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?!