Week 4: Holy Spirit

This week lectures are on the Holy Spirit. Our speaker was Jessie Padgett, who is from Langly, BC and used to be part of the Vineyard church there. He was a great speaker, full of life and deffinetly full of the holy spirit. Here are the key points that I found:

-there is only one manifesting presence of God on earth and that is the holy spirit

“Speak to the treasure and it will rise up and bless you. Speak to the flesh and it will rise up and bite you.”
-lowest form of discernment is sin, speaking to the flesh
-when the see the absolute good and pleasure in something, you are speaking to the treasure

God created each one of us so we were like him, full of creativity and able to look for solutions. He put fingerprints on each of us (Romans 1:18) which is the truth. It can be found in every person, it just needs to be woken up.

I BELONG.

-not I believe, so I behave and then I belong.

-your behaviour is irrelevant to the salvation process. Behaviour only becomes important after salvation to help you mature

-We need to believe in God's ability, not our own. Walk in the way of the holy spirit

We are designed to leak.
-we are streams of living water and are to go through a cycle of emptying and filling
-always be after the presence of the holy spirit, the pursuit of the holy spirit should be #!
-designed to leak so that God can be strong

The holy spirit worked through many of us this week, beginning healing processes for many and providing confirmation and affirmation. It was a bit difficult for me to get a grasp of people manifesting in the holy spirit. It often involves people speaking in tongues, collapsing to the floor, uncontrollable movements, screaming and laughter. I have never seen this before. Please pray for continued understanding of the holy spirit in my life.

Other highlights of the week:

• I did my STOP@5 this week! I spoke on how God is omnipresent. (I will post my speech as another post.) I was really nervous at first, but once I got started I was fine. It went really well and I got some good evaluations. Praise God that it is over!

• I went snowboarding for my first time ever this weekend! It was soooo much fun! I did fall lots, but surprising didn't hurt too much the next day. I went with Stephanie and Rachel (Stephanie is a teacher up at the mountain and Rachel had been a few times in Washington.) I was so nice to actually board on a real mountain. The runs are really long, it took about 10-15mins. to get down to the bottom and LOTS of powder. I will go a few more times while I'm here. (The pics at the top of this blog are of the amount of snow up on the mountailn) Here is the website for the mountain in case you want to check it out: http://www.blacktailmountain.com/
  

• We drove to Seattle, Washington on Sunday for mini-outreach. It is about a 10-12 hour drive. More on this in the next blog!

Week 3: Father Heart of God

Highlights of the week:

-Missions Tools is AWESOME! This week we learnt how to lay tile. This was really cool for me because I have always wanted to do that, watching people do it on This Old House. Now, I can finally say I have done it and I liked it! We laid tile in the kitchen of one of the houses on base. It was a very small space and we were almost walking on top of each other. Also on Friday for track time, we went into Kalispell to Samartian House.

Samaratian House is a shelter which helps homeless people get back up on their feet. Our team went last Friday too, but I stayed back at the base because I wasn't feeling well. We met with the founder of the place, Chris and he just shared some stories of the people he has met and studies he has done on the homeless people in Kalispell. After a long lunch break, we got to work painting a suite. We painted the whole suite an off-white in about 2 hours. There is 8 of us in total, Matt, Jeff, Stephanie (the leaders), then Jacob, Scott, Tae, Matt and myself. The suite was small with one bedroom, a small kitchen/living area and a bathroom. We also cleaned the hallways and laundry room. Oh and the whole time we were painting, we listened to country (mostly Garth Brooks! Most people here are huge country fans!)

-intercession time Each week we have 3 intercession times. Intercession is praying on behalf of others, 'standing in the gap'. We have intercession as a whole base on Monday's and we pray for situations in particular countries. Then we have intercession as a class and we pray about different issues. I have never done this before and this week it started to make sense as I heard things to pray for from God. TOTALLY AWESOME!!

Lectures: Father Heart of God

Speaker: Matt Atkins

This topic is a very important one that is foundational to Christian growth. 1 John 2:12-14 tells us that our sins are forgiven and that we need to know that God is our father. An important quote I got from this lecture:
“I receive from my parents what they can and have given me and I won't hold against them what they can't and haven't given me.”

To understand the love of God, there are two different types of love we talked about.

• “Agape” -fathers loves as a theological reality (unconditional love for you)

• “Phileo” -fathers love is meant to be an experimental reality (demonstrated affection for us)

There are 5 Aspects of a Father's Blessing (things which every child needs)

1. Meaningful Touch

2. Spoken Message

3. Attaching High Value

4. Picturing a Specific Future

5. Commitment to Fulfill the Blessing

What hinders us from receiving?

• the kingdom of Satan resisting God's love
  -Satan has been questioning God's goodness since the beginning (Genesis 3)
  -”Did God really say....?”, “You surely will not...”

• loveless teaching

• our lostness hinders us (Luke 15:1-32)

• unforgiveness hinders us from receiving the father's love (Matthew 6:14-15)

Forgiveness
...is NOT forgetting (Genesis 45:4)
...is NOT denial (Genesis 45:24)
...is NOT trust (Genesis 42-45)
...is NOT absence of anger (Genesis 42-45)
...IS entrusting the outcome to God, the righteous judge (Genesis 50:19,20)

-unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die

Look at others as a window, rather than a snapshot. I love this! We are all windows of opportunity.

This is just a few words that really stuck out for me from the week. I got a lot of information and it is very hard to summarize it into something that makes sense for those of you who are not here! Hope it makes a bit of sense though or that you get something out of it.

Until next week!

Week 2: Prayer

The first week of our regular schedule. Here is what a typical week looks like:

7:00-7:20 Breakfast
7:20-8:00 Quiet Time
8:00-12:00 Worship, Intercession and Lecture
(exceptions: Monday-all base worship & intercession, Tuesday-tracks 8:20-9:45, Friday -tracks 10:15-12:00)

12:00-12:30 Lunch
1:30-3:00 Meetings (Outreach Prep or Small Groups)
3:00-5:00 Work Duties (my job is to clean the preschool)
5:00-5:30 Dinner
6:45-9:00 Lecture (ONLY on Monday) every other evening is free except Thursday when we have our Community Meeting @7pm

Hope that makes sense.

A bit about lectures first and then I will get onto highlights of the week. The speaker was Mike Phillips and he continued on the topic of hearing God and prayer. This was a really interesting week as every week is, lots of information! I'll just quickly summarize some of the things I'm learning.

Why do we want to hear God's voice?
-to quiet the voices that aren't true
-to explain me (for application in my life)
-to hear him say 'I LOVE you'

An interesting quote Mike gave us:
“Without God, we are meaningless sacs of chemicals.”

There are many different ways to hear from God

Four Primary Ways
-Thought patterns
-Visual (visions, dreams)
-Emotions
-Intuitive

Other Ways
-Scriptures
-Prophetic Actions
-Peace
-Metaphors
-Deja Vu
-Whole being experiences

Steps in Receiving Something from God

1. Reception -who, what, when, etc.

2. Interpretation -what does this mean? Who is it for?

3. Application

Just a bit of information for you to chew on. Now some highlights of the week:

• the beginning of track times

On Monday track times, we will be working with facilities on the base learning different skills to add to our toolbox that may be useful on outreach. This week, we worked in one of the new houses they are building on the base. I got to use a nail gun and a mitre saw for the first time ever! I also did some caulking around the windows, filling in cracks.

• the beginning of STOP@5's

  These are short presentations (3-5 minutes) that each student has to do in front of the class and any other guests sitting in on lectures. The topic can be any character or attribute of God. (mine isn't until the end of the month)

That's pretty much it for this week. Well I did get sick, but it's not really worth mentioning since it is long over with! Thanks for reading!

Some more scenery pictures: (these are some of my pictures, not stolen from other people!)

another picture of the base (that is my dorm on the left hand side) You can't see my room because it is behind the tree!

more of the base

the beautiful mountains and nature around us

Week 1: continued...

On Thursday night (the night of our community meeting-everyone on the base attends and people from the community are also welcome), it was “Welcome to Montana Night”. We had a special dinner where the dining hall was all decorated like a Western Ranch (there were even stuffed heads on the walls!! -kinda creepy).

After the dinner, we had a SQUARE DANCE! The caller was so funny! He had a super long beard as you can see in the picture below and was a big joker! I had to be the part of the guy since girls largely out number guys on the base. It was a good time!

-Claire and the caller

-Dan, Claire and I at the dinner (yeah that's right I'm wearing a John Deere shirt- free found in the boutique a few days before!!!)

-me, Jennifer and Angi

-Stephanie Emery, Rachel, Jami, Alisha and Jennifer

back row: Stephanie Emery, me, Michelle Bailey, Alisha, Teresa (IPHC)
middle: Rebecca. Ja, Emily
front: Courtney

Week 1:Orientation

This week was jammed packed with all different lectures and events to introduce us to YWAM Montana DTS (Discipleship Training School for those that don't know).

The theme for our school is: AT ALL COSTS (scripture reference Luke 9:23-24) The base is very big into the arts, which is why 3 of the 5 specializations/interest tracks involve the arts. The 5 interest tracks are dance, art, music, snowboarding and missions tools. I choose missions tools. More on this later.

On the first night, everyone got a chance to share “How I Got to Montana”. It was really neat to hear everyone's stories.

-some of the girls
clockwise (starting at top left): Claire, Jami (green coat), Michelle B., Crystal, Ja, Stephanie E. (red hat), Alisha (red coat), Stephanie W. (brown hat), Sarah, Mackenzie and Michele F. (middle)

The lectures for this week included:

• Bible Meditation

• Worship

• Hearing God (my favourite of the week)

• The Root and Fruit of Pride (a video lecture by Floyd McClung-very good I recommend you watch it if you can get your hands on it!)

• Relinquishing Rights

If you want to hear more about these or any of my lecture topics, feel feel to e-mail me or chat with me on MSN.