Jfirst Cause Weekly Inspirational
Categories: The Testimony Chronicle's part three - Eric and Regina's Call
September 20, 2008
Eric and Regina's Call
Who will answer His Call? - When I was in college at San Diego State University, I had some hard times do to poor choices of mine. I wasn't living for Jesus for the first four or so years at SDSU. During this time I met Eric Martin in one of my communications classes. We hit it off immediately and became good friends. We lived for satan together literally by doing the worldly thing. Throughout our friendship, I was drawing closer to Christ little by little.
Eric had a girlfriend named Regina Montoya in college in his BC days, lol. I didn't see Eric for awhile and we just randomly ran into each other one day so I thought. As we started to hangout again, I find out his on again off again girlfriend Regina started to go to church. Eric started to want to checkout church as well. In my ignorant days of putting God to the side, I managed to tell Eric that I attended church. I invited him but he wasn't interested. I wasn't much of an example of Christ to him either.
Now that the flame of love was rekindled between Regina and Eric, Mr. Martin was wanting to go to church himself. It's amazing to me the power of a woman. I know it was all by God's but He used a woman that Eric thought was the bomb to bring him to relationship with Jesus. You go girl!!!! All for His glory.
Eric and Regina both committeed their lives to Jesus and a marriage and two beautiful young girls later; are a missionary family. Doing it all for His glory. Eric and Regina are some of my best friends and they are the real deal. They are some of the most godly people I know and when I get married, I want to pattern my marriage after them because they do it for His glory. This is their story of how God called them to the mission field. Read it and be blessed by the Call of God on a couple's life.
Missions Testimony
Calling
I received the calling to be a missionary while on a short missions in Juarez Mexico doing a Festival of Life. I didn’t want to leave and probably would have stayed if it wasn’t for bills and my girl friend, now wife waiting for me at home. After getting married, God began to put urgency on our hearts for Mexico. The church where we were serving literally closed down, and had to ask me for the keys as I continued to use the building months after it closing. So we began to pray, pay of our bills, and visit Rosarito Mexico where Regina’s family friends were starting a church. We felt like now was the time, when we were young and could serve God for many years, instead of waiting until we retired and giving God our left-overs.
Acts 16:9 And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10 Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.
While there Paul cast out a demon, close torn off, beaten, whipped, thrown in jail, delivered from jail, kicked out of the city. But they never doubted their call. While there Lydia and her family were saved, the jailer and his family as well, and the slave girl and a church was started.
He was only there a few days, but later wrote a letter to the church there stating
Philippians 1: 3 I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, 5 for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now… 8 For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ.
Our calling is so important because if we are sure in our calling, then no matter what happens, attacks, slow growth, failures, we know we are called.
How do you know your calling?
Phillipians 4:6-7 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
God’s never spoken to me in a loud voice saying “ERIC, go to Mexico.” It was always more of an inner peace through prayer and fasting.
God Provides
Many people thought we were crazy because we went to college, and were going to quite our good paying jobs, to live in Mexico. But we knew that God Was calling us.
Mathew 6:33. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
I am not going to say it has been easy, the first year especially. Some months we had only 400 dollars, 300 of which was for rent. But somehow God always provided. One time in El Salvador we had 16$ in the bank with an empty tank of gas. That night an American who was visiting gave me an offering. My car was stolen, and two weeks later someone gave us a car.
God Guides
The only problem is we didn’t know where in Mexico. Rosarito was cool and all but we didn’t feel we would be real missionaries because it was so close to the border and they are more like Mexican Americans. So after praying, fasting, and hearing no answer, we got in our car and headed throughout Mexico for a month and a half visiting the various Horizons, to see where God would call us. We visited many churches and saw many needs, but never really heard from God where. However the first week back, we went to visit Rosarito, and on the way back Regina and I looked at each other and knew that God was calling us to Rosarito.
Proverbs 16:9 A man’s heart plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.
God Confirms
God immediately confirmed our call in Rosarito. We told Horizon we were going to Rosarito and they told us they were praying about a Festival, which we never thought would happen in Rosarito. Regina became pregnant with a month of living there. Regina’s father needed open heart surgery and she was able to help him through it by being so close. Mia’s asthma needed to be close to states. When we started going down Eric spoke high school Spanish, and shared with a translator, but upon returning from our month trip through Mexico, Eric started and never stopped preaching in Spanish. Thank God He knows exactly what He is doing.
God continued to bless and do many mighty things while we were in Rosarito. The church moved from 1. Juan’s driveway to a 3 story church building. 2. The youth group grew from 1 kid to 30+ many of whom were from unchurched families, 3. purity and 4. extreme sport outreaches in the local junior and senior high schools, 5. God provided for free a huge warehouse and ramps to run a bike skate park for years where thousands of teens heard and many received the gospel, and much more.
Make Disciples
One thing I learned in Mexico is that it is very easy to get someone to pray to receive Jesus. It is not like here, where no one wants to hear anything about Jesus. You can do a sinners prayer and everyone will lift their hands, again and again. We would get all excited because someone prayed to receive Jesus. We would follow up with the people, call them go to their houses (hard because numbers aren’t in order), pray with them, offer a study at their house, etc. But many of them would never change, never come to church, continue in sin, not want anything to do with Jesus. Did that prayer save them?
Our goal is not to get people to say “the prayer”. Down there everyone believes in Jesus, they know they are sinners, they all say they want Jesus, but to get them disciple, to live a holy life, and into a church is the difficult part. Mathew 28:19-20 18 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
The goal of missions, the church, or any ministry should be to make disciples. How do we make disciples: Go, baptize (win), teach. His encouragement is that He will be with us. Vision of Horizon win, disciple, send.
Mathew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
Changes
After being in Rosarito for five years we began to feel that Jesus was preparing us to go somewhere else. The church had grown and was healthy; leaders had been raised up. So we began to pray for God to show us when and where. We began to feel the Festival is where God was calling us, so I went to Chiapas for a month to confirm God’s calling. I was there for a month. My first day there I met a guy from Rosarito working there, and miraculously found him in Rosarito. I witnessed to bikers, a Pizza Hut guy with a broken down motorcycle, worked with over 120 churches, taught alter call training to over 600 church volunteers. I couldn’t stay for the Festival because my wife was 8 months pregnant. God confirmed the calling while there.
God will Complete it
Going back to Rosarito and telling people we were leaving was very hard. We had been at that church since the beginning, watched the kids grow up physically and spiritually. They hold a special place in our hearts.
But God began closing the doors. For example, one day we drove by skate park and the ramps were being thrown out on the street and fenced off. Someone had bought the building and wanted us out without warning. This was my main ministry, I was destroyed. But God is awesome that same day the director of sports saw what was going on and offered us a basketball court to use for the ministry. It is right next to the new movie theater and a high school with 2000 kids. The church is opening a youth center right across the street, if anyone is interested.
The teens were bummed we were leaving and I was afraid what would happen to them when we left. I had personally shared Christ with many of them, I was their father in the faith, how could I leave my kids.
We were teaching through Philippians with the teens and God gave me this verse. Philippians1:6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ… God showed me that it was His ministry. These were his kids. He had started the work, not me, and He was going to finish it not me. It gave me a peace that I could leave because He was in control.
I went back a year later, and yes some of the kids had left, but those that stayed were His and had grown immensely. One kid Pancho from the skate park would always raise his hand to receive the Lord. But would never come to church or let me disciple him. Before leaving he started coming to church and taking a discipleship course with the pastor. I was able to baptize him before I left, and know he is so on fire that he led his mom, dad, and sister to the Lord and then started bringing all of his friend to church with him.
Growth through Struggles
So we said our good-bye and packed up all our stuff and left Rosarito. After a month of downtime we headed down to El Salvador to help prepare for a Festival. However things there were not easy. 2 days before Regina came down with the family my 7 month old daughter Ily was diagnosed as far-sighted and her eyes were beginning to cross. My wife had to cancel her plans to come down to get exams and glasses for my daughter. God is faithful as we complained of the injustice of a daughter with glasses for life, I met a teen who would be blind in 3 years, and learned to play guitar before going blind to praise God. My older daughter Mia has asthma and was in and out of the doctors the first month there because of the asthma from the smog and pollution. The car we bought was a junker, with the wheel and axle falling off, thank God we were pulling out of the drive way. The buses drove like they were in sports cars with people hanging out the windows and doors. My wife swore that she was going to die in a car in El Salvador. My wife and daughters were faithful as they are had to deal with the plagues of mosquitoes, rats, no water, and scorpions. After the first scorpion she told God I can deal with rats, but not scorpions. A week later we had a rat. Through all of this we suffered but then the Festival was post-poned and eventually cancelled, so we questioned God exactly what we were doing there.
Harvest is Plentiful
God showed us that even though we weren’t there for the intended purpose, He still had a purpose. While there He used us to start a homeless soup kitchen/bible study ministry with 20+ people weekly. Five of which now live in a Christian rehab center where they are being healed as they learn about Jesus. Bernardo went in the week after his son died from a liver failure from alcohol. Begin a woman’s study at a church plant. Serve weekly at two mission churches. One of which was Angustura. A church with 50+ kids and like 3 adults. Those kids were faithful, the church was 3 walls, with a roof on a dirt field, very poor, but the kids would come every week, even in pouring down rain, some would come in canoes from across the river, half of them barefoot. The little kids even led the worship. Lead a group of Salvadorians on a mission trip to Belize in hopes that one would be called to pastor a church. We developed a youth discipleship program at the churches’ high school which included two camping trips, hospital visitations, a teenage run Sunday school class, weekly devotions and daily Bible classes.
Luke 10:2 says, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” Did we serve with the Festival of Life? No! But God used us in so many ways that we couldn’t have imagined. No matter where we have been in the world, there is always so much work to do, so many lost and hungry souls. So many churches and organizations needing help. So many people need Jesus, but we sit and do nothing. To make disciples we must first “Go.”
1 Corinthians 9:16 For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for necessity is laid upon me; yes, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel!
Exodus 32:32 Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written.”
Romans 9:3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh…
Love
I do not know what God is calling each of you to do specifically. But I do know that His general call for you and me is
Mathew 22: 37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
It is such a blessing to love, bless, and serve others. Usually the one who is serving receives more, grows more, and is more blessed.
In Latin America it is a family oriented society. It is all about spending time with people, getting to know them, talking, sharing. It is not unusual to have an hour conversation with someone you just met. We were only in El Salvador for 10 months, but in those ten months we made so many amazing friends. They invite you to dinner, bought us beds, prayed for us, lent us cars, not just friends but part of the family.
Many of you went on the “Love Out-Loud Tour”. You had the opportunity to love people in many ways. Buying them groceries, construction around the house, visiting the sick, in prison. How have you been Loving Out-Loud since being back? You see what happens is It is very easy to love and serve when everyone else is doing it. When you friends are with you. You work off of one another’s faith. Maybe there is a leader who is really outgoing, or gifted. But how are you loving when you are all alone, when no one else is looking, when no one knows you are a Christian, when it is just you and God, because He is the one that really matters.
John 13:34-35 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Why is it a new commandment? Because Jesus says “To love as I have loved you.” How did He love us? HE DIED FOR US! Who are you dying for?
I want to encourage you to Love Out-Loud daily. We tell people that Jesus loves you and that is correct. He does. He loves them so much. He gave His life for each and every single person that you see every single day.
But the question is do you love them? Are you loving them as Christ loved you? Why not?
Be Blessed,
Joey
PS: Sorry for the delay of blog postings. I just moved to San Diego and I have been busy but that is no excuse for delaying the work of Christ. I pray that you are inspired to love Him all the more from this testimony.
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