FAITHFULLY

By Don Baunsgard

In Faithfully, The Journey to Treasures in Heaven, the author, Don Baunsgard, takes you on a thirty-year journey of radical faith. In these pages are incredible stories of God's moments and miracles along with personal failures and sin. Through the trials of pain and disappointment in life due to poor choices and the consequences of those choices, Don also shows you that perseverance and growth through our trials reveal how God faithfully calls us into action to His purposes--the very purposes in which he has created each of us, so we may fulfill the calling for which we have been chosen.

Faithfully is dripping with transparency and honesty through the challenges of life all the while telling the story of one man's journey to finding fulfillment, being sold out for God, yet while battling through his own personal demons. Through it all, the faithfulness of God and the never-ending pursuit to find and then fulfill that purpose are what become what we all are searching for--our sole reason for being on this planet.

Join Don on his journey to finding treasures to store up in heaven and see how Jesus transforms his life of pain into one of absolute joy and a never-ending pursuit to fulfill the calling on his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886445817

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Foreword

This One Love

Chapter 1: A New Chapter

Chapter 2: Something Altogether Different

Chapter 3: The Journey Continues

Chapter 4: The Calling

Chapter 5: Into the Unknown

Chapter 6: The Gift

Chapter 7: This Thing Called Life

Chapter 8: Entitlement

Chapter 9: The In-Between

Chapter 10: The Second Beginning

Chapter 11: Lather, Rinse, Repent

Chapter 12: The Year of our Lord, 2016

Chapter 13: January 2020

Chapter 14: The Last, Great Brouhaha

Chapter 15: The Treasure Within

About the Author

cover.jpg

FAITHFULLY

Don Baunsgard

ISBN 979-8-88644-580-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88644-582-4 (Hardcover)

ISBN 979-8-88644-581-7 (Digital)

Copyright © 2023 Don Baunsgard

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Foreword

Gratefully, I get to walk alongside Don through life, experiencing the miracles of Treasures in Heaven firsthand. The daily blessings we experience at the store and in the community could fill a book on their own (and maybe someday they will!). But as Don will tell you, it's definitely not about us. This is a tremendous testimony to our God and how much He loves His children. God called Don to visit Uganda and took a man who truly loves others to see the desperate level of need that existed there. Simultaneously, over my whole life, God has impressed upon me concern for our homeless and our children. When we came together, God aligned our passions for His mission so we can help others— help others !

Treasures in Heaven only exists because of God and you, the person reading this book. Our donors, volunteers (oh, how we need volunteers!), and our patrons, all of you make our mission possible. God moves through you when you donate. He moves through you when you volunteer. He moves through you when you shop and financially blessed the store. And most importantly, He moves through us all when the financial gifts are redistributed to other organizations so they can be the hands and feet of Jesus.

After seeing the great need in the communities of Uganda, we were even more motivated to open the thrift store. The yard sales were incredible, but to be able to fund Planet Changer on a monthly basis and provide resources for more consistent well construction projects was a necessity. We live with excessive abundance in America such that third-world residents could never fathom.

But God, right?

God can take our abundance and use it to help others when we are willing to let Him lead. And by supporting this store, you are part of that blessing.

The funds we have been able to give to the food banks have helped in incredible ways. And Trail Youth teen coffee shop—what a tremendous blessing for kids! We have seen how this mission has truly helped keep kids off the street and given them a place to belong. We have intermittently been able to support other needs as they arise too. Vouchers are distributed to food banks for their patrons to come and purchase what they need without expense. Our local homeless know they can come by and get what they need, and we help them every day. House of Hope will pick up household items and more as they help abused women and children start life over. We've helped with housing, food, clothing, sleeping bags, transportation, and laundry; the list is truly endless.

With God, through you, faithfully.

So thank you. Thank you for reading our story, God's story, and learning about why we are doing what we have been called to do. Thank you for supporting our mission so we can take care of our neighbors. Feel free to write us and tell us about how the store, our mission, or even our story has impacted you—or just tell us what God has put on your heart! We love to hear it! Thank you just doesn't sound sufficient for how grateful we are.

But there is more I wish to share. Those were the words God put on my heart regarding our store and our dream to help others. He also put the following on my heart to share with you about who you are, who He is, and why any of this matters.

You know that verse in Matthew 22:39 Love your neighbor as yourself? Let's talk about that for a minute. Do you love yourself? Truly, the way God loves you? Think about it. Maybe you do, but most of us don't. Well, not at least without some lessons first.

God loves you so much that He let His Son die on a cross for you. Think about that. Who would you let your child die for? There is a thought-provoking video that the Skit Guys did which you can watch on YouTube called Chiseled. I saw it first when I was attending Celebrate Recovery. I saw no value in myself. None. I was in a broken and hurting marriage filled with toxicity and pain. I felt alone and unworthy. There was no way God loved me. Why would He let me suffer in this marriage? And I attended Celebrate Recovery every Friday and cried. I literally took tissues with me because I knew I would just bawl. One night, they showed that video. Now I watch it at least once a year, and I share it with anyone struggling to see value in themselves. Love yourself. Like God loves you. And then love your neighbor to that same level. What a task!

I think this task is next to impossible, but thankfully, with God, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26). This is my daily goal. Trying to understand things from another's point of view. Trying to love my neighbor as myself. Trying to love myself as God loves me. It is not easy, but every day, I get a new chance to work on it.

Recently we have had several suicides in our community. The part that breaks my heart the most about suicide, having been in that presuicidal deep, dark place myself, is that we have no idea what another human being is suffering through. In the times when I have been in that dark place, I have acknowledged that I had no desire to cause someone else to suffer. The enemy literally convinced me that my woes would sound insignificant to others so it was best to just wallow and feel destitute. And then I would play the broken record of my failures in my head and feel worse and worse until I was near breaking. But I never wanted to hurt my family, and I never wanted to disappoint God. This is quite literally what has kept me from suicide at least three times.

One day, a friend of mine confided in me that she had just been in that deep, dark place too. I called her up and cried and said, Please, don't ever end your life. Call me. I will come and sit with you. You mean too much to me! And now, I call her when I'm struggling. When we are truly willing to love one another thoroughly and wholeheartedly, we can help each other through the toughest of times. And in the sense of loving ourselves, we need to feel empowered to acknowledge when the load is too heavy and seek help in carrying it.

On page 20, Don quotes Matthew 16:24–25. In this verse, Jesus talks about taking up our cross and following Him. What does that mean? As God has revealed to me, it means that we need to acknowledge our hurts, habits, and hang-ups that distance us from God and His plan. We need to recognize those faults daily, and while carrying them, a heavy, cumbersome load, we need to still follow Christ and seek to live in humility and grace, all the while working to correct our challenge areas with Christ's help. He is, after all, walking with us and able to heal us of our afflictions.

The portion of this verse that speaks to saving your life by losing it means we don't harbor our failings and put up a front, pretending everything is fine; it means we lose those worldly things that trip us and make Jesus our goal. Much like the fish logo of the show The Chosen. When the turquoise fish choose to follow Christ, they turn around and start swimming against the current. We need to let go of the world's desires and seek the desires of Christ.

As the verse wraps up, Jesus says, What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Yes, indeed. Our goal should be an eternity in heaven with Christ, not the riches of this brief life and the ego of humanity.

Read the verse and ponder the intent. Apply it to your life. Gain Christ.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?

When we were visiting Uganda, we saw true poverty. The levels of impoverishment are astounding. For us to even fathom living in a small hut without running water or electricity, the true experience is unmatched. It would be similar to living in a tent, far from a city, through all the rainy seasons, without provisions. And caring for children to boot. Our American homeless don't even know this destitution. They can find handouts, meals, showers, warming shelters, and even jobs if they are willing (and able).

In Uganda, there are not enough jobs for everyone. But this isn't my point. The people are beautiful and filled with joy for the Lord. Sure, some are struggling immensely, found on mats awaiting help in the market of the city, but there are also small communities of huts, people helping one another and sharing in the load. People are making community decisions for community survival. The way they handle adversity is a testimony to the human spirit. And they could teach us something about resiliency. No alarm clocks, no expensive cars, and no manicured lawns. Visiting there was a lesson in perspective.

Don and I live in a nice home. Nothing extravagant but a nice home nonetheless. Our kids have everything they need. We have cars and a mowed lawn, and stuff. But this stuff doesn't own us. We talk often about how we know that God has provided these things for the care of our family now, but we could easily sell them and live with significantly less at any time. And as you will read about in this book, we literally have lived with less. And the toughest part of that was living in one of the richest counties of America and driving past all these homes and clean, shiny cars knowing we were headed back to our humble little cottage in the woods with one light bulb, one small sink, one toilet, and very little more.

All of this is to say God has our attention. We said, Here I am, Lord, use me! and He is. Our little thrift store keeps us very busy (and I still have one more year left—well, 311 days—of military service before I retire, so I'm going a few directions right now!), but knowing it helps so many others is our motivating force.

As I'm sitting here on my day off finishing up this entry so Don's book can go to the publisher (and then press through my checklist before running over to help him at the store this afternoon), he is already off collecting donations around the valley where we live. People are consistently amazed at the variety of items available in our store, and that is a testament to the array of donations we receive every day. And then we hear of the lives touched by the redistribution of goods and funds.

Don shares a few of those stories, but one that just happened was bringing in an Afghani refugee family last week and helping them acquire all the basic provisions for reestablishing their life here in America. We said, Come in, get what you need, no cost. Let us help you. You've been through enough. Because of our generous community and the financial support of our patrons and donors, we are able to help others in their time of need.

So thank you. Thank you for reading this book (the proceeds help the store and others). Thank you for supporting our journey. Thank you for shopping at Treasures in Heaven. We pray that God will open your eyes and open your hearts to see what part you can play in this adventure. Every time we help someone in need, we help Jesus, and we store up treasures in heaven.

Go in peace, serve the Lord. Thanks be to God!

Lena Baunsgard, 23 June 2022

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You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge in the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.

—Paul, Galatians 5:13

What if American Christians did ‘bring the whole tithe into the storehouse'? How might the manifestation of the kingdom of God on earth be different?

—Richard Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel¹

This One Love

By Jocelyn Soriano

There is that love

From which all other loves

Come from,

And with which all other loves

Are blessed.

It's that kind of love

That fills your heart

To the fullest,

A love that could never

Be replaced.

It gives meaning

To all that you do,

And to all that you are.

With it you see everything else

In a whole new light.

There is that love

That truly changes you

And you know you could

Never go back

You'd never want to go back.

For this is that love

That one love that

Can make you really happy

And you know you only live

Because it has found you at last!

Chapter 1

A New Chapter

Chance cannot change love, nor time impair, for love is more than a feeling…love is a decision, a commitment to care forever.

—Unknown

Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

—C. S. Lewis

Years ago, I read this sentence in a book, and it has never left my mind. It goes like this, It's not about you, and the remainder of the chapter goes on to explain how the quest for personal fulfillment, satisfaction, and meaning can only be found in understanding and doing what God placed you on Earth to do.

So this life—your life—was never about you or me; it is and always will be about Jesus.

Throughout my life—and especially in my darkest moments—I often wondered how other people survived and handled the challenges that life seems to throw at us. How bad did people around the world truly have it? As a child, I would see the commercials of African children starving with their ribs clearly visible protruding through the thin layer of skin with flies crawling over their faces. They were nothing but skin and bones. It instantly reminded me of the pictures I had seen from WW2 of Jews in the concentration camps—barely alive and just a fragment of what they used to be.

As I have grown to see and understand those who have had to live in third-world countries and the challenges that arise from the conditions of their situation, I soon realize that my problems—my deficiencies—are not that bad after all.

But yet, in the moment of our struggle and our pain, from the abuse of others or in the painful consequences of our poor choices, we cry out with a sense of urgency—a cry for help—for someone to help us, to stop the pain, stop what is happening, stop the agony and sense of hopelessness. We cry out to our God, Lord, help me!

Too often, and usually unknown to us, do the cries for help seem to go unheard, or so it seems. Is God even listening? And when those cries for help, especially as children, become unresolved or when the conditioning, upbringing, and generational curses of families' past slowly become repeated and imprinted on their own children, with no explanation at all, we are left numb and stained with scars and tear-stained pillows wondering, What I have done to deserve such abuse? Through the painful experiences of the life that is set before us and through the negative actions taken upon us, there begins the cycle of survival.

My story, my young life, consisted of tiptoeing on eggshells while looking for land mines and dodging bullets as I made my way from my bedroom—past my stepmom's bedroom and into the living room—like a ninja, hoping and praying I did not wake her.

My own personal survival tool involved plenty of tube-time escaping to Gilligan's Island on a three-hour tour or to Fantasy Island so I can hear Tattoo yell out: Boss, da plane, da plane. The square box with three channels and no remote control was my medication to escape to somewhere else other than my all too real, toxic existence. Kids these days will never understand what it was like to change the channel with a pair of pliers while moving aluminum foil-covered rabbit ear antennas in the attempt to get a clearer picture. This, thank God, was what gave me my peace of mind, and I soon developed quite the knowledge of useless movie and television trivia too! I would literally grab the TV Guide out of the mailbox each week and schedule my television viewing by highlighting the shows and movies I was going to watch on the weekends including, of course, Saturday morning cartoons!

As innocent children, we would open our eyes to each new morning excited about what this day would bring and what new and exciting adventures may lie ahead. I remember when I was five, running around the yard and the house in my underwear with a towel for a cape, pretending I was Superman. My older brother Dave and I would reenact the scenes between Bigfoot and the Six Million Dollar Man by picking up pillows and imagining they were giant boulders as we hurled them at each other while we did our best to add the audio effects in slow motion. Da na na na na na na na na na na!

It was a beautiful time, as it should be for every child, to be creating this alternative universe of child-like activities that involved make believe in a fantasy world. The creativity of a child's mind is endless until a tragedy, abuse, or brokenness comes crashing in attempting to steal your joy and wipe out your imagination.

The truth about generational curses, though, is that there is an overwhelming amount of unintentional pain and destruction that exists in too many of these types of homes behind closed doors. As it was in my situation, it is as if we were never given a chance or had any say in what was right or wrong—no voice. As a child, I could never outrun the abuse, nor did I have the choice to see past it, hoping and praying that one day, when I came home from school, I would find my parents healed of the pain that was heaped upon them from their own parents.

Sadly, this is the kind of life experience that is being played out again and again as a bad dream projected