Tag: Inspiration

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Inspiration Road Trip Testimony

My Wildest Ride of Faith

People around me know that my motorcycle is my favorite way of transportation. I love motorcycles. I am a pastor, and when I ride I spend time in prayer. That is where I feel closest to heaven. It makes my heart jump! I heard somebody express it like this. “Four wheels move the body, but two wheels move the soul!”.

This blog is dedicated to one of my most adventurous bikes, a red Yamaha 1300 V star 2013, that has followed me since 2018. I only had it for a short time, but my time with this bike has been a a powerful testimony about Gods guidance and provision in my life.

God Loves Motorcycles

One day as I was riding my bike, God spoke to me with an audible voice. “Sell your bike, and send the money to your dad in Denmark”, He said.

This was my chance to clear the debt to my dad, so I listed my motorcycle for sale and waited for months, still riding the bike.

After three months somebody contacted me from Trinidad. He had seen the add, and he was ready to meet me at the church the following Sunday. He already knew I was a pastor, and he knew he was supposed to buy the bike. Gold told him to buy it!

I thought this was very interesting. I am convinced that God loves motorcycles and especially mine!

A Significant Sunday

The following Sunday the man from Trinidad was in church sitting in the front row together with his wife. During service a pastor friend of mine showed up outside. He said God had told him to come to our service, and that he had something to share.

We invited him to the pulpit. This pastor had just finished cancer treatment and looked like skin and bone in a suit. This was his first Sunday in church since the treatment, so I understood the significance, that he was with us in Orlando and not in his home church in Daytona Beach.

We all looked at him as he took the microphone. “I am here in the office of an apostle. God has given me wealth and I am here to distribute it”, he said.

What happened next was unbelievable. I was sitting in my seat as he pointed at my son and daughter in law. “God is giving you pick up truck and a car”, he said, and then he turned towards me. “And this is for you pastor Christian…”

Next thing I hear is a roar from huge motorcycle, like the one I just sold to the man from Trinidad in order to pay the debt to my dad. I looked at the pastor from Daytona Beach. “God has seen your sacrifice, this is for you to keep and not to give”, he said.

I was chocked and so was the man from Trinidad sitting next to me. He was here to buy my old motorcycle, and right there God was giving me a Yamaha V star with lower mileage and all the extra equipment that I had been dreaming of!

The following week I looked in my calendar and realized that God had given me this new bike exactly one year after another significant church service in August 2018 where I gave my former motorcycle in the offering in order to raise the downpayment for us to buy the church!

I Yamahappy Biker

The following months I was driving my new bike, and my new friend from Trinidad was driving my old bike. He invited me and my wife to stay in his house, and we became biker buddies. He even gave me a t-shirt so we could ride together. The printed message on the t-shirt was clear. “I Yamahappy Biker”, it said.

One day my new friend was heading back to his home in Trinidad, and the day he left, he left the keys to the motorcycle in the offering at the church. “God told him to do so”, he said.

I was still living in his house, and the motorcycle was still standing in the garage, next to my motorcycle. But now it was my job as a pastor to find a buyer for my old bike, so that the money for the sale could be given back to the church.

This was the second time I posted the same bike on Facebook, but this time it did not belong to me. It belonged to God, so I believed He would have to find the buyer!

MC With A Mission

It took a while, but in the beginning of March 2020 during a conference in Texas, I was sitting at the breakfast table telling the testimony about the motorcycles, how I gave one in the offering, sold one to give the money to my dad and was blessed with a third one on the exact same day as I gave the first one in the offering.

I was sitting next to a native pastor from the Rosebud Sioux Nation and showed him a picture of the bike that now belonged to the church. I had no idea that he was looking for a bike, so right there, at the breakfast table, we made the deal.

Right there I called my friend in Trinidad, and when he heard the motorcycle was going to the Rez in South Dakota, he started laughing. He told me, that he always have had a dream of visiting the Rosebud Sioux nation, so he was super excited to know that his motorcycle would be owned by a pastor on the Rez.

Long story short. The motorcycle was sold in March and delivered in July. I put it on the bed of a truck and drove it to Amarillo TX where we met with the pastor from South Dakota and unloaded the motorcycle from my truck to his trailer. The ride continues, and only God knows what happens next!

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Disaster Relief

The White Shirt On The Pole

Only a few days after we launched the food bank in Ecuador, the work is spreading to more places. Pastor Carlos Marchan and his team in Puyo has been giving out essentials to the people in the city, but now they are planning a trip inside Jungle to one of the small communities.

The people living in the jungle are under the same lock down as the people in the city and they have nothing to eat. Usually they will travel to the city to buy food or trade for food, but because of the curfew they can’t make it that far. They live so remote, without lights and running water, and they don’t have any cars.

Over the past years we have been visiting the village several times. Usually we would travel out there in the morning, preach the gospel and share a meal with them. Some of you might remember the pictures, my sons tribal adventure when they painted us in the face and gave us chicha to drink as a part of their welcome tradition!

The White Shirt

Right now the team in Puyo is making care packages for the villages with rice, eggs and cooking oil and other things. The government gives out rations of five eggs and a little rice, but our team has been able to buy a lot of eggs so they are giving out packages of 30 eggs which is a huge blessing.

For the past two days our team have been giving out care packages in Puyo, and as they went out to the suburbs, they saw white shirts hanging outside the houses. This has become a common thing in Ecuador, people hanging out their shirts as a sign of surrender to show that they have no more food.

We Need Your Help

In Puyo pastor Carlos Marchan and his team sre loading the cars with care packages to drive out in the communities In just a few days, his church has become a food bank, a distribution center of essentials.

This has been possible through generous donations from our local church and from business people that we know. As the team in Ecuador has been sending pictures of families and elderly people receiving help, we know that we are reaching the lost.

If you want to be a part of this, we will be very thankful. Think about the white shirt on the pole. Look at the pictures, the faces of the children, the elderly, the places they live and the fear and poverty they are facing due to COVID-19.

If you want to support, you can buy a care package for 15 dollars. One package will feed a family for two weeks.

Click on the link and donate today.

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ecuador Mission

Food Bank Launch As Response to Pandemic

Last week I was on the phone with my pastor friend in Puyo, in the Amazon Jungle. I was happy because our corona lockdown in Florida finally is over, but in Ecuador the reality is very much different. Due to the pandemic, people are not able to leave their houses during regular hours, and they are only allowed to drive their car once a week. Because of this, it is very difficult just to get essential supplies for a house hold. People have to walk, and if they are not back in their house before 2 pm, they will be fined or even arrested.

Many of the people we know have family members and friends that have died due to COVID-19, including one of the ladies that took care of our team in Esmeraldas last year. In Guayaquil which is the second largest city in the nation, they are burning dead bodies in the street or even dumping them in the ocean, because they can’t bury them fast enough.

Church is Essential

My good friend pastor Carlos Marchan who has an established ministry in the area, cannot pastor his church since everything has been shut down. I challenged him to become essential, to buy food and start distributing food to people in the community like we have done it at our church in Orlando, Florida.

I asked him to buy food at wholesale prizes and we would send him the money. Starting with one ton of rice for 1000 dollars, he could make the church into a food distribution center, which would be the beginning of the temporary “food bank” in Puyo.

A few phone calls later, business people started to donate, and the next day we were able to buy one ton of rice, eggs, cooking oil and other essentials for the people in Puyo as an emergency response to the pandemic.

Documentation

Right now the pastor in Puyo is working together with my other friend who is a tour guide. He has a military background and will be able to use his vehicle to pick up the food without any restrictions.

Our friends in Ecuador will be receiving the donations through our ministry and document with photos and video as they buy the food and give it out to the people in the community, especially families and elderly people in the neighborhood who cannot make the walk to the supermarket.

The economy in Ecuador is hit hard. People have lost their jobs because of COVID-19, and when the oil prices dropped, the nation was brought to it’s knees. Oil is a main source of income in Ecuador with an export rate of 60 pct.

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Lifestyle

Finding Faith In Times Of COVID-19

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have all learned how behave as responsible human beings, keeping social distance, not gather in groups bigger than 10, wait for one another as we manuever through our favorite store, that has introduce one way aisles and limits on toilet paper, kitchen towel, paper plates and more.

In this season I have received countless of e-mails from different organisations and institutions of how they respond to COVID-19. Messages from my insurance company, my bank, paypal, the movie theater, different churches and charities, places I have visited or realtors I contacted years ago. I did not even realize they had my email address, so I responded with “unsubscribe”.

What Is Your Response?

As you can read in this blog, our first response has been “feed the poor”. Extravert instead of intravert. Reaching out and touching lives, even though we can’t touch them physically. When non essential business shot down, we can still open the door. Changes motivated by love and respect for our community and authority and not from a fear of COVID-19.

Now is an incredible opportunity for the Church to rise up in love and in service to communities around the world. The need for Jesus is more apparent than ever, and our potential to influence the world is great. What the enemy intends for evil, God can use for good. 

With Vision Comes Provision

In this season we have been feeding our community every night, giving out hot meals to go, close to a hundred meals a day. We started during lock down not knowing if there would be enough hands to help, but so many people have joined the vision.

Since we started feeding the poor, provision has been rolling in, as we have started to give it all out. It is like a constant flow, pallet after pallet, as we keep sharing, a supernatural multiplication is taking place!

Yesterday we received a huge load of t-shirts, and this morning it was distributed so that we could make more room for food. We were organizing and sorting things out for our foodbank. So many people were out there, waiting in line, just to get a few essentials. We gave out 62 boxes, and as we were packing down, we made a final drive for three single mums plus a daughter, her mother and her grandmother!

Where Is Your Faith?

This blog is about giving, but it is also about living. In this season everything we knew has been shaken. This has been a season of turmoil and change. There have been sickness and death, loss of jobs and financial stability, and many people don’t know what to hold on to anymore.

I made up my mind long time ago. Since we don’t know how many years we have in this world, we should live our lives more intentionally, finding purpose and faith before it is too late.

To trust in God is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. The Bible describes faith as the substance of things hoped for. This solid hope is unshakeable, like an anchor of stability that we can hold on to when the oceans roar and rise.

Life is fragile. We cannot take things for granted anymore. Suddenly we see things in another perspective. For some people it might be blurred by fear, but for others it is clear as faith. The world has changed. What is your vision? Is it fear, or is it faith? What is your response to COVID-19?

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Inspiration

A Day in the Studio

A few weeks ago I joined Rich Marshall in Orlando as his guest on the God@Work television show. This program, that highlights how God is at work in people’s lives around the world, is produced by GodTV and my segment will air on March 16th at 8:30pm Eastern time. I really enjoyed my time with Rich and his other guests as we explored the power of God at work in our daily lives. Please tune in and tell your friends about this opportunity. 

GodTV is on channel 365 if you have DirecTV; or you can get it online at www.god.tv/work. I am on episode 110. You can also download the GodTV app; God@Work is under the GodTV Originals section.

I genuinely hope you will watch the March 16th program and drop me a note letting me know what you think. GodTV reaches out to million 300 homes on the globe with a potential of 1 billion viewers.

If you are one of them, plz let me know!

Remember, put it in your calendar: Channel 365 on DirecTV; online at www.God.tv/work or on the GodTV app.

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Powerhouse Church

What Is PowerSchool?

May 13th to 17th people will be traveling from different nations and places to learn more about the Power of God, experiencing PowerSchool 2019 in Orlando, Florida. So far we have people coming from Denmark, Greenland, Portugal, Ecuador, Kenya, Sioux Nation, Texas, Alabama, Pennsylvania – and Florida!

People of Faith

PowerSchool is presented by Powerhouse Church, our local church on Orange Blossom Trail, and the teachers in PowerSchool are all a part of the church. They are pastors and leaders, people of faith who has been through “stuff”, and they will talk to you about the process, how they overcome obstacles in life.

During PowerSchool they will share their lives, not only the success stories, but also their mistakes and misery, the problems and the pain. But they will not leave you there. They will show you a way out and share, how they were able to pick up faith and to move on in life.

This is a week where you will be ACTIVATED to live your life to the fullest – empowered, encouraged, receiving new strength, freedom, healing, purpose and vision for your future (check out the video below to see what the students says about this!)

Power to Overcome

On board we have our senior pastor Christian Hedegaard who will talk about the Power of God, how he was filled with the Holy Spirit and delivered from demons. I will share about overcoming cancer, having a handicapped child, and how it was when my teenage boys were on drugs. Our pastor from Rwanda will teach you about prayer, telling powerful testimonies of healing the sick and raising the dead, and the other leaders will give you their version of how to build a church from scratch, faithfully serving the poor and believing in the vision when nobody else was there.

Worship and Workshops

In PowerSchool we start the day with coffee and fellowship, followed by prayer, worship and teaching. We also have workshops with evangelism, prayer and community service, giving out dinner and brunch to the poor people in the community. You will be challenged, stepping out of your comfort zone, learning how to love and to serve, finding out more about the will of God in your life.

If you want to know more about PowerSchool May 13th-17th, you can go to our website . Registration is open, and the price is 50 dollars for a week .https://www.powerhouseflorida.com/powerschool

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Powerhouse Church

Power to Overcome

Four years ago we introduced Powerschool in Orlando Florida, where people could come to our church in Orlando and learn about Christian lifestyle.

We started out small, with the members from our church, but over the years we have had an increasing number of international students. They come from Africa, Europe and South America, from different states and even from different tribes. We have prayed God to give us the nations, and our prayers have been heard!

What is Powerschool

The purpose of Powerschool is to empower people to live victorious in every area of life. In Powerschool you will meet teachers who has been through “stuff”, and they will talk to you about the process, how they overcome obstacles in life. They will share their lives, not only the success stories, but also their mistakes and misery, the problems and the pain. But they will not leave you there. They will show you a way out and share, how they were able to pick up faith and to move on in life.

I will talk about how we gave up our 60 acres farm in Denmark to come and feed the homeless people in Orlando. My wife will share how she overcame cancer, having a handicapped child, and how it was when my teenage boys were on drugs. Our pastor from Rwanda will teach you about prayer, telling powerful testimonies of healing the sick and raising the dead, and the other leaders will give you their version of how to build a church from scratch, faithfully serving the poor and believing in the vision when nobody else was there.

Worship and workshops

In Powerschool we start the day with coffee and fellowship, followed by prayer, worship and teaching. We also have workshops with evangelism, prayer and community service, giving out dinner and brunch to the poor people in the community.

If you want to know more about powerschool, you can go to our website . Registration is open, and the price is 50 dollars for a week .https://www.powerhouseflorida.com/powerschool