your life and upbringing like? You mentioned that the family was dysfunctional and scattered, not too big. Did you move around a lot or did you go to secular schools growing up or religious schools? What was your upbringing like in your family? Sure. At the very beginning, even since I was a child, I wasn’t wanted. And so even before I was born, because my mom had just turned 17 when she got pregnant with me, it was a great shame in the family. And my family at the time was living in Quebec. And in order to hide my mom’s pregnancy, first my grandfather took her to have an abortion and then because she didn’t know how far along she was. So the doctor didn’t know if it was safe or not, so he chose not to. So instead my family to hide the shame of that they moved provinces. And so my grandmother was only 38 at the time. So the idea was that they would adopt me and I would basically become my mother’s sister. But nobody would know any better because it was in a totally new environment and a totally new city. So all the paperwork was drawn up for the adoption. And when I was born, my mom actually changed her mind and decided to keep me. But she left anyway. And so for months on end, she’d just be gone and nobody would know where she was. And so I lived with my grandparents anyway for the first few years of my life. So basically growing up, eventually I did go back to my mom, but I was always reminded how unwanted I was and how basically the fact that I had life I was alive basically ruined my mother’s life. And so all growing up, I wondered what was wrong with me. Why wasn’t I loved? Why didn’t my mother care for me? Why didn’t my mother love me? I never sat on her lap. She never cuddled with me or anything like that. My mom was always very cold to me and treated me very different than my other siblings. And so there even came a time where I started harming myself as a child because I thought I must be bad if nobody loves me.

So this continued on up through my childhood, a really difficult home life. And eventually there’s also some violence and things going on in the home, things that were not good, alcohol and stuff. So eventually, at 16 years old, on the advice of a counselor, things were so violent that I was told not to go home. So at that particular point, I went and lived at a group home. So in this particular time, so we had moved a lot. Growing up, I’d gone to 13 different schools and in grade eight alone, I went to three different schools. So my education really suffered. And now here I am living in a group home. So during the day I was on the streets in the Western provinces, that’s where we were at the time. And during the night I was sleep at the group home. And life was kind of hard living on the street as a 16 year old. And my mom and stepdad didn’t care. They dropped off one grocery bag of clothes and that was it. They didn’t even want to talk to me. So life continued like that for a season until I got a phone call from my grandmother. And she said, I’m sending you to go live with some different relatives up in Northern Canada. And these relatives had only met once. I didn’t know them from Adam.

And here I am sent to go live with them because my grandmother cared for me and wanted me to be well. And as soon as I arrived there, I was basically told in no uncertain terms that they didn’t want me there either. So here I was, a 16 year old girl and my father didn’t want me. My mother doesn’t want me. And now these relatives that I’m living with don’t want me. And it was a really hard year for me living up there because I was thinking, what’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t anyone care for me? And at that time, my aunt, who I was staying with, my great aunt, actually, she was a religious woman, but not a saved woman. And she would often say to me, Say your prayers, say your prayers, say your prayers. And so I would I didn’t know God. I didn’t grow up in a religious home. I didn’t even know what it really meant to say your prayers. But I would say at night, God, I just want a normal family. I just want to be loved by my family. And I should add, I wasn’t a bad kid. I got very high grades in school. But no matter what I did, I could never win the approval of my mother. I’d get 96% in a test. And my mom would say, well, what happened to the other 4%? And so it didn’t matter what I did. It was never good enough. Never good enough. So I lived up there for a year. It ended up being a year. At first it was supposed to be a few months, but I was always told, next holiday you can come back. So the holiday would come and I’d call home and I’d say, Can I please come back? And my stepdad would always answer and he would say, no, things here are going just fine without you. We’re very happy you’re not here anymore. Call back at Christmas. I’d call it Christmas. No, we don’t want you back. Things here are just fine without you. And so it was like rejection after rejection after rejection. It was constantly this fresh wound that kept being opened in my heart of just not being wanted and not being loved. So that was a really tough year. And it was around that time that I also started I had a back injury and I got some over the counter pain medication that made me numb and I liked that. And that was the start of something really bad, something to numb the pain. But that was basically my life up until I was about 16, 17 years old.

So up until the point where you’re about 16, 17 years old, you said that was just about what your life was like. What changed at that point was that the time where you heard the gospel for the first time or what happened when you were 1617 years old? Well, actually, things started kind of spiraling out of control after that. So I ended up being sent back to my mum and stepdad’s house when I was 17. And things were really bad at home at that point. I was in 12th grade and things were just bad. My grades were suffering, I was struggling at home. It was not a good place to be. And again, still at that time trying to be the best order I could, trying to appease my parents, trying to what can I do to make them love me? And nothing was helping. And so I was getting more and more discouraged and just really struggling. And when my 18th birthday came around, I was still in grade twelve. But I came home one day to two garbage bags of whatever they decided to give me and a locked door. And I was kicked out because in Canada, 18 years old, you’re considered an adult. And so where do I go? I have a part time job. I’m still in high school. What do I do? So at that particular point, I basically lived wherever I could. If a friend could give me a night or two at their place, I’d go stay there. I was basically homeless, just going from house to house to house. And eventually I found an apartment. And at that particular time I was working in downtown, and my apartment was downtown, but it’s a very bad building. And I also really got into alcohol and drugs and street drugs at that time because it was a way to escape. It was a way to not feel the pain of nobody caring for me. I also got into all kinds of basically anything that was a worldly pleasure that the world says, Here, this is fine, here. This will satisfy. That’s basically what I got into. And by the time I was 20, I was doing drugs every day. That was just my way of life. And so one day I was working downtown, and this fellow came into my work. Oddly enough, he was asking for directions. And it was very funny to me because the place that he was looking for was like. And it’s right there. I mean, I didn’t know how he could miss it, but he wasn’t wouldn’t look at his map. No, he asked me to accompany him. And so I said, okay, I had a few minutes. It was not very busy at work. And so we just spent a few minutes together. But in that time, he basically told me he was a street preacher. And I thought, a street preacher? What in the world is that? And he told me, and I thought, Why in the world would someone possess someone to yell at people on the streets? I didn’t understand it, but we chatted just a little bit. And at the very end, he handed me a gospel track, and he said something about heaven. He asked me my name and said he would pray for me. And then he left. Now to this day, I have no idea who this man is. I have no idea. But I remember that track. I went home, and at my apartment, I put it on my dresser. I kind of propped it up so I could see it. And growing up in the occult, New age spiritual things was definitely something that I was interested in. And so the word heaven really piqued my interest. But at the same time, I was like, I don’t want to read that. And so there’s this really big internal struggle, but I want to know what this says. What does it say about heaven? No, you don’t want to read that. You really don’t want to read that. And it went on. I don’t know if it was days or weeks that there was an internal struggle about this track sitting on my desk or on my dresser. And so finally, one day, I picked it up, and I read it. And what I read scared the life out of me. It’s just verses from the Bible, but basically the gist of it.

After I finished reading it, I realized I’m a sinner going to hell, and I deserve hell because I know that the drugs I’m doing are wrong. I know the drinking I’m doing is wrong. I know the kind of lifestyle I’m living. This is all wrong. I know that. But the problem is the track never told me what to do about it. And so that night, I took a lot of drugs, and I went to bed. I just wanted to forget about this horrible thing that seemed very much real to me. And I woke up the next day in a terrible state of fear. And I went for three days. I was in this state of fear, and I just went around to anybody I knew who was seemingly religious. And I basically said, what must I do to be saved? What must I do to be saved? How do I escape this awful place called hell? And not a single person I knew could tell me my goodness. And I went to people who I knew who went to Church. I went to people who I knew who claimed the name of Jesus, but nobody could tell me. And so I told one of my friends, and she said, well, let me take you to my Minister. And he was actually very close to the Church, was very close to where I lived. So I went with her to go meet him. And I felt kind of like, you know, the Philippine jailer when he said to Paul Sir, what must I do to be saved? I feel like I went in there like that, and I just said, I know I missed in her going to hell. What must I do to be saved, essentially, is what I told him. And he said, God loves you, and he would never hurt you. And sent me on my way. And I left so confused. I thought, if this Minister doesn’t even know how to get to heaven, how to get rid of this awful burden of my sin, then there’s no hope. I have to do it myself. And at that point, I started what I would consider self Reformation, the road of self Reformation. So basically, I came to the point where I thought, this is up to me. I have to reform my life in order to be accepted by God, in order to get rid of the burden of my sin. So I thought, okay, here’s what I’m going to do. This Church is near my house. I’m going to go there, and I’m going to pray. And I’m going to do that regularly. And I’m going to try to party less. I’m going to try to drink less. I’m going to try to do less drugs. I’m going to try to be a better person. And because I started doing all kinds of sins by this time, all kinds of bad stuff. I mean, it was just like a downward spiral that I was on. So it took I don’t know how many weeks I was on that path. And then I finally realized, this is absolutely hopeless. It doesn’t matter how much I work. And try to be a good person. I cannot stop sinning. I can’t get rid of this sin. I can’t get rid of this. And, you know, morality never saved anyone. And so I came to that point where it hit me that there’s nothing I can do. I tried it and I became very depressed. And I ended up not being able to work. All I did was sleep all the time. I didn’t realize at the time I was in a very deep depression. And it was at that time that I just thought, well, there’s no hope. Nobody cares about me. I have this weight of sin. I can’t do anything about it. I’m in this hopeless case. And so I may as well just die. Wow. So I lived on the 26th floor of an apartment building, and in 35 years, in this bad area of town, in 35 years, 36 people had jumped from that building. And so I used to fantasize about being the next one. I would open my window and I would look down, and the railing down at the bottom still hadn’t been repaired from where the last person had jumped. And I was like, this is going to be me. I’m going to be next because there’s no hope. And so here I was, 20 years old, and I had no reason to live. Oh, wow.

What do you think were the barriers? I think based on what you just said, we can probably assume the barriers were maybe drugs, early desires, no one to tell you. But how would you describe the barriers that were preventing you from Salvation? Well, initially, I would probably say it was lack of knowledge because I grew up in a home where I never knew the Bible. I didn’t know what a Bible was. I wouldn’t have known it if you showed it to me. I didn’t know Adam and Eve. I knew nothing. I knew nothing. Nothing. And so how do you know what you need if you’ve never heard about it? You don’t know that you need Salvation if it’s never been presented to you, if the truth of God’s word has never been brought to your life. And so I think initially, unfortunately, in my experience, with all of my friends who even claimed to be religious, who were not really saved, who couldn’t tell me the way to heaven, unfortunately, that’s Canadian culture, and that is very much the need of the gospel in my homeland. So initially, I would say it was that just not even having it presented to me or knowing that it was an option growing up after that, I think that it was a lack of having somebody to tell me. I can identify with the Ethiopian eunuch when Philip came to him in the desert in the Book of Acts, and he says, understandest what thou readest. And he said, well, how can I accept the man to guide me? And I feel like I read that track, and I was very much in that position where I was like, now what? Okay, so I have this information, and I know I need to do something about it, but now what? And so to me, apart from the worldliness and those very obvious physical things, those were two things that I really think just a lack of somebody to tell me that really stopped me from being saved. Yeah. How can they here without a preacher? Exactly.

So these barriers are obviously keeping you from the gospel, from Salvation. You have no one in your family who love or care for you. You are tortured and burdened, and you’re wondering, why does no one care for me? You turn to drugs and alcohol in order to numb that pain. And when you try to seek out the road to Salvation, no one around you can point you to the right person, to the right way to be saved. So when exactly was the first time that you heard the gospel and came to a full realization of your sin? Well, that would probably be so, I guess kind of continuing with where I left off, where I was suicidal. I stayed in that state for about eight months after I got that tracked. Oh, wow. From August of realizing I’m a sinner, going to hell, what do I do? And then going through a time of trying to reform myself, there is no hope. That was from August until April. And so at that particular time, I was just going through the motions of life. I was just going through the motions. And one day I was at work and I was actually waiting for a job interview because I lost my other job because I couldn’t hold a job because of the depression. And the solo came up and we started talking. Anyway, we agreed to stay in touch. And the very first time we were going to get together, he actually invited me to Church. And I thought, that’s really weird. I’ve never been to Church in my life. Anyway, I thought for some strange reason, I said, yeah, okay, I’ll go. And even to this day, I’m surprised that I said it, but I went and I can’t remember anything at all about the preaching or anything like that. But I do remember afterwards, he took me back to his parents’place and he took out a Bible and a tract, another tract. This one was like the four spiritual laws. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that one, but it’s got pictures in it. Right, right. And he started going through verses as he went through the tracks with me. And I had to actually stop him. I had to say, wait, what are all these names and numbers you keep saying? And he’s like, well, the Bible is a book made of 66 books, and each book is divided into chapters, and each chapter is divided into verses because he kept saying all these names and numbers, and it was clueless as to what in the world he was talking about. Like I said, totally unchurched. And he got to the original sin. And I was like, who’s? Adam and Eve? So all these things, it was totally new to me. Very new to me. And I remember he got to the point in the track where there was two sides of a cliff, one on the left side, one on the right side, and in the middle was a big chasm. And it said that I was on the one side, on the one cliff, and God was on the other side. And there was no way that I could bridge that gap. There was no way there was a chasm there that was fixed. It’s a great golf fixed, right. And he explained through scriptures that there was nothing I could do to bridge that gap. And I’m thinking to myself at that time, yeah, I know, I’ve tried. And when he came to the point in the gospel where he said that Jesus Christ took the burden of my sin upon himself, the spotless sinless lamb of God, God come in the flesh, he took my sin for me because there is a God in heaven who created me and who loves me and who had a purpose for my existence. Just the idea that there was a God in heaven who loved me broke me. And it was at that point that I realized, this is it. This is it. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Amen. This is the thing that needs to fill that void that’s so aching and large in my life. And it was really miraculous to me. I was so overjoyed that there was a God in heaven who loved me enough to give his son to die for me because nobody had loved me like that. Nobody but God did. And so that day changed my life. I was 21 years old at that particular time. And first day I saw a Bible was the day I got saved. But the man who led me to the Lord, not quite. One year later, we were married. Awesome. That’s a good way to get a spouse.

You’re listening to the Removing Barriers podcast. We are sitting down with Claudia and we are finding out how were her barriers removed. We’ll be right back.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the Removing Barriers podcast. Did you know that you could find us on Twitter, Gab Parlor, Facebook and Reddit? Go to Removing Barriersors, net, Contact and like and follow us on social media. Removing a clear view of the cross.

Two Corinthians 5:17 says, Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. So, Claudia, after Salvation, God has miraculously saved you. You’ve come to the realization that all these years you were carrying the burden of sin that Christ had already carried for you, and Christ had already paid for. What changes were evident in your life after coming to Salvation in Christ? Well, immediately after I got saved, I thought, this is the best thing in the world. I felt so disappointing, and I don’t think the Salvation is a feeling. But the weight of my sin and the burden of my sin had been so heavy on me. And the realization that Christ took it for me was so freeing that I went to anybody. I knew, all of my friends, and I basically said to them, Guess what? I got saved. I was just so excited because I thought that they wanted the same thing that I had. I thought that they were looking for the freedom that I was so desperately searching for. And unfortunately, the reaction was always the same. It was, Stay away from me. So after I got saved, I basically was like the Pharisees. It says they had zeal without knowledge. So I went around and just was so excited and told everyone, and nobody really knew what to do. And so they all stopped talking to me. So at that particular point, I basically lost all of my friends. But I really realized afterwards that they weren’t really my friends, definitely not once worth keeping. And even with my family, I tried to witness to them, try to let them know how much I had changed. And I was really very much like the maniac of Godera, where it’s so interesting to me because people can run around unclosed cutting themselves with stones in the tombs, wailing day and night in sinning. And people feel comfortable around that. But then as soon as they’re seated in clothes and in the right mind and at the feet of Jesus, the people are afraid and they want nothing to do with them. And so I really feel like that’s what happened to me with my family. My family basically said, Depart, we want nothing to do with you. And so after that, they never came to my College graduation. They didn’t come to our wedding. They really unfortunately haven’t had much to do with me since my Salvation almost 24 years ago. But my sister, I remember her saying to me, you’re just so different now. And I said to her, Amen I’m so happy about that. Like I’m thinking, of course, the Lord changed me, and I’m so thankful. It was evident to them, very obviously evident to them also. I should add that several months after my Salvation, the Lord took away my desire for drugs. He took away my desire for alcohol. He also plugged me into a good Church that loved me and wanted to help me. And I was so excited about my Salvation, I got involved in everything. You need me to tithe, I’ll start tithing. You want me to attend all the services? I’ll attend all the services you need me to serve. In the children’s Ministry. I’ll serve in the children’s Ministry. I even went to Bible College six months after I got saved, just because I was so hungry and thirsty for the word of God. At that point, I guess I just felt such a gratitude that the Lord had saved me that I wanted to just do all that I could for him.

So think about the batteries you mentioned earlier. Do you think that someone with similar background and similar upgrading like you, do you think the way your barriers were removed would be effective in helping them having their barriers removed as well? I certainly do. And I hope to be that person to fill in the gap that I was missing in my life. The country that we serve in right now, they were the first country in the world to legalize in marijuana. So drugs are a very big issue here. Less than 2% of people claim to be born again, 44% claim no religion at all. And so very much a similar the occult is very big here, and so very much a similar background, even though a different culture than what I grew up in. And so when the Lord called me here, I thought, wow, that’s really interesting. Lord, you had me go through all of that, which seemed very difficult at the time, but obviously it had a purpose, it had a meaning. And so now I’m here, and my desire is to share the freeing power of Jesus Christ. We have very high suicide rate here, very high, the highest on the continent. Oh, wow. Because these people here have no hope. And so they’re taught self sufficiency. They’re taught to do it yourself. Everything that I did, I know for sure that the gospel can set them free, and my desire is to bring that to them.

So what are you doing personally in area of evangelism to help others remove the barriers in their life? I know you are married to a missionary. You’re under mission field. What are some of the things that you’re doing Besides some of the things you just mentioned in the area of evangelism? Sure. So we’re Church planters right now, and so we’re establishing our first Church. So that is teaching on my part. I teach Sunday school. We go out evangelizing in the city every week, basically any way that we can get the gospel out. We’re trying to do that on top of it. I teach English here in a private school, which has really given me a great opportunity to make relationships with the people here, because the country that we serve in, it’s very closed. We’re in a very remote part of the country where there aren’t very many foreigners. So the people need to have a relationship with you in order to trust you. So just trying to build those bridges and make those relationships so that when a person comes to their time of need and we’ve had this happen, we’re able to step in and fill in that gap and say here and thank the Lord. We’ve seen people come to Christ and we want to see many more. Amen. Thank you for your work.

So, Claudia, we’re going to go into a bit of a fun section and just find out some of your favorites. What is your favorite scripture verse? Oh, my favorite scripture verse. I’ve had lots over the years, depending on where I’m at, the Lord seems to change it. But the one that’s been pretty constant the last several years has been John 15 four. That one is a really good one for me. It says, Abide in me and I in you as a branch cannot bear fruit of itself, accepted abide in the vine. No more can he accept you abide in me. And the reason why I love it is because that verse reminds me that without the working of the Holy Spirit and the power of Christ in my life, then anything I do will really amount to nothing. And I need to always abide in him for him to work through me. When the Scriptures say abiding Christ, could you just explain for our audience what does that mean? Does that mean that no matter what circumstances you’re facing in your life, you reject what the world or our flesh or what others are telling us about it, and we rest in what God has said about it? Or does it mean to strive and continually try to earn God’s favor? What does it mean to abide in Christ? Well, for me, it means to, number one, to stay close to him, to have a personal relationship with him daily in prayer, in the reading of his word, in the meditation of his Word, and allowing that to become part of me. And then on top of it, it also means to I just lost my trait of thought. I was going to have two points, and I just got my second point. Sorry, no worries. The reason I asked was because in this season of motherhood, I found it incredibly difficult to abide the time anyway, not complaining because my children and my husband and my home are God’s most precious gift to me after my Salvation. But boy, am I finding it difficult to just find time to be in Christ or like to be in the word, to abide and to just rest in him. So I was asking that off the cuff.

But let me ask you this. What would you say is your favorite biblical historical account? Some people call them Bible stories, but here at the podcast, we don’t like to call them that because the word story has a connotation of being like a myth or made up. But we know everything that happened in the scriptures that is described in the scriptures actually happened. What would you say is your favorite biblical historical account? My favorite by far is the story of King Joseph of Judah in one Chronicles, Chapter 20. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the story or not, but Joseph, that was about to go well, the enemies of God came against him and he really didn’t know what to do. He said to the Lord, what do I do? And the Lord said, Just don’t do anything. You’re going to see my power today. And so Jehovah’s Fat said, okay, but God still told him to go to the battle, so he still marched to the battle, but on the way, he set up singers and people to praise the Lord. And that singing and time of praise actually caused confusion in the camp and defeated the enemies of God. And so I just love how the power of praise and worship to defeat our enemies. I love how that’s highlighted in that particular portion of Scripture. I just find it very exciting that the battles not ours, but God’s, if we worship and praise him,

what would you say is the most convicted scripted passage to you? I would say probably not a passage, but Israel’s historical account, including in the prophets. And this really convicted me several years ago before we came to the mission field, the Lord worked a lot on me. As I was reading through my Bible, this phrase kept jumping out at me, and it was super convicting. And even to this day, it’s very convicting. And it’s they worship the work of their hands. They worship the work of their hands. And so when I look back at Israel’s history, the whole reason why they went into captivity was because not only did they forsake God, which we often highlight, but then they worship the work of their hands. They were self sufficient. It was all on them. They were doing the work. And I guess I identify with that. And it’s something that I strive to not do. And so it’s very convicting to me when I read that in scripture. And Unfortunately, I see in later books of the Bible, in the book of Revelation and stuff, that’s where the Church is going as well. And so very much being aware of not worshipping the works of my hands and making sure that it’s a homework. Yeah. Worshiping the works of your hands. That sounds like can use it to describe the entire Western world. Oh, my dear, very much self sufficiency. Self sufficiency, yes.

What is the most comforting scripture verse for you or passage, without a doubt that’s Psalm 139, especially the first 18 verses. I really love the nearness of God in that particular portion of Scripture. How David just talks about Lord, you’re so near me, you’re so intimate. I could try to flee from your presence, but I can’t. You’re always there. And so that really, if ever I’m at a time where I’m struggling, that’s usually the passage that I go to just to be reaffirmed of the presence of God in my life. Reminds me of Psalm eight, where he says, what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visit is him. Amen. It’s marvelous that our God wants to be so intimate with his creation. It really is. That’s why Christianity is not a religion. It’s a relationship. Absolutely. 100%.

What is your favorite hymn of the faith? I’m going to cheat here. I’ve got two. That’s fine. My son has, like, six favorite colors. My two very favorite number one is my Jesus, I love thee. Amen. To me, that’s a song about the intimate love one has for their God. And I really love how the verses of that him progress from the point of Salvation to being in glory. It’s just a progressive song or hymn, and really it’s a heartfelt prayer to the Lord. And so I feel that that hymn is very personal. When I sing it, it’s like I’m praying that unto the Lord, my second one would be, lead me to Calvary. And that one to me is pretty convicting. And it always helps me focus back on what’s important in my life. So often it’s super easy to get distracted and lose my way. And yet the chorus says, lest I forget Gethsemane, lest I forget thine agony, lest I forget thy love for me lead me to Calvary. And I often need a reminder of that. Lord, I don’t want to forget those things. Those things are important. I want to make sure that my heart has always turned towards you, that him, I guess, is kind of like accompanying him to direct me back in my way. Great.

Who is your favorite giant of the faith from the Bible? I have so many. I would probably say David. David would be my giant of the faith. And I think it’s only because. Well, I think it’s mostly because so much of his life is recorded in scripture. I mean, we get to see the good side and the bad side. We get to see his prayer Journal in the book of Psalms, and we get to hear about all the sins that he committed. And so he’s just such a real person in the scripture, and yet God used him mightily. And every King after him was always compared back to his heart for God. And so that is really encouraging that this very sinful, very ordinary man who followed the sheep with young was so used by God. It’s very encouraging. One of our son’s names is named after one of the good Kings of the scriptures, one of the good Kings of Judah. And the way that this King was described was. And he followed in the footsteps of David, his father. When you said every King after David was described in terms of their heart for God, like David, such as David had, that just made me think of that. And, yeah, definitely a wonderful giant of the faith. I was amazed at how many times that every single King after was always compared back to him. And I was like, this man is amazing, incredible. It’s very obvious. Like, God wrote that about him. He prepared the temple. He was the one who gathered all of the money, gathered all of the material, laid out the plans, and just handed it. We call it Solomon’s Temple. But really, David was the one who did all of the work for exactly. Solomon just built it, and then he got the credit. Unless we think that we’re supposed to be following like this impossibly perfect guy. Obviously, David had his issues with sin, as we can read in the scriptures. In spite of that, God’s benevolence God’s mercy. And even considering him as a man after God’s own heart is just really encouraging. Most definitely. And even the fact that he was fearful of fall, he ran from fall. I remember I was in a very difficult time in my life about 15 years ago. And God became super real to me during that time because I spent a lot of time in the Psalms and I read the Psalms and I was just like, David said that to you, God. That’s pretty irreverent. But he was pouring out his heart to God. And that taught me I can do that. I can tell God, you know what? I’m really angry right now. I don’t like the situation. I don’t like so and so they’re being me. I don’t like this and God can take it, but I love it. Whenever we read those Psalms, at the end, he praises the Lord. He starts out one way, but God changes his focus and changes him. And so that really helped me have a more real relationship with God was just spending time in those Psalms and reading David’s heart and what he went through and how he expressed it to the Lord.

Yeah, David is a very popular favorite giant of the faith on the Removing Barrett’s podcast. But one of the things that always amazes me because pretty much what you guys are saying. But if I were to judge David from a human perspective, I would have never come up and say, hey, there goes a man after God doing hot. He was a murderer. He was an adulterer, he was a homeworker. He was the worst of the worst. But yet the Bible says that he’s a man of a God’s own heart. Why? Because when he was confronted with his sin, he humbled himself, which is really amazing. God still used him. And I’m reading through the Bible right now in Spanish for the very first time. And it’s almost like you’ve never read the Bible before because the way the words are used and you pick things out a lot more. And the other day I realized, I never realized this before, but we talked about it says Abraham believed God and he accounted to him for righteousness and. Okay, well, that’s great. He believed God that he’d get a promise. He but I never realized that Abraham never saw his grandchild. All that Abraham had his entire life was Isaac. That’s all he ever had. Because Isaac was 40 years old when he got married to Rebecca. And then he died. And I think they were married like, 20 years before she had a baby. And so I was like, wow, he was a giant of the face. I always read it. But then I was like, he never even saw his branch out. And yet his entire life, he followed God, trusting that the promise was coming. And I was like, that’s awesome. That was really, really great.

All right, Claudia, let’s wrap it up and tell us, by sharing the gospel, how can those barriers, whatever barriers, they may be removed in the life of others. Well, Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Amen. And he led a perfect life. God come in the flesh, born of the Virgin. And after leading this sinless perfect life, was put to death by sinful man. It was God’s plan to do so so that he could take the burden of all of our sins, past, present, future, all of it. For every man, woman and child that will ever be born in the face of this Earth. He took all of it upon himself in our place so that we don’t have to suffer the punishment of God. He purchased every single one of us with his blood. And so now we have the choice. Not only did he die, was buried and rose again, and to give us eternal life, but now we have the choice to receive that and to say, I want that God, you did that for me. And so now we have a word in Spanish. Approvicar to enjoy, to disrupt, to defruit. I love the thought of it. But to enjoy what he has already done for us, it’s done. We don’t have to do a single thing, but believe that this is what Jesus did in our place and God will accept us because of his son, because of his mercy and his Grace towards humankind. Amen.

Claudia, thank you for joining us on the Removing Barriers podcast. Thank you so much. It’s been a blessing. Definitely.

Thank you for listening. To get a hold of us to support this podcast or to learn more about removing barriers, go to removingbarriers. Net. This has been the Removing Barriers podcast we attempted to remove so that we all can have a clear view of the cross.