We’re a month into DTS and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that God can do so much in such little time, if we’ll only give him the space to. Before I left for YWAM, I remember praying: “Lord, do so much in my spirit that my flesh is exhausted.” And for what it counts, I’m exhausted. Throughout the week, we have many prayer and worship sessions, early morning workouts, daily classes, and fellowship opportunities that all focus on learning about the nature of God and how to be in relationship with Him. God has been continually speaking, revealing himself, and flooding me with His spirit and presence. It’s hard to express all that He has been doing, so I’d like to share a few key points I’ve been learning about God and how he’s been working in my heart and mind these past few weeks.
Our first week, we went through the book of Acts, one of the most exciting books in the Bible because it is just testimony after testimony of how God used ordinary people to bring heaven on earth. We learned that the power of the Holy Spirit- which guided Jesus throughout his entire life, empowered the apostles to suffer for Christ, and turned Saul to Paul-lives in us and gives us the ability to live in a way we never could on our own. In John 20:22 it says that when we are saved, we are filled by the Holy Spirit, and in Acts 1:8, it says that when we are baptized in the Holy Spirit we receive power. This power is what gives us boldness, it allows us to heal and perform miracles, it enables us to proclaim the gospel, and it guides us in everything that we do. We learned that we must be rooted in the Holy Spirit and the truth of the Word so that we are equipped to face challenges and persecution in our lifetime. There is a cost to living life with Jesus and that means dying to ourselves and our desires- but God’s abundance in our lives makes it all worth it.
Our second week was focused on Biblical worldview- “what is the lens through which we see the world?” Through deep questioning and conversations, we questioned if some of our beliefs are actually rooted in the Bible or just a biproduct of Christian culture. We learned the biblical truths that God is ultimately real, we are image bearers of God, sin distorts how we see reality, and Jesus redeems our fallen world. This week gave me a lot of opportunities to look at my beliefs, to identify the roots of where they came from, and to ask the Lord to help me unroot those that were false. God humbled me as I learned I’m too concerned about His plan for my life, when I should be focused on how my life fits into His redemptive plan for the world. From now on, I have the responsibility to intentionally build a biblical worldview that resembles God’s kingdom by letting my thoughts and beliefs be influenced by the word of God alone.
Or third week was freedom week. This week was focused on finding our identity in God and uprooting the lies that have shaped our identity until this point. It was incredible! When we are saved and redeemed by Christ, our sin is erased, we receive a new identity, we are placed into the family of God, we receive the Holy Spirit, and we are filled with authority. Sin distorts the way that we bear God’s image, but God seeks to restore us to the people He created us to be and the identity he placed within us. Our entire class identified the spiritual strongholds in our lives and the roots that kept them there, prayed for deliverance and repentance, and experienced the grace of God as he delivered us from years of pain. For me, it was my sin of gluttony and my constant reliance on binge eating for fulfillment and comfort. God revealed to me the real root of that sin, and helped me to break the bondage it has had over me for 5 years. At the end of the week, we all stood on a chair and declared that we are no longer defined by our sin, but by the truth of what God says about us. I am now 7 days clean of binge eating.
All in all, God has been doing incredible things on this campus the past month, but mostly, He has been transforming my heart from the inside out. I’ve gotten to go out and practice evangelizing, witness healing and deliverance from pain, hear God speak, and even watch the last person to cross the finish line of the Ironman world championship. I’ve built deep relationships with my friends through their testimonies and their own walks with the Lord, and have learned the power of the Holy Sprit within me if I will only lean into Him. My time here has been incredibly challenging and I am constantly fighting doubts and fears that the enemy places in my mind. But the Lord is faithful and true, and following Him is always worth the challenge that comes with. Every time I hear the shout in my mind to give up, pack up, and go home- I hear next to it a whisper to stay, to lean in, and to trust what God is doing.
I miss you all so much, and keep you in my prayers.
