Thank you, Jesus!

Today was an overall awesome day and it started out with my quiet time. This morning I started off reading Death by Love by Mark Driscoll. The introduction of the book talks about Christ as our substitutionary atonement. Even though this is at the foundation of my beliefs and I have heard it a thousand times before I was overwhelmed with how much God truly and deeply loves me. John Stott has said it so beautifully in his book, The Cross of Christ, “The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone. Mark Driscoll then goes on to give a picture of what Jesus went through on that horrifying day. I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed with emotion, thanks, and praise. How great is his love?! There truly is no greater love than this. Not only did he die on the cross but he suffered through two life sentences. First, he received the 40 lashes with the horrific whip and then, secondly, he received the second sentence of an excruciating, painful, and disrespectful death on a cross. It literally makes me sick to think about all the pain he endured. The beatings with the whip that basically was a ‘meat tenderizer’ is enough to make me throw up if I think about it too much. Seriously though, if thinking about that stuff doesn’t make you sick to your stomach I don’t know what will. I could just hear God whispering to his daughter, “Sarah, I love you this much. This much, Sarah, I love you.” I just laid there upon the wooden stage under the shaded tree with sun beams streaming through the branches soaking in his love: “Sarah, I love you; my daughter, my princess, my darling. I love you.”

After the quiet time we had worship with just the DTSers and then Randy Thomas spoke again. He has such a unique way of teaching; it’s unbelievable. I already mentioned that his topic of discussion is nature and character of God. He doesn’t just list characters of God and where the character is referenced in the Bible. He brings Bible stories to life. He depicts what may be going on and what really was going on. He puts emotions and questions in the stories. He doesn’t just give me the character of God. He makes me search for it within his story telling. I have never had a teacher like him and I am truly blessed by his teaching. It is just so beautiful. After lunch I had free time until dinner because today is my off day for my work duty. Soooo, for two of the hours I skyped with my best friend, Mallory Delia Weddon. It was so awesome to see her beautiful face!!! Love and miss her so much.

Tonight after dinner we had a base ‘meeting.’ It really isn’t like a typical meeting; it’s more like a gathering. The ‘elders’ of the base each introduced themselves and their heart behind YWAM LA. Then we broke up into assigned small groups, met some new people, and then joined back together as a whole around some delicious grub. After the grub we had a musical time of worship. I do not doubt for one second that God’s presence completely filled and covered us in that time of worship. All I could do was respond to his love the entire time. All I could say over and over and over again was Thank you Jesus! I praise you Jesus! Thank you, thank you Jesus. We sang From the Inside Out and all I could do was let my soul cry out, “Lord I give you control. Consume me, from the inside out.” To continue in worship we went on to sing “Where you go I go, what you say I say, what you pray I pray.” For the first time I believed and fully meant every word I sang from that song. My prayer tonight was that God, my father, my comforter, my redeemer would just lead me where he has been and wants to take me, that he would say what he wants to say through me, that I would pray what he wants me pray. During worship I felt hands on my shoulder and Jessica started praying for me. She prayed exactly what I had been praying, desiring to pray, and needed to pray. Without knowing my full situation and heart she prayed exactly what was on my heart. She prayed that God would show me what he wants me to do and that he would confirm that calling because God is a father who wants to lead his daughter. He doesn’t just throw out these ideas or dreams and then leave me hanging. He wants to be there and lead me the entire way. She prayed that I would let God give me his full dream for my life, that I would let God big dreamer than I could even imagine dreaming. She prayed that God would give me pearls (his character) one at a time to make a beautiful necklace (understanding). She went on and on and on and it was by far the most uplifting, encouraging, worship experience I have ever experienced. Thank you Lord Jesus, Thank you.

Let God take you on a ride!!! Don’t live the ‘comfortable’ life. Let him love on you like crazy. Let him hold you. Let him guide your steps before you take them. Don’t wait until you’ve already taken them. God wants to be involved in our lives. Let him, please! It’s the best thing you could ever do with your life. Trust in his saving grace, his divine plan, and his everlasting pure and whole love.  

nature and character of God week

Today we began our week of teaching on the nature and character of God. Randy Thomas is our speaker for the week. He is extremely entertaining and pulls apart Bible stories to make each of us meditate on the story. Today he talked about the Mystery of Jesus; he gave us 10 mysteries. Although they may seem obvious and simplistic at first it’s important to think about each mystery closely and deeply.

The Mystery of Jesus

1.) He was born in a barn.

2.) He had questionable parents.

3.) He had a funny birth announcement.

4.) He was not handsome (Isaiah 53:2).

5.) He was raised in a bad neighborhood.

6.) He owned nothing.

7.) He had strange public relations (John the Baptist).

8.) Picked a motley crew to be his apostles.

9.) He died a bad death.

It isn’t that Randy thinks every single one of these things is a complex mystery. He wanted to challenge our thought process on each one; making us think as they did in the time of Jesus. I’m looking forward to diving deeper into the nature and character of God.

God was really tugging at my heart this morning. I am pretty darn sure that this week he is going to take out some walls that I have built up in my life. If I am sure of one thing it is that this process isn't going to be easy. Please keep me in your prayers. I am in need of healing and I know that I cannot move on until this wound is healed.

one harmonic voice

September 24, 2010

It’s crazy to think I have been here for nearly a week. I wish I could describe the depth of the relationships that exist here already. This in itself is a testament of God’s faithfulness and desire for his children. Sometime in the middle of the week I was reading Romans 15 during my quiet time and verses 4, 5, and 6 jumped out to me. This specific area in Romans says, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. [5] May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, [6] that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” After reading this section of scripture I immediately started praying for our community here on the YWAM base. I prayed against everything negative you could really think of and asked God to unify us in a crazy, crazy way. He had already started uniting us Sunday night as a school, which includes the leaders, but on this day he beautifully pulled us all together. It was to be a time of worship within just our school. Jess and Tony began by playing the piano and guitar and they simply encouraged us to pray out what God had laid on our heart. I felt God tugging at my heart asking me to pray out loud for the group even though I had already spent time in prayer for the group. I began asking God among my fellow DTSers to unite our time that morning so that we may leave here singing in one harmonic voice. After musical worship God totally took our time and focus to a new level. Without going into a super long story about the entire 3 hours we were there, we left that morning unified, forgiven, healed, relieved, and so much more. God met all of us in our brokenness that morning. One of the guys, PJ, felt led to get up and apologize to the girls as a whole. He stood up there saddened by what he had done to girls in the past and confessed that he was once one of those guys who hurt girls, used girls, and could care less about girls. He went on to say that each girl was absolutely beautiful and that he could never imagine wanting or letting anything happen to us. He asked for forgiveness and I know he was released from a lot of sin, shame, and guilt that Satan was holding over his head and I definitely know that a lot of girls were released as well. That is just one example of how God brought harmony across our school. He has truly done some amazing work here already and it has been one week. Absolutely indescribable. Thank you Jesus.

We also finished up the Dean Sherman lectures on Relationships. One of the main things I took away from his lecture series was on rebellion. He said if you see youth or anyone really rebelling the question to ask them is: who haven’t you forgiven!?! This really struck me because if someone is rebelling it is most likely because their foundation was shook up and they haven’t forgiven that person for shaking it up. So, in the mean time they’ve been trying to fill themselves with everything else. Pretty crazy/awesome stuff. It really got me thinking about rebellious periods in my life and who I hadn’t forgiven at that point. My challenge for you is to think about periods of rebellion in your own life and to see if there is someone you haven’t forgiven. If there is, forgive them on the spot, out loud. Even if you don’t ‘feel’ like forgiving them you definitely need to say I forgive so and so out loud. Forgiveness is a decision. This doesn’t mean all your pain, feelings, and emotions go away. It simply means that because Christ has forgiven you, you can forgive them. So, whom haven’t you forgiven? And how can you be praying for them?!

September 21, 2010

Today during my quiet time God totally met me. He met me in my unbelief. I was reading Deuteronomy this morning during my quiet time and Deuteronomy 4:34-35 stuck out to me. It says, “Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him” God emphasized what Moses wrote a long time ago. He said, “Sarah am I not your God?? I am not the same God, who delivered my people out of Egypt, parted the Red Sea, led my people to the promise land, and healed the sick? Why is it so hard for you to see me as the God who is capable of miracles, signs, and so much more? Why do you box me up in your desired God size box? Don’t you want to let me do my thing? Don’t you want me to be me and for you to be you, and let me move in you? Because your identity is in me. Let me move in you.” All I could do is say yes God, yes. I want this, all of this, and more. I don’t want to limit God to this picturesque box. It’s incredible how much I sense his presence here. It’s as if I am in communion with him throughout the entire day, without fail, and I’ve never experienced something like this. There is truly something special about this place. Today in lecture we watched a lecture video given by Dean Sherman. He was a hilarious, bold, truthful, and simple yet deep speaker. This week our lectures are on relationships. Dean Sherman started the lecture by stating that every single problem revolves around relationships. He then went on to talk about how we are called to do two things. 1.) Love and love because we are representatives of God (John 13). 2.) We are called to be unified. By unity the world will know Jesus Christ, the Son, and our Savior (John 17). Dean then went on to talk about the ingredients of bad relationships. The first problem is in the ingredient we call pride (Romans 12:3a). The proper antidote to this problem of pride is sober judgment aka humility (Romans 12:3b). Dean then stated, “Unity in any situation is simply corporate humility.” The second problem is in the ingredient called differences or variety. We don’t appreciate differences and that’s absolutely insane. Many people are so turned off by church because they have been called ‘weird’ or ‘different.’ I think the people that don’t accept differences have a small outlook on who God is and what he is capable of doing. They are stuck in a picturesque box of who they want God to be. He is so much more than my or your preferred style of worship. He is so much more than the ‘perfect’ look. He is so much more than the come to church and take take take. He is so much more than we understand. It’s truly unreal to think about how great our God really is. I’m praying that on this DTS he’ll take my understanding and expand it because there is so much more to learn. We are required to complete journal entries throughout the week in a journal and we have to have a theme for our journal. We have to decorate the front of the journal with our theme as well. I am not exactly sure what theme I am going to do yet, but worship, light, and surrender keep on coming to mind, in Bible readings, and discussions. Really praying that God will show me what he wants me to focus on. If I can be praying for anyone or anything please comment and let me know.

In Christ’s love. <3