Forever You Rain

God can show up in any given moment. He is unpredictable and I feel like that's what makes following Him so exciting. Especially when He DOES show up. On Monday morning May 30th, our base was having a time of worship, where we just sang songs and gave glory to the Lord. Adam Thompson, one of my leaders, was leading worship and He started talking about how he felt that the word for the morning was that God wants us to go after Him with all of our hearts, all of our souls, with all of our minds and with all of our strength. And so we took that and ran with it. We all started to get passionate in the place of prayer. We asked Him to come, and then proceeded to sing this song that had the lyrics "come like the rain" and we sang that over and over. We continued worshiping and not long after, we experienced massive pounding against the roof of our building. Not only was it raining, but this water came so hard that we needed buckets underneath a few spots because of leakage. This was no coincidence; God came, and as a symbol of the fact that HE reigns, he sent physical rain. So powerful and so moving. We all sat there in silence and just thanked Him for who He is. Moments like that do not happen every day, so when they do, it's really cool.

I really love times of worship. It's something I am passionate about making time for because it's such a great way of focusing my thoughts on Him and only Him. We had two other sweet times of corporate worship in the last week.. and I will share about one of them because it is just really cool. Yesterday, Friday, there was an event that took place throughout a few other countries at the same time. It's called ONE VOICE. A group of YWAM bases in places like Lausanne, Switzerland,  Kona, Hawaii, Denver, Colorado,  Perth, Australia, Ensenada, Mexico  all gathered together to worship the Lord at the same time. We were fortunate enough that this took place for us at 1 pm our time. We got the camera rolling and skyped with all of these bases and played the same worship songs together. What a cool sight to see. I feel like the view of that from heaven would have been pretty incredible, as people of every background on different continents raised their hands to their father at the same time. I felt honored to be a part of such a sweet event.

PHASE ONE:

For the last 2 weeks I have been taking a class called Phase 1 which is a training course that will qualify me by Australian standards to staff this next Music Discipleship Training (DTS) and it will actually be recognized and official. The course itself has certain things it covers, and one of the things we are required to do is teach a skill because we will have to teach a skill on DTS. So for this course I taught how to properly kick and dribble a soccer ball. It seemed like such a simple thing to teach, but it actually showed me that everything takes a little preparation, and teaching isn’t just a walk in the park. So to all of you teachers of any kind, I got a little taste of what you experience. That was really cool. Now granted, I was teaching soccer so it was fun for me, but I found teaching to be very fulfilling. I loved being able to show other people how to do something that they didn’t yet know how to do, and to demonstrate it in a way where they felt encouraged and actually able to do the skill.

Aside from those two things, I have one last thing to share. Like I have mentioned earlier, our base does community evangelism every Thursday night and my team goes into the city and serves the people there for a couple hours at night. I know that evangelism is a routine at YWAM Perth because we do it so often, but I am ALWAYS blown away by what God can do in such a short period of time with such a small amount of people. So we set up a soup table, and I somehow volunteered myself to dose it out when people came by and just feed them warm soup.. which by the way smelled so nice. Being that this was my job for the night, I made sure to be intentional about making people feel welcomed into our little community fellowship we had going on around the patio area. It ended up being so cool for me to meet such a variety of people from such an array of cultures. There was a large number of aboriginal people that came through asking for soup, and these are people who almost seem like they aren’t good for anything, and they have just begun to settle for the life that they have always known. I saw this as my friend Alicia was painting one of aboriginal women’s nails. I looked over and I saw Alicia telling her that she is a beautiful woman of God, and just speaking life into her, so that she could catch a tiny glimpse of what how God actually views her. It warmed my heart to see that, and I can only pray that woman could receive all of that truth. Another group that came by was a few Aussie teens, who happened to be homeless. They seemed like they were in a pretty rough state, and from what I could tell, had gotten themselves into some trouble (I think stealing.. things like that). They kept coming back for more soup, and every time one of them would ask, it was always in a way that they didn’t think they deserved soup or something. I don’t know how to explain it, but I was beginning to see a pattern with just how people let their circumstances and their past define who they are, and all that they are worthy of. I could just see that all these people wanted deep down was to be shown genuine love. And I almost felt bad that all we could offer was soup and a bit of conversation. But I remembered this scripture: Matthew 25:35 “For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in” And that’s exactly what we did. And I know that God was honored by this small act of mercy that our group was able to show the people of this city. My spirits were lifted as another couple came by. They were both from London actually, and I’m not even sure why they came to Perth. They came by our little “salvation station” to tell us that two weeks ago after some of our group prayed for them, that everything in their lives instantly started to take a turn. They said as soon as they turned the corner that night, they found a place to stay, and the man found a job I believe, and they just were so overwhelmed with gratefulness that they wanted to come back and share the good news and thank us. Of course it wasn’t us who did any of this, but God. I am just so encouraged that they were able to see the Lord move in such a powerful obvious way. And I hope that they both start to open up a little more to the idea of a God who LOVES them and loves the ABUNDANTLY. That was a really really cool night and we can only accredit all of those things to the One who gave us the night.

Life is such a beautiful gift. It really is, and this is a glimpse of what I have been learning more and more as I have continued settling in here in Perth. We have so much to do on a day to day basis and I many times forget to just enjoy myself. So these last couple weeks that is something I have really been intentional about doing, is just enjoying each moment I'm a part of. It's amazing what such a simple concept, when put to good use can show you. 

Ecclesiastes 5:18 “Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one's labor in which he toils under the sun during the few years of his life which God has given him; for this is his reward.”