You must understand this...

This was a week in which I struggled with being sick most of the time and found it very hard to stay focused due to the many fevers I would have. Many people would pray for me and ask that God would meet me in this time and often I would think “How is that even possible, I can’t seem to even spell simple words or speak in complete sentences.” However, prayer is powerful and I learned once the fever passed, the body aches subsided, and the effects of the many medications the doctor gave me wore off that God did meet with me this week.
I greatly enjoy the book of Exodus (probably because my mentor loves it so much :)). This week in class our topic was “God’s Global Purpose” aka “MISSIONS WEEK” in which we talked about different missions in the Bible and also historically. We were reading the story about Moses bringing the Israelites out of slavery when I stumbled across a verse that I have read many times before.

“So Moses told the people of Israel what the LORD had said, but they refused to listen anymore. They had become too discouraged by the brutality of their slavery.” Exodus 6:9 (NLT)

I read this and all the sudden it hit me, I let my situations control when I hear God speak, and when I don’t hear him at all. It is not that God isn’t talking, but rather, I REFUSE to listen. I would often times this God was distant and didn’t want anything to do with me when I struggled or become overwhelmed, however I look at the Israelites and they too REFUSED to listen. God was right there with them during that time and in Exodus its talks about God hearing the groans and cries from his people. God was there with them!
I went to God for forgiveness and with great gratitude when He brought it to my attention. How many times have I done this to God and refused to hear what he was saying? More times than I could count. How many times have I allowed my situation to become bigger than God? More times than I wish to know. How many times have I become discouraged with my situation and allowed that to control my life and heart?  I did it this week when I was sick.
Later in the week God opened my eyes to the verses that come right before verse 9:

And God said to Moses, “I am Yahweh—‘the LORD. ³ I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El-Shaddai—God Almighty—but I did not reveal my name, Yahweh, to them. ⁴ And I reaffirmed my covenant with them. Under its terms, I promised to give them the land of Canaan, where they were living as foreigners. ⁵ You can be sure that I have heard the groans of the people of Israel, who are now slaves to the Egyptians. And I am well aware of my covenant with them.

⁶ “Therefore, say to the people of Israel: ‘I am the LORD. I will free you from your oppression and will rescue you from your slavery in Egypt. I will redeem you with a powerful arm and great acts of judgment. ⁷ I will claim you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God who has freed you from your oppression in Egypt. ⁸ I will bring you into the land I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I will give it to you as your very own possession. I am the LORD!’”  Exodus 6:2-8

I read this and sat back to try to swallow the fact that God NEVER revealed that he was LORD to Abraham, Isaac or Jacob. However here he is telling the Israelites 3 times in a row that he is Lord. He wanted them to know who he was and that he had heard them. He also revealed to Moses that the covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was a promise I fulfilled in their lives, they did make it to Canaan. And as I let all of this sink in for a bit I heard the voice of the Lord saying to me, “I am the Lord, and until you can fully grasp that fact your situation will always be bigger than I am. However I will tell you again, I am the Lord! I have heard you groan just like I listened to the Israelites when they were enslaved and oppressed. I am listening to you. The situations in your life, no matter how small or large, are not greater than I, for I am the Lord. You must understand this for our relationship to strengthen. I am the Lord.”

He is Lord and he can handle my problems, small and large. My situations are important to him and my life and important to him too. Even in my being sick this past week that is important to him. I find it so beautiful when God takes the time to express his heart to us and be intimate with us when we are struggling and even better, when he removes the vales from our eyes when we can’t see. What a beautiful Lord we have. What a loving Papa he is.

I leave you with a Psalm from David (a man after God’s own heart) and a few words that spoke into me last night during a time of worship. I will stop trying to hide my quilt from God, for he is my hiding place and he knows the best pathway for me. Rather than just knowing God sings songs of victory over me but refusing to hear them, I want to hear them loud and clear!

“Finally, I confessed all my sins to you
and stopped trying to hide my guilt.
I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the LORD.”
And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.

⁷ For you are my hiding place;
you protect me from trouble.
You surround me with songs of victory.

⁸ The LORD says, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life.
I will advise you and watch over you.
⁹ Do not be like a senseless horse or mule
that needs a bit and bridle to keep it under control.”  

Psalm 32:5, 7, 8-9

“I do! I do!...”

This week we had a wonderful fellow named Bill Payne (who will be with us next week also). We talked about the Character of God. I find that as I even think about to his teaching my heart starts to pound and my eyes get a bit misty. With that said, let me explain.
Early in the week Bill introduced us to a little thing all humans have, the “Truth Box”. It is the spot in your head that tells you what is truth and what is a lie. The more I learned about my truth box, the more I realized that I had a screwed up truth box! I had believed many lies not only of myself, but of God. And something we learned soon after the truth box was introduced is that when we believe a lie about God we are saying that something is wrong with God’s character OR that God is unable to do what he says. Talk about a hard pill to swallow!
Throughout this week Bill told us things like, “If you were the only person on the earth, God still would have sent Jesus for you” or “God loves the gifts you give him in worship and serving. He loves them because of the WHO is giving them, not what they are!” He even told us the reality that “God DIDN’T change after the fall!” At times these truths were something nice to think about, but I found myself being a bit worried to fully put my trust in them. Until Thursday night…
We had a time of worship for our school, and as we sang the songs I pondered about what we had been learning and was excited for what God was doing in our class. (One thing I have learned, whenever I start thanking God for what he is going in everyone else’s life, he is quick to turn it around on me and I usually end up getting my world rocked by him too.) Out of nowhere I decided to have this conversation with God…
“So… you love me huh?” I asked him (side note, stupid question to ask God because he will always answer this the same way).
“I do! I do! I really REALLY do!” was his response.
And in seconds, I was facedown before God weeping. There is something about hearing God tell you he loves you, and I don’t think I will ever grow tired of it. I can think back to times when God told me he loved me and each of those times, I felt like everything in the world was right and okay.
“You died for me, even though I walked away from you over and over again. You died for me even when I tried to be God and when I have called you a liar. You were murdered protecting me even when I did nothing to protect our relationship. You still suffered the worst death in mankind for my heart, and the selfishness and pride that I have held on to my whole life… you still loved me” as I continued to weep.
“Yeah, I did die for you. If you were the only one left on this earth, I would have still died for you. You are my little girl, and I love you with all I am. I don’t just love you kid, I REALLY love you!” He said that with such a gentle voice and as if he was bowing down from heaven to tell me.
MY PAPA LOVES ME!! HE REALLY LOVES ME!!
I wish I could tell you all the joy that I have had within me since this conversation with the King of Kings. The next day in class we talked about our value, and Bill put it in words that hit home for me, especially after the conversation God and I had the night before. Bill walked us through a story, “I want to go buy a person. I want the top of the line, the most valuable, so I go to the person who is the smartest, drives the best car, have the best job and the highest education. I finally find this person in the store of Humans and I want to buy them, so I flip the over to see the price tag attached to them… and it is far too much! So I put them back and I decide I will go down to the basement and find one of you students. You are not the best looking, you are not the smartest. You don’t drive a nice car, if you have a car at all. You are much less than the most valuable person in the world… so I go to flip over your price tag, and guess what?? Tell me what it said??” He then started at each of us, “It said the same thing as the most “valuable” person in the whole world. It is a price that hardly anyone would pay. What is your price?? EVERY DROP OF JESUS’ BLOOD. EVERY TEAR THAT JESUS WEPT. That is what your price tag says. And that is what the price tag of EVERY human being is, because Jesus died for every human being that has ever, is, or will ever live. Every drop of Jesus’ blood. Every tear Jesus ever wept.”

:)

A few verses that have impacted me this week is what I will leave you with.

“As for the Saints who are in the land (all of us Christians)
they are the glorious ones in whom I delight”      ***Psalm 16:3

“…He is a mighty savior. He will rejoice over you with great gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will exult over you by singing a happy song.”    ***Zephaniah 3:17

Thank you Papa, for showing me the deep love you have for me!

Compassion DTS Love Feast...

There were 2 schools taking place since I have been here; my school is the China Focused DTS and then there is the Compassion DTS. The Compassion team has been back on the base for a few weeks now and we got a chance to spend some time celebrating their graduation from school with a thing called “Love Feast”. It is a time for them to share what the Lord had done during their outreach and share personal testimonies.  They did a wonderful job sharing their hearts, and I must be honest, I got teary eyed more than once in the course of the evening. Many of them have left to go home and it has been a sad goodbye, but we trust the Lord will keep doing great things through them, and a few of them will be coming back to the base in a few months to start staffing! J
Here are a few pictures of the evening where we all got to get dressed up and share a beautiful meal, fellowship and time of worship together:

Roomies!

A few of us, some staff, some Compassion DTS, and a lot of China Focused DTS!


This is Jessi! She is the leader of my school and is also my One or One person (I am being discipled by here). She is so wonderful and beautiful! (side note, it is hard to see but I was wearing the Toms from my Community back home to celebrate this wonderful evening!)


The room that we celebrated in! (Jericho) (side note: the guys head who is on the left bottom corner, Dean Sherman.. who spilled a glass of punch on me that night! It was a total accident but still it was a great memory!)

 
Chris and Marlyse! These 2 wonderful people will be tying the knot in Dec and I can’t wait to be there to celebrate with them! Marlyse is one of my roommates (as all of us girls live together) and she is such a joy and delight! Chris is just silly and wonderful! I enjoy taking pictures of them and asking them to make the faces they would make as if were their wedding day, this is what I got!


FOOD!!! So good! As you can tell it is mostly Asian food, but hey, when in Hong Kong….


Dean Sherman shared before we partook in a time of worship!


Some of the staff on base! (this was not a posed picture!)


Congrats Compassion DTS for shaking up the nations for the Cross! You guys are all wonderful!

Satan Came from Nebraska, so says Dean Sherman…

Dean Sherman spent a week with us, and what a joy he is! He is a great mix of humor and driving home a point about how valuable we all are for the Kingdom. Between telling us that Satan came from Nebraska (there are 3 people from Nebraska involved with my school: 2 students and 1 staff) or telling us to get the image of him in his Speedo out of our heads for quite times. He is a blessing to have and to learn from! He spent a few days talking about Spiritual Warfare and the other days talking about Relationships.
Something he said that hit me like a ton of bricks, a statement that seems so simple yet I have never realized it was a wrong thinking. He told us, “All Christians are not sinners saved by grace, they are Saints!” That means God seems me as a Saint!! What a joy that is, and once my thinking changed from being a SINNER saved... to being a SAINT, I can’t even tell you all the way I have viewed my life and my actions differently. I have finally realized that God doesn’t look down from Heaven and see me still covered in mud and dirt, I am not covered in darkness anymore, but I am a Saint.
The week that Dean was here I laid down a lot of the hurts and the lies that I have allowed myself to believe of my life. Many things that have been spoken over me not only as a child, but the things that my friends have called me, or authority figures who I trusted, other Christians who told me it was how God felt about my life. I have had a lot of hurts in my life and a lot of times where I wondered why in the world God would ever see me as clean. By the blood of the Lamb, I am clean and free from my bondage that I once allowed to tie me down! J

13 people together for 1 reason...

This is my family for the next 5 months (minus the staff memebers). We are 13 crazy people from 5 different countries (America, India, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia). We love to laugh together and we have enjoyed learning about each others countries and lives. Thank you Papa for this amazing, hand picked group of people that i get to walk through a life changing experiance with! I cant wait to get to know them all more and share in a great journey with them! :)

Perfect Love Casts out Fear...

“..What could I say? What could I do but offer this heart, oh God, completely to you…
I’ll stand, with arms high and heart abandoned, in awe of the One who gave it all
I’ll stand, my soul, Lord to you surrendered, all I am is Yours.”

The past few weeks I have been shown by Jesus how largely I walk with a fear of man. It is actually difficult to write about because I do not think I fully understand it yet.
I have been reminded of many verses about how silly it is to fear man, such as this one from Isaiah 51:12-16:
“I, even I, am the one who comforts you. So, who are you afraid of mere humans, who wither like the grass and disappear? Yet you have forgotten the Lord, your Creator, the one who put the stars in the sky and established the earth. Will you remain in constant dread of human oppression? Will you continue to fear the anger of your enemies from morning till night? Soon all you captives will be released! Imprisonment, starvation, and death will not be your fate! For I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea, causing its waves to roar. My name is the Lord Almighty. And I have put my words in your mouth and hidden you safely within my hand. I set all the stars in space and established the earth. I am the one who says to Israel, ‘You are mine!’”
Or in Job, when God places a challenge before Job asking him who established the world and gave it foundations? Who made the wild animals wild and gave the horse its mane? God wasn’t afraid to sit Job down and make sure he knew that he didn’t need to be in control.
It seems silly that God would need to give me such drastic stories to allow me to grasp the understanding that I have a fear of man. I also have experienced different situations the past few weeks that have allowed me to see more vividly my fears. God allowed me to break a fast in the beginning of the month, but I tried to tell him “no” because I didn’t want people to see me eating and be disappointed in me. I have also been able to see the ‘people pleaser’ in me and how often it will come out, even if it comes at a price of me feeling less than others.
God is in control! Why is that so hard for us to understand? I have been a Christian for 10 years this June, and I still have a hard time understanding that He isn’t going to mess up. He doesn’t make mistakes. His love is the only thing that is perfect in the world. Yet I still fight with thinking I know better at times, and I still get fearful of what others might think or say about me.
I have followed God to the other side of the world and the times people told me I was being selfish or doubted that this was really what God had for me this year, I didn’t listen to them. I trusted with all my heart that my Papa has asked me to come here for a reason. Praise His name, because my faith has been stretched in amazing ways; and I have seem real life miracles happen on the streets. I have been living out modern day Bible stories!
It is my hope and my prayer that God will keep breaking me of the fear of man. My faith is not for anyone else but me and my Papa. When he asks me to do something I want to do it because he asked me to, not because of what others might say. I pray that during my next phase of this year (DTS) that starts this week that I will be able to give my all to my Creator. So he makes all things good and I will sing praises to him for what he does in my life!

My God is not Dead, He's Surely Alive...

I got the opportunity earlier this week to go to Wan Chi, which is where one of 2 local red light districts is located. The one we went to is filled with clubs. A small group of us went to pray and worship on the streets to break the ground a bit before we go back later in the week. After a time of worship and crying out to God for this streets we were sitting upon I felt God saying, “Ask me and you shall receive.” So I did what he asked me to, I started praying for Heaven to collide with earth in amazing ways that we can’t do with our own power. I also prayed for people to say yes to Jesus and to see that he is beautiful and wonderful and everlasting. I cried out for those people with everything that in within me and declared the truth of the gospel over the people in the district. I don’t know if I have ever sat on a street and had my heart broken so deeply for people I didn’t even know. I asked Jesus to break my heart for what was breaking his, and just looking down the busy street… my heart was shattered.  I actually am sitting in my house in tears as I write about it, it was a heavy spirit and darkness covering the many streets in the district.
A few people felt God was asking us to go out and pray over the streets and maybe have a divine appointment if God set one before us. I started walking with 2 girls. We stood at one corner and just asked God to give us a few words of wisdom before we set out. I and Arianna got the color red, and to keep our eyes peeled for something or someone in red. We started walking and praying over the streets and all I felt like I could pray for was for the blood of Jesus to cover those streets and deliver the people. It is difficult walking down several large city blocks covered with back to back clubs. It is even harder when you see the faces of the girls who are forced into making that their life. A few times I had to pray to have the eyes and heart of Jesus, and to not look at them with shame. My heart was breaking for them, but at times I didn’t know how to look at them with an out pouring of love.
We had only a few minutes left before we had to meet back with our group when we came across a beautiful woman, Edith. She was sitting outside of Crazy Horse, one of the clubs, wearing a RED coat. We found out she had been working there for many years. She didn’t say it, but we knew that she was a “Madam” for the club, which is basically another name for an owner for the girls working there (aka pimp). She was soft spoken and seemed to just want to talk to someone. We asked her how business was going; she told us it was slow (PRAISE JESUS!). Then one of the girls I was with, Madeline, got a word of wisdom to ask her if she was having back pain. She told us she had back pain for several years, she assumed it was due to old age, and affirmed to us that she was in pain at that moment. She also told us that it was very difficult for her to stand up due to the pain that she was experiencing. We asked if we could pray for her because we believed our God could heal her, she agreed after asking how long it would take. I felt God telling me to place my hand on her shoulder and pray. All I knew to pray was “In Jesus name, heal this woman. Heal this woman. Heal this woman.” I repeated it over and over again. I declared it over here. After a few times of saying this out loud, I felt my hand heat up on her shoulder. We ended the prayer and asked her how she was feeling… no more pain! She was healed! Heaven and earth collided, just like I had asked!! SHE WAS HEALED!!! The holiness of out creator came down and through me and 2 other girls this woman is pain free!! PRAISE JESUS! She got right out of her chair and stretched and moved her back in all sorts of ways and with a smile told us she had no pain. She asked us how long until the pain came back and got to tell her that she would no longer ever feel that pain. Arianna then got to share the whole gospel with Edith. It was beautiful!
Never in my life have I seen a healing happen in front of me, let alone have I been the one God asked to heal someone! Oh Praise Jesus for his faithfulness!