Thursday, October 18, 2007

It's been almost three weeks here now. We've had two weeks of classes. Last week we had Jeff Pratt speak to us on the Father Heart of God. It was an intense week to start off the lecture phase with. The first few days were about God's love for us, Wednesday was a personal spiritual-emotional healing day which was sweet, and Thursday was more about persevering through struggle. We so often put our feelings in front of us. Jeff stated that we either have emotions and feelings, or we are our emotions and feelings. Sometimes we don't feel like praising God or we don't feel like God is anywhere near us at a certain time in our life, but we can still declare truth. And the feelings will always come back. I experience that (lack of) feeling sometimes. The worship here is awesome, but one day last week I just didn't want to worship. I just didn't feel like it. I was tired and maybe I wasn't into the music or whatever it may have been. So my mind wandered and I kind of just stood there. Then halfway through, it hit me. I don't worship God when I feel like it. I want to worship God with my life. All the time. And now we're worshipping through music. So, yes, I don't feel like worshipping God now, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to declare that God is holy and good and mighty and worthy of my praise. God is holy and good and mighty and worthy of my praise all the time. Not just when I feel like praising Him. So I want to let my knowledge of truth carry my emotions and feelings, not the other way around. It's a good practice.

The last day of Jeff Pratt was convicting. Which is sweet.

"Often we want our comfort more than we want God's will"

Phillipians 3:10 says, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings." It doesn't stop at the power of his resurrection. It goes on to say "the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings." To really know Jesus, to really know God, we must suffer for him. Not all the time. But sometimes in life there will be sufferings and God is testing us. God wants to trust us. God wants our love. Not our conditional love based on how much blessing he gives us. True, real love. Unconditional love.

"God has so many servants, but few friends." I want to be God's friend. Jeff called these times of suffering times of captivity. In captivity we will feel the farthest away from God we have ever felt. He's still there. We're building his trust. And our faith. Although we may not know it. In these season's of silence, DON'T LOSE HOPE. Because in captivity, our love for Jesus is purified.

Pure love for Jesus. That's what I want.

"MORE OF HIM and LESS OF YOU. It's worth the suffering."


Pastor Blake Mattocks spoke this week on the Character of God. It was more so our character through knowing God. Which was good.

He let us know that we're world changers. I believe him.

Also:

"Learned truth has to become living truth."

"The world is sick of religion." This is huge. And true. I think too often our faith isn't so much faith as it is religion. I'm guilty. Jesus didn't come into this world with religion - why are we living religion? We need to live love. True, real love. It's so obvious that Jesus hated religion without faith and love. We can't be going around the world telling people they need to stop doing this and start doing that and throwing rules and regulations at them - "Rules and regulations without relationship breeds rebellion." We need to love. Through love we let people know what we know, and that they can have what we have. Life.

Sort of the same type of thing as earlier in this blog - "What shapes your decisions - feelings and emotions or convictions based on the word of God?" Pretty challenging stuff if we're truly honest with ourselves.

"Commitment always comes before accomplishment."

Doubt is a thief.

We had a session on contentment. This hit me hard. I'm often not content with what I have or where I am right now. Discontentment is only focusing on what we don't have. 1 Timothy 6:6.

There have a ton of amazing testimonies so far here from many different people. Think God doesn't work miracles these days like in Bible times? You should hear some of these testimonies. Jeff Pratt would not be alive speaking to us if God didn't. Why wouldn't God be big enough to work miracles these days? He is. But at the same time, I don't think we can be looking for signs just because we want to see them. Do I want to see it? Absolutely. But Blake said something that really hit me - "Believers don't follow signs, signs follow believers."

Good stuff.

As much as I just typed, that is still just a tiny, tiny taste of all the stuff we talked about and learned and experienced so far in lecture phase. Wow. I like it.

And also we have quiet time every morning and right now I am studying John and 1 Corinthians. I have already discovered and learned new things and have been inspired through that too.

This weekend we're going up to Eagle Rock till Thursday to have class with the Eagle Rock DTS, so that should be fun. Then we come back till Monday and then head up to Estes Park for the Go Conference - a conference on missions (I think?) with DTS's from all around North America. I'm excited for that.

That was a long blog. Enough for now. Bye.

Chris

Monday, October 8, 2007

First Week

Well, I've been in Denver for a week now. Today is our first day of official classes, although our speaker for this week couldn't make it until this afternoon so we have this morning off. Thus I blog...

Last week was just sort of a crazy get-to-know-everyone-and-everything-week. We had sessions on this and that about the base and just the DTS in general. This week we'll be getting into the normal routine - wake up, breakfast, worship/intercession, class, lunch, class, work duties, dinner, free time. Monday nights we have inner-city outreaches. Tuesday nights we have stuff too (team-building or something like that).

This weekend was pretty sweet. We went up to Eagle Rock - YWAM Denver's second campus, located in the mountains about 40 minutes out of Arvada. We stayed in a nice big cabin and had bonfires, went hiking, ate food, hung out, shot stuff, carved pumpkins, went to a little mountain town, and successfully pulled off a stealthy prank on the Eagle Rock DTS on Saturday night.



These are the guys in my DTS as well as some of the leaders.


This is the view from atop Eagle Rock. It was awesome.

Lunchtime.

Later

Chris