Two Completely Unrelated Yet Awesome Things...

Freestyle Worship


So FRIDAY... we had our last day of lectures on Fear of the Lord. I expected it would probably just be another normal day of lectures, maybe a wrap up kind of day, hit some points home... oh how I was wrong. I walked in and there were no tables set up for our lectures, so I was like hmm... doing something different I guess. So we started the morning off with some worship. We all stood around in a circle and just kind of started in prayer. I really love this base... especially when it comes to prayer. People are so passionate about prayer, and the Spirit moves in crazy ways during that, and I get all riled up and stoked on Jesus... and so on, its awesome. So we started off with prayer... and that led into singing God of Wonders. That was a pretty sweet time of worship there, and then it gets better. After God of Wonders finished, the speaker who was leading us just with his guitar kept going in the same chord progression and people started like... making up their own lyrics... and then people would pick it up, and everyone would start singing it was SOOOOOOOooooooooooo fun. It was scary at first to start singing something random... but that didn't last too long haha, it was great. And then after that we broke up and just went into time with God/prayer for others. So I got prayer from people and I prayed for people and it was awesome and incredible and Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. We finished that prayer time, the speaker was like "once I got you guys going, its tough to get you to stop" which was funny. After the prayer time we had a time to share and confess areas of our life that had sin and that we needed to address which also was awesome. That is basically that story... it was heaps fun.


Evangelism Part 2


Saturday night, I helped with Night Care. Basically, every Saturday night a bunch of guys from local churches run a free sausage and burger stand in a park across from City Hall, right in an area with a bunch of bars. So basically we do ministry with a lot of drunks but it is really cool... even with the drunks having conversation or you get people that aren't drunk too, which is sweet. Last time I went, I had maybe one... decent conversation... but today I felt so much more comfortable. I started off hanging out with one of the staff on my school (5 of us from my school went) and just kind of watched what he did. There were a couple things he said that really started to hit home after the night ended in relation to how you should approach evangelism. Jesus and Christianity are sometimes "dirty" words. People are turned off the second you say them. The body of Christ is important yes, it is SO important, but sometimes addressing that to people right off... just turns them off. We are called to love above all else. Jesus wasn't a "Christian" but he drew SO many people because of his love... because of his supernatural abilities and other things I guess. So instead of starting off with just pushing Jesus, start off with love, start off with that you are doing this event because of love, because you like community and see where that goes. So I talked to 4 people... well 1 of those people was like a group of 6. I sat down beside one of the guys, and we started talking about this event, and he was so impressed with just the willingness that we had to come help, and he really affirmed how important ministry like this was. He said it was cool that people didn't force anything... which comes back to our call to love, and they will know we are Christians BY our love. I had a conversation with a couple other of his friends too, just kind of explained.. briefly why I was here, and then they all went to a bar. It was a cool little chat though. The next conversation I had was with a younger guy who was in Newcastle with his friend on his 18th birthday just hitting the town. I really felt like I got an impression of innocence about him. He wasn't like the others, he enjoyed what he was doing, but it didn't seem to be what he really did in his life. He had a shirt that was from a youtube user that he supported that he found a lot of ways to relate to the guys story. This youtuber basically video blogged his life, and his challenges, and I was like do you see yourself in some of those? And he was like yah definitely... and we talked about he used to go to church before his parents divorce and he hasn't since.. but I really felt like he was searching, I didn't get a chance to go much farther in the conversation, but I really felt like in some ways he opened up... I was thinking this morning "who tells a random stranger about his parents divorce?" I know that I have been told that culturally Australian youth are much more open but I really think God was there in that conversation too. There was another conversation with an older man.. it was good, but I really want to talk about the last conversation. It was funny, last night I didn't talk to anybody really for the first good chunk, and then I just went from person to person talking, it was awesome. The last conversation was with a guy from Sydney who was just kind of in Newcastle. I had a chance to share my testimony, share the hope that Jesus has put in my life, share the purpose I have in my life because of Jesus, share that I am doing what I am doing because I love people, I love conversations and I love community. He was so receptive to it all too. I talked to him about what he thought of church and everything. He said that he went for like... Christmas and Easter, but that was all. In my mind, I am going, thats not great but THAT IS A START! (Or maybe that is me just now... I don't know). He talked about how he really felt the difficulty about church was being accepted... and being challenged intellectually. So that gave me two thoughts... maybe he had bad church experience, and that he was searching. I talked to him about Christianity being about relationship, and the church is important yes, but relationship, living our daily lives in accordance to Jesus... that is what is SO important. I also really encouraged him to jump into a church, to look for one, just give one a try, it will definitely be worth it. He left a bit after that, but he said that he was definitely thinking about trying harder to look for a church.

Fear of the Lord

Week 4 was Fear of the Lord. Let's start by looking at a passage from the Bible, Luke 12:4-7:


⁴"I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. ⁵But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. ⁶Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. ⁷Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.


Okay, so in this verse Jesus says a couple things. First, don't fear things of this world, fear God. Man holds the ability to kill our bodies, but God decides where we spend eternity... so really, what is worse? However... Jesus goes on to say basically that we shouldn't worry about this because God loves us SO much. It is crazy that the only thing we should fear, God, is the one thing that has such an incomprehensible love for YOU and ME. The word fear in this verse has two meanings when you look at the original translation. It means to have a reverence/respect/love for God and a fear of knowing what God is capable of. Think of it this way: the ocean is a beautiful thing. We can swim in the ocean, we can be refreshed, we can surf, we can have heaps of fun but in all of this, we must realize that the ocean is capable of harming us. We are free to enjoy the awesomeness of the ocean so long as we understand how to avoid its dangers. Fear of the Lord is the same thing. We are free to enjoy an intimate relationship with God. This IS the Fear of the Lord. Another interesting point that the speaker made was that God will NOT pretend. God doesn't do secret sin. He will not pretend that there are areas of our lives that are okay when they are clearly not. In sin, we only have two options. We can sacrifice closeness with Jesus and ignore the sin or we can deal with the sin. In dealing with the sin, there is power in acknowledging that sin with the people around us. God just wants us to trust him and understand that he can help us deal with the sin. One of the things that really hit home for me is that Matt said our job in the DTS is to "listen and obey". We are not called do anything more then to simply listen to what God wants us to do and obey that. I am definitely learning and growing in this way.


Wednesday, we learned a lot about the importance of boundaries. Boundaries are part of Fear of the Lord, and they are ways that we can keep our relationship with God strong. Another big thing that Matt hit home was that Fear of the Lord is not about perfection. I identified this in Father Heart of God week, but it applies here too. I think God really is trying to hit this point home in my life. So often, I am like compelled to try and be perfect and I feel awful when I mess up, but God doesn't NEED us to be perfect, he wants us to just put trust in him. Perfection isn't required, but humility is. Humility isn't feeling less about myself. Humility is understanding our identity in Christ. We must be so sure of our identity that Satan cannot touch it. We cannot compromise. We talked about the different signs of the Fear of the Lord:

1)      Freedom from fear and control. Fear controls a person and desire for control takes precedent in many people’s lives. We must break the shackles of fear.

2)      An attitude of respect and submission towards leaders. Matt shared with us a story of not listening to Fred and Luke’s judgment about a situation with a girl. He didn’t have an attitude of respect and ultimately got into a situation where we seriously crushed the girl’s heart.

3)      Control of the tongue. Psalm 34:11-13

4)      Healthy relationships. Relationships aren’t about perfection. We can process difficulties with people.

5)      Freedom for the fear of man.

6)      Our ability to forgive without being bitter.

7)      Obedience to God.

8)      Authority. The more we give authority to God, the more authority we get. For example, look at the centurion who asked Jesus to heal someone. He understood the levels of authority and knew Jesus had the authority to heal even if he wasn’t right beside the person.

9)      Integrity when nobody is looking. Integrity is the quality of being honest, having strong morals; moral uprightness.

10)   Friendship with God. Fear of the Lord draws us into that “secret” place. Just remember, God loves to tell us about ourselves.

11)   Favour of God.

12)   Confession of secret sin.

The final thing I will leave you with is a challenge. One of the most powerful questions we can ask God is, "Lord, what Can I do for you today to bless you?"

Father Heart of God

So week 3 we learned about Father Heart of God. I know it is said over and over, but God's love is greater than we can ever possibly understand. He is the ultimate father. He never stops loving you, it is just a love that doesn't even make sense most of the time. You might ask, "Why do you still love me?" and the answer is... well I'm not sure, he just still loves us though. An interesting thing about God though, is that he isn't impressed by our attempts to act spiritual. His level of perfection is far greater than we can ever achieve so it makes sense right? Anything we try to do pales in comparison to God's perfection. And he doesn't ever call us to be perfect either. He just calls us to have that relationship with him so that he can love us like a father.  In Jeremiah 3:19, we see God's desire for us to call him our father. Despite this love though, there is one big thing about grace that has really stuck out to me. Grace does NOT negate consequences. I have been learning that more and more over week 2 and week 3 but it is SO true. God gives us grace so that we have hope to live, but that doesn't mean there aren't consequences to our choices. The consequences shouldn't be looked as punishment I don't think, but instead repercussions. Sometimes when we sin, we feel guilt or shame, but God will NEVER project shame in our lives. It just isn't something he does. On the first day of lectures in Father Heart of God week, we had an opportunity to listen what God thinks of us. It is really important to understand our identity in God. If we can understand this, and become totally rooted in what God thinks of us than nothing anybody else will say can ever hurt us. It is like building a house on stone; when the storms come it will stand firm. I really felt like during this identity time, God was speaking into me my identity in areas that I felt I wasn't very strong. For example, I feel like I am afraid of a lot of stuff and God told me I was courageous. It is interesting when things like that happen... and AWESOME!!


So the second day of lectures, I learned just as much as the first. We talked a lot about ways to get rid of sin in our lives. First, we must acknowledge it, second we must take responsibility for it (don't analyze it or make excuses), third we must ask God for forgiveness and fourth, we must receive God's forgiveness. Sometimes the fourth is the most difficult. Satan tells us that we AREN'T forgiven, but we ARE! Forgiveness is a CHOICE not an EMOTION. We don't always feel forgiven but that does not mean that we aren't. As soon as we ask God for forgiveness, we are forgiven. We just need to come to terms with this amazing thing called grace. One of the interesting things we talked about was our Body, Soul and Spirit. Imagine three circles, all overlapping in one middle area, lets call this the "center". The body is our physical senses, the soul is our mind, will and emotion and the Spirit is our connection with God. I talked a bit about shame and guilt earlier. Shame and guilt effect us in this area of our body. God wants this stuff out though. He wants to deal with it once and for all.  He may work slow, or he may work fast but is important to realize that God IS helping us. When we let him help, we are accepting the reality of what Christ did on the cross. We sometimes don't understand Christ's sacrifice and his love but I think as we wait for him to help us and see what he does in our lives, we more easily understand the love.


On Thursday, we had a chance to share with our entire school things in our lives that we felt were holding us back or getting in the way of our relationship with God. I think there were a couple really important things that this allowed us to do. First, acknowledging our sin allows God to help us get through it. Once our sin is out in the open, Satan no longer has ANY power on that sin in our lives which is super awesome. Another big thing I thought that came out of this experience was that I think our entire school got a LOT closer. We all accept each other even though none of us are perfect because of love, and because we know we all sin.


So that was basically the way the rest of the week went. Just going to leave you with a quote.


"He claims all because he is love." - C.S Lewis

Promise Ring

I don't want another worldly thing,

All I want is to know you God.

Fit upon my hand your promise ring.

Hold me close and tell me I am yours.

So this is a chorus to a song written by someone who used to be on staff at this base here in Newcastle. All day yesterday it has been stuck in my hand and I think these lyrics are SO powerful. It is my prayer in life that this becomes true to me and I am trusting in God as I develop this... because it isn't about what I can do, it is about what God can do in me. I encourage you guys to think about these simple lyrics and see what truths they hold in your lives.

Also, sorry I haven't had an update in 12 days... I have been pretty busy, I was away all last week camping. I will get an update on what I have been learning tomorrow. In short though, last week was Father Heart of God and this week is Fear of the Lord.

Evangelism

So on Thursday we had a chance to go to a mall here in Newcastle for evangelism. At the outset, we had an introduction to what we would be doing and as I had heard before, I was told that evangelism is about obedience not result. It isn't about "completing" your salvation count and being like YES, that is one salvation for me! Don't get me wrong, that is the ultimate goal, but it is not for us to make that happen. Evangelism is about listening to God and doing what he says. Easier said then done definitely, but nonetheless necessary. The leader of that night of evangelism showed us a scale. Just imagine a number line from -10 to 10. -10 being hating everything about the idea of God and 10 being like a perfect Christian... which I don't believe there are... but that is a side point. Our goal with evangelism isn't to move them from -10 to 10. We listen to God, let him do the work and just simply tell them what we feel God is telling us to tell them. Maybe we move them from a -4 to a -2. That is a success. We have planted a seed in their hearts and done all we can do and it is up to God to do the rest. 


Now for my story about the night... for the first like 40 mins of the night, I didn't talk to anybody. I was getting pretty discouraged because I didn't feel like I was being obedient and I thought I was being selfish and just got super frustrated. I learned after the night that that was common and that very often, Satan is putting those things in peoples hearts, ESPECIALLY thursday, to bring us down. After all, we are in his territory. So, I had two conversations in the last 20 minutes. The first conversation was with an older man who was Catholic. I didn't talk to him very long, and I didn't know what to say really, but I kind of just asked him if he knew about Jesus and followed him, he said yes, and I was like cool. I felt pretty awkward, and the conversation didn't last that long. In the last like ten minutes of the night I had a really good conversation with two guys, one a Buddhist and one a Roman Catholic (both of which didn't know anything about either). So basically I just talked and talked to keep my mind off of what I was doing but I think it was pretty sweet, now that I think about it. I told them about Jesus being the saviour to forgive all of our sins so that we can have eternal life. I didn't move them to start calling themselves Christians, and I don't even know how much of a difference in their heart I made, but the one guy said "If I ever think about something more, I'll remember you." Sure I was sad that I couldn't get across the importance of knowing Christ, but I think I was obedient, and God will do the rest.

Week 2 - Character of God

So this week we learned about the Character of God. There were a couple things that I think really stood out to me. First, God never intended death. When we look back at Adam and Eve, God planned to have an intimate relationship (even with physical interaction) in the Garden. Water didn't have the strength to wash people into the ocean, or kill people, death just didn't exist. I think it is hard to understand sometimes, but that was God's plan. He wanted us to have such a crazy relationship with him that we never died and that we could always just chill and love on him. Everything changed after The Fall though. Death started to exist, but that doesn't mean that God wanted death. Because of his love, he gave Adam and Eve free will and ultimately they used that to make the wrong choice, and death was introduced into our world. If you look at the history of Israel though, God was constantly trying to regain relationship with us that he once had, and obviously that reaches the pinnacle with Jesus' death on the cross and resurrection. God created so many different sacrificial laws to atone for sins, and he created the ten commandments so that we knew what not to do and what to do, there were priests who could intercede with God on behalf of the Israelites, there was The Holy of Holies where the priest would come into the presence of God in the temple once every year (if I am not mistaken). All of this I think points to God wanting that relationship back because of the crazy change after The Fall. Back to my point though, God never intended death. I don't think there is punishment for people anymore. I don't think God kills people because they did something bad (maybe there are examples, but I don't think so). On the cross, Jesus took all of our sins, and all the "punishment" (which if you look back in some verses that say God "punishes", the Hebrew translation often has a varied meaning, some that give a much different meaning than punishes) on the cross. This doesn't mean there aren't consequences. Of course there will be consequences if we sin! I mean, look at robbery for example. If there was no consequence in robbing a store, why wouldn't we do it? Sin is the same. Of course there is a consequence, but God tells us what we can do to glorify him, and he assures us that he loves us. A key verse about the Character of God is Exodus 34:6-7.  So I think that kinda combined a bunch of different things about the week that I learned... so I'm going to finish at that, but if you want to talk more about Character of God, I would love to ;D

Jesus' Preparation

So I heard this yesterday... and I really thought it was worth sharing. It is just kind of something to think about. Jesus took 30 years of his life to prepare for ministry. He spent 30 years learning God's laws, learning scripture, growing to know his identity as God the Son (because there had to be a time when he came to understand this, I don't think he always knew.. or maybe he did, but regardless), and just... getting himself ready. He went through 30 years of preparation for 3 years of ministry. He spent 10 TIMES more time preparing then his ministry, so I think that is just a thought about how important preparing our hearts for ministry is. Our role model spent 30 years... even in our lifespan thats like 30-40 percent of our lives preparing... just food for thought.

The Weekend

So Friday was a pretty standard day, as much as can be standard I suppose. We had a lecture on intercession and prayer and looked at the crazy importance of prayer. In a very brief summary of that, basically, God relies on our prayers to do things. Look at Elijah for example when he prayed for no rain. It didn't rain for like 3 years or something, but it took him PRAYING for it not to rain. God has the power to answer prayers, but we have to pray them first. On Saturday we had Youth Street, which is basically a kids day program that this base runs from like 2 till 8:30 roughly. I am on the music team, so we had two jam sessions during the afternoon. It was pretty fun and involved me jumping and screaming and dancing like a maniac with everybody... pretty exhausting but fun. Then during the night, we had Youth Street Live which is basically a worship service with a speaker. We started off with a cover of "Too Late to Apologize" and everybody basically moshed for that song, and that was heaps fun, and then we did some more upbeat songs and a couple slower songs, and to be honest, I'm not sure if I have ever had that much fun worshipping God... or if I had, not too much, was kinda awesome.


As for Sunday... a bunch of us went to the beach, and explored because it was too cold and windy to go swimming... and then yesterday we went on an adventure through town and just hung out.


Hope all is going well for everybody!! and happy thanksgiving

Thursday

So we had a lecture today on Hearing God's Voice and one of the things that really stuck out to me was when the speaker said that we shouldn't try so hard to change things in our lives that it is all we think about. Instead, we should spend time with God and we will be transformed. I think this is pretty huge... kind of self explanatory, but worth sharing haha

Base Day

So Base Day probably doesn't mean anything to you guys when I say it first, but Wednesday is Base Day. Basically it is a day where the whole base comes together from Worship, Intercession and Prayer. So the worship yesterday was incredible! I loved it. I love worship songs haha, they are like the best. And I was super encouraged by all the people around me worshiping too. After worship, we had intercession prayer for Tanzania. It was kind of a new experience for me, basically we prepared our hearts to pray and then we listened to what God put on our hearts to pray for like 5 minutes, and then in small groups we prayed for that. It was really sweet I would say. Also we had a break in that and we prayed quickly for a group of people from the base who were going on Outreach to Papa New Guinea (PNG) and there baggage was having some trouble coming through, and there was a risk that it would not make it in time, so we did something called a Korean Prayer, basically everybody prayed at the same time. I couldn't even hear myself it was so loud, but you could feel God working, God listening, God present and the hearts of everybody in the room truly dedicated to what they were praying. Going to be an awesome 5 months.

First Couple Days...

So I have now been here for like a day and a half and I am having a blast!!! The flight was awesome. I had kind of been worried about the potential of major turbulence... and I get really motion sick, so that kinda sucks... BUT it was like... not much at all! From Toronto to Vancouver there was no turbulence whatsoever so that was great, and then from Vancouver to Sydney there was only like... 2 areas of turbulence, one over Hawaii and one near Fiji, and I slept through the Hawaii one, and it wasn't even that bad over Fiji, so that is like such an answer to prayer! The first day was really sweet, everybody is super super friendly here, like I can't even begin to describe which makes the going away and being away from everybody a bit easier to get through. My DTS (Discipleship Training School) has 11 students... potentially 12, and right now there are 10 of us here in Newcastle. So it is really sweet because of it being a bit smaller, we all will get to know each other even better! There are 7 Canadians and 4 Americans, which I am told is not common, usually they may have like 1 or 2 Canadians, so thats exciting! We are all in a completely new place in our journey and it is comforting to know that there are people around going through the same things. I have two roommates, Dave and Trevor, both pretty solid guys, and both from B.C. Our leaders are all really great too, I can't say enough about how friendly they are.

So then today, Tuesday, we had a lot of orientation stuff. We learned about lots of different rules that YWAM, and more specifically this base, has. It might not be the most exciting stuff, but I think it is still important, and the random story in the middle of everything kinda adds a bit more flavour to the discussion. We also walked down to the Youth Street building, which is like a warehouse. Youth Street is basically a program they run every Saturday where they reach out to the youth in the community and run different programs, with the goal being sharing Gods love and the gospel. So we will help out with that every Saturday which is super exciting! There is so many cool things to look forward to!! The warehouse that it is in is actually pretty sweet. They bought it within the last couple years and they have a crazy vision for what they want the building to function as and look like, and it is coming together! It is pretty crazy. I just had dinner a bit ago, and also can I say that I love the food, it is delicious mmmmm. 

I think that is all for now... it is all that really comes to mind. 

If you wouldn't mind praying for me about just like being super open to everything that I here. That is one of the really big things, because I think that I will really be challenged on things I believe and I think God will be really moving through things and teaching me new things, and I just need to open to that and willing to let God kinda do his thing. On a side note.... that is kind of related, I was talking to a girl and she kind of said that we don't have to intellectually think everything through, like it is good to think things through, but sometimes we can over think things, or we can like think about how God works and thinking about if it "makes sense" or not, but I think that just kind of doing what God leads. Like move first, think later. That will be a big thing for me and I would appreciate prayer!

Looking forward to hear from you guys, and sorry if this is a really massive post!

Love you all lots,

Jon

Vancouver!!

After 2103 miles, I am in Vancouver, at the airport, now to wait almost 4 hours till my next flight woo woo!!!

The Journey Begins

So I am sitting at the airport in Toronto awaiting my boarding time. I'm not even sure what to say, I just figured it would suiting to post as the journey begins! Also, I love smoothies... just thought I would say that. Anyways, I don't exactly know what to say haha, so I shall just say good bye to Ontario!! I'll miss you all. :(

Psalm 63

¹ O God, you are my God;
      I earnestly search for you.
   My soul thirsts for you;
      my whole body longs for you
   in this parched and weary land
      where there is no water.
 ² I have seen you in your sanctuary
      and gazed upon your power and glory.
 ³ Your unfailing love is better than life itself;
      how I praise you!
 ⁴ I will praise you as long as I live,
      lifting up my hands to you in prayer.
 ⁵ You satisfy me more than the richest feast.
      I will praise you with songs of joy.

 ⁶ I lie awake thinking of you,
      meditating on you through the night.
 ⁷ Because you are my helper,
      I sing for joy in the shadow of your wings.
 ⁸ I cling to you;
      your strong right hand holds me securely.

 ⁹ But those plotting to destroy me will come to ruin.
      They will go down into the depths of the earth.
 ¹⁰ They will die by the sword
      and become the food of jackals.
 ¹¹ But the king will rejoice in God.
      All who trust in him will praise him,
      while liars will be silenced.

So in less then 24 hours I will be flying to Australia. Mind blowing I would say. I was reading Psalm 63 though and there was one thing that really impacted me in the commentary that my Bible gave. About verses 1-5 it said: "Hiding from his enemies in the barren wilderness of Judah, David was intensely lonely. He longed for a friend he could trust to ease his loneliness. No wonder he cried out 'O God, My soul thirsts for you...in this parched and weary land.' If you are lonely or thirsty for something lasting in your life, remember David's prayer. God alone can satisfy our deepest longings." I feel like it has been kind of a worry of mine going away by myself at first, even though I know everybody will be super friendly, and then I read this and was like wow, I'm so silly haha. 

So that is my first post! Many more to come, and they shall be from the land down under!!