Long Awaited

I have never had so much trouble posting a blog. For some reason words would just not come. Anyways, this is a jumbled mess of all of my failed attempts at blogging in the last week and a half. Enjoy my sparatic and random thoughts from the week. It does not flow at all.

I write to you as an exhausted YWAMer. In case no one told you, YWAM runs you 90 to nothing, and leaves very few gaps of time to sit down and blog. For this I apologize for their lack of consideration towards the blogging world. Before I blame YWAM though, I must say that any free time I get is not spent behind a computer screen so it’s a lose-lose situation for you guys.

So last week was Holy Spirit week and I really don’t have enough words to explain everything that happened. We got to experience first hand a lot of the work of the Holy Spirit and the gifts that come from Him. Prophesy, being slain in the Spirit, speaking and interpreting tongues, and the laying on of hands to name a few. Contrary to popular belief, (ahem) the Holy Spirit is not about magical powers like in Harry Potter, but sometimes He does work through miraculous powers that defy the rules of nature. Did you know that stuff is still happening around the world? People are still being healed; miracles are still being seen everywhere where faith resides and the Holy Spirit is given His due recognition. Our speaker actually saw a guy with an amputated arm, and watched as he prayed over him, HIS ARM GREW BACK. Can you even believe that? An arm just sprouted right out of a nub. Oh man what I would have given to see that. So maybe by the end of this experience I will throw a little “Wyngardium leviosa” on all of you guys and fly like Harry Potter by the power of the Holy Spirit. I’m definitely praying for it.

A lot of that stuff is controversial but guess what, its in the bible if you want to take a peek in the book of Ultimate Truth. And we do believe the bible to be 100% true right? If your answer is no, you have some bigger issues to face.

This week we are learning about the Fear of the Lord. Mark Davies is our speaker and I already LOVE HIM. Actually I loved him on Monday morning when sarcasm was the first thing out of his mouth. He uses the word “dirtbag” a lot and I think I am going to implement that into my daily vocabulary. He says things like “you know those days when everyone pisses you off and you react like such a dirtbag, then you get all convicted about your actions through the Word of God and it just sets off a detonator in your heart like a bomb.” (He usually makes a sound effect here.) Ha, he talks on my level, doesn’t use any religious jargon, but just tells it how it is. LOVE IT. He is only 27 and admitted that he wanted to murder his 2 year old twins this morning and just needed some prayer. *(Note the hint of sarcasm, he actually is the best dad ever and his boys and new infant 2 month old baby girl are the cutest kids in the world.)

So we are talking about Fear of the Lord, which is ironic because I just finished reading “Intimate Friendship with God” by Joy Dawson, and the subtitle was “Through the Fear of the Lord”. Needless to say, it seems like this topic has been pretty loud and clear lately from the big guy upstairs. The book says that if we really fear God, that we will HATE our sin and HATE evil, like God HATES it. Ouch. Mind bomb. I don’t hate my sin like God hates it. The evidence of that is that I run back to it in times of weakness, and yet the bible COMMANDS that we FLEE sin and fear the Lord.

We learned that Satan can come and tempt us at any time with any sin. Just when you say that you will never struggle with (fill in the blank), you will be in it and not sure how you got there. And it always starts with the mind. It does not matter what it is: unbelief, pride, lust, criticism, disobedience to God, or anything. We will find that there is no attraction to that temptation to sin to the degree that we have the fear of God. When we have Jesus’ attitude towards sin, instantly we will hate Satan’s suggestion to sin. James 4:7 says “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” And don’t just sit there after that, load up on truth so that you will not be tempted again. Philippians 4:8 lists the things we should dwell on. It says “FIX your eyes on these things.” That represents a deliberate, determined, and disciplined act of your will. Because whatever you dwell on will determine your actions.

Out of the fear of the Lord we see that HE is just, and has every right to our whole-hearted surrender and obedience. The nearest thing to heaven that we will find on this earth is being at the center of the will of God, in a loving relationship with the one who created us. When we are delighting to do His will and delighting ourselves in Him that’s real freedom. That is fulfillment. The privileges and rewards from God when we truly place Him first in undivided devotion far outweigh the price, no matter how high.

To gain a greater and healthy fear of the Lord we must make a choice with our will. We must confess our lack of the fear of the Lord before God and cry out that He might have mercy on us. We should continually seek God for it and study the Word of God through which He speaks.

And lucky for us, we never need to be in despair that we will not attain to intimate friendship with God. Being obedient to the next thing God tells us to do will get us there. He has promised to clearly communicate to us everything we will ever need to know in order to obey Him---provided that we want to obey. Psalm 32:8 says “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go”. God always rewards diligent seekers. With the simplicity of a child, we can come to our loving heavenly Father and trust Him to lead us one step at a time along the pathway of obedience that leads to intimate friendship with Him. He is longing to take our hand and do just that. And if there comes a time where we turn our back on sin and decide to indulge in our flesh/sin and mess up royally; we can be sure that God is the ULTIMATE TAILGATER, and is always closer to us than our thoughts. Even when he seems far away because of our disobedience, we know that He never leaves us, He just simply rams us in the bumper until we decide to turn around and tearfully return to His loving arms. Our God is so merciful.

On a lighter note, I have a lot of new really good music lately mostly thanks to Kelsea Leacox and Matt Watson. Does anyone know me well enough to know how much this excites me?! I love getting new music, I think it’s a love language.

This weekend we are going to the Royal Gorge. We leave Friday and will camp Friday night and then wake up and GO EXPLORE! Then we get the opportunity to do the Royal Gorge Skycoaster. Let me explain: You know the skycoaster at 6flags? Where you pull the rip cord, free fall and then swing back and forth? Well this is the same concept, except they have built it where you swing over the massive gorge, 1200ft from the ground. HOW GREAT IS THAT? Yep, and then on Sunday the PLAN is to go wakeboarding in Pueblo, but we are still praying that that works out. I would give anything to strap a wakeboard onto my feet. Just thinking about it makes me almost giddy.

So today I am happy. The sun is shining. I want to make sure you know that I say this just for today as I could wake up tomorrow and feel stale and stressed and numb and maybe even a little pissed off and not even sure who I am pissed at or what about…I have no guarantees for tomorrow where my unreliable and fickle emotions are concerned. I am learning though, not to worry about tomorrow so TODAY, I can thank God with all my heart that THIS PRESENT DAY I feel love toward the One who loves me first.