Haggai 1

God continues to blow me away here. Tuesday night we have our base gatherings. Usually these gatherings are open for people outside the base to join. Typically the night includes worship through music and a speaker of some sort. Last night, they closed the gathering to base people only. We started with a few testimonies from some DTS students about the previous week in Gleanings and San Francisco. Carrie, Saul, and Matt spoke. After that the SOMD (school of ministry development) spoke about this Luke 18 conference that is going on. It’s going to be huge! 3,000-5,000 college age students are flying/driving to LA for this conference from all over. They even had to move locations because they have too many people coming. It’s basically a conference for people who feel called to missions or are interested in missions. It’s a 3-day conference, and Loren Cunningham (founder of YWAM) is speaking Saturday night. So, you might be asking what we have to do with it?!?! We YWAMers get to go!!! Verner (our base director) believes so much in the YWAM presence there that he is covering our cover fee. Not only do we get to hear Loren speak, be amidst thousands of people who love and want to serve Jesus, but they’re going to have us there as a tool. All the YWAMers are going to be wearing the same shirt so that they know who we are. Instead of an ‘alter call for salvation’ they’re going to have more of a calling/questioning time for these young adults. I am SO pumped for this. Jesus is using me to fire up people for the sake of His great commission. I may only be a ‘DTS’ student, but the Lord has done miraculous stuff in my life already when it comes to my heart for missions. We’re not there to ‘promote’ YWAM; we’re there to promote the Great Commission!!!! This just gets me pumped up thinking about it; it’s unreal. Of course, I will refer them to YWAM because this organization is an amazing and anointed tool that God uses to train His children (chosen ones) for missions. Ahhhhhhhhhh!

Okay, so after this Verner began speaking. I don’t even remember how he started this entire thing, but he got up there and closed it off to the public because he wanted to ask for forgiveness from everyone. I was absolutely blown away by this. He got up there being completely transparent about everything he had just gone through. He said that he was wondering why during intercessory prayer times we’ve been having such a difficult time getting clear direction from the Lord. At the same time the base staff had their weekly meeting and had decided to do their annual Christmas tree lot, just because it’s usually what goes down. Verner said that he went to Joy Dawson’s house to talk to her about how intercessory times were difficult (she’s a well known lady in the YWAM family who has great practice and fruit with intercessory prayer. She has written, basically, a ‘how to have intercessory prayer’ guidelines sheet. While Verner and other staff members were sitting with her, Joy told them that intercessory prayer was easy. She boldly went on further explaining what she meant by that. In the gathering, Verner basically said that he is life an infant. That he is learning how to listen to God. He was up there to say that he and the leadership had not led intercessory prayer the way it should be held. He went on to confess how he doesn’t like waiting on the Lord. How he is good at working and getting things done, but has the hardest time waiting. He said that he has been rushing intercessory prayers and not letting the Holy Spirit work through things. He then said that an individual on staff came up to him on Friday and told him that God had given her this phrase “it smells like flesh” for the base. She said that the Christmas tree lot was being done by fleshly works and desires, that God didn’t have that in the plans. Verner said that he started crying because he knew this. He knew that this was wrong because they had rushed this decision to happen. He was upset because in September, someone reminded him, that they prayed about doing the Christmas tree lot and God said no…but he had completely forgot about it. Anyway, it came down to the fact that Verner wasn’t listening. He was trying to rush God, and then was blaming God for no response. It was probably one of the most beneficial and powerful things for me to see him get up there in front of 100 people, confessing his sin and then asking for forgiveness from everyone. I literally started tearing up during this. At the end one of the CSBS (Chronological School of Biblical Studies) students stood up and asked if we could pray for the elder counsel ‘Korean style,’(where you all just pray at once out loud) and then asked anyone who was touched by this to go up and lay hands on them and pray.

This is where this night begins to hit me, personally. As I said earlier I was completely blown away by how powerful Verner’s confession was to all of us; even to the point that I began to tear up. When Adam asked those who were touched to get up and pray for them I just sat there. With all of my being I was yelling inside, “Sarah, get up! Go up and pray for them. What is your problem?!?” But, I couldn’t; I sat glued to that seat. After we prayed for them, a base staff lady, Kathryn, got up and said that she felt that we should be practical and sit there, as a base, and wait on the Lord. As soon as we started waiting on the Lord, I felt God telling me to go over to Synnove (my small group leader) and talk to her about how I had been holding back from being myself and who God created me to be. I sat there AGAIN battling inside whether or not I should do it at that moment. Then God said, just do it. So, I got up and went over to her and asked her to talk to me after this entire thing because I know if I didn’t tell her right then I wouldn’t have told her what was going on inside of me. She said that she wanted to go outside right that minute and talk to me about what’s going on.

Synnove and I went outside and I started pouring out what was going on. To sum it up, I wasn’t being obedient to what God was calling me to do. Earlier that week, on Monday, during base worship I sensed God telling me to go talk/pray with Jessica Hover and I didn’t. Even though I wasn’t faithful, God continued to be. He brought her over to me during worship. She came over and said that God put a verse on her heart for me and then she prayed for me. This is just one example of me lacking obedience. Before I even came here I knew I would struggle with being a student, but relating more with staff. Because of this, I have been sitting back and letting others lead. Even when I have felt God asking me to take a certain opportunity to lead I haven’t. I have been struggling with this fear of man. I have been afraid that my fellow DTSers will think I’m trying to be a staff person by taking on leadership opportunities. Because of this I have been sitting back. I haven’t been the person God has made me to be. After Synnove encouraged and prayed for me we went back into the meeting and at this point there was an overwhelming presence of God in that room. Everyone was repenting. It was amazing. Soon as I walked into that room I knew that God wanted me to yell out for His fire and boldness to be who he created me to be. There was no more sitting back for Sarah Jane Alber. I desperately called out for Jesus to come meet me in my weakness. Come make me who You created me to be. After I called out in front of everyone I felt like this weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. It was God, no doubt about that. Later on in the night Jess aka Marge got the Holy Spirit laughter. It was hilarious. It was like God was laughing and being joyful through her. At first it was really weird to me because I was like why is she laughing during this time of repentance, but it was clear that God was joyful. He was delighting in us because of this corporate repentance. He loved on us with joy. Jess was His tool to bring this on. It was awesome!!! God is stretching my view on Him every day, and I am so thankful for that. Thank you Jesus!!! He is preparing me for something big…just not exactly sure what it is yet (which is the fun part).