Week 3 - Healer

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32 ESV)

I don’t really have time for an epic novel this week, so I’m going to stay away from a full account of the week and stick to writing about a few things that I think God wants me to share. Honestly, it’s difficult to narrow down a week and leave things out because God tends to do so many noteworthy things every week on a DTS. But I don’t have unlimited time to write, and you don’t have unlimited time to read, so I think I’ll make it a bit (yes, just a bit) shorter this week. Suffice it to say that overall we had another very good week, and many students are already different than they were just seven days ago.

This week’s topic was relationships, and what a timely subject it was. God really knew what He was doing when He led the leadership team in creating the schedule. Basically every student came into this DTS with a background that involved some degree of relationship problem, whether with friends, family, or member(s) of the opposite sex. That being the case, this topic was really foundational and good to have near the beginning of the school. This week’s incredibly capable speakers were Matt and Cora Dawson, YWAM leaders who live just up the hill from the base (they taught worship and evangelism on my school last year). They are able to build instant rapport with people and easily gain the trust and respect of the students, and they are experts at conveying truths through storytelling. The story of their own relationship is a great example of putting God first and waiting for His timing (they liked each other for two years before finally getting together), and it is a testament to the fact that our God is a hopeless romantic.

I could write so much about their teaching, but I think one concept really stands out to me: that God is a healer. He is not an accuser; that is, He doesn’t ask us to expose our faults and hurts so that He can punish or condemn us. Instead, He requests that we bare our broken places to Him only so that He can ever so gently clean them out and heal them properly. He asks that we bring our lives into the light and approach Him in complete truthfulness because He is a God of truth and his healing power works in the light. God wants truth in our lives because truth is what sets us free – truth about God, truth about ourselves, and truth about the world around us. The enemy, on the other hand, has power only in the darkness. He is a deceiver, the father of lies.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:5-9 ESV)

Unlike God, Satan is an accuser. He takes advantage of our wounds, using them to plant the seeds of lies that can color the way we think for the rest of our lives if left hidden and unhealed. When people hurt and mistreat us, especially as children, we are thrown into confusion because that was not the way we were made to be treated. We were made to receive unconditional love from our Creator. The enemy uses the confusion brought on by the wounds to lead us astray, planting lies about who we are, how we deserve to be treated, what the world is like, and ultimately who God is and what we can expect from Him. Then, as we continue to experience life these seeds of deception grow and eventually produce bad fruit (sin, brokenness, more hurts). Then the enemy, who happily planted the seeds to begin with, pulls a fast one and blames us for the bad results! He tells us there must be something wrong with us, something we should be ashamed of and keep hidden in the darkness (where it conveniently remains in his power, keeping us in bondage). God’s will is that those original seeds of deception would be exposed and the initial wound brought to light, in order that we can be set free to know Him as He is. And the definition of eternal life is to know God as He is (John 17:3).

 That’s a relatively abstract illustration, but the point is that our past hurts, if left unhealed by God, can have some major results later in life. In fact, they often lead to more wounds and more wrong thinking. For example, a child whose parents never show or express affection is left with a confusing deficit of love (remember, we were made for complete unconditional love) and could begin to believe all sorts of lies about himself – that he is somehow unworthy of love, or that he has to spend his life constantly trying to earn love from those around him, or that the void he feels in his heart is meant to be filled with all sorts of things it wasn’t made for. This might send him headlong into destructive habits or relationships that will only result in more hurts and lies.

Now, for most of us it isn’t quite that dramatic, but the concept remains true. There are lies of various sizes that we believe (and which keep us in bondage) that God wants to replace with truth (and freedom). Coming to God and finding this kind of freedom was the purpose of the amazing ministry time we had with Matt and Cora on Friday. They started by teaching us how to come to God with these issues and let the Holy Spirit do His work. They laid it out simply in 6 steps:

1. Ask God to speak to you. Ask, “Is there is a lie that I believe to be truth? When I first start believing this? What hurt led to this lie?” The Holy Spirit will reveal these things to you if they are there.
2. Hear from God. If you can’t hear Him, ask Him why. He’ll get to the root of the issue.
3. Forgive the person that wounded you.
4. Renounce the lie that you believed.
5. Ask God for the truth. Ask where He was when you were hurt.
6. Declare the truth over yourself. It is very important in this whole process to actually speak things out – we have incredible power in our tongues (James 3, Proverbs 18:21). Speaking lies over ourselves throws confusion into our souls, while speaking truth fights those lies and solidifies truth in our hearts.

The rest of the time was left for the students to go through this process with the support of Matt, Cora, and the staff. They could go to different areas of the room to focus on problems with different types of relationships – one corner was for father/male authority figure problems, another for mother/female authority problems, and one more for sibling/friend problems. Over the course of this time, the Holy Spirit really made an appearance and started working, bringing up tears, nearly-forgotten memories, revelations, and ultimately a generous dose of joy and freedom. The staff moved around praying and speaking with students who needed some support and guidance. Matt was playing the guitar the whole time and basically being an open faucet for God’s spirit of love, intimacy, trust, and joy. I remember at one point as joy and laughter were kind of sweeping through the room that he was singing something about “releasing the Spirit of giggly Jesus” (If you know Matt Dawson, you’ll know what I’m talking about). Cora moved around praying and talking with people as well as prophesying over them. It was a time of a lot of different things for different students, but I think a lot of truth and freedom were found overall.

Wow, God is good.

Dan

P.S. I’m not going to say anything about applying this to your life, but really, what’s stopping you? As Matt Dawson would say, who’s ready for a nice, tall glass of freedom? God’s ready to give it to you. You just have to be willing to bring everything into the light, withholding nothing from Him. You can’t have any “no-go zones” with God if you want to have the life abundant that Jesus offers.

Week 2 - Heaven: Creative, Colorful, and Musical Worship

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

                “Worthy are you, our Lord and God,

                to receive glory and honor and power,

                for you created all things,

                and by your will they existed and were created.”

(Revelation 4:9-11 ESV)

OK, so now finally I’m on to this week’s lecture topic, which was worship, an absolutely foundational and fascinating subject. Our speaker this week was Teresa Archer, who has an incredible story that involves quite a lot of the world, but who currently leads worship at the Tauranga House of Prayer (THOP) with her husband, Paul. She is a wonderful storyteller and an engaging speaker who knows so much about worship, both from study and experience. As she speaks, she has a tendency to go down rabbit trails, but these tangents tend to be as valuable as the core teaching itself.

Coming into this week, I think we had quite a few students who thought they had heard most of what there was to hear on worship but soon realized there were huge aspects of and perspectives on worship that they had never considered. Even the staff, who had all been through at least one DTS week on worship, learned heaps from Teresa. As usual, I’ll just pick out a thing or two that stood out to me.

To start, Teresa defined worship as consisting of three parts: response (intentional), reaction (immediate), and metamorphosis (change – from the inside out). This doesn’t necessarily have to be worship of God, either, because everyone worships something, and we all bend our lives around what we worship. But those who worship God in Christ realize that we are made to worship Him, and that our greatest needs are met as we fulfill that purpose. In the context of worshipping God, we also learned that what we need to worship is faith, encounter, and relationship. The encounters with God are what create the immediate “reaction” part of worship, the “response” part is done intentionally through faith, and the “metamorphosis” happens through all three of parts, but especially in the relationship, which is a lifestyle, a daily walk.

Teresa went on to walk us through one of the most amazing illustrations of worship in the Bible, a passage where worship is anything but mundane. In fact, it’s incredibly creative, colorful, brilliant, flashy, dramatic, musical, and awesome! It’s a picture of what is actually happening eternally in heaven, even right now as you read this. It’s in Revelation 4 (part is at the beginning of the post):

At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne. And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald. Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God, and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.               

And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,who was and is and is to come!”

(Revelation 4:2-8 ESV)

Did you really read it? Did you take in how ridiculously crazy this is? Or did you gloss over some of the strangeness and wonder of it because you’re too used to reading incredible things in the Bible? I also have a tendency to downplay this kind of thing as I read through, so if you’re not a little bit amazed by this vision, read it again.

Teresa had us take a closer look at all the unbelievable things John sees here in his vision – the throne, the colors, the lamps, the rainbow, the elders, the creatures, the sea of crystal. John is smashing up against the limits of language here, trying to describe things that cannot be precisely described because they are unlike anything within human experience. It’s fascinating – God is fascinating, far more fascinating than the millions of things we have to fascinate us today. If nothing else, God is worth worshipping just because of who He is, regardless of what He’s done for us. God is anything but boring, and our worship should really reflect that, at least in the way our hearts come before Him.

Just reading this passage gave Teresa an idea of a few things we can expect in heaven:

1. God is exalted.
2. “People” are responding voluntarily.
3. It is dramatic.
4. It is creative.
5. It is beautiful.
6. It is musical.
7. It is a story.

One more topic stood out to me as Teresa continued her lectures. On Thursday, she decided not to teach on what she originally planned, and instead felt led by the Spirit to speak about worship as spiritual warfare. As usual, the Spirit was perfectly on point. She talked about how worship and prayer, though different, go hand in hand, and often worship can lead into intercession as simply a natural outflow. She talked about how worship is really the foundation of living out our faith because it means we are acknowledging God as king and placing him on the throne – His rightful place. Not only that, but worship is the uniter of all Christianity – we are all worshipping the king, all looking to our one God (Eph. 4:3-6).

Worship also can be an act of spiritual warfare, which includes not only standing firm against the enemy (2 Chronicles 20) but fighting back against him and advancing the kingdom of God. Worship can cut through the enemy’s deceptions, clear the air, and bring light in dark situations. God can use it to bring healing, revelation, and transformation. In fact, if you don’t know what to do, worship should be your default response. And if you take a look at Acts 16:16-34, you’ll see that worship challenges the foundations of the world and replaces them with the foundations of heaven! God loves to do all the work as his people worship him – check out Judges 7:20.

This all really came into play later this week on Thursday and Friday mornings. On Thursday morning we had an excellent time of worship full of joy and dancing and “ruckus” (as Cheyne would say) which really illustrated worship as being more than just singing – it is sometimes a full-on celebration of God’s goodness and love! Then on Friday morning we had a time of intercession focused on the country and people of North Korea. We took to heart what we had learned about worship as warfare, and began and ended our time of prayer with just worshipping God. It really made a huge difference, and I think passionate and heartfelt prayer really flowed naturally as a result of worshipping the king and welcoming the Holy Spirit. Not only does worship shake the foundations of the enemy, it can also open us up for God to reveal His heart to us.

Anyway, there’s a little taste of what we learned about worship this week and what happened because of it. Hopefully it got you thinking a little bit!

Dan

This doesn't have two much to do with anything, but I took it this week, so here you go (click to enlarge).

Week 2: Miscellaneous Events and Details

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:33 ESV)

For the record, it’s really hard to sum up a week of DTS in a blog post without taking half a day to write it. So much goes on here and we learn so much that it’s just hard to narrow it down. But I keep trying.

The main focus of this week in lectures was worship, but before I get into that, here are of few of the other cool things that happened this week:

• Starting off every Monday morning, we have what’s called whanau (Maori for “family”) time at the base. Everyone from the Marine Reach Ministries office up the hill comes down to the base, and we spend some time together and hear about anything important that’s happening in the ministry. This Monday, we took up an offering for Nesi, our wonderful DTS registrar, and her family, who are Fijian but are applying for permanent residency in New Zealand. They needed around $2300 to cover the application expenses, so we wanted to bless them with at least that much. After the offering was counted up, there was about $3100, which was more than enough! But that wasn’t all. As Nesi took it to the bank to deposit the 2842 New Zealand dollars (some of the $3100 in US dollars and IOUs), the teller told her that there was actually more than Nesi had thought. In fact, the teller now counted around NZ$3400! To her knowledge, no one had added to the money since the offering, so the only explanation was that God multiplied the money! Now, including the IOUs, the collection totals near $5000, more than twice the visa application expenses!!
• The second exciting side story from this week starts with a broken electric piano/keyboard. Not so exciting to start, but it gets better. Anyway, the keyboard which the base here has been using for worship and general student playing (a very nice but old one) recently decided to completely stop turning on. So I, along with our worship DTS leader Cheyne, was tasked with figuring out what to do about this. We looked into fixing it or buying another used keyboard, but finally we decided that this time it would be best to do it right and buy a new keyboard that would hopefully last longer than our other options. So we drove all around Tauranga looking at our options, did some online research, and finally drove all the way to neighboring city of Hamilton to pick up an 88-key, hammer-action Casio Privia PX-150. This was pretty exciting for me and quite a few other piano-playing students, who now have about as close as we can come to a real piano with our budget.
• I am now officially the staff member in charge of basically anything technology-related in the base – internet, sound, projector, etc. I’m really not as knowledgeable as some at these kinds of things, but I guess they figured that out of the rest of the staff I was most suited to that position, and I’m not complaining.
• We had our first justice stream class from 1:30 to 3:00 on Wednesday afternoon! We now have 10 justice students from 8 different countries, and it’s really great group! We started off our justice-focused time by talking about what justice and mercy are, how they are different, and how God is both just and merciful. You might not expect it, but these can be tough concepts to define. I think we’re going to have some pretty intense discussions as we move forward led by our stream leader, Patty.
• On Tuesday and Thursday, we had our first two BSS (Body, Soul, Spirit) sessions. BSS is the physical/exercise part of the DTS. A couple schools ago someone pointed out that DTS does so much to promote spiritual and mental growth but largely neglects physical development, so they began an exercise component. The leaders (the lovely Cadi Trask and Danny Aviles on this school) try to make it as fun as possible, and it functions as a community building activity as well. On Tuesday, we started off with fun relays and ended with a game of blob tag (some people felt like they had regressed back to elementary school). Then on Thursday we did a circuit through 20 different stations, which were designated for activities from pushups to sprints to dancing to drinking water. Then after we were done someone brought out a long piece of black plastic which was promptly laid out down the hill and turned into a slip ‘n slide. As you can see, we had an epically good time with that.

Camille, an awesome student from French Switzerland

No need for explanation here

Edgar, a justice student from Brazil who came to DTS with his Chilean wife, Nicole. He gets credit for the other two photos (and I used his camera to take this one)!

• Later Thursday night, we had our first small group time. Our small groups consist of everyone in our particular stream, so Danny (my fellow justice staffer) and I have small group with our 10 justice students. For our first week, we had a campfire down in Gideon’s Valley, which is just a few minutes’ walk down from the base. We roasted marshmallows, hung out, discussed the week’s lectures, and worshipped a little bit. I think we all had a pretty good time.
• The fun didn’t let up on Friday night, when we split up into genders for guys’ and girls’ night. Us guys went down to David Cowie’s (the ministry leader’s) house and ate pizza and ice cream sandwiches, shot really cool guns (a 50-caliber flintlock rifle, a 70-caliber cap and ball rifle, and an antique .22 rifle), and watched a movie.
• On Saturday it seems like I caught up on sleep most of the time J, but in the evening we went to the movie theater to see our justice movie for the week, which was the recently-released Les Miserables musical. Fortunately I like singing, because there was 2 and half hours of it, along with good acting and a whole slew of justice and mercy themes.

I thought I’d also put a bit on this post about what it’s like to be DTS staff. There’s no doubt it’s quite different from being a student. For one, there’s more responsibility (duh), which makes time management a much bigger deal (and it was a big deal as a student). As someone who’s quite task-oriented, it can be hard strike the right balance of spending time with God, building relationships with the students, fulfilling my staff duties, doing everything else that needs to be done (like writing blog posts), getting enough sleep, and that kind of thing. Spending time one-on-one with God and finding intimacy with Him is especially easy to overlook, even though it is the foundation of everything and maybe the most important thing to be sure to do. God has really convicted me that He has to come first, then everything else will follow. If I have a foundation of intimacy with God, I will be effective in my staffing and in getting all my other duties done, but it probably won’t work if my primary focus is on being effective in staffing and getting things done. Seek first the kingdom, and everything else will work out.

Another part of staffing is that I’ve begun to feel a bit of what you might call a pastoral burden for the students, especially the ones I’m more responsible for in the justice stream. This burden isn’t a bad weight; I just really desire for them to know Jesus like I do – better than I do. That burns in my heart, and really makes me want to pray for them and intercede for them. When they have a victory, I want to rejoice with them; whey they fail, I feel some of the grief. Certainly, I understand that the real weight is ultimately on Jesus, but we as staff have the amazing privilege of partnering with him to transform lives. Do you have anyone in your live that you are investing in, hoping and longing that he or she will come to know God better? Are you making disciples? I understand that I’ve got it easy here because the structure is all laid out for me to disciple people, but all of us in the body of Christ should be making disciples in some way – it was the last thing (and one of the clearest things) He told us to do!

Check out the next post to find out a little of what our week of lectures on worship was about.

Love ya,

Dan

Week 1: Apart from Me You Can Do Nothing

“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”  (John 15:5 ESV)

If there is one lesson that new DTS staff learn from the first week of a DTS, it is this: apart from Jesus we can do nothing. The work that we do the first week of a new school is wholly impossible without the presence of the Holy Spirit which brings wisdom, discernment, comfort, healing, and the power needed to destroy the works of the enemy. This past week has been full on, intense, and difficult at times, but already the students are different than they were when they arrived. If you want a refresher on how the first week of Seth’s and my DTS played out, read this.

While it was a crazy week, we at least gave the students a slight ease in.  And “slight”  is the correct word, as we started right off with David Cowie giving his very non-confrontational  talk on how we as Christians need to give up our rights when we choose to follow Jesus – rights to food we like, good accommodation, privacy, wealth and possessions, reputation, freedom, life, etc. From there we jumped into an introduction to Marine Reach and Gideon’s Fields, the beautiful and special land where the base is located. This introduction from Linda Cowie led into preparation for the powhiri, or traditional Maori welcome, which happened that afternoon. Gideon’s Valley, which is just a few minutes walk from the base, is tapu (sacred) Maori land now owned by a trust of both Maori and pakeha (white people). In contrast to the not-so-distant past when Europeans came and took the land from the native Maori by force, today the pakeha and Maori honor one another, with newcomers being officially welcomed  by the tangata whenua (people of the land) in a traditional welcome ceremony. It really is an honor for the students to receive this welcome, which is led by the district’s Maori chief Huikakahu, who also lives in Gideon’s Fields just across from the base.

The wero (challenge)

The powhiri begins with a wero (challenge) by a Maori warrior, who attempts to intimidate the newcomers and discern whether they come in peace. Once satisfied, he retreats and a Maori woman calls to the newcomers, welcoming them: “Haere mae, haere mae!”. Then one in the new group replies, crying “Call us again (in Maori)!” This repeats a couple times, and the newcomers enter and sit down. A succession of speeches follows (the Maori like oratory), with singing interspersed. A man from the welcoming side will give a speech and the tangata whenua will sing; this repeats on the other side – a speech, then a song. It goes back and forth once or twice, until the leaders are satisfied. Then the tangata whenua greet each of the newcomers with a traditional Maori greeting called the hongi, in which the ha (breath of life) is shared and intermingled. Two people put their foreheads together and touch noses, essentially breathing the same air. For Christians, this hearkens back to the time when man was created and God breathed into him the breath of life, His Spirit. Once the newcomers are greeted with the hongi, they are now considered tangata whenua, people of the land.

More wero

The tangata whenua singing after a speech

The hongi

All tangata whenua now!

Anyway, that was the gist of DTS day one. Day two was orientation, and while it was incredibly important in terms of setting up the culture for the DTS, it doesn’t really need to be described here.

Wednesday, on the other hand, was when the real intense part began. On Wednesday we began three very full days of what YWAM often calls “openness and brokenness” time. During this time each student has the chance to tell part of their story, complete with the good, bad, ugly, and very ugly. Then, after a student shares, the entire class prays in pairs as our leader Cheyne and a few staff members talk to the person (and listen to the Spirit), trying to understand and discern the roots of some of the problems that he or she mentioned during the testimony. Once they have an idea, they may lead that person in a prayer, sometimes before the cross, sometimes as a public declaration before the class, as the case requires. Finally, the student leaves the room with his or her school’s staff for further discussion and prayer. In this way, lots of sins, wounds, and struggles are brought into the light where God can really deal with them in his grace, and the whole community becomes closer together because everyone has been completely vulnerable and even dark secrets have been exposed. Absolute openness can be incredibly difficult, but it is incredibly good in the right context.

As before, these times were powerful and often heavy as we listened to sometimes shockingly hard stories. This time, we heard some stories that were, if possible, even more appalling than those that Seth and I heard on our school back in July. It was hard to believe how many stories of abuse, rejection, and oppression we heard. Perhaps most devastating were the many stories in which girls were taken advantage of, let down, oppressed, misled, or disappointed by men in their lives, whether friends, boyfriends, brothers, fathers, or others. The frequency with which this kind of thing was mentioned made me sad, angry, and slightly guilty all at the same time. Here were all kinds of examples of the injustices we as Christians are tasked with stopping. How did so many men stray so far from what God intended? Women come to men seeking love and acceptance, and rather than gently pointing them in the direction of perfect, infinite love and acceptance, many men either ignore them or try to take all they can from them while giving little in return. I know where this tendency comes from, that but that doesn’t make it any less atrocious.

Along with the many stories of past wounds, lots of people told stories of the sins they had been struggling with. Many had found no success in their struggles even up until coming to DTS and came looking for freedom. Others even came having never made a commitment to Jesus, or one only in the distant past, long neglected. Therefore quite a few students recommitted their lives to Jesus after telling their stories, consequently surrendering to Him and proclaiming their earnest desire to be free of sin.

And so, while it was a heavy time of hearing difficult stories, it was also a time of winning battles, achieving breakthroughs, and jumpstarting journeys of healing. This type of healing ministry happened especially on Friday, when several very significant things happened. First off, at one point in the morning a student shared his story which included the ways that he had been bullied and rejected as a child. In response to this, one student who had himself been a bully stood up and offered to stand in the gap for everyone in the room who had been bullied. In essence, he offered to represent the bullies who had formerly tormented many in the room, admitting the sins, offering the apologies, and begging the forgiveness of his/their victims, as those bullies should have done themselves. This kind of “standing in the gap” is difficult to explain, but something happens when the Holy Spirit gets involved and healing is able to happen on both sides.

After Friday morning, everyone who wanted to share had had a chance to do so, but ministry wasn’t over (fortunately). A few student guys had approached our leader, Cheyne, the night before saying that we as guys needed to do something to ask forgiveness of the girls, standing in the gap on behalf of the men who have treated these women so cruelly and selfishly. Cheyne also had the idea (which had to have been from God) of washing the girls’ feet as a way of bestowing honor and dignity back on them. This was awesome for us as staff guys because we really wanted something like this to happen, but the students were the ones to suggest it and take ownership of the idea. The guys really put some hearts into it, gather flowers from the valley to put in the warm water they got for the footwashing.

It started with the guys all kneeling with heads down on one side of the room while the girls came in the door and stood on the other side of the room. Cheyne spoke for the guys first, admitting what we’d done as a group and asking forgiveness. Several individual guys followed, and then Cheyne gave the girls a chance to respond by expressing the wounds they still felt and offering forgiveness. Then came the footwashing, with the guys kind of listening to the Spirit on who to approach and wash. The Spirit was really present by this point, and tears flowed freely as these ladies saw, some for nearly the first time, what it looks like for men to be godly, humble themselves, and honor women with a right spirit. I had the privilege of washing one of my fellow staff member’s feet and speaking over her truth about who she is and how God feels about her. At the end, once everyone else had been washed, my friend Matt remained washing a student’s feet and weeping, asking forgiveness and speaking truth and honor. I heard later that that student had been one who had disliked men and found it very hard to trust them, thinking them all the same. The Spirit truly was working.

Following that we still weren’t quite done. Cheyne now had everyone with father problems to come up (absent, oppressive, neglecting fathers, etc.). Everyone else surrounded them and prayed while Cheyne played and sang “The Father’s Song” over them. Again, more healing.

As you can see, it really was a roller coaster of a week. Lots of awesome things happened, but we still have a long way to go. But while we abide in the Vine, we have every reason to expect great things.

Nothing without him,

Dan 

Excitement, not Stress

Well, it’s been nearly a week since I arrived in New Zealand, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was nice to be here. I miss home, family, church, friends, and a lot besides, but both the environment and opportunities here sure do ease the difficulty. It’s high summer right now and here in Tauranga that means beautiful, comfortable days and dewy nights with only a refreshing touch of coolness. And unlike our time in New Zealand from July to October, it stays light until 8:30 or 9:00 instead of being dark by dinner time – a fact that makes organizing games of ultimate frisbee much easier  J. As nice as it was to be here during winter and spring, I’m not sure that much beats the summer weather here.

Still, we certainly haven’t had too much time to lounge around outside since I got here last Sunday. For me and the rest of the staff, our days have been filled with almost non-stop training and preparation for the students’ arrival. There are nearly 10 more students than there were on the last school, so new accommodations had to be set up in addition to the required cleaning of much of the base and the constant stream of little tasks that Linda Cowie can always come up with for us to do. There are so many details that have to be taken care of to run a DTS with 43 students!

During our training times we covered all kinds of really important topics. Most importantly, we started every morning with worship and prayer, acknowledging that if He isn’t our focus and leader and foundation, this DTS will go really bad, really fast. We talked about the vision we had for the DTS and the culture we wanted to create that would allow the vision to become reality. We talked about communication within ourselves as a staff and with students through one-on-ones (kind of like mentoring sessions) and small group times. We learned about our spiritual gifts and strengths and how they all fit together as a team, and each of us was assigned certain staff functions according to those aptitudes. Then we discussed time management, a vital part of life when you have as many responsibilities and obligations as DTS staff do.

Although it was a little hard leaving home a week before the DTS actually began, I can really see how incredibly important this staff orientation week was. I think we all got a better sense of just how much responsibility we have as DTS staff – it would be a very stressful amount if we weren’t certain that God was guiding us and extending grace when we don’t live up to everything we’re supposed to be. Because of His leadership we can be really excited instead of being stressed because we know that He is going to transform lives on this school. I can’t wait to see how people are changed and healed and brought closer to God in the next few months.

Students began arriving yesterday (Friday) and will continue to arrive up until Monday morning, when the school officially starts. Amazingly, this school is even more diverse than mine: within the 43 students, we have 15 different nationalities! Many are from Europe (Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway), but we also have students from North America, Korea, Singapore, Fiji, New Zealand, Brazil, and Chile! Fourteen are in the Medical Mercy stream, thirteen are in Pacific Challenge, four are in Go, two are in Devoted, three in worship, and seven with me and my co-staffer Danny in the justice stream.

Photo credit: Danny Aviles

I want to again thank all of you who have supported me in my return to New Zealand to serve as staff. I feel certain that He handpicked each of us who are on staff for this school and that I am in the right place. In fact, the very first night I was here (last Sunday) we saw a sight that seems like confirmation from God that we are right where He wants us to be and that His favor is over this base. We had just finished having dinner at David and Linda’s house (they are the founders of Marine Reach Ministries) and were walking back up past the chapel to the base when a rainbow began to appear. It got brighter and brighter (the double rainbow was easily visible too) and soon arced all the way across the sky. If you stood in the right place, the rainbow actually connected the chapel with the training center, a picture of the intersection of prayer and discipleship. It was one of the most spectacular rainbows I had ever seen, but it was only the beginning. As the rainbow faded, the western sky lit up, soon becoming one of the most vivid sunsets I have ever seen. We ran up the hill to see it better, and I couldn’t take pictures fast enough! Both the rainbow and the sunset were nearly miraculous sights to see, something only God could create, so we took them as signs of his pleasure over us and this YWAM base, and reminders that He is the source of all beauty. Without Him there is no good thing.

Off to a great start,

Dan