First of all, I need to share a quick testimony with you.
I know that I had send out an e-mail about raising finances in order to go out into Thailand, Burma and Southwest Australia. Personally I needed about $2,500 still. I knew that it was possible for God to do… there have been miracles I have seen before in the area of finance, but not really for myself before. So I said “Okay, God show me what I need to do and I will do it” and then I kept praying. As a class we have been meeting at 6 am for 20 minutes to pray for finances to come in since about 4 weeks or so ago. And I have been doing other things that I felt like God has put on my heart to do as well. A few of them were: Giving away things of mine, making a video, asking my family and friends to pray, and cleaning out my credit card and putting all of the money towards outreach, leaving nothing for any personal needs, which was a pretty big step for me to do… but once I had the word of the Lord, I didn’t hesitate to do it. We also as a team got this scripture: Matthew 4:4 “Man does not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”. So we felt to give up bread until we saw the money for our team come in (this wasn’t easy either because we get free donated bread every day and this is usually my breakfast…but “to sacrifice is gain” J
Then there was a night about a week later after I sent out that e-mail to you all where we had worship and prayer for our class finance to come in. That was the night that I felt to give something away, so I did and then I felt to just keep praying with different people. As I was praying with one of my small group girls Maddie, we started getting really excited in prayer and all of a sudden I looked up on the board with the names and amounts and my name was completely gone!! I had no idea HOW that money came in at all! And then there was even $500 extra dollars that was given towards my outreach, that I had prayed and felt to give to others’ outreaches as well.. but just the faithfulness of God was really displayed so clearly to me that night. And I knew it wasn’t about the money, it was just about hearing Him and then doing it by faith and then seeing Him work!! So amazing. And it was by the due date as well that the money came in, which I remember praying that morning saying “I have faith that this is going to come in all today!”
Praise the Lord! Praise His Holy name! We hear this phrase used all of the time especially in worship music, in the bible, sometimes we say it when something good happens and we celebrate together. But I have gained a deeper understanding of this phrase as I have done exactly that: “Praised His name”
And I really feel to share this with you all..
We praise Him because of who He is.. because He is good, because He is loving, because He is faithful, because He is perfect. And (supposedly) amazing in every way. But I have come to realize that saying these things with my mouth isn’t necessarily what is going on in my heart at all times.. especially if I am under a certain pressure, in a sticky situation, worried, anxious, stressed out about something, in a very difficult predicament, feeling like there is no hope..etc. So that brings me to---There was a speaker who came to talk to our base at our Friday Night gathering service named Paul Hawkins, from the United States. He asked all of us this question “Why is it do you suppose that when people get hurt (Christian or not), they punish God, and move away from God? Why do we not pray? Why do we blame God for what people do to us?”
-Such a good question right? This challenged me to really get at the root of where any worry, anxiety, bad or negative emotion I had when I entered into prayer, worship, or going about my daily life… which is clearly unbelief.. When we don’t go to Him (who made us, knows us better than anyone, loves us more than anyone, and wants to guide us through whatever it is we’re going through) in these times that our circumstances are not the best and we have no control over them, basically that’s showing Him that we don’t believe in His power, His love and His goodness that He wants to show us.
The phrase God is good is so overused and has become almost ineffective today. But I have come to see that God can’t change who He is (He is good by nature), therefore He is always good, even when our circumstances are not, or even when we are not good for that matter. So this deeper knowledge of God’s goodness has forever shifted my way of thinking… I am not being cliché when I say this either: In the good times, I will praise God, in the horrible times, I will praise God, in the times that I have absolutely no idea what to do I will praise God, and I will declare His goodness and faithfulness over my life even if I don’t understand what He is doing at the time. I really hope this is making sense… because it is such a powerful thing to understand, and it has definitely made a difference in the way that I view God over this past year.
These last 3 weeks as a class have had teaching Missions, Lordship, and the Father heart of God which was a really big week--- We spent the week learning how to view God as a father. It was a great week that I think brought a lot of healing, and restoration in many of the students minds. This healing had to do with understanding the grace that God had really given us throughout our lives, and knowing that it’s enough, and knowing there is nothing that you can do more to make God love you any more than He does, and nothing to make Him love you any less. He will always love you. “He who loves much, has been forgiven much. People who have been forgiven much understand grace in a very deep way.”
And I think about that and think back to my life and the grace that God has poured out on my life in so many ways.. the times that I turned myself away because I thought I knew better. He has never given up on me. And He hasn’t given up on anyone for that matter. And I can’t help but tear up out of thankfulness because of His abundant grace. He has given me incredible parents to take care of me and to implant truth into my life that I would be able to grab hold of and understand for myself and walk in those truths and not look back for a second. I want to honor my parents for being so consistent in the way that they have loved me and continue to love me and pray for me and support me, now that I am half way across the world. It’s a blessing I will never fully understand. I also want to thank Him for the blessing of my grandparents and extended family and the friends that have been placed in my paths to shape who I have become. This week has been a real time to just being grateful and thankful for what God has done in me and through me as well. I know that I am excited for more, but I feel like part of the process is to stop and just rest and be thankful for what has happened and for who I am becoming, and that God really has done an incredible work.
I have one other evangelism story.. So about a week and a half ago, we went out on Thursday into the City as a big group. And I partnered up with a girl named Maddy (who is on my outreach team and is a different one from the one I wrote about above). We prayed as we were walking and we just asked God to lead us out and show us where to go. I felt like I had the word “bear” and she had the word “yellow”. So we were like “alright whatever God is doing here, it sure ought to be good”. As we walked we really were not getting any real sense of where to go.. but then I looked over and saw these yellow canopies set up in this patchy piece of grass where there were people underneath each individual tent. And so as we got closer we saw that there were animal shapes underneath the tent coverings and we got excited as we searched for a bear.. at the time I felt like we were meant to be going over the very end tent covering, but I saw that Adam (our leader) and a few other students were over there so we wandered in the other direction.. and started talking to this guy who was sitting down. His name was Ren and he was from Australia, and he was basically just taking it easy as we approached him, and we started to talk to him about his life. As we were talking it was so natural to add in little glimpses of the gospel message and really tell him how much God loves him and cares about him and has purpose for his life. He was still very much processing everything we were telling him, but if all we did was get the wheels turning then Hallelujah! That’s great.. and we will pray for his continual pursuit of our personal Lord and Saviour. Maddy ended up giving him her bible, and we called it a night.. but it was great to be able to talk to someone about God this way in while! It’s moments like this that I remember all of the work and training we do isn’t for nothing! We’re championing young people so that they can go out and do this very same thing for the rest of their lives… pretty cool actually! On top of that, we got back to the group and shared what God told us.. and then Adam said that the people they were talking to were actually promoting animal rights, but not just animal rights, but bear animal rights… how cool is that!
I could keep going with stories, teaching points, and just on and on about things I am learning and growing in, but the main point that I wanted to get out in this update is that God is really moving. He is moving in a deep deep way that I have never seen or experienced before, and I pray that it only continues and that other people may be impacted by the work that is going on here. It’s difficult to put them all into a short update sometimes, but I can try! I have come to this conclusion over the past month or so: if this is what the kingdom of God is supposed to look like here on earth, then oh man, heaven is going to be sweeter than sweet!
