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Honolulu!!
If you read last weeks entry you'll know that our DTS spent the last week at the YWAM base in Honolulu, on the island of O'ahu. It was great... :-)
Heh heh, these are a bunch of my room-mates duplicating Rebeka's cool hairstyle... (She's the one on the far right.) These girls are (from left to right) Camilla, Amanda, Cynthia, Kristen, Vanessa and Rebeka. A bunch of us had to sleep at a church that was relatively near to the base. The YWAM base is kinda small so we couldn't all sleep there... We had fun though. :-)
We played hangman more than once... :-) That's Koto, she's from Fiji. (I'm afraid I don't remember what that word was...)
That's Jean on Waikiki beach! We went there once, but it was very windy and kinda cold, but still fun...
That's on our way to the mall! (I'm afraid I went there every day from Monday to Friday...) From left to right: Gay, Jean, Rebeka and Cynthia.
...and that's me, Kimberly and Amanda. :-)
And what did we do at the mall? We tried on dresses just for fun... :-) (That's me and Kimberly in case you can't tell...)
...me and Jean... (My hair is creepy...)
...Jean and Kimberly... (Ain't they pretty?)
That's a cool picture, isn't it? It looks like I have a star in my hand or something... :-) (Before you think I have some supernatural powers, that just my camera's flash...)
First we learned about spiritual discipline. In Luke 2:52 it says "So Jesus grew both in height and in wisdom, and he was loved by God and by all who knew him." From this verse you can take out four areas of discipline: wisdom, stature (physical exercise), spiritual discipline and social discipline. Think about it, if Jesus had to grow, how much more do we have to grow!
There are also five Bible disciplines: read, study, meditate, memorize and hear (God's voice). So far I just used to read the Bible, but the other four are just as important, so I've started working on the book of James. (I've memorized the first four verses...fwee! :-))
Some other disciplines are REST (we should rest one day a week), EXERCISE (yes, God cares about our health, too...) and SOLITUDE. Quiet times alone with God are really important. It's much harder to hear His voice and to even concentrate when there's a bunch of noise around us...
Disciplines are an important part of discipleship... Did you know that the word "disciple" is mentioned 269 times in the Bible, and the word "christian" is only mentioned 3 times? That means being a disciple must be important... In Luke 14:25-33 Jesus commanded His disciples to do four things:
1. Hate your family and even your life (this is an intended exageration to make a point, but Jesus never said anything He didn't mean...)
2. Carry the cross
3. Follow Jesus
4. Give up everything
When we do these things and become His disciples, we live life to the fullest. Most people think that living life to the fullest means going after the same things the world go after, e.g. wealth and possessions, but Jesus promises that we'll live life to the fullest when we follow Him...
We also fasted for one day. (That was hard...we ordered pizza in the evening...) Mike (one of our staff) told us that, unless we're fasting for something specific, we can simply fast to show God that we're more hungry for Him than for food. It makes you think when you can't even manage to fast for one day...
Then we learned about pride and humility. Did you know that pride is the Nr. 1 thing that hinders our spiritual growth? Or that humility is the doorway to God's blessings? Humility is the willingness to be known for who you are. There are four types of pride: Pride of face (physical pride, being proud of your looks), pride of race (racial/cultural pride), pride of place (positional pride, e.g. being proud of being a leader) and pride of grace, and that's spiritual pride, the worst of all... (Did you notice that they rhime? :-))
Sorry if I didn't write all of that very well, I'm really tired and finding it hard to concentrate...sorry!
One last thing to ponder over: How you love others is how you love God...
The Fatherheart of God...
...or Openess and Brokeness.
Hey, I'm sorry I'm a lil late. I wanted to do this yesterday (on Sunday), but the computers in the DTS lounge weren't working and the computer room was closed... So, I'll tell you now about my last week. :-)
I'll try to summarize it 'cause I made a whole lot of notes... Ok, here we go...
We experienced a lot of healing this week, and the way we did it was to simply ask WHY...
Why do I do the things I do?
Why am I the way that I am?
Why do I struggle with this?
Why can't I stop doing what I'm doing?
Our attitude towards God should be humble, open and honest. Otherwise we can't ask why and we won't want to hear the answer. We need to be completely open with God in order to be broken... I can just hear you thinking "But I don't want to be broken!" Oh yes you do... If you want to experience His wonderful healing, then yes, you do want to be broken. It says in Psalm 51:17 The sacrifice you want is a broken spirit. A broken and repentant heart, O God, you will not despise.
And why do we need to be broken? Wash me clean from my guilt. Purify me from my sin. (Verse 2)
Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. (Verse 7)
And it goes on... Oh, give me back my joy again; ... Remove the stain of my guilt. ... Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me.
You get closer to God when you're broken and vulnerable.
First off, you need to know that God doesn't love you for what you do. His love is completely unconditional. He loves you no matter what you've done. He's always loved you. And He still does.
The answers to those WHYs I mentioned before are dark areas in our lives. Dark areas are places where God doesn't rule... Weaknesses and insecurities in your life need to be dealt with. A dark area for insecurities could be that you haven't experienced enough love as a child, or you were rejected by someone in the past. It's these things that we tend to overlook and try to ignore that create strongholds in our minds. Strongholds can be set ways of thinking, for example if we see one mean Japanese person, so we think that all Japanese people are mean. This is prejudice and a stronghold.
Strongholds can be created by thoughts that are planted in our mind (if someone's told you you are stupid or ugly), they can be created by how we see God or ourselves, they can be created by simply observing (e.g. if we see something repeated over and over, so we think it's always like that) and traumatic things that happened in your past can also create strongholds (for example if you were raped you might struggle with feelings of unworthiness.)
One thing that can create very bad strongholds is lack of acceptance... Not feeling accepted can lead to depression or even to hating yourself...
One thing that lot's of us do wrong when we see our bad habits is that we try to change our habits instead of asking WHY this habit is there, then going to the source of that bad habit and being healed there. E.g. if someone struggles with looking at pornography, maybe he'll just make himself stop looking, but he'll still always have a desire to go look... He needs to ask why that desire is even there, maybe there's a sin in his past he hasn't dealt with, or maybe someone sinned against him and he never truly forgave that person for that particular sin.
That's another problem... Sometimes we say "I forgive you," but that doesn't always cut it... Sometimes you need to forgive someone for creating a certain feeling within you, like rejection or unworthiness, even if they didn't do it on purpose. You were still hurt, and you need to forgive and let God heal.
I'll give you one example of one of the things where I received healing. I've been struggling with a pretty low self-esteem and feelings of unworthiness. I asked God why, and He showed me that I had never been certain of my dad's love. (He's a really strong man, and strong men sometimes have trouble saying "I love you," which isn't a sin, but it was something missing in my life. He showed me he loved me in other ways though.) Another thing was that I always felt that my parents would only love me if I did well in school, and I wasn't always very good, so... (My parents were not like that, they just wanted me to do well because they loved me, and I misinterpreted that...) And one last thing was that when I went to school there were some people who told me that I was fat and ugly... I wasn't, but I believed them... So I had to forgive my parents (eventhough they didn't sin against me) and I had to forgive those people I went to school with. We did this in class, in front of each other, and I ended up crying my heart out, so Larry, our speaker, wrapped me in his arms and prayed over me. (I think he's held most of our class in his arms now...) He told me that he had a picture of me sitting cross-legged on the floor, and God reaching out for me and picking me up, brushing off all of the hurt and the feelings of unworthiness. (I was bawling by then...) Then he felt like God was saying to me that when I had been walking alone, He had been right there with me, watching over me. Larry had no idea what my life had been like, and what he said touched me sooooooo much, because in school I had been by myself a whole lot, and God telling me that He cared about that just...blew me away. (I love You, God!!!)
I didn't really want to share that, and I'm not trying to attack anyone at all! (If you're my parents, I love you guys and couldn't ask for better parents! And I know that you guys love me, too.) I just wanted to show you an example of how God's been working in my life, and how God can heal.
Now God has healed me, but that doesn't mean I can just kick back and forget about it... Now I need to be very careful not to fall back into that old way of thinking, because satan knows exactly where my weak points are, and he's going to attack me right there.
When you've experienced this kind of healing you need to be aware that the devil will still tempt you, and now he'll probably tempt you more than he did before! He doesn't want you to be healed, he wants you to fall back into your old habits! But what we can do when he attacks us is to go to God with it straight away, and we can rebuke the devil in the name of Jesus, telling him that he no longer has any power over us because God has healed us.
And we also need to try to stay away from places where we'll be tempted. For example if you were healed from smoking, then don't go into a bar where people are smoking all around you. Even Jesus prayed "And don't let us yield to temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." (Matthew 6:13) If JESUS asked God not to let Him be tempted, how much more do WE have to pray that! If we think we're strong enough to resist temptation on our own, think again! We're not! We can only resist it with God's help.
This got pretty long anyway... This week was absolutely amazing! It's also made our class grow closer together. (Crying together does that to you...)
Ok, I think I've definitely written enough for now... ;-)
Nations to Nations
This was an amazing week. I'm soooo tired...
Ok, this week was about "Nations to Nations," about nations going/coming to different nations to share the gospel. There's a Nations to Nations team who came to share with us (they're so cool, they have people from Africa, from Australia, from Switzerland, from South America, ...) and we joined together with three other YWAM bases, the one in Honolulu, the one in Makapala (which is also on the big island, like this base) and Maui. The DTSes from those three schools came to Kona and we all had school together. There were a whole bunch of people on campus, and they were staying in our rooms, which means there were altogether ten girls in our room... It went pretty well, it was just kinda tight, and we were all really, really tired by the end of the week...
The Bibleverse that we had over this week was Revelation 7:9:
After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white and held palm branches in their hands.
We are called to go to all the nations of the earth and to bring them the gospel, the "good news." Sometimes we're prejudiced towards certain people groups though, like maybe towards people from Third World countries. We may not even realize it, but sometimes we subconsciously think we're better than they are, which explains why some missionaries try to bring in our culture along with the gospel, trying to make them worship and have church services the way we do, which isn't necessarily good... A lot of culture goes lost when we do that, and when we go into the nations we should just accept the people as they are, we should embrace them as they are, along with their culture.
I don't want to give a lecture on all that I've learned this week, (I know, I have a tendency to write too much...), I just wanna share a few of the special things...
Ok, first a couple of cools things that I learned that made me think...
FAITH is a walk, not a stand... And without faith it is IMPOSSIBLE to please God.
And here are some things that we, as Christians, NEED to pursue, otherwise our faith is just "standing"...
1. We need to pursue a new level of intimacy with God.
2. We need to pursue a new level of worship as a lifestyle.
3. We need to pursue a new level of sacrificing our time and a new level of commitment.
4. We need to pursue a new level of prayer-life. (Guard your prayer-life! Satan will attack it!)
5. We need to pursue a new level of spending time in the Word and listening to His voice.
6. We need to pursue a new level of discipline.
7. We need to pursue a new level of faith in God.
8. We need to pursue a new level of transparency. (Be known for who you really are!)
9. We need to go to a new level of forgiveness. (Unforgiveness is sin...)
10. We need to GO!! ...and proclaim the Good News.
Notice that it almost always says "we need to pursue," which means we have to take actions, we have to WALK in faith, it doesn't happen automatically. This week's really made a big impact on my faith...but not only on my faith, it was a special day for a different reason, too... :-)
On Wednesday it was Valentine's Day (Happy belated Valentine's Day!! :-)) and it was really, really special... The guys from our class (from our class...) decided to do something special for all the girls in our class, so they told us to meet them at 5pm and to dress up. (That's all the told us...) So we went there at five (all of the girls were so pretty! Most of us love dressing up... :-)) and some of the guys were waiting there, then they escorted us (one guy with two girls, one on each arm) to the pavillion (that's where we normally have class.) They'd decorated it beautifully, there were round tables that were all set really nicely, with heart-shaped chocolates and candles. There they escorted us to our seats and served us dinner, with entrees and dessert and everything... It was sooooo sweet... :-) They also played us some music and a few people danced, and it was just a wonderful evening. I think this was the first time I've ever actually done something special on Valentine's Day. (Thank you guys!!) I sadly didn't make any pictures (I'd forgotten to reload the battery in my camera) but maybe I'll be able to show you some that some other people made...
By the way, I'm still praying about going to Russia... I'm thinking about going back home after this and going to the University (PH Bern) and becoming a teacher (pre-school and 1st/2nd grade) and then, after three years when I'm finished, going to Russia and working with children there. While I'm studying I also want to learn Russian and more about the culture. I'm still praying about it though, but if this is what God wants me to do, I'm super-excited... :-)
Fear of the Lord
Hiya! This week we had a great speaker, his name's Dan Shannon. (We've actually only had great speakers so far, we've been really blessed...)
I'm not going to make this long, just basically what I've learned is that to be able to fear God you need to know and understand His nature and His character. Dan summed it up in two sentences...
The nature of God is how big He is...
The character of God is how good He is...
I tend to worry a lot about things, about whether I'll have enough money, about my future, about eating too much, etc., and I don't trust God, I don't have faith that He can handle all of those things. But the truth is that He is so big (He holds the entire universe and all the galaxies in the palm of His hand!) and so good (He loves us all sooooooooooooo... much!!) that, if we know that, there can be no doubt in our minds that NOTHING is too big for God!
And, when we've understood how big and how good He is, there should be no option for us but to follow Him. How could anyone, who truly knows God, chose NOT to follow Him? It wouldn't make sense... But we can only follow Him and fulfill His plans for our lives completely if we understand His nature. Why would anyone want to follow someone they don't know? We need to know God to be able to trust Him.
When we're worried about something and ask ourselves if God is able, the answer is absolutely!! He IS big enough for all of your worries and troubles and problems! Just trust Him and ask Him for help, and He will not fail you....ever.
Other than enjoying our lectures, I've had a pretty good week. :-) Last night we went bowling (I played so bad, it was so much fun!), on Friday morning our DTS was in charge of the worship and everything went wrong while we were preparing (the sound-guy was late, I didn't know most of the songs by heart and we had no notes, one of the guitars sounded weird, we didn't have time to practice) and ironically enough that morning they told us about thankfulness, so we thanked God for everything, and it went really good! It's (mostly) been a good week. :-)
By the way, for those of you that don't know yet, in about three weeks my class is going to be leaving for Taiwan. We'll be there for two weeks having lectures and probably doing mini-outreaches, then we'll split up into our teams and go to our different outreach locations. There are ten people in my team (we're a great team!) and we'll be going to Cambodia for two months. Then I'll be going back to Kona, Hawaii for one week, and then I'll be on my way home again. Time's been going so fast, it's scary!
Ok, that's long enough... God bless you!