Spirit-Directed Worship Chaos

I cannot at all believe that we’ve already been here almost 4 weeks. Time has flown by incredibly fast, and so much has happened in such a short time. But I can tell there’s still so much that’s going to happen in the next 8 weeks of lecture phase, not to mention outreach to Cambodia after that. I want to thank everyone again who supported us with finances and prayer to get us here. We found out a couple weeks ago that the cost of outreach was going to be more than we thought, but because God provided so much before we came we already had the extra money we needed to go! Thank you for all your generosity that has made it so easy to be a part of this amazing experience.

Now this week, just like each one preceding it, has been a week of mind-blowing new experiences. Monday was especially exciting, especially because it ended with the Holy Spirit coming in power like I’ve never seen before. I’ll let you experience it secondhand by way of my journal entry for the day (although you’ll notice that I wrote it pretty much like a blog post, on purpose):

“Wow, today was amazing. Why? Well, the short answer is that God is amazing. But to be more specific, I would say that it was amazing because we heard from two incredibly gifted and Christ-centered teachers, and because after the second one the Holy Spirit showed up – and I mean really showed up. 

 This morning began with whanau time, which was of course nice because we got to visit, eat scones, and watch David Cowie speak in front of a group of people. It was a bit out of the ordinary, however, because they took up an offering to help with the cost of adding a filtration system to the well that supplies the base (the iron levels in the water are too high). It was cool, though, because just from the DTS students and staff, and the Marine Reach staff NZ$1700 was collected, but I think that grew to more than NZ$5000 throughout the morning with additional donations coming in ($30000 is needed for the system). 

 After whanau time we began lecture. This week we are hearing from Dean Sherman on the especially important topic of relationships. Despite the fact that he is not actually here with us but rather communicating by DVD, his teaching has been unbelievably engaging and potent. He is great at simplifying things without oversimplifying them, and he was constantly pointing out things in Scripture that I hadn’t thought about before. It was just revelation after revelation, the kind of thing where I wished that basically everyone I knew could watch it because we so need to hear it (I’ll give you a few key points this weekend if I can). Although honestly, I really need to sit down and think about how I am going to apply so many lessons to my life. 

 After an uneventful afternoon of napping and ultimate Frisbee came a much more eventful evening. For the first Monday of each month, we have Invited Speaker Night. This is of course, exactly what it sounds like – Marine Reach invites in a really good speaker, and we have a night of worship and teaching. Some people from the surrounding community come as well, and for some reason we use it as an excuse to dress up (I went all out and actually ironed my khakis and dress shirt and even pulled out my tie). This particular night, after a good worship session, a man named Kristin Williams came and spoke to us. Now, I’m not sure if that’s how you spell his name, and although I thought they were just saying “Christian” at first, he assured us that it was “Kristin” and that he knew it was a girl’s name in the US. Anyway, he was yet another incredibly powerful and dynamic teacher, not to mention hilarious. He spoke with a very great deal of passion, imploring us to hold nothing at all back from Jesus while we have this time here at DTS for Him to really work on us. I felt convicted that I hadn’t really given Him use of my time, and while I have this chance I really want to spend as much time with Jesus as possible, including long periods of prayer. 

 After this, he used a couple scriptures (Revelation 12:11, Matthew 24:14, Matthew 19:28-30) to convey his vision that one day (maybe soon) there will be a generation of young people who really go all the way for Jesus – many, many leaders, apostles, and prophets doing signs and wonders, bringing the gospel to absolutely everyone on the earth (see Rev. 12:11 especially). He told us that part of the reason he continues to minister to young people is that he knows that someday the youth that he teaches may become those on-fire leaders for Jesus that will change the world. In fact, he said, it could be us! 

 This was a really interesting thing to hear, partly because I had never really heard or considered this bit of end times prophecy from John and Jesus, and partly because his vision reinforced the passion that David Cole conveyed to us last week. These are two men who are totally convinced that God can and will do massive and incredible things in our world, maybe quite soon. In fact, he is already moving in huge ways, and there’s no doubt that He wants us to be a part of it. And that’s really an encouraging thought. 

 During his talk, Kristin touched on all kinds of other interesting topics and stories that anyone currently or previously involved in youth ministry would find quite amusing. Still, the most wonderful part of the day came when Kristin finished his talk and proceeded to pray for us. After a short time praying over us, the Holy Spirit was definitely making its presence felt, but he stopped and gave a little instruction on situations where the Spirit comes in power. He told us to be sure not to force or make up a reaction to the Holy Spirit just because others are reacting to its presence in a certain way, but just to be open to Him. He also admonished us to avoid falling into the trap of being selfish, getting annoyed when other people are visited powerfully by the Spirit and you are not at the time. Rather, we should be happy that anyone gets to experience the presence of God so intensely and just wait for God’s own time and manner of revealing himself to us powerfully through his Spirit. 

 After that little teaching tidbit, Kristin felt that he had heard some things from God about a couple of the DTS students, and he explained to them the prophetic words that he had heard about them. That is a gift which is incredibly amazing to me. Kristin had never met the students that he spoke to, yet those of us who knew them could see how precisely the words applied to each one of them! 

 Having shared the words that God had given him, Kristin started praying for us again, essentially asking the Holy Spirit to come and fill us up more and more, as Dave Cole did when he baptized in the Holy Spirit. This time something happened that I have never experienced before, and there’s no doubt the Spirit of God was really there causing it. For a good while the room was filled with what one might call Spirit-inspired/directed chaos. Some people began to weep, other to laugh, some sat silently, while others sang whatever expression of worship came to their lips. Sometimes I just rested in Jesus’ presence, other times I was moved to pray, and still other times I just sang whatever notes or words I felt like. For everyone, the Spirit led them to a place of completely unique worship. Finally, the Spirit-riot died down, and we sang together again – “Wairua Tapu/Holy Spirit Welcome, “How Great is Our God,” “I Exalt Thee.” It was a powerful and emotional time like none I have ever been a part of. I’m sure it would have looked like ridiculous chaos to an outsider, but we were in the presence of God. Also, there anything really weird or creepy about it, as Christians from some background might think there would be. There was just God, and a lot of people expressing the genuine love that he so definitely deserves from every one of us.”

So that’s the best I can do to explain the day on Monday, although it doesn’t really do it justice. After that, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were relatively calm by comparison. We continued to have Dave Sherman teach us by video, moving from the foundations of Christianity (which really center on relationships) toward more specifics of relationships, especially between people of the opposite sex. It’s been tons of valuable teaching in a really short time. Each day, we have finished up lecture time with a crazy creative activity that our leader, Catherine, came up with to review what we learned that day. On Tuesday, we had to develop a radio advertisement or short song/jingle to convey a topic from lecture. That turned out to be hilarious, as the vast amount of creativity in the room resulted in songs (included a revision of “Call Me Maybe”), raps, skits, and folk ballads. Then, on Wednesday Catherine showed us a clip of the Wedding Scene (“Mawwage - mawwage is what bwings us togeva today…”) from The Princess Bride, then had us come up with new dialogue to dub over the film with the sound muted. Of course, that was ridiculous and hilarious too. Then today she had us chose a random object from a bag and come up with a way to relate it to one of Dean Sherman’s points.

Besides lecture, we had BSS on Tuesday which consisted of a rather punishing circuit workout consisting of about 15 different exercises situated around a circle. We did each exercise for a minute then moved on to the next one in 20 seconds, until we had gone all the way around the circle. Then we went around the circle two more times! Today (Thursday) for BSS we did relays, most of which were pretty silly – power walk, crab walk, wheelbarrow race, etc.). We had a good time though.

Power walking relay!

Crab walking relay - this is what complete determination looks like.

Grape Vine relay!

Bear Crawl Relay!

Wheelbarrow race!

Sprint and backwards run relay - trying to stop at the end!

OK, so there are just a few more things of note so far this week. One is that unfortunately we had to say goodbye to two of our fellow DTS students, Kayla and Skyler Martin, as they headed back to the States. I say “unfortunately” because they are awesome and we will miss them, but really it’s not at all unfortunate because it was so clearly God’s leading. Skyler and Kayla were married not too long before the DTS began, and just before coming to New Zealand they found out that Kayla was pregnant. They came here and have been wonderful, but Kayla began to feel that God was leading them back to the United States for some reason. This seemed crazy because they had only been here for a few weeks, but then they began to gain confirmation from God all over the place: from dreams that Kayla had, from other people, from prayers, and from teaching that we’ve heard. Interestingly, part of this guidance all had to do with raising up “Daniels” (as in, people like Daniel in the Bible) in the United States who would lead and shape our culture from within it. It seems like maybe they will be helping raise these leaders up back in the US, and perhaps their child will even be a Daniel, in spirit if not in name. To top this off, their baby’s due date falls on March 12^th of next year, which just so happens to be my birthday – and if you didn’t realize, I am literally a “Daniel!” So, it seems certain that God wanted Kayla and Skyler to come to New Zealand for a time of refreshment before sending them back to the United States with renewed zeal and love for God and his ministry. And so it was a bittersweet send-off this afternoon.

On Wednesday Seth and I had our Justice Stream class, and this week we talked about abortion. This is, of course, a controversial issue in the United States, but that may well be a result of political indoctrination more than logically thought out opinions. I highly recommend that you watch this really interesting video to consider what you’re actually saying if you think abortion is permissible. Unless you can say without a doubt that life doesn’t begin until 3 months into a pregnancy then more than 50,000,000 people have been killed in the US since 1973. And if you’re unsure of whether life begins at conception or not, then think about this: Would you agree to destroy a building if there was even a possibility that there were people inside? Also, is it really up to us to decide whether a child will have such a bad life after it is born that it shouldn’t have a life at all? Definitely worth thinking about.

And, just one more thing to tell you about. We had a meeting on Wednesday night to talk about traveling around New Zealand after DTS, which is something Seth and I had definitely planned on doing. As it turns out, a lot of other people we’re thinking about the same thing, although there are a lot of different ideas as to what said travel will consist of. Hopefully, though, Seth and I will have a companion or two on our New Zealand exploration. Meeting that night also got me all excited because I love planning trips, so I started trying to figure out how much it will cost, what the cheapest way to travel will be, etc. Right now, it looks like we might actually fly down to the South Island (you can do that for $80!), then rent a car to explore the country and drive back up to Auckland where we fly out on December 12^th. Yeah, I’m excited about that, although there’s no way that I would wish for the DTS to end just so I can see more of New Zealand. This time at DTS is so valuable.

Anyway, there’s a lot of the fun stuff we did this week! I hope that wherever you are that you’ve had a good week!

Your highest and best,

Dan