And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. (Luke 2:52 ESV)
This blog post is based on the stories and message that I shared on Sunday, December 30th at the Vine of the Mountains church. On that Sunday, the time usually reserved for the sermon was given to Jared Grosse, Seth Blanton, and myself so that we could tell about our experiences over the past five or six months. In Seth’s and my case, this was DTS; in Jared’s, it was going to Fuller Seminary in California and voluntarily living out of his car. Of course all three of us had amazing stories to tell, and it just so happened that the day’s lectionary passages (1 Samuel 2:18-20 & 26 and Luke 2:41-52) lined up perfectly with our story. Particularly in the Luke passage, we see the twelve-year-old Jesus following God’s leading into an unexpected place, somewhere his parents aren’t entirely happy with him being. He stays behind in Jerusalem after the Passover feast even as his parents leave to go back to Nazareth. They have to walk all the way back to Jerusalem and search for him, finally finding him in the temple, learning from and asking questions of the religious leaders and amazing everyone with his understanding of God. When asked why he remained there rather than accompanying his parents, he replies, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?”
This is a good
bit like what Seth and I did. We ignored the expectations that our culture
normally places upon guys our age, believing that “being in our Father’s house”
was more important than anything else we could do. I disregarded the traditional
career path (and money, security, etc.) for someone with my education in favor
of building up my foundation in Christ. I think I was obedient to God and went
to a place where He was working, putting myself in a great environment to grow
in wisdom and spiritual stature and favor with God and man. Seth and I stepped
out in faith and God absolutely came through, using our openness transforming
our understanding of him and our lives.
The Wisdom-building and Favor-increasing Environment (DTS)
One of the main reasons that DTS was so meaningful and life-changing for us was the incredible environment and overall atmosphere that Marine Reach Ministries (a part of YWAM) has created at the base in Gideon’s Fields near Tauranga, New Zealand. Long before there was ever a YWAM base there, Gideon’s Fields was (and partly still is) owned by a trust which decided to make Gideon’s Valley a place of prayer. In the steep-sided little valley, they constructed an international prayer walk: a network of trails overlooking the Waimapu River and its huge waterfall there, with benches placed in various locations for visitors to sit and pray for the nations of the world. That valley has been prayed in so much that it has gained a reputation for a place where it’s easy to hear from God and experience his presence – some of our lecturers referred to it as an “open heaven.” The valley is a perfect place to be connected to God right in the midst of the beauty of his creation.
Just up a
trail and a little gravel road from the valley lies the YWAM base. About two or
three years ago, Marine Reach finished construction of a building there. An
amazing work of God’s provision, this building was purpose-built for
discipleship training schools. Within one building, there are all the
facilities needed to conduct a training school, with the students living
on-site. There are dorms and rooms for nearly 30 people, bathrooms, offices, a
large kitchen/dining room/lounge, and a lecture room. The building overlooks a
field that can be used for sports, across which is a recently completed prayer
chapel – another work of God’s gracious provision. And all of this is
surrounded by beautiful New Zealand countryside. It’s truly a perfect place to
find God both in community with others and alone with God in the quiet places
of the chapel and the valley. |
| The chapel |
 |
| The lecture room |
Our DTS also
could never have worked without the leadership – DTS staff, school leaders, lecturers,
worship leaders. The leadership was always wise and encouraging, and it always
pointed us toward Christ. Our leaders led by example, mentored, taught, and
prayed over us constantly. They were absolutely necessary for the DTS
experience that we had – this is part of the reason why I want to go back and
be a leader myself.
Of course,
even with the best environment, God has to do the work (and we have to be
open). Fortunately, YWAM’s first
priority is to acknowledge this and keep God at the center. Also, I think
everyone in our school was open (or became open) to letting God work on them
even when it was uncomfortable, Because of all this, we had an outstanding DTS.
The Big Picture (How We Changed)
We all came in dealing with some kind of struggle – there
was just about any kind of problem you can think of. During our very first week
there, we had a lot of time set aside for sharing our life stories with
complete openness and vulnerability, revealing broken places, sin, and all. It
was an amazing environment and an opportunity we rarely get – to be absolutely honest
about who we are and where we’ve come from, and find at least the beginnings of
healing and freedom from past wounds and burdens through prayer, forgiveness,
and encouragement. Through that sharing time we came away with an understanding
that not all our classmates had come in as the “upright” people you might
assume would go to a Bible School. We heard our classmates tell their stories
about struggling with sins (part of my story), being broken by abuse and
molestation, being oppressed and taken advantage of by partners in past
relationships, being wounded by rejection and distanced from God by bitterness.
Some barely had a relationship with God at all. Others had a relationship with
Jesus, but living and active faith had never really been a part of it or had
shrunken into something dry and barren that only the breath of God could
rejuvenate. Now certainly everyone wasn’t dealing with the same degree of difficulty,
but everyone arrived really needing to experience God’s grace and peace in some
way or another.
But however weighty those initial burdens, I think
everyone came out a stronger, freer, and more confident follower of Christ.
From the very beginning of the school, we saw fellow students freed from the
chains of sin and the lies of the Enemy, we saw the wounds of abuse and
rejection healed, and we saw forgiveness overcome bitterness. We have friends
whose physical appearance even changed because they were freed and healed
spiritually and emotionally. We saw the incredible power that the prayers of a
unified community have because they are backed up by the Holy Spirit of God
Himself.
So I think that is part of what DTS is about:
freeing, healing, unburdening – shedding
the things that hold us back from being close to God and serving Him fully.
But then there is the second part, which is empowering the students to do the things that they’ve been freed to
do – serve and love people, exercise their gifts, find intimacy with God. This
part happens through the teaching, through mentorship by the staff, through
time spent alone with God and his Word, and through continually being
challenged to step out in faith (even if it’s a little uncomfortable) and
expect more from God than you ever have before.
Now all this happened throughout lecture phase in
New Zealand, and continued on through our outreach trip to some extent.
However, the idea of outreach is that having had experienced and embraced all
the good changes from lecture phase, it was now time to share what we had
received with other people who desperately needed it. DTS was never just about
us and fixing our issues; it was imperative that we let people in on the good
news and the God that had made us so much more whole and alive. We had been
equipped to serve, so we did. We went into difficult places to live with and
minister to the poor and oppressed, and we saw firsthand that God was the one
who did most of the work. We were forced to rely on God – we barely knew the
language of the countries where we were, and the problems we faced were much
bigger than we could ever deal with on our own. Our little team could often do
little more than pray over a situation, but God came through and made
everything worthwhile.
So that was the gist of our DTS:
broken people came in, they encountered God, and they came out freer, more
whole, more alive, more confident, more servantlike, and more in love with
Jesus. That,
at least, was our experience. DTS graduates are by no means perfect or
finished, but they are also by no means the same, and the change is for the
better. It’s just the beginning, but
it’s a great beginning.
My Journey
When I arrived at DTS, my relationship with God
wasn’t great. Now, I wasn’t remotely close to turning away from God, but I felt
very distant from Him. I had been drawn away by the distractions of school and
our busy culture, and some repetitive sin was also separating me from Him. I
felt farther away from God that I had many times before, and I didn’t feel like
I was moving closer.
Then DTS immediately changed that trajectory from
drifting away from God to moving quickly closer. Through a combination of the
base environment that I explained to you (community, teaching, leadership) and
confession and freedom from sins and distractions, God became so much more real
to me and the gospel so much more revolutionary. God spoke to me personally in
ways that could not be mistaken for anything besides His voice. My whole
perspective changed as He showed himself to be more powerful AND more personal
than I’d ever experienced before.
I began to see the fullness of our mission as
Christians, which is do the same things that Jesus did (including the
miraculous things), and I began to see the fullness of God’s sufficiency – He
gives us all the power, authority, and guidance that we need to carry out this
mission when we are in close relationship with Him.
A Story
While
this whole journey happened gradually over 5 months and encompasses many
different stories, there is one that I especially wanted to share and which
ties into the passage at the beginning of the post (Luke 2:52). I read this
passage and was most struck by the part that talks about increasing “in favor
with God and man.” I wondered how you
increase in favor with God – Jesus did it, so we should be able to as well,
right? That made me think of one of the big revelations I had on DTS, which is
that in at least one sense we have favor with God not because of what we say or
do but because of who we are.
Certainly, this is a journey and we gain favor with God as we obey him and follow
His plan for our lives, but this favor is also a constant reality – when we
believe in Jesus our very identity changes. We become transformed sons and
daughters of God, and because of that we have God’s favor regardless of how bad
we might mess things up.
I had this
reality revealed to me by God in a really personal way. One day several weeks into
DTS I went outside near the chapel to spend some time with God. I didn’t
immediately start praying and going on and on, but instead I asked God what He
wanted to say to me and waited, listening. Then suddenly the words “Luke”, then
“3” and “22” popped into my head. I didn’t know what that verse said, so I
looked it up and read:
“and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’” (Luke 3:22 ESV)
That’s an
unequivocal expression of God’s favor if I’ve ever heard one. In context it was
spoken to Jesus just after He had been baptized (before ministry, cross,
resurrection…)., but I had no doubt the words were also meant for me,
especially in the context of some other passages:
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.(John 1:12-13 ESV)
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:14-17 ESV)
So I had this revelation that as a believer in Christ and one led by
his Spirit, I was a son of God. And as God’s beloved son, He was already well
pleased with me. There is nothing more that I have to do to make Him pleased,
and I don’t have to fear failure, because my identity is set – I am his son.
When we are in Christ, we have God’s favor, and I don’t know about you, but
that knowledge really comforts me.
Why I’m Going Back: THIS (↑) is worth being involved in.
And so you can get an idea from that of why I
think I should go back and be a staff person on the next DTS. It’s not just to
boost my own leadership skills, though that is part of it. It’s also an
opportunity to make all of this (what
I just explained in the rest of the post) happen in other people’s lives. I’ll
get the privilege of supporting, mentoring, befriending, and praying for the
students of the next school, and then I’ll get to help lead an outreach team
and see what God does again. It’s exciting, and it’s rather frightening. So
obviously, I really need your prayers (God listens!) and I need your financial
support if God leads you to contribute in that way. I said it’s something
that’s worth being involved in, and if you agree, then you can be involved by supporting
me and others who do the same kind of thing. Check out the info card below to
find out more!
Overwhelmed by His (and your) love,
Dan
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