Jerome Walks Across America with Nothing & Miracles Happen

Jerome Beers has an amazing testimony of God providing for him as he has lived a Matthew 10 lifestyle for eight years. God wants us to trust him in radical ways so that we can see his goodness. Jesus sent his disciples out with nothing but the shirts on their backs in Matthew 10 so that they could experience God providing for them. Jerome has lived out the principles that we seek to impart to young people through the World Race. Here is his story:

Walking across America with Nothing

“It was 2016. I was going to college and it wasn’t working. I needed to step into something different. I was covered in cynicism and bitterness as I looked at what the world was offering me. What I had in front of me just wasn’t motivating at all.

I studied different world religions and ideas. And I became convinced in the reality of Christianity from an academic standpoint. But there was still this emotional, experiential side of it that I hadn’t ever seen really lived out.

So I decided to go through the Bible to see what it has to say for itself. In Matthew 10 I came across all these promises about emotional well-being and God literally physically taking care of you.

Jesus tells his followers, “Just go. You don’t need food. You don’t need money. I’ll give you what you need along the way.”

I took that very seriously. I sold everything I own. I dropped out of college and I started walking across the United States with the goal of just walking till I hit the Pacific. I walked from Pennsylvania to Los Angeles.

So the first day I’m out there, I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m just kind of making this up as I go. I pray, “God, I need some food.” Then, I see some rain clouds off in the distance. It starts pouring on me. So now I’m soaking wet trying to dry out, and there’s this little farmer’s stand set up on the side of the road.

I walk in there to kind of get out of the rain. I begin talking to the owner inside. I never told him that I was walking across the United States or that I needed food. After the rain lifts, I begin to walk away. I’m about 15 feet away from the stand. And the owner said, “Wait, wait, come back. I want to give you this quart of cherries.”

And that was the first time God gave me some food on that journey. It held up for over 500 days. After about a month, I’m coming through downtown Pittsburgh and a prostitute approaches me. I talk to her like I would talk to anybody else. Eventually she looks at me and says,”Hey, I wanna buy you a meal.”

I hadn’t told her what I was doing, that I needed anything. I started to say, “Wait, no, you don’t need to. It’s okay.” But I felt God speak to me and challenge me, “What are you doing? I just offered you a meal.”

So I said, “Okay.” It gave me a new idea of what this was gonna look like and how God was gonna show up in all sorts of different ways. We went into this little restaurant.

She was so poor, she didn’t even buy herself dinner. She watched me eat the dinner that she bought for me.

I learned right then and there that God was going to show up every single day and give me what I needed. I’ve continued to live that way for the last eight years now. I take the principles that you see in Matthew 10, that show God’s real. He’s present and he’s active. You can live that way. It’s possible.”