The Transformation Podcast Justin Mayfield

Celebration three-dozen episodes and taking a look ahead to see what’s in store for future episodes. Justin also announces a short break for the podcast and shares a little backstory for it.
One final announcement is the podcast will be moving onto Youtube in the not-too-distant future, Lord willing. The show will continue to be featured on the various podcast mediums it is already featured on for those who prefer to listen audibly.
A taste of the future episodes in the production pipeline:
HIGHLIGHTS A massive series on Jonathan Edwards, exploring his life story, revival ministry, prolific theology, family legacy, personal spiritual disciplines and much more. Multiple guests are slated for the series. Scotty Kessler is booked for two upcoming episodes featuring two different inspiring men of God. The testimony of a Mexican man who escaped custody, tried to murder a guard and was finally saved by Christ from a life of addiction. Multiple episodes featuring different members of a group of mormons who were all saved out of the LDS faith and into orthodox Christianity. And many more!

Brian Barcelona had a radical encounter with God as a young adult. Not too long after, this led to Brian preaching the Gospel in high schools. The first Jesus Club had 30 kids, but as Brian preached straight down the middle with the unadulterated Gospel message, the club soon grew to 600 kids meeting regularly to hear the Word and encounter the living God.
Sometimes Brian would encounter large groups of kids who were devoted to living life in violent gangs. “Why are you fightin’ over colors? Are you Crayola? Why are you fighting over streets? Your parents can barely afford their rent. Why are you dying for something that means nothing?” As Brian declared this at one particular meeting, a gang member stood up and said, “What do I have to do to be saved?” Brian’s response: “Man, give up everything.”
It’s this type of fidelity to the testimony of the Gospel that has stirred so many hearts in a growing number of Jesus Clubs throughout the nation. As Mark and Stephanie Kram testified on Episode 27, 100 kids got saved at a high school in Justin’s neighborhood last year through a Jesus Club on that campus.
Listen to this week’s episode (audio above) to hear the full report of what God is doing through this encouraging ministry.
HIGHLIGHTS Brian moved his ministry to L.A. where he ended up on the 700 Club and many other Christian shows. This exposure helped spur the Jesus Club idea into a movement that grew far beyond Brian's direct ministry. Brian shares at the beginning of the episode how the Dream Center, a Christian nonprofit, is serving people in need during the coranavirus quarantines. Brian got to travel to Brazil to witness the historic gatherings that took place during the recent revival.

In Episode 9, Derrick Rhayn shared the incredible story of how God led him to Himself. In this episode, Derrick is back, sharing from under 24/7 quarantine in Paris.
Derrick has been trying to live as all-in as he can to the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. Even though he is only a little more than a year old in the faith, Derrick has seen much encouraging fruit from the last several months of constantly saying “Yes!” to what God asks of him.
In the time since recording his testimony on the podcast, Derrick has been on a mission trip to Mazatlan Mexico, a brief mission to Boston, another back to Mazatlan and an 81-day prayer-laden trip to Macedonia.
Now, Derrick is preparing to enter into a discipleship training school at the YWAM base in Paris. He almost didn’t make it to Parish though, as he wasn’t due there for another few weeks and the presidential order halting travel to and from Europe would have grounded him stateside.
Thankfully, God prompted Derrick to leave on the 13th and his plane was the last one leaving the Denver airport to Portugal (his connecting flight).
In this episode, Derrick shares the apparent insanity of saying “Yes” to God–even to two-hour mission trips across the U.S. and the fruit that he’s seen from them. He shares how he’s seen the Lord save over 50 people on these little excursions and also the deeper fruit of forging a faith-first relationship with Christ.
Derrick also opens up about the journey in his prayer life the Lord has had him on and how it wasn’t until hour three in a particular prayer session that he received impromptu direction from the Holy Spirit to go on a mission to Macedonia. While there, he continued his journey in prayer, praying for several hours per day.
Listen to the audio (above) in this week’s to hear the full report from this young missionary’s travels.
HIGHLIGHTS His second Mazatlan trip was only 24 hours but him and his ministry partner saw around 50 people saved during that time. While in Mazatlan with his church (City Central), Derrick saw a Spirit-inspired picture of the WOrd of God being planted on a local island that has the reputation of being particularly dark, spiritually. Now the local Christians have put up signs all around the island that have Bible verses in spanish. In Boston, Derrick met a woman who was struggling with suicidal thoughts and he was able to tell her, "God sent me all away across the country to talk to you." Derrick is enrolling in a music-based DTS that will minister abroad with music.

The stats wouldn’t have predicted Josh McDowell would turn out to be one of the world’s most famous evangelists. Josh’s early life seemed headed for destruction. His dad was drunk just about 24/7 and a man who lived in Josh’s childhood home repeatedly sexually assaulted Josh for much of his young life. That is, until Josh violently threatened him to never touch him again.
Josh’s anger being used as a tool to attempt to bring some order to the chaos of his home was a recurring theme. When Josh’s dad would hit Josh’s mom, Josh would fight him. He’d even tie up his dad in the barn to keep him from embarrassing the family when guests came over. In frustration he even swore off his belief in a good, loving God.
It’s perhaps no surprise that when Josh came of age and enrolled at community college, Josh became antagonistic to a group of Christian students that attempted to love him. The group’s joy and kindness frustrated Josh and he set out to disprove their belief using all the tools of modern academia.
Josh even saved up and flew himself to the other side of the world to study in Europe’s great libraries. He had hoped to disprove the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. Instead, he wound up believing the truth that it had indeed happened as described in the pages of scripture.
Josh surrendered to Christ in the months that followed that epiphany and God began to move in His life powerfully. After being discipled by a local pastor for some time, he was encouraged to confront his dad and forgive him. Hesitantly, Josh followed through with setting up a time to meet with his dad. When he did, all that came out of his mouth was “I love you.”
Those words had a profound effect on teh senior McDowell, and he ended up giving his life to Christ sometime later. The change in him was so radical that his small town immediately took notice and, before too long, others came to Christ.
Josh’s mom passed away and he never got to speak to her about Christ. Then, a few years into his walk with Jesus, Josh’s dad passed away. This left Josh without family and pondering the state of his mother’s soul.
One day, he was praying and asking God to show him whether his mom had ever surrendered her life to him. Josh thought this prayer would likely never be answered, but 90 minutes later, as he walked a pier not far from his seminary campus in California, he ran into a sweet older lady fishing on the doc.
The lady struck up conversation and mentioned that she had family in the same town in Michigan Josh was from. It turned out that this lady was Josh’s aunt, his mom’s sister. Finding out that this woman was very dedicated to God, he asked if his mom had ever given her life to Christ. His aunt told him the incredible story of her and Josh’s mom giving their lives to Christ at a tent revival meeting as teenagers. The Lord had brought them together that day, thousands of miles from Josh’s home, in order to answer Josh’s prayer for assurance as well as to address Josh’s lack of family.
Listen to the full story as well as hear Josh’s parenting and discipleship advice in this week’s episode. Audio above!
HIGHLIGHTS Josh shared on his 7 keys to effective parenting with Justin (link below). Josh's real name is "Jos" but when he was a school athlete, someone printed it "Josh" in that paper and it stuck. Josh shared about his great wife and the advice his mother-in-law gave for raising great children. Even though Josh has written over 150 books, Josh said he'd be fine if he never wrote another one again because each one "guts you."

Hudson Taylor is one of the most famous missionaries of the modern era––and for good reason. By the end of Hudson’s life, countless Chinese Christians owed their spiritual salvation to God working through Hudson Taylor’s willingness to venture where few would dare.
Born to a Christian family, Hudson’s father had a strong desire to evangelize China but was unable to due to life circumstances. So his father did the next best thing, he prayed and asked God that if the family had a son that he would be a missionary to China. Though Hudson didn’t learn of this story until several years on the mission field, God still answered this prayer mightily in making Hudson the most influential missionary to ever evangelize China.
Hudson’s spiritual legacy wasn’t limited to his father. His mother and sister both set out to pray for Hudson’s salvation while, as a young man, he ran with “infidels.” ONe day his sister enetered in her diary that she would pray for  Hudson every day until he was saved. A month later, Hudson’s mother was on an extended trip when she fel thte uncontrollable urge to leave the dinner table and pray for Hudson until he was saved.
Mrs. Taylor poured out her soul for hours before God until, just as her last bit of energy was sapped, she felt the Spirit tell her he was indeed saved. At that same hour, Hudson felt the pull to read a tract in his father’s study which convicted him of the truth of the Gospel.
Hudson later wrote that the unbelievers he hung around used to say that the Christians they knew said they believed the Bible but didn’t live like it was true. When Hudson was saved, this notion stuck with Hudson and made him resolve to live like the Bible was true.
This started with training himself for the mission field by living on as little as possible as well as living by faith. Sometimes he would just sell off anything he owned that he felt he’d feel ashamed to give an account to Jesus about if the Lord were to come back in that moment. Other times, he’d do things like purposely neglect to tell his boss when his paycheck was long pass due. He opted instead to let God remind the absent-minded supervisor, which God always did, but at the last possible second so as to underscore the miraculous nature of the situation.
After many experiences like this, Hudson set out to China on a miraculous voyage where, had it not been for God responding to the prayers of the few believers on the ship, they would have died on multiple occasions.
In China, Hudson had many more miraculous adventures in the early years until he was finally led to start the China Inland Mission. Listen to this week’s episode (audio above) to hear many of the miraculous stories from Hudson’s missionary life.
HIGHLIGHTS When Hudson arrived in China, he found himself in the middle of a war with little to no contacts. At several points, Hudson or a fellow missionary narrowly missed by bullets or canon balls. Just before the Boxer Rebellion, which targeted Christians, and after long decades of Taylor's service, the China Inland Mission boasted 811 missionaries, 171 stations, 223 out-stations, 387 chapels; 581 paid native helpers, 193 unpaid native helpers, 12,964 total baptisms; as well as, 266 churches, 788 boarding scholars, 1382 day schools, 6 hospitals and 46 opium refuges. It is estimated that roughly 1/10 of China's 1 billion population is Christian. Today, many Chinese Christians take a spiritual pilgrimage to Hudson's hometown in England to see where their spiritual heritage began.

In last week’s episode, we heard the gripping story of Kim Phuc’s life before being saved by Christ. We heard about her idyllic childhood being traumatically altered by the napalm attack which was captured in the world-famous “Napalm Girl” photo. We heard how her only dream was to be a doctor so she could save the lives of others just like the doctors of the Barski Unit that had saved her life. We heard how that dream was stolen from her by the communist government who used her as political propaganda. And ultimately, we heard how Christ miraculously saved this despairing young woman just two days before her planned suicide.
When we left Kim, she was still living under the oppression of the Communist government, who had shutdown her church and imprisoned its pastors. 
So what became of Kim and her new faith? Did her faith survive spiritual isolation? Did Kim survive Communism at all? Better yet, could she escape these terrible circumstances as a young girl with no connections and no means to do so?
In this episode, we pick Kim’s story back up and we will get answers to all these questions and more. Once again, you’re up for an unbelievable journey as the conclusion to this story is just as wild as the start. This episode is about how God miraculously saved Kim Phuc from Communism.
One of the first significant steps the Lord took to save Kim from Communism was to miraculously create a friendship between the Vietnamese Prime Minister and herself. This friendship allowed Kim to leave Vietnam under the auspices of studying abroad in Cuba.
Cuba was still a Communist country but at least moving there kept her away from the abusive hands of the Vietnamese Government as they continually objectified her as mere political propaganda.
Kim was still without Christian fellowship for many years but it was in Cuba that Kim met her husband. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever be seem beautiful again to a man after her accident, but this man 100 committed to her.
The two married and planned their honeymoon in another Communist country, which was the extent of where they were allowed to travel by the Communist regime. It was on this trip that God worked a series of major miracles in the couple’s life.
The miracle that set off the whole chain of divine blessings happened while they were at a quick layover in the Toronto airport. Kim had been looking for a chance to defect from her country and the Lord revealed an opportunity to do just that as she waited in that airport.
Kim told her husband, who wasn’t a believer, that she felt the Holy Spirit told her this was the time to defect and that she was going to obey what God had shared. Her husband thought she was seriously challenged, not knowing what to do, but ultimately his love for his wife was enough to take the chance.
The couple did not get back on their plane. They instead hid and took a leap of faith asking someone what they should do. They didn’t know anyone in Canada and they didn’t have any resources to support themselves. All of this would be moot though if Canada wouldn’t let them enter the country. Kim’s husband was very scared as the consequences for their actions could be very severe.
But the Holy Spirit assured Kim and she spoke to her husband confidently that everything was going to miraculously work out because God was taking care of them.
Sure enough, divine appointment after divine appointment started revealing themselves. Perhaps the chief among the miracles was that this exact time happened to be during a very small, unprecedented window where Canada was allowing people in the couple’s situation to enter the country.
Eventually God secured the couple housing, jobs and even a church. This last blessing was not only sweet for Kim who had been spiritually surviving only with her personal Bible and solitary prayer, but Kim’s husband had become a Christian as well. Once he had witnessed the miraculous way God had saved the couple from Co