All That Is Good

This week’s learning was about ‘Heart Transplant’, specifically Ezekiel 36:26: I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. This week’s speaker was just phenomenal, her name is Goldie Gibson and she has the biggest heart for God that I’ve ever seen. She’s 60 years old and just loves Jesus so much, she’s also never been married because she has been patiently waiting on God’s timing. She’s awesome.
The beginning of this week was really tough, I felt so gross and twisted inside because I began to open up the problems that I re-sealed off a few weeks ago. I felt like this was the wrong feeling to have because I was giving it to God, He’s supposed to make me feel at peace, right? RIGHT?! Healing is all about process, and I hate that. I hate having to deal with the issues, it hurts and it makes me think about things that I hate thinking about. Well Goldie was talking about how we need to be with God in the hurt, and that’s one of the hardest things to do. I was hurt and refused to deal with it, so I ignored the wound and let it scab over so it stopped hurting; however that made the wound get infected. So when I finally decided to give it to God, it hurt like a mother because it’d been festering there for so long. I’m sorry this is kinda graphic, but that’s seriously how I feel inside and it sucks. But after spending some time with God in the hurt, I’ve started to feel a little better and have been able to breathe deeper than I ever have before. I still wish it was a faster process, but it’s going to be worth it in the end.

I also had a few new revelations this week. First, I was sitting with God and thinking about love. To truly love someone and be loved, you need to trust them. Easy enough. Oh wait, no. To trust that person you need to be vulnerable to them. VULNERABLE. That might be the scariest word ever (and I am only talking about emotions, don’t be physically vulnerable). Maybe it’s because I’ve been hurt so much or because I’ve silently suffered with low self-esteem, but regardless it’s a major thing. Society makes each one of us feel like wimps, have you ever noticed that? If you cry, you’re a pansy. If you talk about your feelings, you’re a ‘woman’. If you can’t bench your body weight, you’re a weakling. Vulnerability is a major NO and to do so is putting you at a very high risk. This mindset has completely affected my relationship with God and it is something that really needs to be fixed, so that has been my prayer for the past week. It’s a scary prayer, but I’m doing it!!! Secondly, I had the realization that love is freedom. It’s something I’ve known for my whole life, but I never really believed it. From experience I’ve learned in my heart that to be vulnerable to love means that I open myself up for being manipulated and controlled. No thanks. But I’ve started taking steps toward trusting God and knowing that He makes all things work together for my good. Baby steps!

I also want to apologize for the fact that I haven’t called anyone in a few weeks. I ran out of phone card minutes and haven’t had the internet to add more.
Well, this weekend was our second (and final) free weekend, which is why this blog is being posted late. Ten of us rented a house for the weekend up at Hahei and Cathedral Cove, and it was gorgeous. For those of you who don’t know, Cathedral Cove is the beautiful beach from Prince Caspian (Narnia!) when the four Pevensie kids randomly end up back in Narnia from the bus station. It was so beautiful. The pictures will be posted on facebook as soon as I get real internet. On Saturday, some of us walked from the beach near the house to the cove and then kayaked back to the beach. I learned two songs during that walk because it literally took an hour; one was in French and the other in German. It was awesome. Then we hung out at the beach, played some games, and went to the hot water beach that night. The hot water beach was one of the coolest things ever. Then on Sunday morning, another girl and I woke up at 6am and watched the sunrise over the ocean, and then four of us kayaked around some small islands for a couple hours before we had to start cleaning and packing. Epic.

New Zealand is beautiful.

Please keep praying for our Fiji team as there is still disunity and an ‘interesting’ social dynamic. I also have been feeling pretty down the past week, so maybe prayer for that too.

Third World Think Tank

This week we had lectures on Submission and Authority from Steve O’Hearn (the national director of YWAM Australia!) which was quite an honor. I learned that submission and obedience are different things, dang it society! Submission is an attitude that means we are giving someone full respect and authority over a situation or for God we should submit our whole life. Submission is an attitude and obedience is an action, therefore we can be obedient and not submissive or vice versa. Interesting.

Steve also taught on relationships for a few days, which was super awesome. He talked about boundaries, God’s view, baggage, submission and authority in marriage, and seeking God first. I’m not going to talk about all the things I’ve learned through that because it’s so much, but you could ask me about it when I come home or something.

One cool (and a little scary) thing that happened was that it was my turn for ‘encouragement time’ which we do every week during small group. So I sat in the chair and everyone encouraged me and then prayed for me, after which there were some prophesies spoken over me. There was a general theme of mercy, compassion, and empathy through all of them so that was pretty rad. Throughout my life I’ve had countless (seriously A LOT) people say to me, ‘God is going to do great things through you,’ and I’m so sick and tired of hearing that because there was never anything specific said… and ‘great things’ is so ridiculous vague. But I think God may have narrowed that down now, but we’ll see what He wants to do with my life. I’m sorry blog readers, but to be honest, some of the prophesies are pretty big deals and I’m not going to write about them on here because it’s kinda public and I just want to see what God says first.

Jesus Christ , my sanity and clarity.

We had a meeting about our Fiji/Samoa outreach today (woo-hoo) and found out some more stuff about it. Fiji looks like a lot of serving, hanging out with the Fijians and evangelism. I hope some of you have heard about this but I’m ridiculously aware of how the U.S. sucks at world news, but Samoa was hit by a huge tsunami in October and the country is simply leveled. Ravaged. Decimated. But there’s a YWAM base there so we’re going to be helping them rebuild, fix, clean, and reconstruct stuff for them and for their community. It also looks like we might get the opportunity to work through Habitat for Humanity to build some houses for the community. Sweeeet!

I would like prayer for encouragement this week. I was dealing with some things earlier in the school and I got so tired of dealing with them that I just bottled them up and put them on the shelf, only half dealt with. When our small group was praying for me, one girl told me that God wants to free me from some things that I’ve given up on dealing with and that I need to let Him finish off the process that He has started in me. Wow. So I’ve re-opened the bottle and am working through stuff again, which can get exhausting. So I would really appreciate some prayer.

All The Hype

This was the week of decisions

My two week fasted ended on Monday, and I came out of it with God’s clear decision for my outreach destination. I was peaceful about it until they started talking about the things that we were going to do on outreach. The place I hadn’t decided on was the one that fit my personality and my challenging nature, so I second guessed the decision that God had told me. And so I came back to Him and asked if that was truly the destination He wanted me at and then the following conversation ensued:

“God, where should I go? I know what you told me but I am built for the other destination.”

“Yeah, you’re right. You’re made for a life of adventure, challenges and intensity, but the time for that hasn’t come yet. Go to Fiji.”

“Ok, God!!”

So I’m going to Fiji and Samoa, endofstory.

This week we learned about missions and evangelism… AWESOME! I have learned so much and I feel way more prepared for outreach, it’s exciting. On Friday morning we spent some time in prayer and asked God to reveal to us some of His lost children so that we can seek them out during our afternoon street evangelism in Matamata. My partner, Josh, and I didn’t find the person we both saw during prayer, but we got the opportunity to pray for an elderly woman and then talk to some 17 year old kiwi’s about their religious beliefs and opinions about God. Then on Friday night we went to THOP (Tauranga House of Prayer, the NZ version of IHOP) for some worship and during that I felt God asking me to go outside to talk with Him alone. As I did this, I became more aware of a heavyhearted feeling that I’ve had for a significant amount of time and figured that this was why we needed to talk; and it was. I started talking with Him about it and then suddenly I felt really angry and frustrated at Him and was just really blunt about what I was feeling, then I got really sad and started sobbing because I felt so heartbroken and realized that I had covered my heartbrokenness with bitterness and anger toward God. While I was sitting there crying, I felt Him wrap His arms around me and share in my brokenness. He told me that He knows how hard it is to deal with and that I don’t need to worry about the reason it happened, just that He is going to bring good out of it, that He is a good God and that I need to trust him fully with the future. Once I calmed down, I apologized for my anger and resentment toward Him and then the heaviness and burden lifted off of me and I could breathe deeply for the first time in a long time. Chicka-yeah!

“An ordinary woman, she serves an extraordinary God. In her moments of greatest weakness, God reveals Himself through her. She has chosen to allow God to use the broken pieces of her life to create something beautiful. She is a pillar of strength, a woman whose faith remains unshaken in the face of change. The Holy Spirit whispers, “Speak what you see.”

I see beauty.

She leans against her Savior, and she finds grace. Knowing that only God can sustain her, she stands in the face of fear and resolves not to give up. She recognizes that the things of God are the only things that matter. Seeking after the things of Christ, she lives a life of integrity. She is a fighter, a survivor, a woman of strength. She is beauty.” – Regina Franklin, ‘Who Calls Me Beautiful?’

By the way, Five Iron Frenzy played in Matamata, NZ in 1999. WHHATTTTT?!?!?!?!

Fistful of Sand

This is the update for last week…. Sorry :/ Internet situations have gotten more sporadic and I’m only able to write this to you now because a super awesome guy came to the base, bought internet, used some of it, and then gave me the remaining amount right before he left. Sweet as! This week’s will be posted on Friday……………… hopefully.

Last week we talked about SPIRITUAL WARFARE; one of the most controversial and interesting topics in Christianity today. Dun dun dunnnn. We learned about how there are certain ‘curses’ over families and how to rebuke them and break them in the name of Jesus… crazy stuff man. We didn’t have any manifestations this week though, so that was good. The key thing that I took out of this week is the true realization that there is nothing that Satan (i.e. Jerkface) can do to us as Christians. Sometimes it feel s like jerkface is holding us in his hand and pounding us with his other fist and God is just watching on the sidelines… but He’s not!! Jerkface can do nothing to us and no matter what happens, God loves us and we are always protected in his loving arms, even when it doesn’t always feel like it. We have such security in our salvation and eternity that we can only sit back and laugh at jerkface’s lame attempts at making us stumble. What a lame as excuse for a nothing. Pfff. It’s quite the realization when you become aware of the spiritual battles that are occurring constantly and also that we can even help the angels defeat the demons! We have weapons of our own: prayer, fasting, praise and worship, the word and armor of God, speech, faith, communion and the name of Jesus. But the only way to be effective in warfare is to have faith and a good, clean conscience. And then WA-CHAA jerkface loses.

This past weekend the DTS travelled 5ish hours to help out with the Christian Surfers Conference, I was supposed to be in the worship band but we forgot the bass at the base… so I didn’t get to play. Oh well, I got to run the powerpoint! It was awesome and God totally worked through that time though, there are a lot of surfers that attend the conference that are not Christians and so the coordinators decided to have an alternative in case some of the people didn’t feel comfortable with the worship time… and worship was at the very end, after the teaching. Honestly we were expecting there to be the DTS and maybe 10 surfers that would stay for it. So I had a little intercession and lifted up the worship time to Him and asked Him to let His will be done. And you know what? Only 10 people LEFT to go to the bonfire… and some even went to the bonfire and then CAME BACK to the worship time! Hallelujah!

God is good! He loves me, knows that I am beautiful, holds me when I cry, hears my prayers, and fills me up when I feel empty.

There is some exciting news to come in the next blog entry… SO SIT AT THE EDGE OF YOUR SEATS UNTIL THEN!!!!