THE AUDACIOUS ADVENTURE with Danica & Autumn

Meet YOUR Fellow Adventurers! // Adventuring with the Holy Spirit

• Danica Childs • Episode 2

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You’re not alone as you embark on THE AUDACIOUS ADVENTURE – we’re here to be your jovial guides for the journey!  In this second episode, we share our personal backstories and Christian testimonies so you’ll know exactly who you’ll be traveling with on THE AUDACIOUS ADVENTURE!  (Make sure you check out our first episode where we explain what The Audacious Adventure IS.) 

Join us as we adventure with the Holy Spirit – and the more laughs along the way, the better!  Whether you realize it or not, once you have the AUDACITY to say YES to Jesus, you're embarking on THE AUDACIOUS ADVENTURE -- a lifelong journey with the Holy Spirit as your guide.  It's the threefold adventure of knowing God intimately through His Word and your experiences with Him, knowing your true self through the work of the Holy Spirit, and then making Jesus and His love known to the world.  

ABOUT US:
DANICA CHILDS is a Spiritual Director with a MA in Spiritual Formation/Soul Care from Talbot Seminary and a MA in Christian Apologetics from Biola University. Her sister AUTUMN is a storyteller passionate about the spiritual gifts and creating with the Holy Spirit. We’re sisters who've spent a combined forty years in various forms of ministry, including co-planting a church in Hollywood with other families, where we served in a variety of leadership roles for around a decade. Later we began THE AUDACIOUS ADVENTURE as a Los Angeles based ministry in 2016. We daily pursue creative, artistic, messy, and joyful lives of adventure in Southern California with our family and friends!

"We're excited to adventure audaciously with YOU!"


Autumn Cornwell:

Hello and welcome to the Audacious Adventure. I'm Autumn Cornwell.

Danica Childs:

And I'm Danica Childs.

Autumn Cornwell:

And we're two sisters adventuring with the Holy Spirit.

Danica Childs:

Thank you for joining us today.

Autumn Cornwell:

Right now, you're probably wondering who are your guides for this audacious adventure we're talking about? Well, I guess a little backstory is in order. Basically Danica and I are the daughters of missionaries who were in Southeast Asia until I was around 10 years old, I think it was. And then our parents resumed careers in other areas, other arenas and came back to the States. And so we spent our formative years in Washington state and then the East Coast. And then we ended up coming back to college, Christian College, where we both got our Mrs. degrees and married our college boyfriends. So that's a fun story in and of itself. And then we ended up settling eventually in the same area in California. And right now we actually live minutes from each other, and we're both married. Me 29 years.

Danica Childs:

22.

Autumn Cornwell:

Oh, good answer. We both have two kids. We both homeschool right now. It's been a journey with schooling. And it's been fun. So that's another adventure. And we actually, and Danica is going to share a little bit about her journey, but overall, we've been active in California doing different careers and different vocations.

But we always were involved in the church, and doing all sorts of things:

lay leadership, volunteering, actually co planting churches with families, doing lots of ministry and outreach and hosting groups at our house, listening prayer groups, Bible studies. Danica will tell you she also preached, was a teaching pastor. And we covered the gamut. Oh, my goodness, we covered the whole gamut in the last 20 years. So we have a combined experience of about 40 years.

Danica Childs:

Yeah, yes, focus on combined.

Autumn Cornwell:

Yes, yes, yes.We are not, we do not have some sort of mysterious, youthful years of ministry. So that's kind of the overview of us, I guess. And why we're doing this, and we just have a passion, we have a passion for adventuring with the Holy Spirit, and kind of sharing our knowledge and our experiences, and kind of setting people free from kind of the constructs and the boxes of religion, and helping them be excited about the Bible and the Trinity. And just God himself, you know, so.

Danica Childs:

Yes, exactly. And we just love God, we have had so much fun getting to know him.

Autumn Cornwell:

Actually we should probably say we both accepted Jesus as our Savior. We said yes to him when we were very young, about four years old. Right? For both of us? Was it about four?

Danica Childs:

How did you, how were you brought into the kingdom?

Autumn Cornwell:

How was I brought into the Kingdom? (Laughter) Yes, yes. Uh, so I think it was mother and I were together. And I said I wanted to accept Jesus, I wanted Jesus to be in my heart. And that's how it happened. You know, I still have a vague memory of that, like, I can still remember it. And I remember he has never left me since, you know. There's been an interesting journey of me going, "Jesus, you could just kind of sit over there for a little bit. And I want to do my own thing for a little bit." But you know, he never left me. He never leaves or forsakes us so. But it's been interesting. And as Danica mentioned, it is an adventure. The sanctification process is truly organic and textured and full of all sorts of experiences you would never expect.

Danica Childs:

Yes. I came to the Lord, as they say, The LORD, as a four year old in the country that my parents were missionaries in. From another missionary kid preaching a fire and brimstone sermon at me, saying, "If you love Jesus, and you want to go to heaven, you have to accept Jesus in your heart, otherwise, you're gonna go to hell," (laughter) "Do you want to go to hell?" And I was like, NO! I love Jesus. And so then from that moment, I accepted Jesus. So you know, there's all sorts of ways to come into God's Kingdom.

Autumn Cornwell:

Fire and brimstone.

Danica Childs:

Fear!

Autumn Cornwell:

And mine was, "Jesus, I love you."

Danica Childs:

Yes. So that began my journey, four years, when I was four years old. I do remember our mother saying that there was a change in Danica's behavior.

Autumn Cornwell:

Ha, ha, ha!

Danica Childs:

Like for the better or the worse, I don't know.

Autumn Cornwell:

Because her name was Danica Dickens.

Danica Childs:

Yes, I got into a lot of trouble. Let's just say I got lots of consequences as a child.

Autumn Cornwell:

Good child, bad child. (Laughter)

Danica Childs:

But as we, as I grew up, I would say... so one more thing is autumn and I have grown up in all different denominations of churches as well. We grew up in mainline denominations, and then we've been in non denominations. And we've worshipped in all denominations throughout the world, actually, in all different countries around the world. So we have quite the varied experience and we just love God's Church in all The multi dimensional nature of it, we love it all.

Autumn Cornwell:

Yeah, whether it's like a jungle setting we've worshipped or, you know, high church settings

Danica Childs:

persecuted church settings

Autumn Cornwell:

Yeah, persecuted church settings...

Danica Childs:

high churches, formal churches, low churches, informal churches,

Autumn Cornwell:

Charismatic, more liturgical. You know, we love it all.

Danica Childs:

We do love it all.

Autumn Cornwell:

When it's inerrant, they believe in the inerrancy of Scripture.

Danica Childs:

Yes.

Autumn Cornwell:

They love the Word of God. And they believe Jesus is the savior. Yeah, we're there.

Danica Childs:

Yes. So we have quite the variety of experience. And we enjoy all of it. We enjoy all these expressions of how Christians worship their Lord and Savior. So I just wanted to make sure that got out there as well. But as far as like my journey, I don't remember ever feeling super close to God as a child, although I always knew Christianity was the truth. I've never wavered from that. I've always known it was the truth. And yet, I always was like, oh, but there's gotta be more than it just being the truth. But I do remember specific moments where you know, you're talking to your high school friends, and you have the atheists or the agnostics, and they're like, God doesn't exist. And, you know, if he did, why would we have evil and all those sorts? You know, all those questions, you get thrown at you, you know, and I just remember, even if I can't answer it, I still know that I know that it's true. And so, you know, after graduating from a Christian college and getting out in the world, and being confronted by more people who don't believe Christianity is true, and getting confronted with their questions, and not really knowing how to answer them, I waas like, you know, what, maybe my problem is, the reason why I don't feel close to God is because I don't really know know, know why it's I knew it was true. But why it was, you know. So I thought, well, you know, the best place to figure this out is getting a master's degree in Christian apologetics. So that's what I did. I went to Biola University and got a master's in Christian apologetics. And it was fantastic. I love the program, had great professors there, learned a lot, totally convinced me again, that Christianity is true. And then I walked out of that program, and I still had this emptiness inside. This emptiness of like, I know your're real Jesus, but I just don't feel close to you. And I don't know how to get close. I don't know what's wrong with me. Now, I should say at this point. We started getting involved doing things in the church and doing ministry things. And I just kept thinking, you know, like, I still feel sort of like lonely in my relationship with God, if that makes sense. And then I started talking to a friend of mine who put me in touch with Dr. John Coe of the Institute for Spiritual Formation at Talbot seminary, and he had this series, a CD series that really got into the idea of spiritual formation, and what does that look like. And a big part of that is understanding yourself in relationship to God, understanding your family of origin, it was really the adventure, the personal adventure. And so that struck a chord in me, I was like, I need to go to this program. So I applied for the Masters in Spiritual Formation and Soul Care at Talbot and got in and did that degree as well. And that is where I finally learned how to develop a relationship with God. A relationship that is based in honesty, and truth where I could be my true self, before the God who loves me. And it was when I realized how to do that, in the presence of God that the relationship with my relationship with God started getting deeper and more and more intimate and started fulfilling me in that way that I had always longed for ever since I was a kid. And one of the things I really had to learn in this process was how to actually feel and acknowledge my emotions, because I don't do that naturally. And as a kid because I wanted to avoid any kind of emotional pain, I would just numb myself to it or just ignore it and act like it didn't exist. And when you do that, you actually start numbing yourself to the presence of God as well. And that's what I learned. So that is where I am today. I am now a spiritual director as well and I can feel my emotions and name them now.

Autumn Cornwell:

She not a big brick anymore, just kidding! (laughter)

Danica Childs:

Although it still takes a lot to make me cry, usually war movies.

Autumn Cornwell:

oh yes I love this story of Danica's journey because it's so funny because we are very opposite.

Danica Childs:

Very.

Autumn Cornwell:

Danica feels nothing, I feel everything.

Danica Childs:

And that's not hyberbole. (laughter)

Autumn Cornwell:

So God was like boom! I think what happened was God, Jesus was like, "dut, dut, dut, duh, duh, " and then he spilled all the emotions on me. And then he's like, "Oh, I only have a few left for Danica, sprinkle, sprinkle." (lots of laughter)

Danica Childs:

That's pretty accurate.

Autumn Cornwell:

Which is actually good because Danica wasn't a pushover, and she didn't cry all the time. I tried to make her cry sometimes. But anyway, being the older wiser one.

Danica Childs:

Oh, see, she admits it.

Autumn Cornwell:

Um, but yeah, so my journey, so while Danica was on her journey, my journey was different in that I always had this I always felt like Jesus was kind of fun and adventurous. I got this sense about him, even if I wouldn't have articulated that. But I was big into physical adventures and creative adventures. So that's how I went about my life. And it was always kind of ambitious. And I want to create, and I want to be a writer-director, I want to create content, I want to make people laugh. And so, you know, my whole life, I was very driven to everything, from scripts, to books, to films, to whatever. It was always about story. There was always humor in it. And then on the same token, as I was furthering that career, I was always traveling internationally. So between Danica and myself and our family, and then my husband and I, we traversed the globe. And so that meant, you know, backpacking and, and going into rustic settings, and then cities and all all landscapes around the world. But what then happened was, I just also had a kind of time with the Holy Spirit, when suddenly my heart started to get, I guess, tender, it sounds really cheesy, but it did.

Danica Childs:

Strangely warmed?

Autumn Cornwell:

Strangely warmed! With the idea of all these tribes in Southeast Asia. We would trek through tribes, and we would go on these adventures, and I just cared for these people. And some of them were really hurting, they were persecuted. And I couldn't just come and be a tourist, I had to do something. So that led me into many outreach trips with our church at the time, and very interesting just to see the persecuted the joy, the love, the strength, the hope, the peace of the persecuted church around the world blew me away. And and it kind of changed the way I viewed my life. And also just this idea of like, oh, my gosh, we get one life to live before we're in eternity with Jesus, I want to make it count. I want to do as much as I can for Jesus and His Kingdom and make people laugh along the way. And so I guess the main thing that I discovered when Danica started to go get all her degrees, was that she was starting to be more open to the Holy Spirit's giftings because we met Biola and Talbot professors that were really about that and really made us see that you know, you can be intellectual, you can love theology, but you can also be open to the Holy Spirit's giftings. And really flow with that more. And so that made it exciting. And we're gonna get into that in other episodes, but it made me step out in faith in more ways and more ways...

Danica Childs:

Take more risks.

Autumn Cornwell:

Yes, yes. And so, yeah, and I think creatively, I have always been a risk taker, taker, like put me on a stage to do stand up comedy and not know what I'm doing.

Danica Childs:

Some of us are trying not to look. (laughter)

Autumn Cornwell:

I could crash and burn. But anything, you know, I would go out and risk any way I could creatively. And then I would do that also with Jesus and getting him out there in different ways, but still in tandem with my career. So anyway, so mine has been different than Danica's and mine goes into more prophecy and miracles and different kinds of adventures like that, I think. But then we both got into both of those. So yeah.

Danica Childs:

She takes it to the road, she takes it to the street, she talks to strangers, she prays for all sorts of people. So she's definitely risk taking in that way, a lot more than I am. So the way I like to think about it is Autumn is like a bubble of effervescence. She is she brings the joy, she brings the warmth, she brings the enthusiasm. She has so many great ideas. And then I'm the rock of reality that helps ground everything.

Autumn Cornwell:

That's a great analogy. Yes, you need both. Yeah.

Danica Childs:

And one more thing. Autumn has written two young adult novels. So if there is anybody in your life that you think would love a good read that is adventurous and hilarious. You can pick up either one of her books, you can find them on Amazon, the first one was Carpe Diem. And the second one was Never Sorry, Ever Jolly. And a lot of the experiences she describes in these books they take place in Southeast Asia, she actually experienced on her travels. So these are not made up scenarios. These are things that actually happened to her. So when she's talking about how she adventured and she took risks, well, you can read about it in her fictionalized accounts, that are actually filled with real life events from her life.

Autumn Cornwell:

And I know they're kind of like thinly veiled autobiography. I know I remember going should I make it an autobiography, or should I make it fiction? And I was going back and forth. And that's the adventure of the creative life. Yes, like what do you do? And right now to be honest, I'm grappling with the other projects I'm going to be doing and I know we're going to be doing something on that on the show too for you creatives out there when you're trying to create with the Holy Spirit and just that idea of where to go next and what is God calling you into and all that so I love that kind of stuff. And that's another thing.

Danica Childs:

If you have a young adult in your life who you want to give them books with an uplifting feel to them, these are not moralistic tales, okay, for one thing, so don't get that in your head. These are really funny, young adult messy books that are filled with hope and light and joy and just the wonder of travel as well. Yeah, the joy that comes with that. So You know, there's a lot of stuff out there that can feel dark. This is not... Autumn's stuff is super light and fun. And, I guarantee you will laugh.

Autumn Cornwell:

And she will get a commission on it. (laughter)

Danica Childs:

If only!

Autumn Cornwell:

No, no, she's my sister. She gets nothing, but my presence. (laughter) We should be waking up every day with hopeful expectation, hopeful expectation of what the Holy Spirit is going to be doing today. Like the idea of like, what is the adventure today? And it doesn't matter where you are, who's in your life, it is adventurous. I mean, even if you're an accountant, even if you're doing tax accounting, you know, it's an adventure in that for you.

Danica Childs:

You can anticipate it. Because there's always the adventure of knowing more about yourself. That can happen every single day if you are open to the Spirit. There's the adventure of getting to know God every single day as you open to the Spirit. And then there's the adventure of taking Jesus to a hurting world. And that is a huge adventure, bringing that joy and love and peace and forgiveness to a hurting world.

Autumn Cornwell:

Oh yeah, and it's and I think people can get a little overwhelmed. I think we've all been through some stuff i the last couple of years here, but I think God still it says, the joy of the Lord is our strength. You know, and because of the joy set before Him, Jesus endured the cross, I mean, the idea of joy and understanding that just how we view the world is really important right now. So we want to be your jovial, like robust, but jovial guides that will encourage, be encouragers. I mean, we want to speak the truth and we will be straightforward we will be forthcoming, vulnerable, transparent, but we also feel we always want to leave you with hope and joy and a sense of, "oh, I can't wait to see what God has in store for me next." I mean you are partnering right now, you listening or watching or whatever, you are partnering with the Holy Spirit. You are part of this right now. You have no idea what the next year is going to bring in your life. But we are here to be part of it.

Danica Childs:

Yes!