My name is Cynthia Jones, a 55 year old wife, with one daughter and two grandchildren. My husband and I live most of the year in a small community outside of Spartanburg, SC, USA and five months in Costa Rica where my husband receives part of his cardiac care. My daughter is in her third year of seminary and was instrumental in the life I live now.
Being brought up in the Baptist church I was baptized before I was a teenager. Always believing in the Bible, prayer, the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father I thought I was a good person although I had allowed alcohol and drugs to dominate my life. The life I was living was not the life that is described and desired by Jesus Christ. My daughter tried to reach me and in July 2010 her love and prayers opened my heart and my desired for God to take his place in my life. Rededication of my life was made publicly and with baptism. Praying and talking to God, reading and studying the bible daily I felt my heart began to change. Outside my anger was removed, the tone in my voice changed, the way I viewed my world softened and I felt peace and happiness.
During my chemo-therapy for Stage III-C ovarian cancer in 2003 God tried to reach me but I refused to listen. When I would pray before bed or during difficult days I was never afraid of death because my soul was saved… but God was trying to tell me the life I was missing without a dedicated walk with Jesus Christ. Even though I survived when I was given two years to live my life began a downhill spiral. My days were unhappy, discontented and felt like there was nothing special about life. God was patient with me; allowing my misery until I was willing to surrender to his will. He led me through conviction with the unconditional love that only God can give His children. What a gift!
God told me to pursue education on His word. Where I will be lead is unknown but I know God has a plan. The pain and suffering of our disadvantaged children through divorce, drugs and being discarded by society is something I feel strongly about. It is not for me to question why, when or where but to study God’s word so I may share the truth of Jesus Christ and life everlasting. My family supports my studies and we see the presence of the Holy Spirit at work in many close to us.
A scholarship with CLI is important because it will allow me to study no matter where I am with courses that are presented in a clear, direct manner which I am able to understand. I was left with a condition called chemo brain which affected my ability to remember, I lose words and sometimes cannot finish a sentence. It is with my faith that I know the Holy Spirit will guide me in my studies and God will restore my body. The mission of CLI leaders and staff is clearly to bring God’s word to all areas of the world regardless.
My church is new with few members. Each member is dedicated to an area of service and everyone works together to accomplish God’s work. Churches are abundant in the USA but so many do not have God as their leader. I know God is calling out to the world in many ways; showing us how we are surface Christians and giving us a warning to come back to Him. It is not about a religion – it is totally about God the Father who sent his Son to die for me (us) and the gift of the Holy Spirit that is His gift to guide us everyday in every way when we listen. That is the truth God placed in my heart.
In years past I would never have pictured myself and my husband in a foreign country and I do not know if my calling will plant something or if there is something I am to learn by being there. Your prayers for guidance in my life, knowledge and understanding of the courses I am studying and the presence of the Holy Spirit to guide me that I will know the truth.
In the book of Hebrews in the Bible, the final chapter (13) we find these words,
11 The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. 12 And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.13 Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.14 For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
Today as we listen to what the writer of Hebrews tells us about Jesus, we need to realize that Jesus is a man who was ostracized in order that the community he became a part of might be set free. He is the one who takes the guilt of all the others upon himself and he deals with it by paying the price that was on all the heads of the community he represented. In a North American idiom, Jesus becomes “the fall guy” for the world.
Each year in the Jewish calendar of the Old Testament times, as Yom Kippur (translated Day of Atonement) came around on the tenth day of the seventh month, the nation would gather and a very solemn assembly would be held. There was a very carefully prescribed ritual that was followed on Yom Kippur. First, the high priest would offer a bull in sacrifice for his own sin. Then he would take two goats and present them before the Lord. By casting lots, he would choose one of them to be killed in sacrifice and the other would be kept alive as the scapegoat.
Next the High Priest would sacrifice the goat along with a ram and take the blood of the bull, the ram and the goat, and he would go by himself into the Most Holy Place, the very sacred place in the inner temple area where God “lived” on the Ark of the Covenant. And there he would sprinkle the blood of the animals on the mercy seat. When that was accomplished, he would come out and again in a careful ceremony, he would lay his hands on the head of the living goat and confess all the sins of the people of Israel. Then a man who was appointed to the task would take that goat out into the wilderness to be let go. It was expected that the goat would die there outside the camp. The wonderful thing about it was that the goat symbolically carried with it all the sins of the people which had been confessed.
Then in the final ritual of the day, the priest would take all that was left of the sacrificed animals, and bring the remains outside the camp and there he would burn them. And in this way, God was teaching his people to see and experience the blessing of having all their sins forgiven.
That was the event that was in the mind of the author of Hebrews as he penned these words to the congregation to whom he was writing. He wanted them to see in their minds the fact that Jesus was the fulfillment of all that God had intended for the people in the annual Day of Atonement.
The Sins of Those who Believe Died Outside the Camp with Christ
He pictures for his readers, and for us, what happened on that day when Jesus was crucified. For on that day, the one who knew no sin, was condemned as a criminal. He was declared by a political ruler to be not fit for human society. He was cast outside the camp—outside the city, there to die. And even though his condemnation may be seen in any number of ways—a great tragedy of misguided jealousy on the part of the Jewish leaders, an act of political necessity by an unjust judge named Pilate, an awful act of a miscarriage of justice. However you may want to see it, however you may want to describe it, the writer to the Hebrews says, I have a vision of that day which needs to make its home in you. But this time, instead of a goat being led out into the wilderness with your sins on its head and then the animals being burned outside the camp, the author says to you and to me, see in your minds a vision of Jesus being led outside the city and there being crucified. All your sins were laid on his head. He is the scapegoat. In that vision you have a picture of what it means to have one who was innocent bear the sins of your life. He took them outside the camp and there they remain. You carry them no more.
The blood of Jesus is sprinkled on us like the blood of the animals was sprinkled on the worshipers at the great assemblies of the Old Testament people of God. The blood of Jesus is given to us in baptism to show us that we no longer carry our sins, but we are set free from them. God has acted in our lives and we are washed in the blood of the Lamb, we are cleansed in the blood of the scapegoat of history, Jesus Christ. We are set free by the blood of the one who bears the guilt of our sin — of our loving ourselves more than God, of serving ourselves rather than the great King. Of being totally convinced that we are the center of the universe and all that exists, exists for us. All the various ways we have offended God have been taken up by the one whose name is Jesus.
That is why the church throughout history as we stood before the Lord and said, I believe have always included from the very earliest of times the words I believe in Jesus. Oh, I believe in Jesus. As Carl, one of our students at CLI says, “It wasn’t until my mid-forties, after a succession of devastating personal, familial, financial and professional blows did I finally and unequivocally repent, state my belief in Him and ask Him to take charge of my life. From that day forward, I can say that I have a personal relationship with Jesus that sustains me and that I cherish above all else. I know that I am truly a child of God…” There is something about that one Name that, when we come to know that person, everything changes. We are from then on, children of the Most High God.
Christian Leaders Institute has many students in the country of South Africa. Because our online bible school is free and doesn’t require textbooks, English-speaking people in South Africa are able to obtain our training without having to relocate, quit their jobs, or come up with extraordinary amounts of money.
One of these students is Brian Govender, from Durban in South Africa. This is his story, in his own words.
My name is Brian Govender, and I am 48 years old. I am married to wonderful and beautiful God fearing woman who’s name is Vasie. We have two kids, a boy named Shannon and a girl named Nellisa, and not forgetting God’s great blessings to us in the form of two grandsons.I was born in Durban South Africa, and was raised by wonderful parents who were non believers until 2009, I praise God for their Salvation. I was employed in company that manufactured soft trim components for the motor industry as a Production Superintendent. I worked there for 26 years until I was retrenched in 2009 due the global recession.
My walk with the Lord Jesus Christ began in the year 2005. Being an idol worshiper, I was very much into the world and things of this world until God began to stir up my conscience and direct me according to His plan and purpose for my life into a new direction. I have embraced His direction wholeheartedly in August 2006 and still continue to do so. The very first week following mine and my families conversion, the desire to share, speak, and minister the Word of God was birthed in my heart. I became active in all the working departments of the church, but the area that interested me most was evangelism, which still remains my strong point. My desire to reach out to all of God’s created people and share the Word of Truth with them rest heavy within me. My wife shares the same desires as I do, and she is still very much active in the service of God period.
My heartfelt desire is to take the Word of God forward in a liberating way, in which the believer is no longer wallowing in spiritual darkness or blindness due to his or her inability to comprehend the deeper spiritual truths of the Word of God. To grow in the the Kingdom of God it is important for the believer to first know who he is in the Kingdom, what he has in the Kingdom, and what he can do with his or her faith in the kingdom for God. My desire is to see a new generation of disciples equipped with the Power of the Word of God go into their towns and cities, into the highways and byways of their cities and claim it, and all of it’s resident inhabitants for Christ Jesus for the Glory of God. I desire to see a spiritually enriched congregation who have a desire and passion for the work of the Kingdom and the Kingdoms forward march, ever moving forward for the Glory of God “Amen”.