And that's why we don't see when we choose not to believe that God can crash through the barriers of pain. His love knows no barrier.
Our job isn't to understand how He's going to do it. Our job is to release the tide of His love through us. That's Kim Meador and she joins us today on Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller and your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly.
John, I am so excited to have Kim back with us. She's a gifted storyteller and has such passion for leading people to the Lord, which when you get down to it, that's what it's all about. And you're not going to want to miss a single minute of the program today, especially if you need a word of encouragement from the Lord. As believers, we know God's presence is with us, sometimes more so than at other times, but much of the scripture assures us that He is there, maybe especially in the down times. I think of Psalm 139 verse seven, when David writes, where shall I go from your spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence? You can't hide from God. He knows you. He knows where you're at every moment of every day of your life. He's all around us.
And we want to give you a glimpse of His hand in the midst of everyday situations. And that's what Kim so brilliantly captures. She's so in tune with the Spirit of God.
I deeply appreciate this sister in that way. Yeah, and every time we have her on the broadcast, we hear from people. Kim, God has just gifted you and you know that and it's a privilege to have her back. Just real quick, if you don't know Kim, she and her husband Troy started Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch. They rescue abused and neglected horses.
They nurture them back to health and use them in a writing program for kids, many of them abused and neglected. And Kim has incredible stories that have occurred on the ranch and a lot of personal stories as well. And she's captured some of those in the new book called Encountering Our Wild God, Ways to Experience His Untamable Presence Every Day. Kim, welcome back to Focus. Thank you. It's wonderful to be back with my brothers. We're like energized. We've been talking already and we got to start now. We've been at it going, talking about what the Lord's doing. It's so much fun. But anybody who meets you immediately senses the presence of God. You just have that ability. For those that don't know you, the recap is that man, the Lord puts you through some difficult stuff as a little girl.
Just if you could, freshen that story to remind the listeners or for the first time to tell them who you are. Absolutely. What I know is true is that everyone comes from somewhere and everyone has been through something. And God's Word is also true everywhere throughout scripture. But in Psalms 23, we read that He says, don't be afraid. I'm with you through this valley of the shadow of darkness, my rod and my staff, my comfort and my protection.
I'm with you. And that is also true as we walk through very, very dark times. That became real to me at a young age when I was nine. And as I have shared previously at nine, that's when my mom, I wanted to grow up and be like her and my dad. There was nothing my dad couldn't do. He was a superhero and wore a cape and flew in my mind. And it was during that season of my life that my dad's best friend came to my little grade school and put me in the back of his car and my two older sisters alongside and started to drive in silence down a very familiar road that led to my grandparents' house.
And he wouldn't speak. And I knew during that silent drive that something horrific had happened. And we arrived to my grandparents' house and there were cars all over and you could feel the grief just waving from the house. And for the first time in my young life, I did not want to go into a home where I only ever felt love. I was afraid. I was afraid. And I was pushed into the arms of a woman that I didn't know her name.
I recognized her. Finally, she just said, I'm so sorry. I don't know how to tell you this, but your father has just murdered your mother and taken his own life. I'm so sorry. And I remember thinking, wait a minute, my dad loves my mom and he loves me and he would never do that.
You're a liar. And I just popped off of her chest and ran out the back door in this child's effort to just outrun the unthinkable and just ran and ran and ran until there was just nothing left. And it wasn't even a long distance. It felt like days and just fell down in the dirt.
It was in an orchard that had just been plowed. And I remember just grabbing handfuls of dirt in this effort to hold onto their memory. If I can just hold on, it won't be true. And then I could hear myself saying, Jesus, help me. Jesus, I need you now.
Jesus, help me. I didn't even know who Jesus was. I wasn't raised in the church. I wasn't raised in a Christian home. I can only remember going to church twice before that, but I didn't know that God's word is true. And in places like Romans chapter one, where it says that God has made within the heart of every man, the desire to know him.
And it doesn't matter how you were raised or what culture you're from or what you were taught to believe. When our heart is being crushed, we know intuitively to turn to the one who made that heart, because we know somehow through the power of his spirit that he's the only one who can heal it and redeem it. I did not know then the power of verses like Romans 10, 13 that says, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Everyone. A few verses higher, it says that salvation is as near as your lips and your heart. If you profess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that he's God, you will be saved.
I didn't know any of that. All I knew in that moment of crush was that there was a pop in my heart, an ignition of hope. And that somehow I'm gonna get through this.
Somehow I'm gonna make it. And now I know in a way that I cannot verbalize I'm not alone anymore. And that was the beginning of knowing Jesus Christ in this wild child's life.
That was the beginning of everything. I didn't know then that every ounce of pain you and I will ever feel in this life, the Lord has already assigned for his will. When we're suffering, we just can't take in the truth that God is going to do something mighty and beautiful and powerful through our pain. When people try to share that with us, it makes us mad.
It makes us frustrated. You don't know what I'm going through. You don't know what I feel.
You just don't know. And the truth is, Jesus Christ does know. And that he's the only one who can take what the enemy means to destroy us by and do this Genesis 50 20 of what the enemy was gonna crush you by. Oh, don't you know, I'm gonna let that be the very thing that gives you life. And not only you, everyone you give it to, only Jesus can do that.
That is so good. There is one pain that you and I can experience that he cannot redeem. One.
One. And that's the pain that we choose to not give him. And that's just pain that destroys. And that's walking through that valley of the shadow of darkness and sitting down in the middle and camping out and living in pain and grief and suffering.
And we were never called to do that. He says, don't you know I'm with you, walking with you step for step. Jesus Christ's love and hope and joy and peace is not the light at the end of the tunnel. He is the light in that black place, leading us through. But we've got to choose to trust him step for purposeful. I will get through this because Jesus promised me, Jesus, I will follow you through this black place because you are with me.
And I know that in a way that only God can, you're gonna do something amazing because of this. I don't get it. You never asked me to. You don't ask me to understand your ways.
You only ask me to trust you for them. Yes. And that's not hard. Yeah, it's so good. And that that is, uh, I wanted people to hear that background because so many times they won't understand where's this passion coming from?
What have you lived through? And that is so critical. Um, and I love that end. You know, one of the things that I enjoy saying when I speak is that we don't own our testimonies. Jesus bought them with the price of his blood. These are his testimonies working through us.
He's just saying, are you willing to walk it for me? Yes. And they belong to him. Right.
Right. Cause we're his creatures created in his image. And I just, I love that kind of perspective. You have written this great new book and countering our wild God. Now some people think, no, God's not wild.
How could you say that? Almost sounds sacrilegious that God would be wild. No, he's tamed. He's refined.
Go there for a minute. Why did you choose a title to describe God as a wild God? You and I cannot look at what he has created and not know that he is not wild and unfathomable and untamable and uncontainable.
His word is true in Isaiah 55 where he says, Oh, don't you know my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts and as high as the heavens are above the earth. So am I higher in my dealings than you. My love, my joy, my peace, my hope cannot fit.
It cannot fit into your understanding. Don't even try. Just trust me for it.
Just trust me for it. His redemption, we cannot fit it in the confines of the little teeny tiny box that makes sense to us. God is wild. His love crashes through every boundary that we think he can't get through. His redemption and his hope and his peace roars over the mountain range around us that we just say, God, it's impossible.
It is impossible for me to get through this. And he just roars right over it and mountains skip out of the way. And they say after you are God and our maker and we just experienced this tsunami of love that pours over us. It doesn't matter if we understand it, it just is. Nothing that he is can fit with anything that we understand about him. Our God is wild. He doesn't ask us to understand. He just asks us to trust him.
Yeah. The God side of the equation is so, I mean, you are expressing it. I mean that vivid imagery that you are giving us, God's open arms.
The question is on our end, how do we learn to walk in that kind of simplicity? We overcomplicate it. I haven't done the right things.
We keep a scorecard. The Lord may not love me because I did this, this and that. How do we settle our hearts to look at the simplicity of God in that wild nature of helping us? Absolutely. Our enemy is a thief and a liar. And he dwells in that analysis to paralysis. You not, you're never, you always, you don't know enough, you don't say enough, you don't know his word enough, blah, blah, blah. Right. All the accusations.
Correct. When serving God, knowing God, releasing his Spirit that lives inside of us is really is really as simple. Pray, listen and do what he asks.
It really is that simple. All throughout God's word, we are commanded, pray without ceasing, pray at all times, pray on every occasion in the power of the Holy Spirit. Every opportunity you get, pray, pray, pray.
We're commanded by God himself when he spoke over Jesus, this is my beloved son who I'm well pleased. Listen to him. Yes. Kim, last time you were here, you shared a wonderful story about going to Goodwill, but there is actually more to the story involving a horse named, I think, a Lula, if I have that right. What happened? So part of our ranch is to rescue abused and hurting horses. And a while back, our ranch was contacted by a family that was just distraught. And they said, we have a horse we can no longer take care of, and she has a horrific wound on her shoulder. And she was our dad's horse, and the other day, he didn't come in for dinner, and we waited and waited, and finally we went out to go find why dad didn't come in, and he had passed away of natural causes in her corral in one of the places that he valued the most. And this beloved little mare was standing over him very carefully, guarding him and grieving his loss. The one that loved her the most had passed away right in front of her. And they said, well, you just come and take her.
We just don't know what to do. And so we brought her home that day, and her wound was significant. It had been stapled closed, and all the staples had failed, and she was grieving. And so we brought her into our ranch and helped her back to health. And her name is Alula.
Alula is the name of a star, and her scar is star-shaped. And so God is always painting a masterpiece, as referred to in Ephesians 2.10. And when we don't like the current picture, all it means, and my wise sister tells me this, all it means is that, Kim, he's not done yet. And so in practicing Pray, Listen, Do, I was working on a project, Lord, I need frames, where would you like me to go?
I'm just asking him in. I've lived so much of my life on autopilot. I know how to do this, I know how to do that, I know how to run this ranch and go grocery shopping, get fuel, buy coffee. Oh, but God, here's a spiritual part, I better ask you, I better pray. And the Lord has loved me enough to say, honey, don't you realize every moment that you're breathing, that's the spiritual part. I want you to ask me into all of it. Psalms 37 23 says that he wants to be invited into every detail of our lives.
So Lord, where do you want me to go? Buy picture frames. Answer was strangely immediate, Goodwill. Awesome! I love Goodwill, it's like a giant yard sale every day. And so instantly, shopping these affordable aisles with my little blue basket, gather up a bunch of frames, go to the only checkout line that's available, and I hear the Holy Spirit say, no, not yet.
Okay, take a few steps backward, thinking I'm getting ready to go do a speaking tour in a very warm climate, so found some board shorts and flip flops, didn't even know I needed them, wow, thank you God. Go to the checkout line again, and a second time, no, not yet. So now I'm creeping around Goodwill, don't know why I'm here, Lord. And so I go and find one more frame, and so now I'm looking up at the ceiling like, now?
And just feel nothing but release to go to the checkout line. And as I step to the next position in line, that's when I heard the young woman who was serving a man say, oh, I'm sorry, I don't know how to do this transaction, I'm gonna have to call for help. So she called for help, help came, cut right in front of me, she was short, she had fiery red hair and laser blue eyes, and she was mad. And she hit my basket and almost knocked everything out, and she goes into the next checkout line, and she opens it up and she sneers, did you find everything you need?
She hasn't looked at me yet. And I said, actually, I found more than what I needed, I'm going to do this speaking tour, and I found more than what I was even looking for. Oh, that's great, what do you speak about? And so I gave her just a thumbnail and I said, I get to speak about hope and a little bit about the ranch.
Oh, that's great. And she's checking through all these frames. And then this beautiful young woman rocks back on her heels and starts to shout in my face, I'm so glad that you talked to people about hope, because I'm sick and tired.
Nobody takes responsibility for anything anymore, and I'm sick of it! I'm just sick of it! And like a bell on a clear day, I can hear the Holy Spirit say, I want you to point blank her with what I've done for you. And I gotta be honest, my first response was, Abort! Abort! She's mad, the guy behind me's mad, everybody's mad, she's not gonna hear it, Lord, it's a bad time, it's a bad time!
Really? Okay, I'm going in, God! And so I read her little name tag and it said, Angel! Darrell Bock God has a sense of humor.
Cheryl Kane He does! And so I say, Angel, honey, you're right. I'm so glad that I get to talk to people about hope, because hope is so vitally important to our heart and for our life that without it, everything is meaningless. Hope is so important I remember not only the day, but the moment that genuine hope came into my heart, and that was the day that my dad murdered my mother and took his own life. And that was the day that I met the author of hope.
That was the day I met Jesus Christ, and he's been in my heart ever since. And she just went, ah! She didn't move, she didn't breathe, she stood there with her shoulders up to her ears, staring at the floor for what felt like a day. She looked like I had shot her with an arrow. And after a long moment, she starts to exhale and her shoulders start to settle down, and as she's raising her eyes to meet mine, they're flooding with tears. And she goes to open her mouth, and these two huge, heavy streaks go down her face. And this is a young woman who just screamed in my face. Now she is speaking in a voice that I can barely hear.
It's the voice of a little, little girl, and she says in this tiny whisper, I've never shared this with anybody. When I was 12, my mom killed herself right in front of me. And all I did was just open my arms in that universal gesture that, oh baby, this hug is for you. It was like throwing a life ring. She wanted that so desperately.
She didn't even go around the counter. She launched up onto the checkout counter, put her knees on the counter and just buried into a total stranger's neck and just wept and wept and wept. And right there in the checkout line of a Goodwill store in a little town, one former orphan got to introduce another orphan to the love of Jesus Christ. If you want to know the simplicity of the wild love and redemption of our God, it really is as simple as we pray and we listen and we do and we just follow His Spirit where His Spirit wants to go.
Jesus said Himself in John 4 23 and 24 that God is Spirit. He's looking for anybody, anybody who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. Will that be you?
Kim, will it be you? Will you worship Him by following the voice of His Spirit while standing on the truth of His word because they always go together? What the Holy Spirit asks us to do will never work outside of the power and truth of God's Word because He's the one who wrote it. We pray, we listen, and we do. Kim, I mean, it's hard to breathe because you are bringing such great truth to the listener and we have flown through the first half hour.
I mean, this is amazing. The place to end it because I can envision that person weeping with you right now. Another version of that clerk who's never felt the love of God has not seen the enthusiasm of a believer like you've got. I think the place to end is for you to pray for those people who are saying, Lord, I want that. I don't know you.
I'm in the apple orchard grabbing at the dirt like Kim was as a little girl. Pray for them and let's come back next time and we'll get into more of the whys and the hows. Kim, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, I speak the power and the authority and the pure love of Your name over every single person who is listening today, who has collapsed in that place of brokenness and despair and grief and pain and suffering that believes you do not see right now.
Holy Spirit, will you breathe over them in their car, in their office, in their kitchen, out in a field wherever they might be, that they would feel the fire of the presence of the living God descending on them. Don't you know I love you. You're my son. You're my daughter. And if you were the only one, I'm coming for you. And I'm here right now, reaching for you. My beloved, will you reach back and take me by the hand? I've got you. I've got you. And you are going to make it. Will you call on my name and invite me into your heart and your life to lead you through this time? I've got a plan.
I've got a purpose, and it's good, because I am good. Can you feel my arms around you now? I love you so much.
Let's walk out these days together, and I will show you side by side. My goodness, and my wild love for you, my beloved. Thank you, Jesus.
Thank you, that your redemptive love knows no boundaries of men. And when we ask you to come in, you do. And you heal every broken corner and closet. And when we ask you to come in, you do. And you heal every broken corner and closet and drawer and crack. Your light is unstoppable, and it lights the darkness.
And the darkness can never extinguish it. Thank you, Jesus. Come in now, we pray, all for your glory.
Have your way. Amen. Amen. Kim Meador.
Man, this is the gospel. And I want to pick up next time, if you're willing to stay with us and talk about the introduction that you made between this angel at Goodwill and Alula. Let's pick it up there. Can we do it?
Yes, sir. And we'll pause right there in our conversation with Kim Meador on today's episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Kim's stories are so gripping and so captivating. She has been such a popular guest here for that reason. Well, God really has gifted her not only in reaching out to broken people, but in sharing her stories in such a way that demonstrates his grace and mercy. It is powerful what the Lord has done in her life. And as you've been listening today, I know you've been touched by her stories of redemption. That's really at the heart of what we do here at Focus on the Family.
I hope you know that. Everything points back to the Lord and his redeeming nature. Kim has many more stories like the ones you've heard today, and we've gathered those in a free audio collection. You can sign up at our website to download those, and John, you'll give those details in a moment. We also have Kim's outstanding book, Encountering Our Wild God, available to you. Just make a donation, a gift of any amount, and we'll send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for supporting the ministry and helping others.
Yeah, be generous today as you can. Get your copy of Encountering Our Wild God when you call 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459, or look for details in the show notes. And while you're there, be sure to look for the link to the free audio collection. Jim mentioned it, and we've pulled together three inspiring episodes of this show with Kim Meador in which she shares fantastic stories of people she's encountered and how she's seen God work through her ministry. You won't want to miss these.
Again, it's absolutely free audio. You'll find all the details and link in the show notes. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we hear more of this conversation with Kim Meador and once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Are you already in the mood for Christmas? The lights? The music? It's only summer!
Well, you're not alone. Celebrate Christmas in July by listening to Focus on the Family's Christmas Stories podcast. You'll hear heartwarming stories, get ideas for fun activities to do with your family, and remember the joy of Christ's birth. Listen to the Christmas Stories podcast at FocusOnTheFamily.com slash Christmas Stories or wherever you get your podcasts.
