Holy Hillbilly Hobbits: They are Tasty, They are Nice!

The really pertinent verse God gave me at the beginning of the week:

"Then I gave orders, and they cleansed the chambers [of the temple], and I brought back there the vessels of the house of God, with the grain offering and the frankincense." - Nehemiah 13:9

Seth began his post on Wednesday by saying that not much had happened in the first three days of the week, but of course that’s all relative. Quite a few things had actually happened, as you hopefully read in his post. Now, I get to tell you about Thursday and Friday, which really were quite busy by DTS standards, and that means a nice, long blog post from me. So get ready! Just when you think you’ve seen how awesome God is, he goes and shows himself to be awesomer…

As Seth mentioned, this week our speaker was David Cole. David is an awesome missionary and long-time YWAMer who spoke to us with amazing wisdom and a true passion for Jesus. He also spoke as one who has experienced the work and miracles of Jesus firsthand during his time as a missionary in New Zealand and Asia. His designated topic for the week was repentance, but he really didn’t get to that topic until later in the week. He started instead with some different things (lots of things!) God had put on his heart, telling us joyfully and optimistically about the huge works God is doing all over the world (especially in Asia, where he lived for a long time) and challenging us to die to ourselves and go all out for God. People are coming to Jesus and being healed all over the world – the kingdom is advancing all the time! For example, consider the exploding church in China, where I believe he said 20,000 people come to Christ each day!

He then began to talk about the foundations of our faith, including repentance, by going through Jesus’ early ministry in Mark 1. Following that, he continued to use scripture to talk more specifically about foundations for life and repentance. He talked about SO many different things, that there’s no way I can get it all on here, but I’ll give you a few things that stood out to me.

One of his main points was that wherever Jesus went there was confrontation and change – no one could stay the same when Jesus was around!
Jesus’ first words in Mark were “The time has come! The kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” And He is speaking these words to us! The time has come for freedom, restoration, and healing; we only have to repent and believe in the gospel! Repentance by itself is awful, but we have incredibly good news to go along with it – news of forgiveness and reconciliation and peace.
Why did Jesus come? To show us what God is like, to take away sin, and to destroy the work of the devil (1 John 3).
Foundations for life (found in Hebrews 6): repentance from dead works (anything God didn’t initiate), faith towards God, baptism, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, eternal judgment.
True repentance is seeing our sin from God’s perspective and in the light of his love and holiness.
Repentance is not remorse (i.e. I wish I hadn’t done it).
Repentance includes a response in three areas: confession of sin (being right with God), restitution (getting right with other people, as much as possible), and getting rid of idols/possessions associated with sin.
God requires specific confession of sin or else he will not be able to minister with his grace in that area of your life.
You can’t hide holiness, and you can’t hide sin.
When you’re a leader and something goes wrong, the best thing to do is hit the deck and pray.
Repentance is a gift from God! He loves us enough to convict us, so He can give us more of himself! Joy and refreshment comes from responding to the Lord.

“Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus…” – Acts 3:19-20

Besides all of this, David also gave all kinds of practical advice concerning how to confess, make restitution, and throw away idols. It really was a full week of teaching!

In addition to teaching, lots happened on Thursday and Friday that I want to tell you about (some briefly, some not so brief). On Thursday morning we went down into Gideon’s Valley (a 5-10 minute walk from the base) to have worship. The theme for the worship session was “Worship as a Weapon,” so we really focused on speaking and singing out the truth of Christ to obliterate any lies of the enemy and send him far away.

After worship was lecture (which I think I’ve said enough about), then later in the afternoon we had our BSS (Body, Soul, Spirit) class. On Thursday we didn’t have an actual workout; instead, we stayed inside and learned about nutrition from Emma, one of our fellow students from South Africa who is a dietician. Then, after learning about how none of eat correctly, Seth and I felt guilty enough to go for a run before dinner. We ran about 4 km on the hilly New Zealand road, commenting that if we did this often enough, we would be in great shape by the end of the DTS. Hopefully we can actually keep it up.

That night, the students from the nearby Couples DTS joined us for dinner, and then we prayed for them, commissioning them to go on outreach to Fiji and Vanuata beginning next week. Thursday night is also the night for our Justice small group, which this week consisted of eating chocolate chip cookies (our leader Brittany is awesome) and taking a personality test and discussing the each person’s results. It was really a good idea, considering that we are going to be in close quarters in the coming months, especially on outreach, and will need to understand how to get along with each other and get things done.

Following the usual morning routine, Friday began with a wonderfully energetic student-led worship session. This was followed by a raucous run through just about every kid’s Sunday school song we could remember (complete with hand motions), starting with “Father Abraham” and concluding with Seth and I successfully leading the beloved “At a Time Like This.” For those of you aren’t familiar with it, “At a Time Like This” is a ridiculous song that mostly revolves around doing a bunch of random hand motions and making different sound effects to go with them, all quickly and in the right order. No one here had heard it before, but it was quite a hit. I, having done it about a thousand times, was held in rather high esteem to be able to do everything without even having to think about it. During this whole time of old kid’s songs, most of those who weren’t from North America had never heard the songs, so they just got to watch all of us very enthusiastically make fools of ourselves. Very entertaining, I’m sure.

After all that lightness and joy, we had to move on to something that was much heavier, but certainly no less joyful in the end. It was time to respond to what we had learned this week about repentance, and get up in front of everything and publicly repent of whatever past or present sins God put on our hearts. I’m sure that probably sounds incredibly unpleasant to most of you, but this actually highlights one of the things that I love the most about DTSs – here we don’t just hear about hard things like repentance and openness, we actually do them. And truly, if I’ve learned anything while I’ve been here, it’s that the things that are the most challenging and uncomfortable to do at first are usually the things God uses the most to show his love, grace, and healing power.

Fortunately for us (or for me at least), we had already had quite a bit of practice opening up and showing everyone else our issues as we shared life stories at the beginning of the school, and we have already seen how unbelievably good God is at restoring us when we are absolutely honest about our broken condition. We’ve certainly also established that this is a very safe place to be vulnerable, where no one will ever think about judging you. And so, at least for me, it really was much easier this time to get up in front of everyone and talk about my sin.

Anyway, God showed up again and did amazing things, as we knew He would. One by one, people got up to the front of the classroom and confessed to everyone the sin(s) they wanted to repent of, or they told about the wounds or relationships they were letting go of/wanted to repair, etc. Then some told about the restitution they had made or were going to make concerning the sin – letters written, forgiveness extended, stolen goods returned, etc. Also, many people threw particular objects away at the foot of the cross, especially things that symbolized idols or reminded them of past relationships which they needed to let go of. Then, after all of this, each person prayed out loud, repenting before God, asking His forgiveness, and receiving His renewal and restoration. Dave and a staff member from each person’s stream also prayed over everyone.

Now, that may not sound that exciting to you, but think about this: how often do you have the opportunity to hear people proclaim their sins in front of a group of people, then watch (and participate) as the power of the Holy Spirit through prayer frees them from all sorts of hurt and bondage? How often indeed? In those two and a half hours, we repented of sins from bitterness to sexual immorality to downloading music illegally. We told about old relationships that we had never been able to completely close the door on, and family relationships that needed healing. We told about addictions and self-centeredness and pride. And then we experienced God’s forgiveness and regeneration, which Seth describes as being like a huge faucet – it’s always there and ready for us, we just have to turn it on and accept it. We felt weight lifted off of our shoulders because Jesus wasn’t joking when he said His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

That’s about the best I can do to explain what that time was like. Honestly, words fall short, but I just want to convey how amazed I have been by the transformative power of prayers said with the authority of the Spirit. We have seen brothers and sisters completely changed in the few weeks that we’ve been here, just through prayer and the work of the Spirit. And even those who haven’t had their lives completely turned around have received a major refreshing from the love and peace of God. Anyway, it’s great.

After the time of repentance was over, David gave everyone the opportunity to be prayed over and baptized in the Holy Spirit. Now, this may seem kind of weird to those with certain church backgrounds, but the way it was done wasn’t strange at all. If you remember, Jesus was essentially baptized in the Holy Spirit right after John baptized him in water and God told everyone how super happy he was with his Son. In this case, Dave mainly just prayed for the Holy Spirit to come down in power and fill up each person. The call to come up and be baptized in the Holy Spirit caught Seth and me a little off guard though, and we didn’t go up. We soon rethought that decision, however – how could it be bad to receive more of the Holy Spirit? – and fortunately we got another chance just that evening, which I’ll tell you about soon.

Later, after lunch and cleanup, Seth and I fortunately didn’t have anything else planned for the rest of the afternoon. So, while Seth went into town with a group of people, I took a little nap and then got into a game of ultimate frisbee, which ended up going for almost two and a half hours! It was a lot of fun, running around on a field that was so wet that it was impossible to make any sharp turns or stops without flipping over and sliding. I played the whole time barefoot, which gave me at least as much traction as anyone with shoes, although after a couple hours the bottoms of my feet started wearing off…

After dinner that evening, Seth and I had the wonderful privilege of going to the Tauranga House of Prayer (THOP). THOP is held every Friday night at ChangePoint Church (which we attended a couple Sundays back), and it gives people from all over the city of Tauranga the opportunity to worship and intercede in prayer on behalf of the city. The meeting starts off with some praise and worship, but the music continues for the rest of the two hour session, moving between actual songs and whatever lines the worship team comes up with, serving as a kind of ongoing prayer by music. While this is going on, the evening is broken up into different segments, each designated to pray for a different subject, from revival in the city to revival among young people in particular to healing of the sick and infirm. Sometimes there is also a specific scripture passage to guide your prayer. At one point, as we began to pray for healing, someone gave a testimony that just that day their knee, which hadn’t been able to bend much at all, had been healed through prayer! And so we laid hands on and prayed for everyone in the room who had knee problems, along with anyone who needed healing for anything.

Sometime in the middle of the evening, Dave Cole (our teacher for the week) came in with his wife. As the prayer time neared a close, I began to think about asking him to baptize me in the Holy Spirit since I had missed it that morning. I asked Seth about it and he felt ready as well, so we asked him about it and without hesitation he prayed over us, asking God to immerse us in His Spirit. To be honest, I really did feel like I was being filled up with something as he prayed for us, and now I’m really excited to see what kind of things God does through me. We’ve heard some amazing stories since we’ve been here, and I want to be a part of some myself!

By the time we got back it was just about time for bed, although I stayed up a while writing this blog. After a nice night’s sleep, this morning (Saturday) turned out to be awesome, as a bunch of us guys (led by the very enthusiastic Mitch) got up and cooked a huge American breakfast – pancakes (some with blueberries!), seasoned potatoes and onions, scrambled eggs, and bacon (OK, so not what North Americans call bacon, more of an intermediary between ham and country ham – but good nonetheless). It was really a lot of fun, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I think we made about 100 pancakes. And the best thing about all of it was that others pitched in to clean up after us!!