Week 4

Wow I can’t believe that a quarter of my lecture phase is already over! This week has been very refreshing. Cliff Wiener taught on Intercession and Worship this week and started out with focusing on hearing God’s voice and the Holy Spirit.

I’ve always had this hierarchical picture of the Godhead in my mind because I’ve never really fully understood who the Holy Spirit is. I got a real revelation on the Godhead and especially on who the Holy Spirit is this week. I now know that he is a person who wants to relate to me just as Jesus related to His disciples.

On Monday evening we had a worship time where we really invited the Holy Spirit to come and speak to us and He did! I was blown away by His presence and how much He spoke to me that evening.

Some other key points for me this week were the whole topic on the spiritual battle we are in, our responsibility to stand in the gap for others and that worship means total surrender.
Cliff was a great speaker who was able to make complicated things simple by telling stories. Tomorrow we’ll have our first real intercession time with the whole base (our base has set prayer intercession times twice a week and now that we’ve had teaching on it we can join them).

The main highlight for me this week was our camping trip over the weekend. I’ve never been camping before so this was quite an experience for me! We had our lectures out in the bush, slept in the bush, cooked in the bush and had no running water! It was great! Friday night we had a blast while playing capture the flag and running through thorn bushes in the night (some of us were so dedicated to the game that they even swam in the river in pitch darkness just to get the flag). After the game we had a spontaneous time of praise and worship as a team. It was a very, very special time for all of us as we were glorifying God under the stars and realizing how much we love each other. I have never experienced such unity in a group before, it is amazing and I feel so blessed!

Saturday we had a rally and as you can see on the pictures above the rally included eating a whole box of shapes and a jar of salsa, an egg walk, 50 push ups, sticking your face in mud (I did that one!), swimming a certain distance,… My team won in the end and the whole thing ended with a huge mud fight in the river!

As you can see we had loads of fun the past couple of days and really grew together as a team.
This week Ari Sloots, one of our base leaders, is teaching on the Fear of the Lord. We already had our first session this morning and it was incredible! I can’t wait to hear more on this topic.
We find out hopefully tomorrow where our outreach opportunities are and I can then tell you in my next update where I’m going on outreach! Please pray that I can completely surrender all of my hopes and presumptions to God in order to clearly hear from Him where I should go on outreach. I really don’t want to base my decision on my own desires or where my friends are going but completely on where He wants me to go.

Please also pray for me that I will gain a much greater Fear of the Lord this week. Pray that I will get a deep, deep revelation of His holiness and His immense worthiness and that I will learn to despise my sin. Also pray for conviction of the Holy Spirit on areas in my life that I haven’t fully surrendered to God and that He will speak to me and challenge me this week.

Thank you so much for your support in every way, it really means a lot to me. Next week I can hopefully tell you where I am going on outreach and by then I will hopefully also know if I'm still missing money for it. The exchange rate I got when I paid for my tuition fees was fantastic and I was able to save some money thanks to the Australian economy.