A Night of Power and of Change

Alright… well I completely fail at writing blogs I’ve decided and I apologize to all of you. I honestly would sit down to write one like every other day, get halfway and then not be able to finish. It’s harder than you think for some reason.

Anywhoo… so contrary to what you all believe… we do not spend all our time at the beach. I promise. Yes, in our free time, that’s where we love to spend our time…. But there are other things going on. I will be honest with you guys though… sometimes, no… a lot of the time, we have a little too much free time. Let me explain just a little bit further. It’s interesting with a mission trip like this, there are a lot of aspects that go into it that bring about this kind of issue. When we first got here… for the first 3 or 4 weeks, we were diving into the word, having spiritual warfare, pressing into God for the things that he wanted to do. Then at some point in the trip, life took place. We’re here for so long, 3 months, that life just kind of worms its way in sometimes. Facing issues such as having a lot of down time, and then how to fill that down time… when we finally got internet up at the boys house, we filled most of our down time online, or watching movies. If we weren't online, then we would hang out at the beach to relax. Another thing, really, Kirk isn’t here to babysit us... we're all older, but we're still a bunch of kids, so it’s a little easy to lose focus. I’m not saying nothing has been accomplished so far. On the contrary, we've accomplished many things! We’ve been building relationships with people and with families and with kids. God has done things and is changing people and is changing us. Still, not to the extent that all this should be happening. The changes happening now, are good, but won’t be impactful unless they become even more real. We need more than just a glimpse of something new, we need a wave of something new. We need a kind of change that when we leave this island, we can leave in confidence knowing that God can run with what we’ve left behind us.
We we’re discussing this last night at an informal meeting we had at dinner. For weeks some of us have been really restless with how rowdy the kids are and how they don’t pay attention. None of us have really dealt with a group of kids like this before and we didn’t know much about how to handle it really. It’s easy to just get frustrated and focus on the fact that they aren’t paying attention. Plus, there are kids who are listening and are hearing from God, and they have to miss out because of the kids around them that just won’t focus. It’s been a battle every single week. Well, along with all of this, Josh has had it on his heart to really change things up. Him and Ian are leading it tonight and we are putting our hope in a change. Josh has felt really strongly that we really need to make the kids take the initiative. They are really good at church answers, you tell them a bible story, they know the outcome. You ask them a question, they know how to answer. It’s boring, it’s not life changing at all. Tonight, they are having the kids make the choice. Why are you here? But more than that, do you want to hear from God or not? If not, then out of harsh love, we are just going to say, you need to leave. We love these kids, we’ve gotten to know a lot of them, and we don’t want to kick them out. But unless they take the initiative and unless they make the decision that they want something to happen inside of their hearts… there is absolutely no point in them being in service.

Another change going down tonight is that we aren’t preaching to the kids. I think because Ian and Josh are both doing this together and just because they are very different, I think this is going to be effective There is also one more reason which I think is the most important but I will get to later. Anyway, they are going to be sharing a little bit of their testimonies and really just breaking it down for the kids and being real with them about their lives and choices in their lives… and the things those choices lead to. After that we are going to spend time praying for the kids. Right there, is what will be the most effective part. Pastor James told us this a while ago as well. He told us that really, we can preach to these kids all we want; but, until we speak into their lives directly; until God becomes personal to them and shows up right there in front of them and makes Himself real to these kids; none of that is going to matter.

Still, even that, even praying for the kids… yea, it's great idea! Nothing else is working so lets try praying for the kids this week and see what happens?! No, it’s more than that, we feel strongly that this is what God wants, and we know that Him and His Spirit is what will make this effective. Which is the other reason I was going to explain earlier; Josh and Ian could be new and more effective because it’s two of them, because their not preaching but being real with the kids instead. All that could make it effective… yea, sure, maybe. They are all really good ideas, and they all have really good hearts behind them. Still, when we were talking about it last night and when we started to discuss the buses and where we were going to put the kids who would leave… and the politics behind how some of the church members will deal with what we do… well we just kept on going in circles about all of it. As they were doing that I just started to feel really strongly about expectation. I just got this image of us thinking everything would go really smoothly because this is a really good idea and the kids will have to take it the way we expect them to… and I was thinking about what would happen when that wouldn’t happen. We all had a good understanding that it could still be messy and things were still going to happen though… so what exactly was it that was formulating inside of me? Well, I finally got a chance to talk and as I started to talk it was seriously one of those times where I didn’t even know what I was saying. It was stuff in my heart that I didn’t know how to put into words and yet as soon as I opened my lips, it came out. My heart said… we can talk all we want about all of this. Really, we could have a perfect plan. This whole initiative thing is a really good idea, and I think this whole change it up, be real with the kids thing is a really good idea… but really, unless we cover it in prayer (which at that moment I felt like we were just so far form that)... Unless we cover it in prayer, we will be even more ineffective than ever before! The ONLY thing that will cause ANY kind of change tonight, is if the Spirit of God moves in power like never before. HE needs to change hearts, HE needs to penetrate and speak directly to these kids! I was saying how I was tired… so tired of us going into the past 4 Fridays only 70% or 50%... We love the kids, and we’re there for the kids… but there are still parts of our hearts that complain about the buses, or get really tired… or get fed up and too focused on how rowdy the kids can be. Every week, and I’m tired of it. I want to go into tonight in the presence of God. If something starts to attack me, or any of us; we need to be transparent, and come alongside each other in prayer; be encouraging and unified. I feel also like sometimes on Friday nights, we can be very divided; in a funny kind of way. Tonight needs to be different. I want to walk into that room and walk onto those buses with 110% of my heart, ready to go, in this constant connection with God, hearing His voice clearly; focused.

So, I said that I really wanted to spend a lot of time in prayer, that night and today… because we never pray enough… ever. We always have like one session and expect God to move. But our hearts… GAH. It’s not something I’m getting to worked up about to the point that I’m focusing on the fact that for the past few weeks this has happened. It’s easy to do that and be like, oh man… we’ve been wasting our time, we’ve failed, what do we think we’re doing? It’s easy to do that. But 1 Corinthians 4:3-4: “indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but I am not innocent. The Lord alone judges me.” Getting stuck in our mistake is a silly thing to do. The only thing to do at this point is to let Jesus pick us up and keep going… not just keep going, but running… stronger and faster than before… at a steady pace, alongside Him and let Him now do what He wants and needs to do. Don’t continue being ineffective by getting caught in the past; but give it to God, and let Him move. I am so thankful that we serve a God who is just like that… “he works ALL THINGS for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.” That means everything, our mistakes, our failures… He turns it all around for His glory; because that’s the kind of God that He is! Praise His name!

So, the reason I made sure to get this blog up is so that I can have you guys join us in prayer for tonight… Pray for God’s Spirit over Ian and Josh so that everything that they say and do would come from God and not from themselves. Pray for us as a group, that our hearts would be unified, woven together by an unbreakable thread; that we would be transparent with each other tonight and be focused on God and on prayer.

Funny, one last thing… there was one point where Josh started to share with us two visions that we had. One based on this story from Ezekiel that Pastor Jimmy talked about on Sunday… where Ezekiel was standing in a river and at first it was at his ankles, then it went up to his waist and then over his head or something. Josh was saying how God was taking us deeper into the river. His second vision had to do with two pools of water. We’ve been in the shallow pool for a long time and God is taking us into the deeper pool. It was cool because Anthony and I both had similar revelations about these visions. Anthony brought up one about how in the shallow pool, we are exposed cause we’re not totally in the water, but when we get into the deeper pool we’re submerged by God’s presence. It also made me think of how when we’re in the shallow pool, we’re exposed and we focus more on ourselves but in the deeper pool it’s all water, it’s all God. Also, in the shallow pool we are immobile, we’re just standing there, ineffective. When we’re in the deeper pool, we’re in constant motion because we have to swim. Both of these I thought we’re really cool. It’s so funny cause this conversation just continued… Anthony then brought up that he thought it might be weird to say this but if we could go and someday pray out in the water together. I think the thought sparked from the idea of being submerged. Still, while he said that I had another revelation which I thought was really cool! It was just like… yea! That wasn’t a stupid idea at all… it was more the idea behind it that mattered. The perspective change that fun and prayer should not be separated, which we had kinda done a little bit in the past few weeks. Why not while we’re out having fun spend some time praying… or when we’re all sitting around with nothing to do… praying. We want to break the perspective that it has to be for a specific time and in a specific place. We want to go back to living and breathing God, walking, talking and laughing with Him. It was cool… just one revelation after another and God just changing things in us. We ended the night with a bunch of worship together as a group… which I have been so, so thirsty for so it was really cool to finally get the chance to do that together.

So, again, just be praying for us guys… We love and miss you all… tonight needs to be a night of change. The only way that’s going to happen is if each and every breath, and each and every step is in His Spirit and according to His will.