It has been a while since my last post here on my blog, and I’m super sorry about that! Wow, I can’t believe the last post I did was from my first week, and now I’m on week seven! Well I have been keeping really busy here on the YWAM base. Whether it be lectures, tracks, work duties, meals, and even homework, most of my days are pretty filled.
In my lectures, we have covered 6 different topics each geared toward helping us grow not only in our view of who God is, but also in how we grow in our daily relationship with Him. The topics we have covered thus far have been: The Character and Nature of God, Grace and Holiness, Relationships, Prayer/Hearing the Voice of God, Father Heart of God, Life With Jesus, and the one we are currently on is titled Holy Spirit. Each week, God has revealed Himself in a completely new way to me, and most of those ways have been a struggle for me to accept the parts of God that we as humans will never be able to fully comprehend. It has been especially hard for me to struggle with all this while asking questions that I can’t really seem to find the answers to. One thing that I have grown to understand and fully except is that in the morning when I wake, God loves me, and at night before I fall asleep, God still loves me despite anything that happened during the day. That truth alone far surpasses any question that I could possibly have, and it is that truth that has been setting me free from my bondage to any emotionally need that I have been feeling defines my relationship with the living God. Also, my team and I are in the process of getting ready for our outreach to Thailand, which we leave for December 6th. I am totally excited for this crazy 2-month time in another country and I can’t wait to see what God does!
God has also been using the people here to help me in the journey of growing closer to Him. I honestly and fully believe that God placed everyone from the students to the staff on this DTS during this specific time for a purpose, and some of those reasons have become very apparent. Two of my friends, Mike and Josiah, have been guys of accountability and men that God has literally provided at perfect timing. We have been able to grow with each other day-by-day, in our teachings and just living life together. Each day has been a blessing here being able to live in community with a group of 52 people that are here to hear how God is speaking to them, and how He is asking them to serve Him here on earth.
Lately, God has radically been working on my heart in the area of surrender, and things I need to let go of and give Him full control of. Specifically, this has been in the area of my future and my strong desire to pursue full time medical missions. Each day in my DTS, I had this feeling that God was asking me to let go of something that I was beginning to hold onto more tightly than my relationship with Him. After a lot of prayer and seeking, God finally revealed to me that it was my whole future that I was not allowing Him to move in. It has been a daily struggle, but with God’s strength I have been working toward allowing Him to have His way with my whole life and not just a portion. In doing this, God has really given me a heart for those in the world who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ, and aren’t receiving all that God has given us in His word. Not really sure how this heart was going to play a part in my future, I asked God what I should be pursuing after my DTS, and the only thing that I really felt peace about was pursuing a School of Biblical Studies (SBS), specifically in Taiwan. Now, originally I immediately dismissed the thought, especially since the program is 9-months long, but each day the thought grew stronger. The subject of this school really did interest me, a 9-month study of the bible, reading it over 5 times and studying it deeper than just the words on the page. Actually taking it apart and looking into the context and background as to why who and where each book of the Bible was written to better understand its meaning for us today totally was something I could see myself studying and learning about. I earnestly feel that doing an SBS is something God wants me to do, and in doing that I would be able to gain a foundational knowledge of God’s word that I wouldn’t be able to gain anywhere else, and that I would be able to root anything I do on a biblical ground. Now I have the heart for it, and I really feel like this is the path God has for me, but all the logistical issues were getting and still in some ways plague me.
Originally, I knew that if God really wanted me to go down this road that He would do some amazing things. One of the big things was having the support of my parents, and a few weeks after I decided to go after this journey full-throttle I received both of their blessings! I was totally blown away by the way He moved in both of my parents, and how great it felt to go at this path with their support backing me up. Now, the only thing that stands in the way is finance. I currently still need $1200 to finish paying for my DTS I currently am on, and to pay for my SBS I need to raise a total of $3000 across a 9-month span of time. I also need to have a monthly pledge of $150 to cover food while I’m in Taiwan during the 9-months. I still don’t know how I am supposed to raise money for SBS while I still am in need for my current DTS, but all I know is the heart God has given me to pursue this passion for knowledge of His word, and I am willing to try and go at it any way I can. God has been teaching me amazingly new things everyday and I don’t know exactly how things are going to work out, but all I do know with out a doubt is that I love God with all my heart and He loves me so much more back…
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