All My Walls Down, All Your Love In

[Disclaimer: I know I haven't blogged much in a while and this is pretty long. But that's only because God has done so much awesome stuff in my life over the past several weeks. So it might be worth your while to read it all if you want to know what's been going on with me...]

"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." - 2 Corinthians 3:17-18

Freedom (the Concept)

I could hardly come up with a better verse to describe what happens on DTS, or even to describe what the journey of everyone following Jesus should include. ...where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. As we invite the Holy Spirit into our lives, begin to trust Him more, and give control over to Him, the result is also greater freedom. Greater freedom from the condemnation and taunts of the enemy and other people. Greater freedom from the broken and twisted things of our past. Greater freedom in relationships; that is, more freedom to love and be loved by God and others and serve them as the unique person that God has made us to be. Freedom from addictions. Freedom from being wholly ruled by our mind and emotions. Freedom from purposelessness and hopelessness. In one way or another, the Presence of God in the Holy Spirit brings this kind of freedom.

This isn't to say that gaining this freedom is effortless or easy. It requires our continual and active participation. The Holy Spirit doesn't so much come and give freedom as He shows us opportunities to step out into freedom and empowers us to make the step when we otherwise could not. He gives us opportunities and courage to step out of darkness into light, but we have to choose to be vulnerable, expose sin and brokenness that we'd rather not talk about, and receive forgiveness that we don't really deserve (but have been freely given through the cross). The Holy Spirit brings conviction, showing us sin that was hidden to us in order that we might leave it behind and be free. But we have to choose to leave it behind, submit to God, and follow His ways. God gives us opportunities to step out in faith, to face our fears, to use gifts He has given us (including supernatural ones), and to do things that will challenge us and stretch us. They are all things that will grow us and bring new levels of freedom, but all things which require faith, trust, effort, and courage to do. The great thing is that He never asks us to do these things on our own. Really, it turns out that He is there giving us the tools to obey Him, encouraging us, providing rest when we need it, giving us grace in our weakness, and putting a fiery passion in our hearts for pursuing nothing less than ALL of the freedom that God wants to give us.

No time of transformation is easy, especially transformation "from one degree of glory to another." But there is an incredibly strong driving force behind our transformation which makes it easier and easier the further we go – it is a love for the Person most worthy of love, whose Glory we can behold and whose Presence we can encounter if we will just open the door where He is knocking. If we can continue "beholding the glory of the Lord," we will follow and worship Him, and we inevitably become like the One we worship. Of course, there is always the option of walking back into the prison and putting the chains back on ourselves, but we will never do that if God remains the object of our pursuit and worship.

Freedom (the Process)

Though the process was often tough, we saw so many people gain freedom in the last three months. Students were freed from addictions to drugs and alcohol. Students were freed from being ruled by fear of what other people think of them. Students were freed from painful things in their past or even harmful family patterns. Many were freed from living under oppressive lies planted by culture, people, or the enemy. Others were freed from physical ailments, and still others were freed from suffocating religious and performance-based mindsets. And not only were the students experiencing breakthroughs, the staff were as well! This included myself, and for that I sincerely want to praise God all the time.

To be honest, I think the second half of this DTS brought with it the most breakthroughs for me since my own DTS last year! It has been an intense and wonderful time!

It started several weeks into the DTS, when I began to become aware of a building frustration in my relationship with God. Though the DTS was going pretty well, I was having a really hard time connecting with God. I didn't feel like I could hear His voice very well, and I couldn't connect personally with the Scripture that I was reading. I was becoming more and more sure of believing that God would never do anything truly miraculous through me (unbelief). I felt kind of disconnected in worship times, like I wasn't totally sincere about the things I was singing. I understood that I what I really needed was more intimacy with God, but the more time I tried to spend with God, the more it felt like a chore rather than a joy. The confusion and frustration kept building even as I tried to understand the problem and do something about it.

Finally, I gave up reading Scripture decided to spend more time just resting in God's presence rather than trying to do anything. I began to do that and focus my thoughts on a couple songs which reminded me of God's rest and unconditional love: Take a Moment and Through and Through. This helped a bit, but I still felt the barrier.

Soon after this, a woman named Laurie Morris came to do a week's lectures. Laurie's life's work is to help people uncover the oppressive works of the enemy in their lives and be led to freedom through prayer and counseling, relying heavily on the Holy Spirit. The works of the enemy include spiritual bondage, core lies, places of pain, damaging family patterns, and even demonic oppression. During the week, she led all the students through this process in class, and gave ten students the opportunity to meet with her one-on-one for two hours – a more personal setting. The next week, however, she remained in town and gave the staff the opportunity to meet with her. Considering what I had been going through, I jumped at this chance, and I am so glad that I did.

In preparing for and then meeting with Laurie, I ended up encountering and dealing with some things that I didn't even realize I needed to deal with. For example, though I had heard a few times before of the harmful effects that Freemasonry can have on people, even down family lines (that's a whole can of worms which I will not open here), I didn't realize the extent to which it affected me. Before I met with Laurie, however, I found out that Freemasonry had had a large presence on my dad's side of the family. So in meeting with her, she told me that some of things I had been dealing with (blocked intimacy, fear, works-based mentality, unbelief, etc.) she had seen in people with the Masonic in their family lines, including herself. Knowing this, with her help I prayed through a prayer renouncing any Masonic oaths (and the associated curses) that my ancestors had taken.

Besides addressing the Masonic, I dealt with several other things in meeting with Laurie. I renounced and repented of a couple different patterns that have come down in my family – unbelief and pride/rebellion. I broke agreement with different lies that I had been living under, and listened to God for his truth in each situation. These were lies that I would never have articulated but which I could see really drove my behavior – things like "I always have to be doing something or accomplishing something to be OK", "I will never find that trust and ongoing intimacy with God that I really long for", or "I will never hear God's voice as well as others can." In looking to God for the truth, He gave both me and Laurie different words and impressions, things which have helped change my mindset and actively work against the lies. For example, we got the impression that music would be a specific way that I would find intimacy with God – and already it has been filling that role more and more!

Freedom (the Effects)

The effects of this time with Laurie was both immediate and prolonged. Almost immediately, I felt like walls had been taken down and it was so much easier to spend time with God, receive from Him, love Him, and hear Him speak. I felt like a weight had been taken off of me.  Over time, though, I continue to have breakthroughs and experience new things. My times with God have been so much freer, richer, more varied, and satisfying. It's much easier to feel His presence and connect with Him. As I said, Laurie was right about music being a way to connect with and express my desires to God. I like to go down to the valley where there's no one around and sing at the top of my lungs :) Worship times have also been better, and I feel like I can connect with everything that I am singing. In fact, I think God may be putting me on a path to actually leading worship at some point.

In the past couple weeks, I have also been gradually receiving the gift of speaking in tongues. This was the kind of thing I thought was pretty darn weird when I first got to YWAM, but I have really begun to understand its value for edifying myself and others. This is another one of those cans of worms that I won't open up all the way, but I'll just say a lot its value is in essentially letting God have control of my speaking, which an important act of surrender and allows me to be connected to God directly, spirit to Spirit, without my mind filtering anything. In fact, when I speak in tongues my mind is usually thinking things like "This is really stupid. You're just making this stuff up. What a waste of time..." And yet at the same time my spirit is standing up and being stirred up to love Jesus more. Anyway, it's pretty cool, and it's hammering a death blow on that lie about God never doing anything supernatural through me. We had a whole night session focused on tongues where we tried to listen to God and interpret each other. We also sang in tongues (new for me), did spiritual warfare in tongues, and started getting new tongues from God. It was ridiculous and crazy cool at the same time.

All of this really made it possible for me to really engage and receive so much during the last couple weeks of lectures, which was really wonderful. As Joylynn Landshut taught on Destiny by Design, I started to really receive things from God about my dreams, my callings, and my identity both from God and other people. Now, before you get excited, I should say that I still haven't found out what my ultimate specific calling is, but I have a lot more general stuff to go on. Here's a bit of a summary of that:

All I know right now is that I am called to be on fire for Jesus, see lives and land healed, be a solid and stable refuge for people (a rock, an oak of righteousness), have godly wisdom that brings peace and unity to the church, and be a leader/administrator who lifts up new leaders and helps them see their visions fulfilled. Justice also fits in there somewhere, as well as speaking or preaching. Yeah, that's what I feel like I know so far, but it's still quite a bit.

Oak of Righteousness - Shelter, refuge, stable, rooted. People can climb up to be closer to God, and rest in the branches.

I do also basically know what I will be doing for the next year and a half or so, but that will have to wait for yet another blog post.

The final week of lectures really capped it all off for me. The week's topic was the Holy Spirit, and the speaker was the amazing Kristen Williams. Kristen is a fiery, tongue-talking, Scripture-grounded preacher who prophesies over people and encounters God every day in his garage, but he's also one of the most enthusiastic, joy-filled, passionate, and encouraging people I've ever seen. If there is anyone whose attitude about God I would like to have, it would be Kristen. I always say that Kristen could make anyone want to be a Pentecostal (and that includes me). I think part of it is that he simply understands how incredible the Bible's promises are, and he takes God at His word! As he taught, Kristen imparted some of that passion and desire for more of God, and every day the Holy Spirit would show up in class, manifesting in different ways, doing work on people's hearts, giving or unlocking new spiritual gifts, and making us all love Jesus more. It was really, really, really good, and everyone received some fire to propel us out on outreach (and the desire for that fire to only get bigger)!

So now we're leaving tomorrow for seven weeks of outreach – one team to Thailand, one team to Fiji, and three teams to Vanuatu. I think I'm anticipating this outreach what God is going to do on this outreach more than I have going into either of the others that I have been on! We have such high expectations and faith that God will pull through on his promises as we listen and obey Him!

Yay God!!!

Dan