Refocusing

What a week, once again. We had a South-African guy called Etienne Pieterse teaching us on Fear of the Lord and Lordship. Learning about the fear of the Lord was very intresting cos I'd never actually understood what it meant. I'm not sure if I still fully understand what it is but I'm working on it, with God ofcourse. One thing I got was that the fear of the Lord is the opposite of the fear of men, and if you're afraid of one, you're not afraid of the other. So which one I fear and respect more, God or men? His teaching on Lordship was very good as well and resulted in about 8 people getting baptised. It was really cool when he said that dying to self isn't something you do once and then you're done with temptation. And I don't know if it was Etienne or Ronnie who said that dying to self is not suicide; Jesus didn't hang himself on the cross, but he let others do it, he didn't resist. So that's what we are to do, to lay our lives, our desires and temptations, hopes and dreams and fears and failures, lay them all at the cross time after time after time and let God kill them, let them die. And after we've dies to ourselves it's not like our minds are suddenly out of Satan's reach and free from temptation. We still disobey God, but the key is to always return to the cross and be honest, take the focus out of ourselves and focus on Jesus and what he's done for us.

Etienne also taught a lot about worship. His main point was that worship should not depend on our emotions and circumstance. God is holy, almighty and worthy to be praised no matter how I feel at the moment. Worship and praise should flow out of understanding of who God is, not out of our emotions. That's what it means to worship in spirit and in truth; we worship in spirit because the spirit of God is in us and worships with us, and we worship in the truth of who God is. Worship and praise is not about music. In fact music has very little to do with it. Music can be a way to worship, but often we use it as a way to bring our emotions to a level where we feel comfortable to worship. That's why we find it hard to worship if the worship band sucks, we put too much emphasis on how the worship sounds and looks like, instead of focusing on what it actually is about. If we truly worshipped in spirit and truth we wouldn't mind the music. Then again, I'm not saying that it's wrong to get emotional during worship. Of course not, but it shouldn't be the thing that drives us to worship. We worship because God deserves our attention, He deserves our praise, even when we don't feel like it.

On tuesday night we watched a video of a man called Steve Thompson preaching. That night changed my life. It was the perfect timing to hear this teaching, as last week we'd started discussing sin and righteousness. What Steve Thompson basically talked about, was that once we become christian the God Almighty moves into us. We have God inside of us. We are completely righteous and completely holy and we are as close to God as we can get. The current christian mindset is that we still need to do stuff to get closer to God. If I sin, I fall away from God and then need to read the bible more or fast or worship more to get close to Him again. We think that by our deeds we can and need to reach a certain level of holiness before God can use us. We are still striving to be perfect enough for God, to be the person God wants us to be. No matter people don't like christians, we demand so much more from each other than non christians do. We hold each other to such a high standard that it's impossible not to get discouraged. Have we forgotten that Jesus already did all that was needed? He made us right with God and now He lives in us, and there is nothing that I can do to make His work more complete. God is in me and all of His power is in me as well. I am not lacking any spiritual gift, it's only a question of learning to use them. I just need to accept and receive what Jesus did on the cross and stop worrying about how I can make myself better and just start taking part in what God has planned for me and the whole world.

After we finished some of us stayed behind to talk about the teaching. I just sat there and listened. The others started to talk about how this teaching would change they way we approach miracles and healing. And I started to feel something stirring in my spirit, I wanted to try it out, I wanted to see a miracle. I had the living God alive in me, and so did everyone else in that room, so why couldn't He perform miracles through us. And this desire to pray for my acne started burning in me, and for 20 minutes I just sat there wondering whether or not I would dare to try it. And the others we're starting to leave already till I finally opened my mouth. And Ronnie agreed that we should try it. Then others joined, and so about 10 of us prayed for my skin.

At first nothing really seemed to happen, except for the way that we prayed, with a completely new sense of authority. Then I started to feel my hands go numb with the prickling feeling that comes first when you're limbs are 'falling asleep'. And the feeling spread throughout my entire body till I felt like every vain in my body was on fire. And it was amazing. To feel the power of God flow through me like that, I felt like I could do anything. But He didn't heal my skin. We prayed and we rebuked and we declared and we prayed some more, but nothing happened. So we agreed to stop and to trust that God would heal it in His time. But I didn't even care. I was so drunk on the Holy Spirit that I had to stay behind to sober up for a while. I sat down on a sofa in our dark lecture room and started to giggle by myself. And it turned into laugher till I was laughing so hard that I had tears coming out of my eyes. It took me a while to calm down again, and then I just worshipped for a bit and went to bed.

My skin wasn't healed the next morning like we'd prayed for. It still isn't any better. But I don't care. My God is Almighty and He heals me when He pleases and I have given away my right to complain when He doesn't do what I want Him to do. He's promised to heal my skin and I trust that. I don't know when, but I pray that it's soon.

A lot of remarkable stuff apart from tuesday night has happened this week as well. God's been powerfully present in our worship sessions again and yesterday we witnessed Him heal one of our students' knee. She'd injured it early that morning and couldn't put any weight on it. After praying for her for several hours, within 10 minutes she went from not being able to put weight on her knee to jumping up and down and dancing around the room and praising God. And yesterday we also baptised 8 people in our school leader's swimming pool. It was the most beautiful baptism I've ever been to, even though it was in the middle of this shaggy looking backyard, in this filthy swimming pool, the sun shining down on us so hard that everybody was soaked from the sweat. But it was beautiful because 8 people became new, with a new focus in their lives. This week has truly been about refocusing. Focusing on God instead of ourselves, setting our minds on heavenly things rather than what's here on earth. Standing in awe and reverence of God rather than in the fear of men. I gave up my rights to the things that I desire the most in this life. They belong to God now. I burned them at the feet of the cross and it is up to God if he wants to resurrect them or not. He is the Lord of my life, and he is no longer a guest in my house, but the owner, and I have become a servant.

Wow. That went pretty deep... Time to light up the conversation! Because our school is once again leaving the base, I won't have internet access for 3 weeks. So I won't be able to wish anyone a merry christmas on the actual day, so I'll just say it now.

MERRY CHRISTMAS & A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

And to anyone who's going to GearUp, I wish you the bestest frikkin time everrrr!!! I wish I could be there, and it kills me that I won't see you. I MISS YOU ALL SO MUCH!! Be blessed and praise God for He is good all the time! AMEN!