From My Heart
My husband died on impact in a tragic car accident. I thought it would take years to recover from the sadness and emptiness.
I sought God to heal my broken heart and He showed me there is life after tragedy...
During my Bible study time, God began speaking to my heart about my future. Little did I realize the Lord was preparing Rick Josey, a longtime friend of my first husband, to love me and care for me.
God was faithful and healed my broken heart, and He'll heal yours too. "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds" (Psalm 147:3).
You may have different needs but the same loving God wants to supply them. He is both able and willing to bring you through your difficulties. He loves you too!
Rick and I have been working hard to help you by presenting truths that will speak to your heart. You can learn more about our first SUPER HEART Living DVD by clicking here.
It is our desire that you experience everything Jesus Christ made available through his death and resurrection.
Spiritual History
During my childhood, our family attended the United Methodist church in Wichita, Kansas. My mother’s spiritual hunger led her to the Camps Farthest Out, started by Glenn Clark, and the Ashram, founded by E. Stanley Jones....
And each summer she took my siblings and me to one or the other retreat. Those gatherings kindled a God-hunger in me.
I was “born again” at thirteen, yet understood little of its significance. No one trained me to be a Christian.
So I wandered through my teenage years quite timid and shy. While watching a Billy Graham crusade when I was in college, something he said set my soul on fire...
I realized God was not some ‘cosmic force’ just saving me from hell and giving me a future in heaven. He was my Father...
His love and concern for me was greater than I had ever imagined.
I desired to know all I could about this relationship, which resulted in my insatiable Bible reading...
Just how did I fit into God’s world and what else did I not know or understand about Him?
Someone told me about a class that answered many of the questions I had about the Bible. That got me excited! So I took the Power for Abundant Living class.
It taught me keys to understanding the Bible. And for the first time in my life, my spiritual eyes and ears opened.
I began attending Way fellowships with others who loved God too and were searching for life’s answers.
Later that year, I began a new adventure, moving to Emporia, KS to manage a health food store. Soon after, I met my future husband, David Van Sickle...
After some time, we married and had our first daughter while still meeting with these same believers.
A year or so later, we left this group. It did not take us long to miss the camaraderie we had shared...
We searched for a year before we settled into an Assembly of God church. Around the same time, our second daughter was born...
A year before Dave's death, we made the move to a Free Methodist church.
However, through all those years we still longed for the unity we read about in the Bible (Eph 4:3, Eph 4:13, Rom 15:5,6). While men seem to create hierarchies and splits, we knew God makes no such distinctions...
In fact, He wants no divisions at all (1Cor 1:10, 1Cor 12:25).
Dave and I were always looking for ways to help hurting people in the body of Christ. Because of that desire, we took a counseling course from the American Association of Christian Counselors.
Dave’s vision was for us to start a counseling center for Emporia, KS with the Free Methodist Church’s backing. A place where hurting people could find Biblical answers to life’s problems....
However, those plans ended abruptly. Six weeks short of our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary, our wonderful marriage ended when Dave died in the car crash mentioned above.
I am now in the second chapter of my life, happily married to Rick Josey. God has called us to train believers in victorious living...
He wants His sons and daughters to shine as lights in this world (Mt 5:16). We are excited about God, His family, and life!
My life has been full of God’s blessings through the years, yet not without roadblocks from our enemy, the devil...
God has met my needs at every turn. Those stories will make a good book later!
“Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself” 2Tim 2:11-13, NIV (italics mine).
God has been faithful to me. And He is as concerned about you as He is me.
Please visit our web site often.
Our goal is to present relevant information that will enrich your everyday life.
The Super Heart Living series underway is a comprehensive teaching about peoples’ needs and how the Bible provides answers for each one. Stay tuned, more DVDs to follow!
We love you!
Healthy Living
While in college, healthy living became a passion of mine when I discovered a book by Adele Davis called Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit. Someone had given my mother this book. There it sat on her bookshelf just waiting for my eager soul to devour...
Around the same time, I read Kenneth Cooper's The New Aerobics. I had little energy because of my work schedule, studying, and social life...
The idea my eating habits and sedentary lifestyle may be contributing to my demise intrigued me.
From those springboards, I've made improving my lifestyle a lifelong pursuit. Routine exercise and eating foods as God designed them are as natural to me now as sleep.
One of our favorite "breakfast food" is a fruit smoothie. There are so many delicious combinations! Here is one of our favorites. We call it Strapin' Banapa...
1 pt. strawberries½ pineapple1 or 2 bananas1 papayaHull and rinse the strawberries. Peel, core, and cube the pineapple. Peel the bananas. Cut the papaya in half, grab a spoon and scoop out those seeds! (Rick discovered they taste yucky). Then scoop the papaya from the skin.
Place all the prepared fruit in a VitaMix or other blender. Blend until smooth. Drink immediately. Makes two or three yummy servings (hide them from Rick)!
My Love of Gardening
My dad gardened, which inspired my increasing love of gardening.
Martha's Page
Martha and her 7 foot tall
elephant ears.
"We must jettison all the religious junk and get back to God's Word."
-- Rick Josey
I grew up in Kansas and lived there until recently. So the native plants of North Carolina are new to me. As I learn more about their care, I will add them to our landscape.
I love the beauty of this state as much as Kansas.
God says he never leaves or forsakes us. That promise took on a whole new challenge when my life circumstances drastically changed...
My parents died within three weeks of each other...
Eleven months later, instantly I became a widow...
OUR BLOGS
When I eat to live rather than live to eat, I trim down and am healthy.
If I do the reverse trouble abounds.
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Martha Josey
