Defining I Am Impact: A Refuge From the Lowest to the Highest

I Am Impact has always began as a vision in Claudia and I heart by seeing people coming from the lowest of the lowest places and going to the highest of the highest places with God. And part of my personal testimony coming from a gang is that God adopted me and took me in when the rest of the world rejected me and pretty much just laid a path that the only two places where I can live the rest of my destiny are either in jail or dead. But God, even before I was born, had a specific calling and a destiny over my life that unless I found Jesus and he took me into his family and raised me up in the body of God, then I would not be alive today. I would actually still be in a gang or maybe in jail or prison, or I wouldn’t even be alive. And knowing that God’s heart is not just for success or a harvest and numbers as statistics but God’s heart is really for the individual. Seeing them become not just another person that gets saved, but seeing them as a child being grafted into his family or taken into his family, gives me the heart to see that happen with as many other people as I can.

Joshua 2:18 (NLT) When we come into the land, you must leave this scarlet rope hanging from the window through which you let us down. And all your family members—your father, mother, brothers, and all your relatives—must be here inside the house.

The story that stood out to me in 2010 was the story of Rahab, the prostitute before Joshua was going to go into the promised land and conquer the entire area for the kingdom of God. And in Joshua chapter 2 verse 18, he says that you must leave this scarlet rope hanging at the window through which to let us down.

If you put this and paraphrase it, if you put this scarlet rope down, then your house will be saved from the war that’s about to happen. And what this represented to me was a place of refuge, the scarlet rope represented a place of refuge. And I felt inside of my heart, that God was saying that he wanted to put a scarlet rope down in different nations and scarlet rope down in different communities where they would find refuge in him, they would find a place of safety with him despite all of the injustices that are occurring and all the different things of sin that are happening in the world, but they find peace and safety inside of his word in a relationship with him.

At the same time, in 2010, the Lord was putting inside of my heart a lot of visions of orphanages. And in the vision, a lot of these orphans were dressed with this scarlet color on them and everything was scarlet. And when I looked into the lifestyle of these orphans and these people growing up is that they were molested, they were abused, they were taken advantage of, they were outcasts of societies, they struggled with homosexuality. There were just a lot of different things that broke my heart when I looked at this vision.

But at the end of these visions that I was getting in 2010, he was revealing to me that these orphans were going to become leaders of this movement that God wanted to do in Asia. Looking back into it, these were just not pictures of orphans, but they were basically pictures of a fatherless generation that was outcasted from society and God’s people took them in, gave them a place of refuge, spiritually adopted them, and became their spiritual parents. This army that he was showing me wasn’t just an army for the sake of missions, but they were actually a spiritual family for worshiping God unto eternity.

Hebrews 11:31 (NLT) It was by faith that Rahab the prostitute was not destroyed with the people in her city who refused to obey God. For she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.

The next scripture that really stood out to me during this time of prayer was Hebrews 11:31, where it says that it was by fate that Rahab, the prostitute, was not destroyed with the people of her city, but refused to obey God, but she was given a friendly welcome by the spies. In this scripture, the Lord was showing me that Rahab was someone that was a prostitute from the lowest of the low, but then she was raised up to like the highest of the high, in a sense of being written down in the Hebrews chapter 11 as one of the heroines of faith.

That also stood out to me and until my heart in a sense that I felt that God wanted to raise up heroes and heroines of faith from the lowest of the low, and bring them up to the highest of the high in the kingdom. Again, this is spiritual and eternal, but it also has a lot of physical impacts as well. God really wanted to let them be leaders on earth as well as rulers and reigners with him and eternity.

This was something inside of my heart since 2010, that God has always been using as an internal compass whenever I think of whatever we’re doing as a family and as a ministry, is that are we making an impact in a sense that when we raise up disciples, can we raise up disciples that are from the places that people have forgotten, people have neglected, people have pushed away, and people have outcasted? Are we seeing these individuals around the world become leaders with God? I always use that as a litmus test because that is also the same way that God has loved me.

Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair… Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” (Luk 7:44-47)

Another scripture that comes up to me is when Jesus was talking with the prostitute and she was crying and wiping Jesus’s feet with her tears and her hair and the Pharisees were saying why are being so close to this woman? And then one of the responses that Jesus had was that those who have been forgiven much love much. Just understanding everything that God wants to accomplish on earth, you can never do it by performance, you could only do it by love.

I’m seeing that obvious faith as the number one thing, but us having authentic love for God and God’s people have to be another major driving force inside of our walk with Jesus. And without this over-encompassing, incredibly powerful love, then we will quit, we will stop. We won’t continue the path that we’re on. We’ll give up when things get too hard. But if love is the undergirding point that fastens us to this journey that we have with God, then nothing will stop us.

That’s what I Am Impact about. I Am Impact is about lovesick warriors for Jesus that wholeheartedly want to see people on earth touched often from the lowest places, but also see a testimony rise up in them in God that will allow them to rise up to the highest places in the Lord. And some of these major places that God has placed in our hearts and we’ve seen it here in the Philippines is reaching the unreached people groups including tribes and Muslims, going to other nations that have been often neglected by the global church – whether it’s in India or Indonesia and the other different places that God’s place in our hearts like the Middle East. Also the fatherless orphans, those that have been sexually molested, people that have been raped, people that have been prostituted.

These stories are very close to my heart because I share a similar pain with being forgotten by the world and knowing that I’m remembered and picked and chosen by God. And unless someone preached the gospel to me and discipled me, then I would’ve never known who Jesus Christ was and what my life is with him.

I Am Impact is a movement of people that have the same heart that wants to see the same testimony with all types of people that have been forgotten by the world, but in God’s heart are the ones that God is choosing to raise up. God chooses to rise up all of us and all of us have a storyline with Jesus. But just in my personal walk that’s been something that’s been close to my heart, and we want to see that continually grow in I Am Impact as it becomes whatever the Lord wants it to become.