I guess I'm still processing all the information, so bare with me as I attempt to give a brief outline of the things I've taken from each week.
Character & Nature Of God.
- The character of God is who God is that we can be. The nature of God is who he is that we can't be.
- What we believe about God, is that from the Bible or from what people/the world has let us believe?
- If it's not in the Bible, we must go through our thought process with God.
- 'What comes into our minds when we think of God is the most important thing about us' A.W Tozer
- God doesn't change.
- Since the beginning of time Satan has been trying to make us doubt God.
- When God spoke to Adam & Eve, the first thing he said was 'where are you?' He first & foremost wants a relationship & intimacy with us. The consequence of their actions came after.
- Who are we giving authority to?
- We are fearfully & wonderfully made but we're so finite. God is infinite.
- God says we are beautiful, do we believe that? If not, why not? Who told you? Where did that lie come from?
- If you're having a problem with pride, take a moment to think about how finite we are.
- Take captive every thought & pay attention to our thought dialogue.
- Replace lies with truths!
- If you really believe that the Bible was created by the Creator of the universe, why aren't you reading it?
1 Corinthians 13:13
'And now these three remain: faith, love and hope. But the greatest of these is love.'
Hearing the voice of God & The Holy Spirit.
- The challenge is knowing: Gods voice/My mind/Enemies voice
- God doesn't contradict himself
- There's a difference between hearing & obeying!
- Hearing the voice of God is not a gift you're born with, its a muscle we develop
- Are we afraid of the voice of God?
- God never dies down to our pressure
- The way we see ourselves shuts & opens heavens. It can also hinder us from hearing Gods voice
- God gets angry but it doesn't change the way he treats us.
- Perfect love casts out fear & God is LOVE
- God speaks in SOOO many ways!
- A loving father never communicates to us in a way that is threatening
- We tend to focus on what the Holy Spirit does, rather than the person
- Focus on Jesus, don't focus on the miracles (they are just the bi-products!)
- God can use 1 person to change a nation. PRAY.
- Don't stop praying until you get a breakthrough
- How big is your God?
*If you could ask God for 2 things, what would they be?*
Already I've learnt so much & hearing the stories from various speakers of events in their lives where God has provided and watching their passion for him is amazing! One thing that David spoke about during Hearing the Voice of God, was a faith walk. He'd done it with DTS's that he'd lead and encouraged us to do one too. So, on friday morning we were told we wouldn't have any lectures but to be ready at 10am to leave the base in teams of 3/4 and we wouldn't be returning till 11am on Sunday. We weren't allowed to take any money/credit cards/phones/iPods etc.. The purpose was to wait on God & ask him where he wanted us to be, who he wanted us to speak to & we'd have to organise transport/accommodation etc ourselves.
We dressed warmly (admittedly I definitely didn't put enough clothes on!) and got our sleeping bags ready. My team was the team I'm going to Africa with, minus 1 person. I could try to explain what happened but it would take a while! To summarise:
- We spent a lot of time waiting on God and praying about what to do
- We were able to pray for various people we didn't know
- We prayed for the towns we visited
- On Friday night God provided us with a room to stay in, after we thought we'd be sleeping outside! And we were given so much food we didn't know what to do with it all!
- All the walking we did meant we got to know the towns VERY well!
- A lot of time we spent being very cold and pretty hungry
- We were questioned by the police, who asked to see our passports incase we were immigrants and then thought we'd stolen the little chocolate & clementine that we had! Fortunately I had the receipt still. Trying to explain that we didn't have a place to sleep and we were doing a faith walk proved to be quite a challenge!
- We ended up coming back to the base a night early, after realising God was teaching us about our pride!
Even though it was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done, I learnt a LOT from it. Firstly I realised how much I don't pray to God in my day. We spent so much time praying and relying on God, because we had no other option! Secondly, we really appreciated what we did have & the fact that we weren't homeless. Thirdly that God is always faithful! We obviously spent a lot of time together and meant that we became better friends and more of a team, but one of the biggest lessons was to surrender our pride & expectations to God. We went into it thinking we were going to see so many amazing things happen and that God would move in amazing ways. But the reality was, that we were all quite inexperienced in the area of just fully relying on God with everything and so that may have made it harder to hear him. And no matter how small the things we did may have seemed, God can still use them and we may never know the impact that we had on people!
In other news.. it was 3 weeks yesterday since I left home! I can't believe how quickly its gone already! I also have been exploring the surroundings and there are some amazing views! Here are a few pictures..
So.. I know this has been a long post and I'll try not to leave such a gap in-between the next posts! Hope you're all well and email me if you want to know the full story of the faith walk!!
Love you all,
Emma
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