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An Unmerited Missionary The Life of Dwayna Litz
But may it never be that I should boast except
in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been
crucified to me and I to the world.
Born to a Christian family, Dwayna started praying and singing hymns before she could talk plainly. She was saved at the age of five and then baptized in First Baptist Church of Morristown, Tennessee. Dwayna grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and she traveled all over the world in crusade teams as a soloist in revival meetings affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
As early as age ten, she went door to door throughout neighborhoods in America inviting people to the revival meetings and sharing the Gospel with them, prepared with her Bible in hand, to tell them how they could know for sure they were going to heaven. She recalls having the door slammed in her face more than once, but the people came and packed the churches, nevertheless, for the weekly crusades back in those days.
Dwayna moved to Orlando, FL, as a teenager and was a member of First Baptist Orlando. She sang the old hymns as a soloist in evangelistic crusades in India, Haiti, and Korea from age thirteen to fifteen. She was awarded “Best in Show” in musical theater for the state of Florida in high school. She was also chosen to represent her high school, based on an essay that she wrote, as an intern for Congressman Lawton Chiles in Washington, D.C. when she was sixteen years old.
At the age of seventeen, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career in country music as a singer and songwriter and had several production deals with producers affiliated with Arista and Warner Brothers and publishing contracts with various companies such as BMG. She lived in NYC from 1996 to 1997 and sang three nights a week around town with a song list of over one hundred songs from the forties and fifties. She found, however, that her love for Jesus and desire to obey the Bible didn’t help her succeed in the entertainment business. “He must increase, and I must decrease” didn’t go over very well when it came to scripts she was offered and potentially compromising situations. It was a very lonely place for a Christian. It was limiting, to say the least, having the desire to either succeed as an artist and entertainer in a way that was glorifying to God, or not succeed at all.
In hindsight, it was all part of a beautiful, pruning process in her adult life that would beg for words to describe. Oswald Chambers loved the art world and said that God would have to take him “kicking and screaming” out of it. He went up on a mountain and prayed all night and felt impressed the next day that God had said, “I don’t need you, but I could use you.” He turned down the scholarship offered to him to study art and went to seminary.
Dwayna loved art and singing so much that it was her life’s passion in her late teen years and twenties. It was devastating for her to think of life apart from being an entertainer. Her number one fear was who and what she would be without the accolade of a record deal. One night, at the age of twenty- four, sad because nothing seemed to be working out, she was praying about it all to God, and the Holy Spirit clearly spoke to her heart saying, “Let me be everything to you.” She answered weeping, “I don’t know how.”
As the years passed, the music industry seemed less and less alluring until she grew to abhor the system altogether. She turned to Scripture memorization through those long days. The days were so difficult that she actually carried 3x5 cards around with Bible verses on them to memorize to just help her get through the hours of boring, unfulfilling jobs to make ends meet. Ostracized by “casting couch” managers and producers for not playing their game, she grew to truly hate the world’s system and the music industry she once held so dear and live more and more for heaven.
With no husband or record deal, and a season without even a best friend, one day at a time, Dwayna started to experience what it meant for Jesus to be everything to her. She would walk out of a movie, if it was not something He wanted to see, knowing that He was right there with her, too. Her first love became knowing Jesus through Bible study, and reading biographies of missionaries, and listening to sermons. She first heard Walter Martin, founder of the Christian Research Institute, on cassette and called CRI and announced enthusiastically, “I want everything he has ever done!” She had made the exciting discovery of apologetics.
In 1999, Dwayna became of member of the Grace to You tape library and began listening to sermons by John MacArthur on a daily basis. Strange as it may seem, she spent countless Friday and Saturday nights taking notes on sermons! Studying became the thrill of her life! She realized how little she knew, and she had an insatiable desire for learning more.
She entered a Mormon bookstore once in Nashville, by accident, and when she found out it was a Mormon bookstore, she said to the owner, “Wait just one minute. I’ll be right back,” and went to her car and got her notes by Walter Martin. The bookstore owner was stumped by her questions and asked, “Who are you, and what church are you with, and why are you here?” Dwayna got back in her car after the exhilarating experience of witnessing to that woman, and driving home all the way with a smile on her face, she said out loud to God, “Lord, it doesn’t get any better for me than this!”
Her favorite quote became: “It is a very ill omen to hear a wicked world clap its hands and shout well done to the Christian man.”- Charles Spurgeon.
Embarrassed by all of the ambition that she had once had to “make it big” in this world, she moved to Los Angeles in 2001 for the sole purpose of becoming a member of Grace Community Church and sitting under the expository teaching of John MacArthur. She joined the church the very first Sunday she was there and became a very active member. She roomed with two girls from the church for the first six months and then moved to Santa Monica, where she was working in an architectural firm. The job was paying a great salary, and she was able to afford a studio apartment right on the ocean.
As assistant to the Senior Partner, her boss was cheating the company, and one of her duties was to tally his expenses. She found herself starting out the days in a vacant parking lot praying before heading to the office, as the job became something she dreaded. When she finally questioned him about his expenses, he fired her. When he fired her he said, “You are a good person,” which gave her the perfect opportunity to share the Gospel with him replying with a smile, “Thank you for saying that, but I am really not. The Bible says no one is good…But He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf… I am really not good, but Jesus is.” Unfortunately, the Good News of the Gospel was apparently bad news to him, as he fumed out of the office, and she left in peace.
How LTW Came to Be
In February of 2002, on a Saturday off from her freelance jobs, she was walking along the beach collecting shells listening to a sermon on Revelation by John MacArthur on her walkman. She needed a bag for her shells, so she looked to her left and saw some businesses and commotion. She headed in that direction to happen upon the infamous Ocean Front Walk at Venice. It was devastating. The experience was horrifyingly surreal while listening to Revelation. She walked the whole boardwalk aghast at the depravity.
She walked up to a few of the psychics to talk to them about Jesus, but they were not interested in even making conversation about Him. She asked a policeman if it would be all right for someone to put a Christian table there amidst all of the other religions, and he said with a shocked look on his face, “Sure, as long as you don’t cause any trouble.”
She walked to the ocean to be alone with the Lord and pray for the people. She prayed, “Lord, show me how I can reach them.” She stood there by herself, looking out over the vast ocean, and wept for them.
The following day at church, she asked the elder in charge of evangelism what he thought about the idea of her buying a table and chairs and being available to talk to people at Venice Beach about Jesus, with a similar format to that of the psychics, in that she would let the passerby come to her, sit down with her, but instead of reading their palm, she would read them the Bible and tell them what God has to say about their future. The pastor at Grace Community thought it was a great idea, so she started volunteering her time every Saturday, and it became a church-wide ministry.
Dwayna started praying that somehow, some way, she could spend more time with the people at Venice than just once a week. Without asking anyone for financial support, someone called and offered to pay her basic living expenses for the ministry to go full time. It became a full time ministry with non-profit status and is now supported monthly by Christians, churches, and Christian businesses. To this date, no contributions have been solicited, and no one has been asked to give. Yet, the Lord continues to grow the ministry through His people, and all of the financial needs continue to be met
Lighting The Way works with churches in Southern CA in evangelizing the area through prayer walking, feeding the neighborhood weekly, donating clothing to the homeless, bringing Bible studies to them, writing tracts for the New Age environment, taking people to church and to church events, and providing Biblical answers to their objections to Christianity in love and gentleness.
No one is good enough for Jesus to save them. The Bible says we are all saved by grace, and there is nothing we can do to earn God’s favor. And, no one is worthy of His magnificent love. But God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Dwayna Litz is a Christian, no better than the next, but serious about her walk with God through obedience to His Word and evangelism. She never went to college, much less seminary, but she is indebted to tell people about Jesus for all that she has been forgiven, and she is hungry to know Him more through the study of His Word. And the longer she serves Him, the more she loves Him and appreciates His unmerited favor toward her in calling her His own and making her a Christian. She wakes up everyday with excitement for what God has planned and all that God has in store. This work is as natural as breathing in and out for her, different than the hopes and dreams she once held dear, but oh, so much better.
I have heard it said that of all the gifts heaven can bestow upon men, fellowship with Christ in His sufferings is the most weighty trust and the highest honor.”
“Do tell, my brother, Faithful, which of us do you suppose will spill his lifeblood on this field of battle?”
“I could certainly hope for such an honor,” said Faithful sincerely, “But I suppose that it shall be you, for you are more able to bear it than I.”
“Truly,” said Christian hopefully, “I would covet such a glorious fate as that. But sometimes ‘tis easier to die than fight on. Only God knows which path will bring the most honor to His name.” Pilgrim’s Progress Amplified Version pp. 196, 203
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