Hey all! I thought I'd check in this week before we head out to Kansas. Our school is road-tripping to Kansas City for 4 days to visit the International House of Prayer (IHOP) and we leave 6 o'clock Thursday morning. Don't ask me what IHOP is, because I'm not quite sure... hopefully this weekend clears that up! I'll be sure to let y'all know in my next post.
Before I leave for Kansas, though, I have an important meeting that I'm extremely excited about! Tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM Mountain Time, 8:00 AM Central Time, I will be skyping with Josh (a.k.a. Mr. Menke) and the rest of the students and staff at the school he teaches at in Iowa. They have graciously decided to put their March chapel offering towards my overseas outreach! I am blown away by this awesome opportunity and I cannot wait to talk to them during their Wednesday morning chapel service and tell them a little bit about YWAM and what I'm learning here. Thank you, Trinity Lutheran School!
My plan is just to speak out of the overflow of my heart tomorrow morning with the school, for 2 reasons. 1. I'm too lazy to plan anything tonight, and 2. it just seems to make sense. Something I've been noticing lately is that certain things have just become easier, more natural, as the weeks here progress. I spend time with God because my heart longs to, I read the Word because I'm hungry for it, I do things for other people because I love them, and I have much more joy because I know my Father's love for me. Still, I have to discipline myself in these areas, but as I seek the presence of God, it just has started happening more effortlessly. Guys! This is how I yearn to live my entire life! My bros can make fun of me for using so many exclamation points, I don't care! My primary concern and desire in life is to LOVE GOD and SEEK HIS HEART and have everything else flow from that. I don't want to go through motions, I don't want to work my spiritual muscles, I don't even want to do ministry or mission work if it doesn't flow from The Well that does not run dry. Sinning even becomes less and less attractive as I grow in my desire to please His heart. I feel so much freedom in this because it takes all the pressure off of forming myself into the person I want to become and making sure I live the life I want to live. God will work out the details. I'm just gonna love Him through it all.
This is my current prayer: Even if you never do another thing for me in my entire life, Lord, I will love you because what you have already done is more than enough to be worthy of my deepest and eternal love. Amen!
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Wedding Bells
Well, we're down the mountain for good. It is good to sleep in a bed again, but I was definitely sad to go! We built some great relationships with the snowboarders the past couple weeks, and I don't think waking up in the mountains could ever get old. The students up there are awesome people! For example, the morning we left to go snowboarding, one of the girls who decided not to go that particular day offered me all of her gear, including: board, bindings, boots, helmet, goggles, gloves, and a mouth-warmer-thing! Total, it ended up saving me about 50 bucks. In case you hadn't picked up on it yet, I snowboarded and am still alive to tell about it! Not a scratch on my body (several bruises, but no scratches!). I had tons of fun, even though I spent most of the day on my butt. It turns out, I had been doing it completely wrong the entire first half of the day. Snowboarding tip #1: you should never actually be riding with the bottom of the board on the ground, you should always be riding on one of the edges of the board... who woulda thought?!? Not me. But I learned a couple hours in and was good to go after that. :) I could not have asked for a better 21st birthday! I believe I got sung to a total of 5 times throughout the day. AND all of my brothers texted me... woohoo! 4 for 4. It made me feel important and loved (cough cough). That was somewhat passive aggressive, I apologize... like mother like daughter I suppose. :)
Okay, enough revealing of the family secrets. What is God teaching me? To be completely honest, I don't have one specific answer for you this week. We get pounded here with so much information day after day, week after week, that I feel like I am learning SO MUCH I can't even narrow it down. I'm learning so much that I don't know what I'm learning... make sense? Someone here once compared DTS to drinking from a fire hydrant, and I think that is a perfect analogy. Our school director, Jacob, told us the other day that if you count all the hours of lectures and ministry we do here just in the first three months, it is equivalent to going to church on Sundays for 4 and 1/2 years! That's a lot. Like, a lot. So, my goal here is not to regurgitate the hundreds of pages of notes I have taken and all that I have learned, but to keep it personal.
Something I shared with the group here the other day is that I feel as if God is romancing me. I love that word! In worship on Wednesday, I had a revelation about my love for God. I have realized while I'm here how much God is truly in love with me and I have shared that some with y'all. I am finally realizing His commitment to me. But what occurred to me Wednesday is that I have not fully committed myself to Him. Allow me to explain. Now, as the mature, wise, just plain brilliant 21 year-old that I am, I have known for quite some time that the word 'love' in regards to marriage has less to do with feelings and more to do with commitment. When I tell a significant other in the future that I love him, it will mean I am committed to him for a lifetime. Now, for some reason, whenever I have told God how much I love Him, it has been when I was feeling close to Him. Why has my love for God never been about commitment, the way marriage here on earth is? So, this past week, God and I got married! You can send wedding gifts to my YWAM address. :) Seriously, though, when I tell God I love Him now, it means I am committed to Him in the easy times and the hard, the good and the bad. Right now, I am in the honeymoon phase of my love story with God. I am totally obsessed with His love! I can't get enough of it. Looking forward from the honeymoon, I know there will be difficult times, but now I know that my love for Him is not determined on how "in love" I'm feeling at each particular moment. He's not going anywhere, and neither am I. I can only make this commitment to Him because of the commitment I know He has to me. 1 John 4:19 says, "We love because He first loved us." Any amount of love or commitment I have comes only from the amount I realize He has for me. I could go on with this analogy forever, but I'll let you try and figure out other ways the word 'marriage' works for our relationships with God. :)
Okay, enough revealing of the family secrets. What is God teaching me? To be completely honest, I don't have one specific answer for you this week. We get pounded here with so much information day after day, week after week, that I feel like I am learning SO MUCH I can't even narrow it down. I'm learning so much that I don't know what I'm learning... make sense? Someone here once compared DTS to drinking from a fire hydrant, and I think that is a perfect analogy. Our school director, Jacob, told us the other day that if you count all the hours of lectures and ministry we do here just in the first three months, it is equivalent to going to church on Sundays for 4 and 1/2 years! That's a lot. Like, a lot. So, my goal here is not to regurgitate the hundreds of pages of notes I have taken and all that I have learned, but to keep it personal.
Something I shared with the group here the other day is that I feel as if God is romancing me. I love that word! In worship on Wednesday, I had a revelation about my love for God. I have realized while I'm here how much God is truly in love with me and I have shared that some with y'all. I am finally realizing His commitment to me. But what occurred to me Wednesday is that I have not fully committed myself to Him. Allow me to explain. Now, as the mature, wise, just plain brilliant 21 year-old that I am, I have known for quite some time that the word 'love' in regards to marriage has less to do with feelings and more to do with commitment. When I tell a significant other in the future that I love him, it will mean I am committed to him for a lifetime. Now, for some reason, whenever I have told God how much I love Him, it has been when I was feeling close to Him. Why has my love for God never been about commitment, the way marriage here on earth is? So, this past week, God and I got married! You can send wedding gifts to my YWAM address. :) Seriously, though, when I tell God I love Him now, it means I am committed to Him in the easy times and the hard, the good and the bad. Right now, I am in the honeymoon phase of my love story with God. I am totally obsessed with His love! I can't get enough of it. Looking forward from the honeymoon, I know there will be difficult times, but now I know that my love for Him is not determined on how "in love" I'm feeling at each particular moment. He's not going anywhere, and neither am I. I can only make this commitment to Him because of the commitment I know He has to me. 1 John 4:19 says, "We love because He first loved us." Any amount of love or commitment I have comes only from the amount I realize He has for me. I could go on with this analogy forever, but I'll let you try and figure out other ways the word 'marriage' works for our relationships with God. :)
Monday, February 6, 2012
Rocky Mountain Heidi- Literally
I am currently sitting in my new bedroom for the next two weeks- on the floor in a room with 10 other girls! YWAM Denver has a campus at 8500 feet altitude called Eagle Rock. A snowboarding DTS is taking place up here this quarter, so we're going to hang out and get to know them better. My school (Compassion DTS) consists of 21 girls and 4 guys, and the snowboarders DTS contains 9 girls and 31 guys... not complaining ;) Of course, that is NOT why I'm here... my focus us Jesus and Jesus only! What I'm really not complaining about is the beautiful views, hiking, sledding, and snowboarding! I'll have my birthday while I'm up here too which is going to be a blast because that is the day they're taking us snowboarding and/or skiing. I haven't decided which I'm going to do yet. I'm conflicted. Half the people here say I should try snowboarding for the first time and the other half warn against it saying I'll spend the whole day on my butt and feeling frustrated. Opinions? Either way, I'll be wearing a helmet (Mom). Regardless, it will be a memorable 21st birthday, that's for sure (unlike most 21st birthdays... :))
These two weeks up here will be somewhat of a preparation for outreach for several reasons. We are sleeping on the floor, we could only pack in a backpack, and there is no cell reception. I am especially excited about the backpack part! Over the weekend, our school directors took us shopping to REI and a couple other outdoor stores. At REI I found a super awesome 85 liter backpacking backpack! I got it on sale for 60 bucks, I'm totally stoked! Purchasing one has pretty much been my life dream.
Back at the other base in Arvada there are currently about 350 people roaming around. It is mass chaos! This trip could not have been timed more perfectly. Outreaches from the previous quarter's DTS all returned over the weekend. Walking around the past few days has felt like swimming in an ocean of people. I'm not an exaggerator I promise. Needless to say, I have not been spending much time alone. Yesterday, I knew that I needed to get alone with God. I could feel Him tugging at my heart and wanting me to listen to Him. So I searched... and I searched... and I searched for a place to be alone. Finally, I found a small room in the administration building (which I'm pretty sure is off limits), but about 5 minutes into my peace and quiet, a group of people came stomping up the stairs laughing and playing music. I left feeling frustrated and pretty discouraged. I genuinely was desiring to just be with God. And I simply couldn't. As I processed everything the rest of the day, I began thinking about my times with God. I think lately He's been gently nudging me to be able to listen to Him in a crowded room. I need to learn to focus my mind on Him because I know He is there listening and waiting. He does not require that I be the only person within a 75 yard radius before He speaks. His presence is here with me even in a room of 11 girls. I'm feeling pretty encouraged because I prayed about the ability to do this, and this morning my quiet time with Him was totally fulfilling, even as I sat on my sleeping bag flanked by two girls on either side. God is faithful. :)
I'm sorry that I keep making these so long, feel free to skim or just skip the boring parts... but I am totally loving sharing my life and my heart with y'all. Thanks for reading. :)
These two weeks up here will be somewhat of a preparation for outreach for several reasons. We are sleeping on the floor, we could only pack in a backpack, and there is no cell reception. I am especially excited about the backpack part! Over the weekend, our school directors took us shopping to REI and a couple other outdoor stores. At REI I found a super awesome 85 liter backpacking backpack! I got it on sale for 60 bucks, I'm totally stoked! Purchasing one has pretty much been my life dream.
Back at the other base in Arvada there are currently about 350 people roaming around. It is mass chaos! This trip could not have been timed more perfectly. Outreaches from the previous quarter's DTS all returned over the weekend. Walking around the past few days has felt like swimming in an ocean of people. I'm not an exaggerator I promise. Needless to say, I have not been spending much time alone. Yesterday, I knew that I needed to get alone with God. I could feel Him tugging at my heart and wanting me to listen to Him. So I searched... and I searched... and I searched for a place to be alone. Finally, I found a small room in the administration building (which I'm pretty sure is off limits), but about 5 minutes into my peace and quiet, a group of people came stomping up the stairs laughing and playing music. I left feeling frustrated and pretty discouraged. I genuinely was desiring to just be with God. And I simply couldn't. As I processed everything the rest of the day, I began thinking about my times with God. I think lately He's been gently nudging me to be able to listen to Him in a crowded room. I need to learn to focus my mind on Him because I know He is there listening and waiting. He does not require that I be the only person within a 75 yard radius before He speaks. His presence is here with me even in a room of 11 girls. I'm feeling pretty encouraged because I prayed about the ability to do this, and this morning my quiet time with Him was totally fulfilling, even as I sat on my sleeping bag flanked by two girls on either side. God is faithful. :)
I'm sorry that I keep making these so long, feel free to skim or just skip the boring parts... but I am totally loving sharing my life and my heart with y'all. Thanks for reading. :)
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