Cast it Into the Fire! Destroy It!

“The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” – 1 John 3:8b

It was yet another eventful week for the YWAMers at the Marine Reach DTS as we learned about spiritual warfare from Dean Sherman, who spoke across the miles and years through a DVD. Beginning this week, the idea of spiritual warfare was something that I hadn’t been exposed to all that much, because the church background I come from doesn’t talk about that kind of thing very much. Dean Sherman, however, gave me quite a few reasons why it’s really not smart to sweep the subject of spiritual warfare, Satan, and demons to the side. One of the most important of these reasons is simply that spiritual warfare is real, and we’re ALL in it. It’s going on all the time (much of it over our minds/thoughts), whether we acknowledge it or not. And if you think that’s not true, just look at the life of Jesus, who was constantly casting out and fighting against demons. If Jesus did it, then we are to do the same, and I don’t think the basic nature of the universe has changed since New Testament times. At the end of Mark (16:17), Jesus even commissioned us specifically to cast out demons, among other things. But now, especially in the western world, we have all kinds of natural explanations for things that are in reality the works of the devil (like physical and mental disease), and things like demons are for uneducated and illogical people. I think Satan is probably pretty happy to have us ignore his existence most of the time because if we are aware of him and his strategies we can really fight back, especially if we are aware of how much power and authority we have in Christ. Power to heal disease, cast out demons, break chains that oppress, cut off lies, turn curses into blessing, and deny the enemy access to our own lives. So you get the idea – spiritual warfare is real, important, powerful, and the province of every follower of Jesus.

As with Dean Sherman’s teaching on relationships, his instructions on spiritual warfare is just chock full of good ideas, practical strategies, and general wisdom – far too much to include in a blog post. But I’ll try to include a few of the things that stood out to me the most. First and foremost, here is the passage of Scripture that he used most frequently in his lectures, one you’ve probably heard before:

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.” – Ephesians 6:10-20 ESV

One of the first things you can get from this passage is that we are capable and confident because we are in Christ – we have the “strength of his might”! And that’s nothing to scoff at – this is the strength of the God who created the universe. We should also notice that are not struggling to be saved or to be a good Christian (Christ took care of that completely on the cross, and we are new creations) but we are wrestling against spiritual forces of darkness, something larger than ourselves. And we are NOT fighting against other humans (flesh and blood), as lots of Christians have been mistakenly assuming for the past 2000 years. Our job as followers of Jesus is instead to stand against strategies of the enemy (“the schemes of the devil”). So the essence of spiritual warfare is learning to recognize the strategies of the enemy, refusing to cooperate with them, and cutting them off in the name of Jesus (Recognize, Refuse, Resist).

After that, the rest of the teaching was essentially about how to recognize, refuse, and resist the schemes of the devil. The “recognize” part was probably the simplest - this is how to recognize what the enemy is doing:

1.  What would I do to me if I were the devil?
2. Know the nature of God and the nature of the devil. This is really important! We have to realize what it means that God is perfectly good, loving, merciful, gracious, just, and holy – it means that God doesn’t destroy anything except the works of the devil. It means that he always wants us to have life and wholeness, and that sickness, despair, death, and oppression are never his will, and he wants to fix those things. It even means that the wrath and judgment of God ultimately lead to life and fulfillment, as hard as that is to understand a lot of the time.
3. Look at statistics and conditions – see the devil’s geographic strategy. For example, say one city has more teenage suicides than any other city of its size. Do you really think the devil doesn’t have anything to do with that?
4. Ask God (discernment). Just ask, “what’s happening here, God?”

So then, if we recognize what the devil is doing, how do we fight back? The answer has everything to do with the Spirit of God that lives inside every person who repents and has faith in Jesus. The Holy Spirit gives us both weapons and armor as we go against the power of the enemy. We fight against him by praying in the Spirit (Eph 6:18), which we do by removing possible hindrances (unconfessed sin, fear, disobedience, unbelief, etc.), yielding ourselves to the Spirit, letting God tell us what to pray about, and being empowered by the Spirit (just letting the Spirit flow through us). Of anything, yielding to the Spirit is maybe the most important thing – Jono and Mary said this last week as they told us to surrender (yield) to the Spirit. In fact, everything God does, He does by His Spirit, and that Spirit usually works through yielded humans! So we have to learn how to keep a clean conscience, surrender to the Spirit, and let the power of God flow through us.

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” – Matthew 16:18-19 ESV

From there, Dean moved on to talk about the above passage, where Jesus tells his disciples (soon to be his church) just how much authority he is going to give them – the keys of the kingdom of heaven! The church (you and me) has been given God-level authority, basically the authority to bring the kingdom down to earth (“Your kingdom come” – Matt. 6:10)! God has chosen to rule and reign on Earth through his church, partnering with people (imperfect as we are). What an amazing thought! He gave us a huge amount of power and authority that can be exercised just through what we say and what choices we make. “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4), and as Jesus said, “I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19). Our prayers have great power! Our words have great power! When Jesus said “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21), He really meant that his church would do the same kinds of things He did, but would do them even better because it would be a whole body of men and women with the same power Jesus had, not just one person. He meant that we, his people, would be the method that He uses to redeem and restore the world.

When we see hurt, disease, lies, and destruction, God wants yielded followers of Jesus to step in and exercise the authority He has given them to bring the kingdom of God to that situation. When the followers of Jesus come together in unity, with hearts fully surrendered to Jesus and willing to persevere, no sickness, bondage, despair, or any other work of the devil can stand. We have the Name of Jesus, the Word of God, the Power (Dunamis) of the Spirit, the blood of Jesus, and our own testimonies to use in the fight. Certainly, Christians have no reason to blame God for the injustice and problems in the world, for He has given us the authority and power to deal with those things! This is where the problem comes in, though: people have the choice of whether to use their authority for God or to give it over to the enemy. Satan has no authority of his own; he has only what authority people give him through their decisions. This is what happened in the garden – Adam and Eve gave Satan the authority God had given them.

This is where the defensive work of spiritual warfare comes in. We not only have to go against the works of the enemy around us, we have to deny the enemy any access to ourselves. Certainly, as Christians we are secure in Christ – saved, forgiven, new creations, the righteousness of Christ, children of God. However, even with this as our permanent condition, we still have to make sure that we follow God’s commands and regularly examine ourselves, making sure we haven’t opened any doors to give the devil access. Dean Sherman referred to these access points as “gates,” as in the Matthew 16 passage, because in the time of Jesus the gates of a city were the primary access points as well the place where the city’s elders sat to made decisions. Dean pointed out that humans have “gates” as well – access points that are controlled by human decision making.

The gates we have to keep watch over are the mind, the heart, the mouth, and relationships. In reality keeping the devil and his lies out of our minds is a huge part of spiritual warfare, maybe even more important than actually casting out demons. We have to deal with thoughts of pride, unbelief, fear, contention and strife, criticism and judgment, inferiority and discontent, and condemnation. We have to cast down these thoughts (which are lies) and replace them with the truths of God, and we have to take captive every thought, controlling what comes into our minds. This is part of being “transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:1). In our hearts, we have to make repentance a regular thing, taking sin to the cross whenever we need to. We have to guard our mouths as well, making sure to bless and bring life with our mouths rather than doing the opposite (Prov. 18:21). And finally, we have to deny Satan access through relationships, doing away with bitterness, unforgiveness, and rebellion (easier said than done), blessing and serving even our enemies.

So that’s spiritual warfare in a nutshell – it’s all about cutting off the enemy’s influence and praying in God’s influence.

Dean talked about all of this, but in so much more detail, teaching amazing theology in such a practical way. He brought out themes in Scripture that pull so much together and make the gospel into such a cohesive picture. He really is an amazing teacher to learn from.

We finished the week by putting into practice what we learned. On Thursday we spent some time in small groups confessing the gates that we wanted to close in our minds and hearts, then denying the devil access by repenting, renouncing, applying God’s truths, and sending the enemy away in the name of Jesus.

Then on Friday we had another time of sharing like we did the very first week of DTS. During that first week, we didn’t have time for everyone to share, and we finally had time to continue. As people shared their life stories and all the hurts they had dealt with, we prayed for them. This time, I was introduced to the idea of generational curses, brought onto families by such things as vows, deceptions, demonic practices, and the occult. According to Cheyne (one of our school leaders), such curses can bring on a propensity for health problems, mental illness, accidents, birth problems (including miscarriages), and things like that. All of that sounded a bit crazy to me, and might to you, but Cheyne and Mariana (a student from Brazil) both had amazing stories of physical and mental health problems being taken away suddenly after people prayed for family curses to be broken in the name of Jesus.  Mariana’s story actually took place just before she came to the DTS, when her sister was miraculously healed of bipolar disorder and depression severe enough for her to be hospitalized. So during this time we prayed against any such curses people might have on their families.

And that was the week on spiritual warfare – yet another very full week! I hope you learned something!

Dan

Call for International Aid!

Hey again everyone!

This is a different sort of post in that I'm going to actually ask you to do something, or at least think about something. While Seth and I had all of our finances so generously provided by all of you, others in our DTS (Discipleship Training School) have not been as fortunate quite yet. There are still several students who are trusting in God to provide all or part of their outreach fees (NZ$3900 per person). We leave on outreach near the beginning of October, so it is coming up. And while many of you already gave to help Seth and I come, I am asking you to ask God if He would have you provide for another student here so that he or she can complete their DTS and put to use what they learned in the lecture phase. It is honestly one of the best investments you could possibly make in the kingdom of God, because SO much is going to happen on outreach. God is going to change many lives during this time - both those of students and the people they serve - if past outreaches are any indication.

If God leads you give, follow these instructions to donate online:

1. Go to  http://mrmdts.org/online-payments/.
2. In the dropdown menu, choose "Donate to a Student/Staff."
3. Fill out the form. Put my name (Daniel Snyder) in the "Recipient name" boxes.
4. Complete the payment process (you can pay using a credit/debit card)

I promise this is not a ploy to get more money for myself :)  You're paying straight to Marine Reach, so I won't be able to get it anyway. My fees are already paid, so it will go to whatever student needs it most. Email me at pianodan12@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Thank you so much for you generosity and obedience to God! I love you all!

Dan

There and Back Again

Even besides lecture and normal DTS stuff, we've been going on all kinds of adventures over the past week! If you're on Facebook, you've probably seen heaps of pictures already, but if you're not, I though I'd let you know what we've been doing and show you a few pictures.

Last Saturday our entire DTS took a trip to the Karangahake Gorge, which is about an hour away from our base near Tauranga. The gorge is a really interesting place because it is the site of a bunch of old gold mines which you can explore a little bit. There are also some ruins of the old ore processing facilities, plus a former railway tunnel, waterfalls, and beautiful scenery. Seth and I went exploring with fellow students Laura, Erin, and Larissa and got to walk through the long railway tunnel and see a really cool waterfall. Seth, of course, can't resist jumping into a pool of water if there's an opportunity, so just as we were leaving the waterfall he decided he would put on his shorts and go for a swim. Then we had to hoof it back the place where we started to get back on time, following a trail by the river in the gorge.

Seth's stick couldn't quite handle the tunnel wall

The railway tunnel

The waterfall we visited

Our group of Karangahake explorers

 A view of the gorge

Once everyone met up again, each van decided where to go from there. Some went out to lunch while others went to the nearby Waihi Beach. I ended up staying behind at the gorge with my fellow DTS student Micah and Anthony, a local guy who Cheyne, one of our DTS leaders, had met previously when his family had visited the gorge. Anthony is an interesting guy who grew up right next to the gorge and has explored every area of the mine that he could feasibly get to. He showed Micah and I the top of an old collapsed mine shaft that is off the main trail, and I also got to go through section of the mine tunnels called the window walk because it has tunnels that go out to openings (windows) in the cliff face that makes up the wall of the gorge/canyon.

Hiking to the mines with Micah and Anthony

After this little expedition, we met back up with Danilo, one of our leaders (and our van driver) and his wife Monika (a DTS student) and decided to cross the road and get milkshakes at the café there. I got a lime milkshake in honor of Kalyn Matthews, who loves all lime-flavored things in New Zealand. Then, our sweet tooth satisfied, we left Karangahake and headed out to Waihi Beach, which turned out to be breathtakingly beautiful. The weather was perfect – sunny and just the right temperature, and we were surprised to find huge numbers of beautiful shells all over the place. We had a wonderful time looking at all the different shells, and ended up taking pocketfuls home with us.  We arrived back at the base just in time to witness a beautiful sunset on the road coming back in. It had been an incredibly good day of experiencing the beauty of New Zealand.

The beautiful beach! A freshwater stream came out here.

Shells!

Writing in the sand left by our fellow YWAMers in an earlier van.

Micah and me

Our next adventure was on Thursday, when our BSS (Body, Soul, Spirit) time consisted of running/walking up Mount Maunganui (aka “The Mount”). The Mount is a 760 foot high extinct volcano in the Tauranga area. It’s a landmark than can be seen from much of the surrounding countryside, and it holds a lot of significance in Maori tradition. On Thursday, however, it was simply a challenge for our bodies as we pushed ourselves to climb those 760 feet as quickly as possible. I ended up finishing it in 13 minutes, which was somewhere near the front of the pack. Seth, however, was fasting that day and didn’t think it was a good idea to run up a mountain in that sort of condition. When those of us who did run got to the top, we found out the challenge wasn’t done, though – we still had to do 30 pushups and 50 situps. Yay for taking care of our bodies! After that, though, we could finally enjoy the beautiful view of the ocean, coast, and town that the summit provides. It really is quite stunning.

Starting up the Mount

Danilo, Martha, and myself living on the edge

The town of Mt. Maunganui

Lastly comes the most exciting adventure of them all. If you are on Facebook, you may already know what I’m talking about. That’s right – this past Saturday we drove just an hour away to a sheep farm near the town of Matamata to take a tour of the Hobbiton Movie Set for The Lord of the Rings and now The Hobbit movies!! This was definitely a dream come true for Seth and I. After paying a rather hefty (but worthwhile) fee at the Shire’s Rest gift shop and restaurant, we rode a bus over to Hobbiton. There we walked along the path the Gandalf drove his fireworks cart along in the first movie, took pictures in front of hobbit holes, saw the party tree, looked out across the Water at the mill and The Green Dragon (soon to be a real pub!), and generally thought we’d died and gone to heaven. We visited Samwise and Rosie’s house, quoted the movies constantly, and danced like hobbits on the party field. We even got a group shot on the very steps of Bag End itself!!! It was awesome. We could have stayed there all afternoon, but alas, the tour was only an hour and a half. So we soon had to say a bittersweet farewell to Middle Earth and return to the modern (but no less picturesque) world.

The path Gandalf drives his cart down

Scowling at Gandalf as he drives past

In disbelief to be standing in front of Bag End

The party tree!

The Hill

Bywater

On the way back to the base, we stopped at McLaren Falls, a really cool group of waterfalls in a particularly climbable rock bed. There we spent a half hour or so exploring all the nooks and crannies we could before it was time to go again.

Part of McLaren Falls

Gosh, I love New Zealand. J

Jesus’ Love,

Dan

There is Power in the Name of Jesus

“And he said to them, “Go into the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any dealy poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” – Jesus, Mark 16:15-18

OK, the last post, as long as it was, only covered Monday and Tuesday of last week. So here’s another one, and we’ll see how far I get with it.

When Wednesday rolled around, Jono and Mary took our lecture to another level, even beyond what we had done before. We began to talk about releasing the Holy Spirit that is in all of us and how powerful that is. Then we moved on in the last couple days to talk about the gifts of the Spirit, including all the ones that much of the American church kind of overlooks, like miracles, speaking in tongues, and prophecy.

Jono began on Wednesday by saying that the problem for most Christians is that we don’t activate the reality of the Holy Spirit in our lives. To explain what he meant by that, he started by reading John 20:19-23:

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”(John 20:19-23 ESV)

Based on this verse and pretty much the entire New Testament, it is a fact that anyone who believes in Jesus and confesses him as Savior receives the Holy Spirit of God and becomes a new creation. Yes, ALL Christians have the power of the Holy Spirit! But anyone who has been to church for long has heard that. Why, then, are all of these Christians today not doing miracles and healing people and raising the dead like Jesus and his disciples and early Christians? The answer to that also lies in Scripture. If you’ll notice, even though the disciples received the Spirit from Jesus here in John, they didn’t start doing awesome stuff until Pentecost in Acts. As Jono explained, this was because the reality of the Holy Spirit did not manifest itself in them until Pentecost. It’s not that it wasn’t there, it’s just that they didn’t really understand what it was until Jesus revealed it to them. At Pentecost, as the Spirit came down in tongues of fire, Jesus revealed to Peter that the awesome Son of God that he followed was now living inside his body, and all the power that Jesus had was his! He was not an uneducated fisherman; he was a son of God and filled with God’s Spirit! So he preached with the authority of that Spirit, and 3,000 people were saved.

The thing that we’ve missed so completely in much of the Western church (or at least what I’ve seen of it) is that all of us are meant to do things like Peter and Jesus. All Christians are filled with the Holy Spirit, and we weren’t just meant to wait around until we can go to heaven. God means for us, filled with Himself, to go out and essentially bring Heaven down to Earth through the power of His Spirit and the authority of the name of Jesus. He wants us to pour out love on the world, and He wants to heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead, and bring truth through us, His hands and feet! When He asked us to pray “Your kingdom come; Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” He meant for us to be a part of that! He loves His children and wants to bring healing and restoration through a body of people who have surrendered their own will and are living according to His.

But we don’t believe this, really. We live like God is far away most of the time, not right inside us. We’re absolutely brimming with the Holy Spirit of God and we have the authority of the name of Jesus, but we don’t have any idea what that means! We go to church and wish that we could be really spiritual like some people because then we might be able to do something amazing through God’s power. We haven’t really seen any miracles happen (and we’ve only heard about a few), so we’re pretty sure those only happen to people who are really faithful, and even start to think it must be God’s will for some people to be sick and for some to die before their time. But the truth is that it is never God’s will for someone to be sick – No one is sick in heaven – and it’s often not God’s will for people to die when they do. And we don’t have to wish that we had the power to heal people, because WE DO HAVE IT! It just has to be activated by surrendering to God and asking Him to reveal Himself. We don’t have to be special or extra spiritual or anything, because it’s all God’s power, not ours. He can work just fine even in our weakness, even when we don’t feel supernatural. He can do things that would otherwise be impossible, but we have to submit to Him and let Him do it. The normal Christian life is full of miracles!

There have been several times during this DTS when I have thought, concerning myself and so many other Christians: How did we miss this?!? This was one of those times. We are all full of the power of God, but we don’t use it. There is incredible power in prayer and in our words to heal, restore, break chains, bring forgiveness, and do all sorts of good things, but most the time I have set my expectations far too low and have not even asked God for any of these things. Oftentimes I have felt like I didn’t have any faith, but I felt like it was my job to be faithful, so I didn’t ask God to give me faith. It turns out that we miss out on all kinds of things because we just don’t ask for them. God loves to give good things to his kids.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!(Matthew 7:7-11 ESV)
 You do not have, because you do not ask. (James 4:2b)

Now, all of this may be hard to swallow out of the context of Jono and Mary’s teaching. It is so real to us here, however, because they told so many stories of these things happening (like Jono curing someone’s cancer) and we have actually experienced them here. For example, one girl here, Madelyn, was gluten intolerant and couldn’t eat anything with wheat, oats, etc. until she was prayed for this week. Now she has been eating gluten for several days and shows no ill effects! Praise Jesus! We have also had lots of experiences with prophetic words that spoke very specifically to different people. For example, Jono was praying over many of us on Wednesday and giving prophetic words when God spoke to him. When he reached Michael, he had a vision of him flying, which was the exact same thing Michael had seen earlier and hadn’t told anyone about. Or later, when we split up into partners to practice prophecy, Adam ended up describing to Derek the dream that he (Derek) had had the night before but had not shared with anyone. Being here and seeing God work constantly in tons of different ways makes it impossible not to believe that He exists or that he doesn’t do miracles any more.

So that brings me to the last couple days of the week, when we talked about the different spiritual gifts. They focused on the gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, which they divided up into three types: gifts of utterance (prophecy, tongues, interpretation of tongues), gifts of power (faith, miracles, gift of healing), and gifts of revelation (word of knowledge, word of wisdom, and discernment. They went on to explain that these gifts are never earned, but are given even though we don’t deserve them – we just have to ask. Also, they explained that all of these gifts are specifically given to build others up and are not for your own benefit, with one exception. The exception is the gift of tongues, which for many can be a personal prayer language given so that one can be even more connected with God. Jono taught that anyone can pretty much have any of these gifts because we are all filled with the Holy Spirit. God can give us whichever gift we need most at any time. Again, the key is just to surrender and let God work through us.

For me, this was really an introduction to some of these gifts because we don’t really talk about them much in my church background.  But I have really seen that God still uses all of these gifts, and when it is really from His Spirit there is nothing weird or creepy about it. Rather, prophetic words turn out to be incredibly encouraging, and speaking in tongues can really allow someone to personally connect on a very deep level with God or bring people to Jesus in a public setting.

On Friday, Jono did even more teaching that is so chock full of cool stuff that I won’t even try to go into all of it except to point out that it is essentially our mind, will, and emotions that limit the release of the Spirit in our lives. These are the parts of ourselves that we really have to surrender for God to work through us. Essentially, we will be as free and full of the Holy Spirit as we’ll allow ourselves to be, so we really need to give up control to God.

As you can see, we learned a silly amount this week and I can’t put most of it into words. But fortunately I’m not responsible for you understanding everything about the Holy Spirit. Nope, God’s in charge of that, and I trust Him. So just ask Him about His Spirit, and He’d be happy to help you understand who He is!

Spirited,

Dan

“I’m Already Pleased.”

Do you want to have your mind blown over and over again over the course of a week? Do you want to hear story after story of God working miracles and doing huge things through His followers? Do you want to be wrecked in your understanding of just how much God wants to work through you?

Well, if so, just invite Jono (pronounced like John-o) and Mary Turner in to teach you about the Holy Spirit. They came to teach us this week, and I cannot believe how much happened over the course of 5 days – so much that it’s hard to know where to begin. Jono and Mary are long-time YWAMers, missionaries, and ministers with incredible stories to tell and wisdom to share that will probably turn your ideas about following Jesus almost upside down. At least, that’s what happened to me.

After telling us some of their own stories, Jono and Mary began their teaching with Peter’s words in Acts 2:38 (which they came back to many times during the week): “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness [remission] of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Jono explained that repentance really means totally changing the way you think, and remission of sins means their complete annihilation (and our complete freedom from them), not just forgiveness. Coming to Jesus transforms our thinking as we repent and Jesus frees us from all condemnation and shame because He died for us and absolutely cancelled the record of our wrong! We are qualified to be just as good as Jesus in God’s eyes, and God himself comes to stay in us as the Holy Spirit.

To be free, we do nothing except believe and confess, then let go of ourselves. Being free is all about completely surrendering ourselves to God. You don’t have to try and be an awesome Christian – you already are an awesome Christian. You are God’s son or daughter. And you don’t cease to be a child of God even if you aren’t a very good one. You don’t have to try to be spiritual – you already are spiritual.  You don’t have to work yourself up to have faith because God is the One who gives faith. All we have to do is ask Him for it! You don’t have to try to do anything because Jesus has already done everything to make you a pure, unblemished, and precious one of His children. None of your doubts or questions and nothing in your past offends God. He is not a stingy God; He is a good Father who so delights in healing His kids and giving them good gifts (maybe even more than you thought you needed!). He loves to give you grace and faith even more than you love to receive it. So stop fighting! Just surrender to Him! Let go of control.

As usual, there’s no way I can do justice to Jono and Mary’s teaching and God’s wisdom in a blog post, which bothers me because it’s so ridiculously life changing. There are massive truths here that really do change the way we think. So if reading this doesn’t change anything, maybe you should read it again, and ask God to transform and renew your mind. If you ask Him, He will gladly do it!

On Tuesday, we took some time in lecture to just come before God and surrender to Him by praying, listening, and resting before Him. During that time, God’s spoke in a still, small voice in my thoughts, and what I heard most clearly was,

“You don’t have to do anything to please me – I’m already pleased!”

This word from God fit perfectly in the journey that I have been on since I got here, so as people shared after the time of surrender, I spoke up and told about what God has been doing in me (it was quite a bit shorter than this):

When I decided to come on a DTS, part of the reason that I wanted to go was to learn how to hear the voice of God, particularly because I wanted Him to tell me what to do with my future. Little did I know just how much God wanted me to learn and how much He wanted to work on me in this time, far beyond just telling me what to do with my life. In fact, I think now that growing God usually means a lot of things happen at once. It is a relationship, after all.

God began His work by exposing all my insecurities and trust issues where He is concerned, essentially telling me that it’s no good for Him to tell me my future before I can completely trust Him with it. He is right, of course, because with just about every future path I think about my first inclination is that my skills, abilities, and knowledge are inadequate to get the job done, and I won’t really be able to do it. God replies, “Of course you’re inadequate on your own! But you’re not on your own, are you? I’m right here with you – I’m right there in you – and I’m so ready to work through you to do amazing things. You just have to stop trusting yourself and trust me.”

The very first week God began his work. Even as I was pretty sure I would not really hear God’s voice, I asked him to speak to me, and He did! He continued speaking in the following weeks – words, verses, visions – and gradually I began to trust that this still, small voice in my thoughts couldn’t be anything other than God. He told me to read the book of James, which has perfectly fit with my journey here. During the second week, which focused on worship, He told me one night to go to John 4:23. It turned out that it was a verse that I had heard many times but could never tell you where it was, and it was exactly what we talked about that week – worshiping the Father in Spirit and truth. That same week, He began to tell me about future, or at least to get me prepared to hear about it. Through a vision He told me that He has a crazy adventure planned for me and Him, and that I should trust Him with it. He showed it to me like a backpacking trip, climbing a mountain with God walking beside me – which is, of course, the perfect illustration for me because I love the kind of adventure that comes with hiking up a mountain. After that, He even gave me the words and melody of a song to describe that vision (see my post “A Week of Worship” for details), and I have never written a song before in my life. Gradually, God was destroying my doubts, and I truly realized that hearing from God could be a constant thing (not a once-in-a-while thing) and that I could trust Him to tell me what I needed to know at the right time. He isn’t going to suddenly go silent if I keep asking for His wisdom in truth.

So God was (and is) getting me ready. He was saying, “This [your future] is gonna be big, so you’re gonna have to trust me before I can even tell you what it is.” And since then he has just kept preparing me, working on my heart. During week three, which was on repentance, I came before God and before my class and repented of my lack of trust in God which resulted in my fears concerning my future and my adequacy. Then the next week, Kristin Williams came one night and told us about being completely sold out for Jesus (see “Spirit Directed Worship Chaos”), and Dean Sherman prepared us practically for relationships, which is the foundation of following Jesus. And now this week, God brought Jono and Mary in at just the right time to tell us that following God is not about trying, it’s about surrendering, and when we surrender it’s ridiculous what God’s power will do through us.

So that finally brings me back to this word that God spoke to me on Tuesday, and you can see how it fits in my story. But still, it fits even better than I’ve told you. On Monday, the day before I received those words from God, I was spending some time outside just listening for His voice, and He told me to go to Luke 3:22. You might know that reference, but again, I didn’t know what verse that was until I read it. So I turned to it in my Bible and read, “and the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, saying ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’” I realized the next day that unlike other times in Scripture where God speaks from heaven about Jesus (“This is my beloved son”), here God speaks directly to Jesus (“You are my beloved son”). I knew for sure, then, that God meant this to be His word specifically for me, especially because now I am his son, just like Jesus! His Holy Spirit has descended upon me and He loves me dearly. He is pleased with who I am now regardless of what I do! I don’t have to prove myself to God or earn His pleasure but just let Him work through me. So many times I have hesitated to do something because I thought I might fail, but I don’t have to worry about failing! I don’t have to achieve anything, and I don’t have to prove anything before God or people. And strangely, the realization that I am not required to do or to prove anything makes me want to do more, not less. Yep, I’m free indeed!

I meant to add a whole lot more to this post about the Holy Spirit, but I think it’s better not to make them super, super long, so I’ll put it in another post. Before I end this one, though, I’ll leave with a little example of how all this has applied to my life.

As most of you know, I play the piano, and I have for almost 15 years now. Yet for all those 15 years of playing classical piano, I never branched out and played with a worship band. That was because playing based on chords is quite different than reading music and I had a silly idea that I wouldn’t be any good at playing anything other than what I could read as notes on a page. Of course, I always knew that I would never know how good I was unless I tried, but I never gave it a whirl until now.  I had been thinking about trying for a few weeks, but this week I finally got the push I needed to actually go for it. Cheyne, one of our DTS leaders, had seen me playing something a couple weeks back, so he asked me if I would play worship with Him on Thursday. I still hesitated, but he told me to at least practice with them and see how it went. In the end, I did play worship for the first time on Thursday, and it went quite well! I can’t do anything fancy yet, but at least I don’t mess anything up too noticeably :) .

More on the Holy Spirit in the next post!!

Surrendered,

Dan

"The hands of a king are the hands of a healer"

Wow! Dan gave an awesome summary of our teaching last week. So much information has passed into my brain since we have gotten here. My head is starting to feel full, and we're only 1/3 of the way through the lecture phase! Anyway, here is a quick update on last weekend.

 On Friday, we finished up our intensive week of lectures on relationships. Dean Sherman was a fantastic and animated speaker with a lot of things to share. I for one got a lot out this week’s subject. But Dan has already summed up this weeks content nicely, so I’ll move on to the choice things that happened this weekend.

On Friday night, Dan and I went to the Tauranga House Of Prayer (THOP) for the second time since we’ve been here. I had never been to a house of prayer previous to coming here. It is simply awesome! It is a great time to pray (obviously), worship, journal or listen for God’s voice. To find out more about the Tauranga House Of Prayer, check out their website : http://www.thop.co.nz/about/

On Saturday, which was delightfully clear and beautiful, there was an event at our base called Emerge.  Emerge events involve worship, a speaker (or speakers) and most importantly, food. They hold Emerge events every two months, covering a variety of topics. The events are open to the community, and fortunately for us, to the DTS students.  The subject this time around was prophecy, and we heard from Josh and Amberley Klinkenberg from Inflame ministries. Inflame ministries holds prophetic worship seminars of their own, and I would highly recommend checking out their website for more info on these amazing people: http://inflameworshipschool.com/about/.

To be perfectly honest, I decided to attend this event the morning of, on a spur of the moment decision. Little did I know what I was in for. As I was saying, prophecy was the topic for this event, and Josh spoke for a bit about the prophetic gift from the Holy Spirit. After a lunch break for hamburgers and sausages, we jumped into several prophecy exercises.  This is where the fun began. We separated into two lines, with one line facing away from the other line. The line behind them was then rearranged. The folks looking away were told to ask God for a prophecy for the person standing behind them. We were told not to panic or worry if we didn’t get anything. Instead, we were to make something up. Josh explained that often God is in our thought process more than we think, and so even if we believe WE made something up, it was often God who actually did. We did this twice, so both lines had a chance to prophesy. It was SO cool! I was nervous when it came time for me to try it out, but I asked God what He had for me. I didn't hear anything, but for some reason, I glanced over at a power outlet. Weird, I thought. Then it hit me, who ever is behind me is or is going to be a energetic person! They are simply electric; they get people excited, energized and awake. I turned around and told the girl behind me what I had been thinking, and nervously asked her if that made any since at all. To my delight she answered that she was a worship leader! So what I had gotten was just confirmation and encouragement for her.

Another exercise we did was going around the base and looking for objects that connected with a word we had gotten from God. After a few minutes, we went back in and talked about some of the objects and prophesies that people had gotten. A guy named Scotty got up, holding a pair of jumper cables. He proceeded to say that he felt like there was someone in the room who related to the jumper cables. He said the person was like a good car battery, that they could get other people going. That this person could charge folks and excite them. But, he said, in order to do that they needed to learn how to get close to others. And that’s where the jumper cables came in. In order to transfer energy from one car battery to another, you need jumper cables. But the cables are normally pretty short. You have to be close to the car you are jumping off. After finishing his story, he looked straight at me and said "and that’s for you mate, God told me it was for the guy in a checkered shirt". My first reaction was, wait, I'm wearing a checkered shirt? after realizing that I was, the full realization of what he had said hit me. I was so blown away, because it was spot on! I need to learn to get close to people. I love it ONCE I am close to others, but the process of building close relationships is not a strong point of mine. But you can bet that now its something I'll be working on.

Needless to say, I am glad I decided to go to Emerge! God opened by eyes to His gift of prophecy and words of knowledge.

On Saturday night, Josh and Amberley held a worship service at a local church. Although geared towards high school age kids, several DTS students (myself included) went. We had a energetic couple hours of worship. After the worship portion of the night, Josh and Amberley talked a bit about what they do. We then had a time in which we gather into groups around anyone who needed physical healing, and prayed for them. This is something Josh and Amberley do a lot; at most of the events they hold. It was incredible, after several minutes of praying, a handful of teens had been healed of various levels of pain and physical brokenness. One guy in particular had broken his collar bone not long before in a skateboarding accident. He couldn’t raise his right arm very far at all, but after receiving prayer; he was able to swing his arm around however he wanted to. It was so cool to be a part of what was going on, to let God us to heal others. 

After such a crazy, God-saturated day, I was wiped out.

On Sunday we went to the Mosaic Church again. I just can't get over how cool Mosaic is. I was not looking forward to attending a new church, and figuring out how another body of believers did their thing. But Mosaic has blown me away every week. But its not so much the preaching (which is awesome) or the worship (which is amazing) or even the people (who are wonderful). It’s what God is doing in the church. Really, that’s what we should be drawn to in any church. Not the trendy decorations or cool worship leader. God is doing some amazing things in and through this church, and I'm excited to a part of that for the next two months. 

 On Sunday night, we had Marion Fromm as a guest speaker. None of us had heard much about her, so we all had no clue of what to except. Marion is almost 74 years young, and is serving as a business missionary to Cambodia. She founded a company/ organization called Reverse The Curse. RTC produces and sells dried fruit and preservatives under the name of Cambodian Harvest Dried Fruit Co., LTD. Marion founded RTC as a means to employ Cambodian landmine victims. Tragically, Cambodia is still littered with the landmines from past conflicts, and landmine victims are not uncommon throughout Cambodia. Those who have been maimed by landmines have a very difficult time finding work, and often, no one wants anything to do with them. The Buddhist/karma mindset is that the victims "deserved" what they got, and that they should not be helped. This is obviously not God's heart on this issue, and Marion is working to change that mindset. As one might expect, the employees are often open to hearing about the gospel after having been shown Jesus is such a incredible way. Marion had started a church in her factory, with nearly all of her employees attending. She holds small group bible studies every week as well, and visits by the Holy Spirit with visions and healing are frequent. What started as a simple dried fruit factory has grown into so much more.

I think the most awesome thing about Marion’s story is her obedience. God called on her late in life. She had no clue how to start a dried fruit company, let alone pioneer a church. But Marion was obedient to what God asked, and He has more than taken care of her this far. I know enough about God to know that if He asks you to do something, He will equip you with the knowledge and means to see it through. He certainly did that for Marion. 

If you would like to read Marion’s full story (just do it, it’s a awesome story) or find out more about RTC, check out their website: http://www.reversethecurse-cambodia.com/

So, that is what happened this past weekend! Thank you all for your prayers and support, they mean so much to Dan and I. May God bless you and keep you!

Sunset in Gideon's Valley

Cool willow trees!

More Gideon's Valley sunset action

Rosie Cotton Dancin'

As I mentioned in my last post, we heard lots of teaching this week on all aspects of relationships from a veteran YWAMer named Dean Sherman (via DVD). And since I think you might appreciate reading some of the highlights, and because our journal each week is supposed to include a summary the week’s lecture topic, I’m going to put some of the main points in a blog post. Note that this is a distillation of 11hour-long sessions and about 20 pages of notes, so there are obviously quite a few here. But anyway, I hope it’s helpful.

Dean started off with a session called “One Message,” where he simplified the entire message of the Bible to a single point: Love One Another (1 John 3:11). In fact, if you do not love, you do not know God (1 John 4:7-8). It is impossible to know God, except in relationship with other people. He went on from here to explain the difference between Greek knowing and Jewish knowing, which is a very important distinction. All of us in Western cultures have been brought up with the Greek idea of knowing, which consists simply of brain agreement, understanding something in our minds, and objective substantiation of truth. Much of the rest of the world, however, thinks of “knowing” like the Jews did – as a subjective experience of truth integrated into life, such that if you don’t live something out you don’t really know it. He talked about how we need both of these ideas of knowing, and how the Bible includes both. In fact, the Old Testament is all about Jewish knowing – a people group living out the principles and truths of God – while the New Testament is more concerned with Greek knowing – a philosophical understanding of God and salvation. So when we read that we cannot know God unless we love people, it becomes much easier to understand when we realize that John is coming from a Jewish perspective of knowing.

Anyway, the main point here is that the one message that we all have to get is to love, both God and our neighbor. In fact, every problem in the world today comes from a problem with not loving. So we can make the Bible really, really simple: There is one message, which is to love one another, and there is one problem in the entire world, which is relationship. And so, what is the one thing we all need to be good at? Relating to other people. Because if we can’t relate well to others, we are part of the problem. In fact, Jesus pretty much said that the key to the entire world knowing Him is for his people to love one another and be completely united with God and each other (see John 13:35 and John 17:21-23). Unfortunately, this seems to be the thing the church has the most trouble with…

In the next session, Dean went on to define what love is, using 1 John 3:16 as a foundation. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” And that makes it pretty clear. Love is defined by Christ laying down his life for us: Love is defined by the cross. Specifically, the cross means death to selfishness, service to others, and humbling ourselves (Romans 12:3 – pride is the biggest relationship problem). In fact, if we are both in humility, it is impossible not to get along. We have to deny self and be crucified with Christ, but after the cross comes resurrection!

Besides defining love by the cross, Dean defined love in a few other ways:

• Love is defined by the Truth. If I don’t do and say the truth, my love is baloney. People don’t expect us to be perfect, but when we don’t live by the truth, we have to be open, say sorry, and repent.
• Love is defined as choosing the best and highest. Love is not a feeling, it is a choice to honor another person by doing what is best and highest for them.
• Love is defined as choosing what is appropriate. Here is way to approach life without legalism. Before any action, ask: Is it the loving thing to do here and now? Is it the highest and best?? Is this the best time, best tone of voice, best attitude, etc.? We don’t have to define everything as being right or wrong, we just have ask whether it is loving.

OK, well that’s just two of the sessions, so I’m going to have to shorten this up a lot because I don’t want to write a novel here. So here’s session three, titled “Understanding Value”:

1. Relationships are necessary because people have value. Relate to people according to value, not behavior. Fortunately, this is what God did to us. We were still sinning when Jesus came to save us (Romans 5:8). Shouldn’t we still choose the highest and best for others even if they are behaving badly? Shouldn’t we forgive people while they are “yet sinning”?
2. Relationships are possible. Jesus came to restore relationships, and he did! We have been brought near to God, and he has removed the enmity between people (Ephesians 2:13-14). God already did everything.
3. God’s value system: I = you, you = me.

From there, Dean moved on to begin to talk more about relationships with the opposite sex. He explained why it was so important to talk about this:

1. This is the biggest emotional impact in our society.
2. We have a problem (note the prevalence of divorce, adultery, fornication…).

He went on to explain that God thought up and created two sexes, along with attraction, sexuality, hormones, etc. – and he said it was good. We have such a problem with these things not because sex is a problem, but because selfishness is. He also tackled identity problems that we all have, asserting that we are each 100% male or 100% female, no matter what social type casts or media images may tell us about ourselves.

I’m still writing too much, so here’s everything else in bullet points:

• God gave everyone an attraction gifts within our personality and we need to realize we have it and how it works.
• Romantic attraction can be and must be controlled by your choice, based on truth and God’s direction.
• God has REASONS for every command that He gave. The boundaries He placed around romantic relationships are logical, loving limits. God has never said, “Because I said so.”
• 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. You can’t touch body without touching spirit (where Jesus dwells). Sex is never just a physical thing – it is the intermingling of body, soul, and spirit.
• Why is sex outside of marriage wrong? Because it damages you! There is a lack of commitment, you are unprotected from the Enemy, it destroys an amount of intimacy, and it can put a negative weight on your future marriage. Reasons.
• When authority fails you and/or you rebel, that’s when we go for sin and indulge in fleshly desires. If this is the case, we need to forgive the authorities that failed us and submit to the authority of God. We can reparent, with God as father and the church as our accountability/mother.
• We have to have a relationship philosophy, or we are just set up for failure and hurt. For you unmarried types, here’s Dean’s relationship philosophy:
• Get your motives right
• Avoid the Dating Syndrome (dating for the sake of dating)
• Give up your rights to sex and marriage. If we give it up as a right, God will give it back as a wonderful privilege (which he delights to do).
• Take time to develop non-romantic relationships!
• Determine to please God with your relationships.
• Get your life free and straight (don’t bring someone else in when there’s still all kinds of sin in your life).
• Develop personality more than dateability.
• The progression to go through in approaching a romantic relationship:
• Admit in honesty that it is romantic.
• Seek God.
• Make Jesus the Lord off your emotions.
• Communicate to an objective (not emotionally involved) person!
• THEN, Communicate to partner – right timing, unselfishly (do not shock or manipulate), continually
• If there is sexual sin or wounds in your past, the cross is capable of making you 100% new, cleansed, and free! The past is left at the cross.

So there's 11 hours worth of teaching boiled down into about 1,400 words. Hopefully you learned something new!

Love one another, (that's all!)

Dan