All About Joy's LFH
About Joy Charles
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Who We Are
Joy's Lessons from Heaven (LFH) is a Bible-based, Christ-centered, non-denominational, full gospel, blog ministry started by Joy Charles in May 2013, under guidance of the Holy Spirit of God.
Its purpose is to:
- provide resources to help seekers find and know God.
- support believers in spreading the Good News of the Kingdom of Heaven.
- help believers grow in a better understanding of the holy scriptures.
- inspire both seekers and followers of Jesus Christ to develop an ever deeper, richer and more intimate relationship with God.
Joy's LFH blog ministry is but one aspect of an online media ministry God is leading Joy to develop to benefit the community of faith in Christ.
Eventhough Joy's LFH does not operate under a 501c3 status, Joy has always applied a social, nonprofit organization model to her ministry developments. Yet she believes in pursuing financial sustainability in her ministries. With God's help, Joy's LFH seeks to be a self-sustaining, not-for-profit, service to the Christian community that generates income through supporter memberships, financial gifts, and the sale of faith-based inspirational products to subsidize the faith-centered services it provides to seekers and to the Body of Christ.
This means that Joy's LFH is not set up to rely solely on donations to cover its ministry needs and expenses. Instead, it also engages in the selling of goods and services that are in line with the mission of this ministry, as well as in the selling of third-party products, in order to raise at least half of the financial resources needed to realize its ministry objectives.
Mission Statement
Joy's LFH was birthed out of a calling to edify, equip, support and unite the Body of Christ in order to show God's love to the people we interact with, effectively share the Good News, experience daily intimacy with God and hear His voice, know God's heart, live a life that glorifies God and advance the kingdom of heaven in the earth, through the Internet.
Joy's LFH seeks to do these by:
- Providing a worshipful and prayer-filled online learning environment where seekers of all walks of life and new believers can find answers to their questions, learn about the Father heart of God, and find testimonies of what God is doing today in people's lives around the globe.
- Making available to followers of Christ who are sharing the gospel with family, friends, classmates and coworkers, spirit-filled blog lessons, anointed praise and worship experiences, and powerful effective prayers they can enjoy and share with others.
- Engaging in cooperative partnerships with like-minded individuals, groups, organizations and faithful supporters in the Body of Christ.
- Sharing knowledge and wisdom from personal and ministry experiences that will foster the development of true Christian character, help prepare mentors and ministry leaders for the near future, and support the healthy development of new and/or local ministries.
- Being a mentor to women and supporting dedicated women of God as they pursue their callings and develop their ministries.
Vision Statement
At Joy's LFH, we believe that God has called us to go up and take the small portion of the media mountain He has assigned to us and to be a light-upon-a-hill answer and alternative to today's darkness-promoting secular media. Therefore, through the eyes of faith, Joy's LFH envisions itself as being phase one of a future, world reaching, life transforming and kingdom building, web-based ministry and a resource hotspot for seekers, believers, home groups, across the globe. Joy's LFH is committed to empowering the Body of Christ, worldwide, with a wealth of spiritual insight, knowledge, understanding, wisdom and revelation, through teaching, training, and mentoring, to declare the glory of God to all peoples and do our part to assist believers in bringing in the full harvest of God in our time.
Joy's Bio
Summary
Joy Charles lives in Sacramento, California. She is a wife, step-mother to two wonderful, now adult children, and a grandmother to amazing grandchildren. Joy is also a woman of prayer, a worshiper, a mentor and a Bible teacher.
After graduating from highschool in her home country, Joy studied and graduated from a Eurpean academy as an Executive Assistant. In her 30s, Joy graduated from two Bible colleges. And after coming to reside in the USA, she graduated from a local community college with an AA degree in Liberal Arts.
Joy has had years of professional experience as an Executive Assistant for major companies, as a Diplomatic Assistant at an international organization, as a home-based small business owner, and as the founder and director of a non-profit missions organization. She served the Lord and the Body of Christ in different countries as a missionary, worship leader, teacher, trainer, mentor, and in other ministry servant-leadership capacities since 1987, soon after dedicating her life to her Savior, Jesus the Messiah. Her international ministry has lead her to partner and serve with churches of different Christian, Bible-believing denominational backgrounds.
In the Beginning
Joy accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior in 1985. Since the beginning, she's had a profound desire to know God's heart and to do His will. Within two years, her commitment to Christ, her pursuit after God, her deep studies in the Word, her joyful dedication to service, her skills and gifts, and her love for others placed her into several positions of ministry leadership.
In the congregation where she began her walk with Christ, Joy began serving as a solo vocalist in the praise & worship ministry and soon also began serving as the choir director. She began writing and directing plays for evangelistic events, redesigning games for fun-filled child evangelism events, and teaching children in Sunday School. She was also active in the prayer ministry and in the simultaneous interpreting ministry, translating from and into a few different languages. During that time, she also partnered with a local prison evangelism ministry and served as a prison evangelism worship minister.
Bible College
Then the Lord called her to Bible college. Joy went to Christ for the Nations Institute (CFNI) in Dallas, TX, in 1990, and she graduated in 1992 with a major in Practical Theology and a minor in Music Ministry. Joy also became an Ordained Minister in 1992 at Christ for the Nations Istitute, just prior to graduation. Besides Biblical and music ministry studies, her training also included Jewish studies, introduction to the original Biblical languages, child evangelism, street evangelism, friendship evangelism, and dance and drama ministries. She also served as an RA (residential assistant) watching over the well-being of fellow-students placed under her care.
During her time at CFNI, Joy interned at a local Spanish-speaking congregation in the praise & worship ministry and as a Bible-study teacher. At CFNI, she also became an assistant dance teacher and a dance ministry leader. As a student, Joy had the opportunity to be involved in many Christ for the Nations outreaches and events either as a member of the evangelism team, a member of the prayer team, or as part of the choir, music, dance and/or drama ministries.
Joy also received training in world missions. Her first missionary trip took her to Saltillo, Mexico, where Joy discovered a love for partnering with churches and ministries. Upon graduation, as an ordained minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Joy joined CFNI's missions team to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where she remained and partnered with local ministries, learned to speak and write fluently in Portuguese, and used her training, skills, and gifts to edify and equip the Body of Christ in Sao Paulo city and in the surrounding cities. She was dedicated to advancing the Kingdom of God, locally.
Raising Up Leaders
In 1992, after her first mission trip to Brazil, Joy founded and directed a non-profit organization called Oil of Joy Missions Foundation, which operated for about 7 years. Through this organization Joy had the opportunity to work with ministries from different Bible-believing Christian denominations, locally and internationally. She designed teaching programs to train and raise up congregational and ministry leaders and helped to establish new churches and ministries. A few times, she was a guest speaker on a Christian radio-ministry program. In partnership with local churches, Joy organized child evangelism events and ministered at youth evangelism outreaches. She also trained and mentored young adults to become dedicated, spirit-led and effective ministry servants and leaders.
In 1997, after returning to her home country, from a year of Bible, Ancient, and Jewish studies in Israel (details further below,) Joy started offering courses to introduce a Hebraic understanding of the Bible to the faith community back in her home country. One of the courses she offered focused on Biblical Hebrew, to help Christians understand the text better. Another course focused on the Hebraic origins of the Christian faith, explaining how the Bible was transmitted to us through the Jewish people and that Jesus, the apostles, and Paul were all Jews. Her objective was to help the Body of Christ understand that the Bible provided no support whatsoever for replacement theology, which is a prevalent perception in today's faith community. During this period, a financial supporter approached her to be the host of a radio show, one that would serve as a bridge in creating an open door of understanding and communication between Bible-believing Christians and the local Jews population. Joy's radio show aired once a week through a local station, gradually receiving increasing audience ratings. Jews and Christians were both tuning in.
A Year in Israel
In 1995, the Lord announced to Joy to get ready to go to Israel. God moved mightily, providing financially and opening doors for Joy to travel to, live, study, and minister for a whole year in Israel. Joy registered for the Year in Israel program at the then King of Kings College, in Jerusalem (currently: Israel College of the Bible, Netanya, Israel). She arrived in Israel in September of 1996. The study program included courses teaching the Hebraic understanding of the Bible, modern Hebrew (Ulpan), Biblical Hebrew, Koine Greek, and Biblical Archaeology. A year later, Joy graduated and returned home. During that year in Israel, Joy also had the opportunity to minister Christ's love to the Jewish people through a Christian ministry that operated a food bank to feed the hungry, provided medical care for the needy, helped restore the broken down homes of aged Holocaust survivors--and more.
What Joy Is Doing Today
Today, Joy is a faithful member at her current local congregation. She has served on the Board of Trustees and has functioned many years as part of the leadership team serving the congregation. Every day she looks forward to opportunities to share the message of God's love with friends, family, neighbors, clients and people with whom she gets a chance to develop a closer relationship. She loves to proclaim the goodness of God, even when she faces some of life's challenging circumstances.
Joy has also been investing spiritually in the lives of women she has brought (or brought back) to Christ and in the lives of women desiring a deeper walk with God by disciplining and mentoring them towards spiritual wisdom, growth, and maturity.
Joy is passionate about prayer and intimacy with God, and receives revelation from the Holy Spirit on a daily basis. This is where she receives God's vision for her life and ministry activities. Lessons From Heaven is Joy's newest ministry.
Joy's Testimony
Everything I have achieved, is because of God's love and faithfulness. By myself, I would not have been able to accomplish anything. I am not the smartest, or the strongest, or the healthiest, or the most courageous, or the most self-confident, or the best in anything. Neither do I have a high-level college degree: I do not have a Ph.D, nor a Masters. I do not even have a Bachelor's degree. Yet, He chose to set me before princes and kings to testify about Him.
While I was living in Brazil, He pulled me out of full-time ministry for a few years and placed me in a diplomatic position representing a senator in the top echelon of an international/world government organization. With the list of thousands of ivy-league educated people vying for these positions, how did I get in? Only through a divine appointment. God Himself wanted me there. All of a sudden I was fraternizing with world leaders and walking in and out of world summits.
I often felt like Joseph or Daniel in the Bible, receiving uncommon insight and wisdom into things I never had the opportunity to learn. I realized that I had an unfair advantage, one that could beat any college degree any day of the week and twice on Sunday—I had an intimate friendship with the One who knows all things. And He was with me, instructing my mind--and my words.
Eventually, some of my highly educated colleagues began to ask how such an intelligent woman like myself could possibly believe in fairy tales like God--And I had the opportunity to share some of my many personal experiences with God. Soon, I began to teach a Bible-study class for those among my coworkers that God was drawing to Himself. Most received Christ as their personal savior. I will never forget the day one of them said, “You know, I think that God brought you here to save us.” I still choke up when I remember this. After working in this position for three years, God released me and placed me back into full-time ministry.
I can definitely identify with this statement of the apostle Paul:
"I know how to be abased [live humbly], and I know how to abound [live in prosperity]. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ [Him] who strengthens me." ~ Philippians 4:12-13 (NKJV).
I continually offer up all my abilities to my Heavenly Father to use as He pleases. He is always ready to do great things with all we offer up to Him. Through Jesus Christ, I can boast about the greatness, the goodness and the faithfulness of my God.
I am a witness that God can take any average person—someone of no particular importance—and turn him or her into a life-changing force for His kingdom. Thanks to Jesus Christ, I enjoy a deep and intimate relationship with God the Father and with the Holy Spirit, which has lead me to live a life of love, hope, divine appointments, opportunity, unusual common sense, wisdom, success, victory, blessing, peace, fulfillment and joy. You can have the same. To God be all the glory!
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