My first two weeks!!

I wish I could tell you all everything I’ve been learning and experience, or rather, I wish you were here to experience it with me!!!
But since neither of those is possible right now, I’m going to attempt to explain. Excuse me for mistakes. I’d rather write about this as if I were talking to you instead of trying to make it sound like a literary masterpiece.
I’ll tell you about some of the things I’ve learned and then I’ll share about an outreach I went on.
Last week they talked to us a lot about what happens when we do ministry. The ministry we do here looks different because almost everything we do can’t be done without God’s help. When we pray for someone, we’re encouraged to pray for healing or to ask God for a word of knowledge for them. They talked to us about when we do that to not expect one hundred percent success rate. We take a risk when we ask God for healing or a miracle to happen, but when we do that, God rewards us for our faith and he often does what we ask. In the past, I’ve always been afraid to ask God to do a miracle because if it doesn’t happen I’m afraid that I and the other people involved are going to be disappointed or more confused. Bill Johnson taught us that he thinks God is more concerned how we respond in a failure or success rather than being able to see the miraculous. When he prays for a miracle and it doesn’t happen, that’s when he sits with God and tries to figure things out. God wants us to do that. Someone told us a story of a group of kids who went to pray for someone who had already died to be resurrected. There were also adults in the room. She said that as the kids pressed in to pray for a miracle, they got more and more encouraged because they were connecting with God in such a powerful way. It was all of the adults that were getting more and more discouraged as they pressed in because they were afraid that it wouldn’t happen. In this case, the man was not resurrected but it didn’t bother the kids. They knew that God would do the right thing. They were just happy to connect with him. Bill Johnson also told us that we’re often more worried about OUR reputation than God’s. We don’t want to look bad in front of someone, so we don’t ask God to do the impossible for fear that He won’t and we’ll look bad. In contrast, we’ve been spending a lot of time just worshipping God and learning how wonderful God is and how wonderful he made us to be. Bill said worship is the best form of spiritual warfare!!
We learned a lot about getting over your fears so that God can use you powerfully. “The dogs of doom stand at the door of your destiny.” The thing that you’re the most afraid is what God wants you to do. When we get closer to the door, we realize that the dogs have no teeth!!! We reduce our life because of fear. I think this was a big thing for me to face because I have a lot of fear of man. I don’t want to look weird in front of people or I don’t want people to criticize me. I’ve often felt like God wanted me to reach out to someone or encourage someone but I was too scared to do it. This place is all about facing your fears so that you can do what God has called you to do.

So now about the outreach I went on yesterday. There was a group of about 10 of us. Before we went out, they had us write down locations, people’s names, prayer needs, and anything else that popped into our mind. Then we got into smaller groups and compared our answers. The idea was to find out who God wanted us to meet. In my group, most of us had Wal-Mart as a location so we set out for there. I ended up making a wrong turn, but one of the guys in my group had another location that we saw, so we stopped there. I saw a group of people doing a car wash and I had written down “car”, so I went over there with another girl. By the way, three of the people in my group were teenagers and more experienced than me at this. It was kind of fun asking them what I should do. It was a family that was doing the car wash. We told them what we were doing and if anyone needed prayer for anything. Thinking back, I can’t believe that I was brave enough to ask them that. I think God was helping me a lot.J The lady said that we could pray for her daughter. She was having a lot of relationship problems. One of the girls in my team, Susanna, had written down “relationship problems” so I asked her if she wanted to go over and pray for her with me. The daughter was standing over on the street holding a car wash sign. We went over there and told her what we were doing and asked how we could pray for her. She said that she had a lot of back pain (I had also written down back pain). We prayed that God would heal her and after we finished praying, she said the pain was gone!! Eventually she opened up to us that her boyfriend was very abusive (I had written down abuse!) We told her how much God loved her and that she didn’t deserve to be treated like that. As we prayed for her and encouraged her, tears were streaming down her face. She asked what church we went to and said she had been reading her bible recently and praying and trying to figure out what she believed in. We told her about Bethel and invited her to come.
We left amazed at how God had brought her to us, healed her and given her a glimpse of His love for her.
I think I’m going to continue going to treasure hunts on Saturdays. I’ll continue to share what God does on them. It does make you realize that God wants to touch people if we are willing to listen to Him and go where He leads!!
Well this all might sound crazy weird to you guys. I probably would’ve thought the same thing but when you’re here and you’re around people that are crazier than you are, it starts to rub off!! Crazy about Jesus, that is. J

If you’re not bored yet and want to continue reading, I wanted to share some highlights from my notes:

We are God’s royal priesthood. We are God’s princes and princesses. If our dad is really God and we have a good relationship with Him, we should feel pretty powerful. When we worry, it’s a sign that we don’t know who our dad is. I’m just going to type out some of my notes on this subject: We see the world the way we are. If we don’t love ourselves, it’s hard to love others. Unforgiveness chains you to the past. You know when you’ve forgiven someone when you allow them to be free.
You become what others thing you are. The more we see God, the more we become like him. When we don’t see God, our God looks like us.
A religious spirit (which is a bad thing) tells us that if we want to be more like God, we have to DO something. Religion is performing for what we already have.
Don’t believe you are a sinner. You are a saint!
Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It’s thinking of yourself less. It’s thinking more of your God than of yourself. They gave an example of a painting. Would you make fun of the painting in front of the artist? That’s what you’re doing when you think badly of yourself.
Having low self-esteem is costing the creation.
The source of greatness lies within God who lies within you.
We are born to be amazing!!
When people watch your life, they should say, “there must be a God”. If we do only what humans can do , people won’t see us as any differently than non-christians.
This is on another teaching about reason/faith:
The western culture is based on reason. Supernatural things look spooky to us at first because there’s no rational explanation for them. But when you have a God encounter, reason goes out the window.
That doesn’t mean reason is not important, but reason should be tutored by faith.
Faith builds when we have a relationship with God and spend time with Him. Expect God to do great things but understand that he is the authority.