Good morning. God bless you. This is Jeremiah Johnson with Good News in the Morning. And I just want to greet you today. I want to welcome you. I want to remind you that God loves you. God is on your team. He is on your side. This week, we're here with Erin Counts. She's the coordinator of Charis Bible College in Cincinnati. She's been sharing a powerful testimony, and it's been wonderful. And we just want to greet you and say hello, Erin. Thank you for being here. Good morning. Thank you, everyone. Thanks for having me on the show today. Awesome. And so she dove into her testimony yesterday and we just want to kind of pick up. So if you would just maybe give us a little summary recap of your testimony and then let's step into that moment where Jesus comes in. Absolutely. So I grew up in northern Kentucky, grew up without any religion, any background of faith and got really hard hearted. Got to the place in my teenage years where it got really, really hard listening to rap music and just hanging out with all the wrong people, searching for love in all the wrong places, to the point where I was in my late teens, early 20s, came down for college. When I came home, and this is where we start off with my testimony. Yeah, absolutely. I was working in a salon, and day in and day out, it was great. It was normal. Everything looked great on the outside, but again, on the inside, everything was dark, hurting, painful. And I had gotten into the bar scene and just thought that that was what life was. It was my normal. So as time went on, again, my heart was getting harder and harder where I was publicly declaring that God was not real. I had become atheist and just very hard, very crude, very rude, very, could be mean even, very critical, very judgmental. You know, just everything that nobody wants to really be around. However, on the outside, I was party and love and ha ha. So it was just like a catch 22. It was, you know, in some light, some dark, just a lot of chaos and a lot of pain. Until one night, February of 2006, so 20 years ago, I was driving around by myself. And it's interesting because it was in between my bar nights. And, you know, when nobody's around in those moments where you're not around people, you're not at the bar, you're not at work. What do you really have? Yeah, come on. You have all your dark thoughts. And the enemy is just pounding on you. One thing after another about who you're not and how much you're not worthy and how ugly you are and how stupid you are and all the things and all the hopelessness. It just keeps barking at you. So I was driving around one night crying like I normally would, knowing I couldn't go home because I get made fun of by my mom. And so I would drive around and listen to music. And God, God is so big. He can use anything. Come on, that's right. And for me, it was music. It was music my whole life. I just didn't realize it was God until this moment. And so I'm listening to, I think it was Kelly Clarkson or The Fray. I don't even remember. And I finally cried out. And I remember it was raining, dark, dreary. And I just said, God, I don't know if you're real, but I can't do this anymore. Wow. I need help. And that was all I said. I cried out to a God that I didn't even know was real. But I found out within the next three weeks that he was very real. Wow, come on. So I went home that night not thinking I did anything spectacular or did anything at all, really. But in my heart, walls were starting to break down. So my best friend, I went to work, and my best friend had come in with a book, which she thought was a book, but it was actually the field manual for a Bible study. So we had to go to a Christian bookstore, which I didn't even know existed. I'd never heard the word Christian. Wow. I didn't know what a Christian bookstore was. I never knew anything about that. So I followed her in like a little duckling. And she picked up the book. And there was a woman's version of it sitting right next to this men's book. And I picked up the woman's version and thought, well, I'll give it a whirl. Why not? And it forever changed my life. So every night I would drive around and wait for my mom to go to bed. And then I'd come in. In the summer of 2006, I would highlight and highlight. I read this book probably four times throughout that entire summer. And every time I would read it, I would change. My mentality would change. I was being discipled through this book. The transforming of my mind. I was starting to think differently about myself, about God, about my destiny. Well, everything was opening up to me about who God truly was and who I was in him. Amen. And a whole new lifestyle that I didn't even know was possible. But there's a whole new lifestyle and it's called love. Yeah, come on. And his name is Jesus. Yes. And he is the way, the truth and the light. And I'm telling you, he will make a way for you in this life. Come on, it's so good. He did for me. Yeah. Straight out of the darkness. Amen. You know, that point of surrender, like that is like, that's the place, you know. And it's, it's a heart surrender. It's like, it's the coming, coming to the end of yourself. And that is, it's an important moment, you know, to be saved, to be born again. But it's, but it continues to be an important moment because we all, we face things stronger than us all the time. And every time we surrender, that's where that fresh place of that, you know, humility and grace and enablement. And so I just want to encourage everybody that's listening, you know, number one, if you don't know Jesus and, you know, the Lord has brought you to either the radio program or you're listening to this on podcast, you know, I just want you to know that Erin's story was sent here for you, that if you're in a place of darkness and despair and you don't know what to do and you're at the end of your rope, I just want to encourage you that just as she surrendered that night in February, that's all God needs. All he needs is you letting go, of the wheel of your life and saying, I need help. And when that comes from a heart place, he immediately comes in, you know, and all these other things start to align. And so, if you're, and so that goes for someone who's listening to this is not saying, but then also, if you are at the end of your rope, you know, in your marriage, in your finances, in the health of your body, with your children, with your career. With just a person that you're having a hard time with, you know, I just want to encourage you. You don't need some deluxe prayer. You don't need some, some oratory type of thing. All God needs is surrender. And so if you're struggling, understand this, that there's nothing that's too strong for him and he will help you no matter what it is. But if you'll just go to him and say, God, I can't do this, but I know you can, then that starts the journey. And, and so just want to encourage you that are, that are listening to that, just surrender, reach out, he'll help you. And then of course, in your life, you know, he brought out, he began to disciple you. And that's something that we both have a passion for, because it's what works. And you know, it's, it's, it's the walk, and it's the learning. And so, can you maybe tie into that a little bit, talk about maybe either your discipleship process, or you know, things that you do in discipleship, or you know, whatever. Yeah. So after I surrendered and started in with this book and my best friend and I moved in together and she rekindled a relationship with her father and her dad had been studying under Andrew Womack for probably 20, 30 years at that point. And so he started discipling us on Saturday nights. We'd go out to his house in the country and he'd build a fire and just teach us the word. And being a blank slate was just incredible for taking in the gospel, the real truth, the love of God. And I'm telling you guys, the love of God will change your life. He will change your heart. He will change everything about you. And the discipleship is so key because it is one thing to surrender and be saved. That's awesome. That'll get your ticket to heaven. But there's a whole life that we have to live down here. And God said that we don't have to live it alone. Jesus will walk this with you. But we have to be, we have to learn. And Romans 12, too, it says, you know, we need to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Well, if we need to renew our mind, what do we need to renew our mind from? The world, religion, all the things that we've been taught. And in order to do that, we have to be discipled. We need people, what I've always had, because I am a big personality, his mentors and people to disciple me along the way. We have to have people that are stronger than us walk beside us because we have blind spots. We can't see things. We're human beings. So we need each other on this journey. And discipleship is one of those keys to walking out the Christian life in success. You can walk it out, but I'm telling you, the enemy is, he's slick. He's not very powerful. He doesn't have any authority. but he does lie. And he will try to come and beat you up and do things. And we need each other. We need to lock arms with each other. We need to grow. So the growing process is from salvation all the way until we meet Jesus face to face. And we need each other. We need the discipleship process. I'm very big about it. I was very big about it even before I started being discipled by my best friend's dad. I would disciple myself in the morning. I would sit there with a notebook and Andrew Womack or Joyce Meyer, somebody that was solid teacher to teach me the word. Mm-hmm. The word is big. God is big. You know, the angels go around the throne saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty all day long. Why? Because there's so many angles of God. He's so powerful, so enormous that if we could truly wrap our minds totally around it, it wouldn't be God. So we need to have our minds transformed to the word, to who Jesus is, to how much he loves us on a day-to-day basis. Totally agree. And it happens within community. It happens life upon life. And it's huge. And I share this all the time because the greatest miracles that your name would be written in the Lamb's Book of Life and you would have your ticket to heaven, but God wants to bring some heaven into your life now. That's one of the primary callings as disciples. We are to demonstrate to the world a better way of life. And that does not happen without mind renewal. And it doesn't happen without community and mentorship and all these types of things. And so just appreciate you sharing that. I mean, that was my deliverance point. You know, I was, you know, crazy and on drugs and all that type of stuff. And it was the mind renewal that really changed my life and gave me a life that I enjoy. And that doesn't happen until we do that. And so would you just maybe tell us just a little bit about what you do? You know what I'm saying? And because you're a big part of this. Yeah. So, for my career, I am the coordinator of Karis Bible College in Cincinnati, and every other weekend from nine to three, students meet on campus, and we do praise and worship. We're doing discipleship groups. We're doing discussion groups, sharing messages. I do chapel hours where I teach. We have live streams from Colorado from other teachers. The students are being what they call fire hosed with the word. It comes in so quick that they don't they're just like, whoa. And they have to go back and listen to some of it sometimes. But we truly help them walk out their journey. And we're teaching them how to pray. We're teaching them how to lead and teach Bible studies. You know, we're teaching them how to be disciples in this world because we need, you know, the harvest is, it's right. It's ready. We don't have enough workers for it. So we're teaching people how to get that, get out there, get out of themselves, get out of religion, get out of the world, get out all the stuff, get into Jesus and go out there and start sharing the truth. It's so good. It's amazing. And we have signs and wonders and miracles following us everywhere we go. We're getting ready to head on a mission trip out to Mexico where a couple of years ago we went, we had 47 physical healings in five days. People are getting healed on campus. People are getting saved from all kinds of situations and rescued. And It's just amazing to watch God be God. That's so good. If we let him be God. Well said, yeah. And you know, I have people in my church that. Has been tremendously impacted by this ministry as well. And so just, you know, you may be involved in a local church, but this is like additional type of stuff and the additional training if you're hungry. So how would they be able to be a part of what you're doing? Like, can you give us like the particulars? Yes. So you can get on KarisBibleCollege.org and check out the U.S. Extension campuses. There's all kinds of different programs and you can see what we're doing, how we're doing it, tuition costs and all that kind of stuff. KarisBibleCollege.org or you can get on Facebook at Karis Bible College Cincinnati and keep up with us locally. We have all kinds of events going on from Healing University to monthly Zooms that we're doing with the Karis alumni. We also have a couple of local churches that we blast out. So it's a great time. We have Karis Day coming up in July. You're welcome to come on campus. Barry Bennett's going to do a Zoom for us in March as well as Cecil Paxton coming on campus. That's open to the public as well. You can connect that way. You can connect with me. at the campus through the phone number and email is on the U.S. Extension site. So you are welcome to join. Thank you so much. We've enjoyed you so much this week. Thank you, Aaron.
