A life update

So pretty much I still need to share the last two weeks which were probably the most life changing weeks. We studied the book of Esther and Jeremiah, kind of turned my wold upside down and God spoke into some pretty intense areas of my life. This included my character/identity, which actually lead into him showing me / calling me into the next season of my life... I'll give you a hint - it has to do with the bible! So needless to say my life has been an amazing, crazy, and draining ride the past few weeks. I really want to honor God with what he is doing so I am first of all praying about how I should write about it to not make light of anything, and it's just a big deal to me so my heart needs to be fully in it as I write:)

I am in the midst of my last week of lectures studying the book of Mark and getting ready to go on outreach!

For outreach we will be going to a youth camp called "Deeper" that is apart of the program here at the base called 'youth street'. It is a chance for some of the kids (I believe there is 14 coming) to go "deeper" with God. We are going to be the teachers for the week, teaching on the book of Mark - perfect timing, and we leave for this next wednesday. After that we will come back for a week of lectures on Teaching and Preaching then fly out to Sydney on the 17th of April. From there we are going to Wollongong, which is just outside of Sydney and we will stay there for two weeks teaching and preaching the bible! From there we are going to Newcastle (up the coast) to a YWAM base and I think mostly teaching in schools and to youth, we will be there for another two weeks. Now from there we have the AMAZING opportunity to set sail on this medical ship that God has been doing so much with through and with my base. We will get to work with the ship for two weeks serving and doing Public Relations, it is going to be so amazing to be apart of this! (I will put the link at the bottom of this) Please watch it, it is actually an amazing opportunity for God to really move - through out Australia and Paupa New Guinea!! So that is the plan for outreach, it is going to be amazing and I am so ready to start applying and sharing all of what God has enlightened me with.

His heart is huge and it needs be proclaimed!

I am still in need of some last minute funds (not as much as I thought) but still some, please email me if you would like to support and also with prayer I would love to start a small email or some kind of group to keep everyone up to date with what's going on and also my prayer requests. If God is putting anything on your heart please don't hesitate to get in touch even if you want to know more about the ship or the base or even me. I'm really excited about what God is doing and I am taking it all very seriously.

Thats all for now!

Cheers

I Want To Live http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nJQpxZN4wo

YWAM Australia & PNG Ship Tour Promo Video

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YWAM Australia & PNG Ship Tour Promo Video for more information please go to : http://www.ywamships.org PO BOX 1959 Townsville, QLD 4810 Australia Phone: 07 4771 2123 Fax: 07 4771

Oh the book of Amos

So I must say going into this book was great because it only had 9 chapters - a huge break after Kings!

To be honest with this week I had a really hard time getting my head back into the game after the week before, and just all my insecurities that hit me really hard. This was also my first time ever looking at prophetic literature (which might I add is amazing!) so it was a little bit overwhelming - but man did God hit me this.

Studying Amos I think opened a lot of doors in my mind and in my relationship with God. It took me a long time to really be able grasp what God was trying to say through this book, and honestly when I did it felt like another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

Yes, it would be so easy to read this book and only see God's wrath and anger but to start and wondered where that is stemmed from leads to some intense insight. The more I started looking into the book and the more teachings we got on it, God's heart pretty much exploded in front of me. His crying out in desperation to his people who have walked away and turned their heads away from him, the agony of God's hearts is so powerful because he is pretty much handing his heart to them and they don't even acknowledge him. It makes me think of how I would feel calling out and crying out to someone that I loved with everything I had, and seeing them running in the direction of death and ignoring all the acts I try to do to get their attention - that would kill me.

The more I get into God's word the more I'm not only seeing more of his character, but starting to actually feel his heart and the more I start to realize that I'm not worthy to know it. You know when someone tells you something, whether it be information that you feel is over your head or someone confiding in you, either way the question of "why are they telling me this?" comes up. At times that is how I feel about the bible and the stories that God has chosen to tell us, the rawness of his heart is displayed in every book. The amazing part to all of this is that I'm not worthy to know it just like I'm not worthy of his love but yet in the end he gives it to me anyways. God is pulling his weight and more in our relationship… my part is how I respond.

You are God and I am a man

and I cant wrap my mind around you or begin to understand you

You are big and I am small

yet through surrender I can see you-just a glimpse but thats enough for me

When I'm hopeless

When I'm faithless

When I'm helpless

You still here, your still here

cause in this darkness, in this silence

You are beside me, you remind me that I'm not alone

(Joel Limpic - Find Me Here)

the week I though I was going to die...

1&2 Kings - oh dang!

So as I'm sure a few of you all know, I'm not the best at the academic side of things! Pretty much that was the whole week of Kings - amazing, but I did not think I was going to get through it.

My strength in this bible course is interpretation and applying the scripture to my life, which is amazing and I think I'm learning just how big of deal it really is. The thing to that is it comes after all the work of studying to know the history and the foundation of the book, and I am starting to fall way more in love with wanting to know what is going on in the history of the books BUT it is still a stretch for me.

In all the weeks so far I start out by seeing the craziness of the week and the work load but because I am able to interpretation and get a ton out of the scripture I am can break through and just enjoy life with everything. That didn't overly happen with this week. The historical context and facts about Kings is so important to understand because it is pretty much the timeline of so much of the Old Testament, so the whole week I just felt like it was all over my head. To be honest it really sucked, everyday getting up and knowing that I knew nothing, I don't think I have ever felt more stupid in class and just in life because I just wasn't getting anything. On top of everything I really felt God trying to get through to me, I felt him bringing up my identity a lot throughout the week. Realizing in a very big way that I have no idea who I actually am, that just as much as these books are written to the people of God showing them who God is and what he can/will be like if they let him in to their lives and just turn back to him and start obeying his will in their lives - thats what God is trying to show me as well. I think sometimes it is really easy to see books in the bible like 1 & 2 Kings that they don't really relate to us today, that its just this crazy story but it's not.

It took me till the last half an hour before the week was over at 5 O'clock on saturday to see that God wants me and has been crying out to me, to follow his will in my life and allow him to be the King of my heart. God makes it as clear as black and white in the books of Kings that God is always going to be Faithful to his people and that we have a choice to follow his command or to not. He has even gone into detail about what is going to happen when we choose him and when we don't, he has laid it out in such a simple way for us to understand.

Yes, this week was SO hard and I didn't think I was going to get through but I did and the gold that God gave me at the end was more then I could have asked for, it still blows me away to see the works of God in my life. He is so beautiful - it is you God who is faithful.

I'm done with living with the thought of what would have been because that will never happen but I am willing to start to live with what can happen when I choose the way of my father. I can trust in the truth of God's grace, knowing that it will be a long battle against the flesh but it is what he was called me to be apart of. The battle of his Kingdom and doing it the way HE wants too... listen to my voice my child and you will hear it.

I want to be compared to King David in this, I am going to strive after the heart of my creator and lover of my soul. Everything I have is for the will of God...

Once again 'Here I am'

Let the battle begin...

REVELATION!

That is pretty much how I felt going into this week - so flipping scared! Thank goodness for Shauna and the chance we got to speak to each other Monday morning before I started the week (helped soooo much!).

I wish everyone could have a week of studying the book of Revelation – it is SO beautiful! Yes, God did some pretty huge things including making me not so scared of the beauty of his word. Like do we actually realize that this book is the greatest gift ever? It is the most epic, beautiful, and descriptive story of the gospel… there is no new information in this book. All the scary end times’ stuff is the same thing Jesus tells us in the gospel books, and we don’t seem to freak out and come up with these crazzzy theories. I guess it is important to remember not to take the imagery and numbers literally because they all have greater meanings to the Jews (who were the original readers) and it paints such a beautiful picture once we know what each picture and number means! So pretty much my mind was blown out of the water from the moment when we started, day one all the way till the end! We just got heaps and heaps of information and it was the most amazing thing of my life. I love that I'm starting to see that if I just give the bible a chance to speak to me first before I give up on it or before I lay my own judgments on it, it has SO much more to say and a way better way of saying it:)

It hard being in this school sometimes, because every second of everyday we are learning how amazing and huge God is(odd I know). Yes, it is also amazing but I was (and am) getting to a place with seeing how undeserving I am of him, its like before I never really understood the depth of the gospel/God's heart for me - not the candy coated version but the raw honest TRUTH of God in this world and in my life. It is undeniable and beautiful, I am falling in love with God in a whole new way because I am starting to see the very basic small details of what he has done for me and I am going to choose him NOT because of what people have told me but because I am in love with him and he is in love with me.

God is doing a lot right now in me and around me, which makes sense because I am being willing to open the doors for him to explain and reveal HIS truth to HIS word!

A week of creation in creation!

For the week of Genesis we were able to join the DTS for a week of camping! Now if I am being honest I was not very excited at the thought of having to do homework with no quiet (cool) place to work in and having to be dirty living in a tent. The funny thing is, is that by the time it was time to leave I had never been so ready to get out of base and out of Townsville (Romans was a bit rough on me).

So overall camping was really good, it gave me a real chance to get to know the DTS group (they were going through a pretty live changing week) and being out in the middle of the Australian bush gave me a chance to breath.

Going into this week it felt like I was at a really weird place with God, it was getting really hard to find “real” time to be with God. A huge part of me really thought that as soon as I was back into YWAM my relationship with God would get back to normal in snap of a finger – yeah, that didn’t happen. I definitely felt like I was hitting a wall, which was actually really hard after learning so much about what God has done for me and all the truth that I was learning. But I would say that God showed up, not with a big show but with his simple beauty.

Probably one of the best weeks ever, I definitely wasn't saying that while was there but honestly it was just one of those moments in your life that don't come around often!

The hardest part about it all was that the week before with Romans was very challenging on a spiritual level and I was having a hard time depending or even focusing on my relationship with God. It didn't help my attitude that the first day we got there I had heaps of homework to finish from Romans and then the following day we had to read through all of Genesis.... 4 and half hours - dang! Honestly though the moment we started getting into the work, learning context, history, all that jazz God started to really show up in my view frame.

Genesis has changed so much in me, I have never actually wanted to know anything about that book or the other 4 that go along side of it but honestly I cant even begin to explain how beautiful God is how much he met me in that time. With the Old Testament there is so much background you need to know to get the full impact of the word, and that is something that I have a really hard time doing (getting all the details).

The biggest thing that I have taken away from this week I would say is the simplicity of God's never changing, never dying love for me. He started to speak to me in away that I often don't let him talk to me - while I'm just "being" I had nothing to bring to him, nothing to offer but God saw that and he said "just BE" it is so simple yet so hard to do. I always think of how much I need to do for God, or that I need to me in a good, happy, holy place to be able to go to God, and that is SO not true, seeing the leaders that God picked in the most crucial time (the start of everything) choosing someone like Jacob to me named Israel the father of God's people, makes me believe and take confidence that God is able to pick me if I'm willing to obey. Such a beautiful picture. I am going to add my Final application on the bottom on this because it is really a God inspired application and I just feel like it shows where I'm at with the beauty of the Lord.

It’s hard for me to picture how God sees me.

To imagine his heart towards me.

But it is even harder to fathom that I am the center of Gods eye, that he has created everything in this earth so that I would have a way to be close with him.

Feeling the wind on my face, rain on my arms, the grass between my feet - its all him.

To look out and see his power through the mountains and his small beautiful detail in every flower.

I stand in awe at the works of his hands but do I understand that he stands in awe of me.

He loves what he has made and sees it as good, but he is in love with me.

Yes he loves seeing his creation, but only because I am standing in the midst of it. That my love towards him is what he longs for, to be a part of this life that he has given me.

The book Genesis is so much more then stating creating, it is drawing this beautiful picture of God. Through ever story, every man/leader, and every situation God is showing himself to us.

Giving us examples of how he can be in our lives if we only let him.

Lets give him that space in our life to move and to dance and to bring glory to his Kingdom....

God you have opened up my eyes to see your face,

you have opened my ears to hear your voice,

you have awakened my mouth to taste your beauty,

and you have opened up my heart to feel the vastness of your heart.

My Lord, My God, father to everything I know - Here I am.

The past month.... Romans

Awkward... I have been so bad the past 5 weeks with keeping up on my blogging.

So pretty much I want to give a fairly detailed update on the past 5 weeks. The books that I have been studying were Romans, Genesis (while camping), Revelation, 1 & 2 Kings, and Amos - Dang.

To be honest ever since Romans it feels like I have been playing catch up with myself, God, and school... its been a bit of a run. During the week of Romans I had such a hard time wrapping my head around how much of a big deal and the amount of love that went into what Jesus did. Now I say this in true hope that your mind won't just go the whole 'Jesus dying on the cross from sunday school teaching' mind set. We have all heard it about a million times that the impact of Jesus dying has actually start to wear off on how we are living our lives as Christians. The whole message of Romans is that we as the body of Christ will only ever been unified if we live our lives under the truth of the gospel. Meaning that we stop thinking that we are better then one another or some super holy Christian because we "do" more for God, but that we start understanding that we all utterly suck because of the sin that is in our lives and that it is ONLY because of Jesus that we are able to stand in the sight of God and that God is able to see us as righteous. In all honesty every person even (more so people who claim to love and follow God) we all deserve the wrath of God because we ALL fall short in the glory of God but to understand the mass amount of Gods flipping heart that he has made a way for us (that has NOTHING to do with us) to be able to be close with him and that we are after everything declare with Gods righteousness - perfection in Gods eyes! BAH it doesn't even make any sense but I'm glad that he did it. So realizing all that was a lot to take in, understanding for the first time that Jesus is my wrath taker - I don't deserve that, it was and still is really hard for me to grasp that truth and to actually start living by it kind of one of those things that comes with time I think.

So I guess to the say the very least about this week it was FLIPPING CRAZY and God's heart towards us is something that we need to take WAY more seriously because he has done some pretty huge things for us. Lets not just let it become something that we just get use to, but let it bring us to our knees when we look at our lives and the mercy that he has on us in every breath that we take. He truly devisers everything we have