Our Promised Land – The Goal
Our goal for this project, the ministry, is to do extreme damage to the kingdom of darkness. Satan and his demons have crushed, trampled, assaulted and oppressed God’s most prized creation for far too long. And sadly, we do less and less to stop him.
But we’ve been commissioned to put a stop to that. We want to start a revival. We want to see churches across the country rise up and take back what is rightfully ours in the name of Jesus. We want to see the children of God worship with reckless abandon. We want to see worshipers proclaiming the Good News without fear of rejection or persecution. We want to see the body of Christ unified, stripping off the chains of petty disagreements and standing firmly on the one thing we all agree on, the truth found in scripture. We want to see sickness healed, broken relationships restored, captives set free and lost souls redeemed all in Jesus name.
Our goal may have seemed lofty (maybe even crazy), but we knew that with God on our side, all things are possible (Philippians 4:13). And that belief was absolutely right.
Our March – The Journey
This is where we really get to the nuts and bolts of Storming Jericho. Now that you understand what our goal was, we can share with you our rather unique means of achieving that goal. This isn’t meant to be a typical ministry website. We are not planting a church or opening an orphanage. This isn’t a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen. In fact, we really had no physical location aside from the ground we were standing on (or sleeping on) at any given time. We are just two humble servants who allowed God to use us by taking us on the journey (both physically and spiritually) of a lifetime.
The Path
If you check out the homepage of our website, you can see the path we took across America. Our journey started on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in San Francisco. From there, we crossed through California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Delaware. Once we hit Dewey Beach, Delaware, we put our feet into the Atlantic Ocean and thanked the Father for keeping us safe every step of the way. Our trail stretched several thousand miles (around 3,600) from coast to coast. And we walked each and every mile.
The Logistics
As I said before, our path stretched several thousand miles. To accomplish our journey in a semi-reasonable time frame, we usually had to travel between 15-23 miles per day. Depending on our pace, this came out to be about 6-8 hours of walking EVERY DAY.
As we traveled, we continuously depended on God’s good graces to provide for us. We only took the essential items we could fit into our carts. That meant no blow dryers, no hair straighteners, no make-up, and no comic books (so it wasn’t always easy for Mike). We only brought a few changes of clothes and prayed for laundromats and friendly people willing to let us do laundry at their houses. Needless to say, we got pretty used to each other’s…aromas.
Our lodging depended on our location. We had a tent and sleeping bags and slept under the stars many nights of our journey. We weren’t opposed to staying with people who offered (and many delightful people did), but always trusted that God would work out those details for us along the way, and He always did.
Food was generally whatever we could carry. We used to have to plan ahead as there were stretches with several days without a store in sight. We’re talking middle of nowhere-type places. But over on the East Coast, we hit civilization more regularly and were able to stop in at stores along the way.
The Ministry
First and foremost, this was a journey of simplicity, a walk with Jesus. It was about stripping off the distractions of our world and focusing on God. It was an opportunity to let go of pride, comfort and self-created security, and trust Jesus with every step we took. We wanted to spend time with Jesus, to soak up the Word, to allow Him to work in and through our lives without being distracted by things that don’t ultimately matter.
Second, this journey was an evangelism project. As we’ve said before, we have an urgent message. It’s a message of hope and freedom in a world wrought with burdens and chains. We wanted to make that message known and tried to do everything we could (and will continue to try to do everything we can) to see that that happens.
One of our goals was to establish meaningful relationships with the people we met along the way, and I’d say that happened without a doubt. We saw it as a prime opportunity for fellowship and we did our best to take advantage of that. We prayed with people, we worshiped with people, we heard testimonies of the power of God. We wanted to share in joys and sorrows alike… to see sickness healed… to see broken relationships restored. We wanted to work in the power of the Holy Spirit. And ultimately we wanted to share the message of the freedom found in Christ.
In the simplest terms, we wanted to change the world. We’re not really sure if we changed the world, but we do know we were changed for the better, and we pray that we made an impact for Christ that goes beyond us.
Our Wilderness – The Preparation
We’ll try to keep this is as simple as we can keep it: we needed a LOT of help with this mission.
It was a lot more than grabbing a backpack, shoving a sleeping bag in it and going for a hike. It was literally a journey across the United States of America, one step at a time. It was intense. But it was worth it.
Personal Preparation
First and foremost, we tried to prepare intellectually and spiritually. So much so, in fact, that Lindsie spent a year working toward her Master’s degree in Christian Counseling. We also focused on studiously and relentlessly pouring our hearts into growing closer to the Lord, taking insight from His Word, and preparing our minds for the challenges we faced.
We also had to develop emotionally. Although our spiritual strength needed to be honed as a weapon of truth on behalf of the Lord, we also had plenty of emotional strengths we needed to exercise and weaknesses we needed to improve. Our personalities have been developed as they are for a reason. But that doesn’t mean we were emotionally prepared for what we faced on our journey. Whether it was Lindsie’s fear of public speaking or Mike’s occasional mistrust of strangers, the Lord opened our hearts and our minds to his will. We are by no means perfect, but this walk helped reshape and reform us in ways we would have never imagined, and Christ used us every step of the way.
Finally, we had to prepare physically. While walking in itself seems simple, it was more than a walk to the gas station or a few laps around a track. As we said before, we averaged 15-23 miles per day. Imagine your workday. Now imagine spending your ENTIRE workday…walking. Our feet often hurt. Our backs often got sore. Our legs cramped up more than once. And sometimes we ended up sleeping on the ground, which really didn’t help. It got better every day, but it was always a challenge.
It definitely wan’t easy. We just thought it was worth the work.
Preparation For The Journey
One thing to keep in mind (as we’ve tried to keep in mind ourselves) is that this journey wasn’t simply a “get across the country” challenge. It was a mission to meet the people the Lord calls us to meet and help them with the work the Lord calls us to help with. We weren’t doing this for personal satisfaction. We were doing it to show people there’s a Savior worth walking for.
Honestly, we trusted that the Lord would take care of us on the walk. If we hadn’t, this would have been a very foolish undertaking. But that didn’t mean we should avoid planning for success.
Although we eventually got used to cross-country walking and had a pretty good idea of what we were doing toward the end of the journey, we still weren’t experts by any means. There were SO many details we had to figure out on a daily basis, but thanks to the good Lord, things always fell into place.
On a final note, we wanted (and still want) our website to be as clear and user-friendly as possible. We want people to understand our mission and be able to join us in whatever ways possible. Thankfully, our friend Jonathan Kurten has designed a gorgeous site that hopefully makes content easy, but if there’s something missing or something you’d like to read/learn more about, please don’t be afraid to let us know!
All in all, this was a difficult journey. And, looking back, we enjoyed just about every minute of it. Even though the journey is over, we know we still have a story to share. We’re currently working on writing a book about our journey and the way God provided for us every step of the way. We would also really love to share our story with anyone willing to hear it, so if you’re a church or other organization that would like to have us come share about our journey and how God took care of us along the way, please don’t hesitate to contact us via our contact page. Thanks so much!
