Freedom Week

It's starting to sink in for all of us that we have been here at the YWAM base in Northern Ireland for a month. Since we talk about this as lecture week four--meaning we're on our fourth DTS speaker--it seems like so short a time that we've been here. But when I read through my journal assignment from last week, what I was learning then felt so long ago. As I mentioned to a couple staff here, by the time I go back to the States I will probably feel I have aged 10 years, and you all back home will have to remind me that it has only been 5 months.

This week is called "Freedom Week," and it is special because we have four speakers (instead of one) from a church in London (rather than from YWAM). So far they started with our identity (who God designed each of us individually to be), and worked their way up to spiritual warfare (the lies of the enemy, strongholds, the soul-body-spirit makeup, things we hold onto in our hearts that have unknowingly affected us deeply and how Satan uses those things as footholds). Although there have been a few points I have disagreed on (mostly in regards to universal healing, and to proclaiming things into existence), much of this week has been review for me because I am no stranger to spiritual warfare.  Twice this week, time was set aside for our speakers to pray with us, with a ratio of one speaker and a couple base staff to one DTS student, about the issues of God's unique design in us and about strongholds in our lives. Both times I went into the prayer sessions unsure of what to expect, and therefore a bit uneasy, but the Lord worked both times, and I felt freer because of it.

In-country midterm outreach is in a couple weeks. The team is split in two, between Belfast and Dublin. I will be going to Dublin. I went to Dublin for a day trip last weekend, as you may have noticed from my Facebook posts, but that was a tourist trip with two fellow DTS-mates. This midterm trip will be something of a missionary cocktail for me: a sampling of several different types of missions that we will be exposed to and trying them on for size to see which (if any) fit me. Please pray that the Lord will show me what is and is not for me (for the long-run), and that He will put specific people in place as connections for me, and that the Lord will knit our team together in unity even now so that the enemy will have no opportunity to tear it asunder.

As for the actual Outreach Phase of our DTS, we will be walking the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (which I am extremely excited about), then flying to Albania for two weeks, and then on to the Czech Republic for three weeks. I am particularly excited about the work we will be doing praying for people in the Red Light district in Prague, as that is something I have been secretly interested in trying for some time now. The Border Walk, which will be something of a prayer walk for reconciliation in Ireland, made the newspaper last time YWAM did it. It is about a 200-mile trek, so please pray for fitness, refreshment, and renewed strength, as well as that the Lord would bring to mind what specifically needs to be prayed for in each area we venture through. Outreach Phase does not begin until July, but I am sure that will creep up on us, as time is already starting to speed along. Thankfully, we will not need any new visas for our outreach countries, or any additional vaccinations.

I know some of you have been praying for me with regards to sleep. Thank you for your prayers! God is answering! He is granting me refuge from the nightmares. Please continue to pray, as I am sure Satan will try to find other avenues of attack as we draw closer to our midterm outreach.

One main theme that God continues to reiterate is His love for me. In light of the "Smile: Jesus loves you" stickers of childhood, this seems so elementary, so obvious, so cheesy. It's become a catchphrase. And, as a catchphrase, it has lost its potency. So we, as Christians, tend to turn in angst to the cross, to school ourselves into submission with the depressing death of Christ as an example of love. And that it is. But we forget that love does not leave us there, and we forget that God does more than that to love us. He could have stopped with the cross. Heck, He could have stopped before the cross! But He chose to do more. He chooses to intervene in our lives today. And in light of Easter, I think it's time we realized that we have a RISEN Christ, and a Jesus who is ALIVE can CONTINUE to love us ACTIVELY in ways that the world around us cannot attain to. The passion of the Christ is not just that Jesus died, or even that He rose; it's that THE STORY IS NOT OVER! It's that His passion is eternal, and lives on, and is not bound by our doubt and our self-deprecation and everything people have said and done to us. We forget that God is BIGGER than all of this, and that in rising from the dead to continue on eternally, He has proven it...And He continues to prove it to us every day. We just ignore Him most of the time. But what if we didn't? What would life be like then...?

Life, and life more abundantly: Shall we walk in it?