Well, it's week 11 of the school; we have this week of classes and next week and we'll be finished. It's unreal how quickly the quarter has gone by, I don't want to believe it's almost over because I want to keep going. Fortunately I think God wants me to keep going here, and as has been the plan all along, to do the WISE school (Worship Intercession Spiritual warfare and Evangelism) starting June 24. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, I want to talk about these past few weeks of the school.
After the last time I posted we went through a week of teaching on modern versus traditional worship. It was a good week and the teacher gave us some cool perspective on different ways of "doing church," if you'll excuse the expression, but I think the greatest thing I learned from her teaching was to not confine myself in how I can learn and experience things. Several times during the week she had us do some visual or hands-on activities, like painting or walking through a "labyrinth," in order to allow us to reflect on some of the things that we had heard in the teaching. My first reaction was always, "I don't reflect or learn this way," but I chose humility and tried it and because I was vulnerable God showed me some interesting things. As I was walking through the labyrinth, which was just a pattern mowed into the grass, God spoke to me about the Christian walk: sometimes we'll pass the same point three or four times in our life and it's easy to get down on ourselves and think, "Ah! here I am again at square one," but actually we've progressed a lot and He's just helping us dig deeper into the issue so as to remove it from the very tips of the roots; the most mature river is one that meanders a lot. That river also supports the most life. He taught me several other things besides that, about following, about perspective of other people's walk, about humility, etc. it was really awesome, as I'd never even given myself a chance to learn that way. Sometimes we just need to interact with God in a different way than we're used to, we ought to ask Him what He wants to do more often and not assume we know.
Also during that week the DTSers who had gone out on outreach came back. These were people that were around when I had come back from my outreach. It was great to see what they were like after they had experienced some of the same things that I had gone through, and to see how dramatically they had grown after a couple months of laying down their lives fully to the Lord. The stories they came back with were incredible and encouraging and I can't wait to do schools with some of them in the future. God is really doing some crazy things in and through this generation in the nations of the world, and I'm stoked to be a part of it.
After that week we had recording prep, where we practiced our songs all day every day for four days. Needless to say, my voice stretched a ton, and I was very sick of my song before we go to recording, but it was all worth it. All of our bands (we have three in our school) did impressively well during the recording week. The musicians were on tempo and nailed there parts with only a few takes. It was a cool experience being in a real recording studio and listening to a song get pieced together from the ground up, I'm excited to hear the end result of all of our songs. There are some incredible singer/songwriters in our school.
As always I have requests for prayers, and I thank you all for keeping me in your prayers. Again and again I'll keep saying this: I know that your prayers have been and will continue to be very effective, and they're very valuable to me. God has been banging on this brick wall with a sledge hammer and the cracks are showing and a lot of progress is being made in my relationship with Him and I know that your prayers have contributed a lot to the softening of my heart in the different areas of my life. Please continue to pray that I'd be humble, broken and contrite before the Lord, that I'd finish off this quarter strong and wouldn't take a moment for granted, that I'd have a generous heart towards all other people, whether with my physical or spiritual belongings, and that I'd seek Him all day, every day. Also please pray for peace, and, as I mentioned last time, I'm still in need of finances to pay off this school. More than prayers for support, however, because I know that God can give me all the money and more in a heartbeat, please pray that I wouldn't let myself be anxious about the situation, but that I'd embrace it and trust God every step and I'd walk in thankfulness for the trial, because He has already done much in me and will continue to.
God bless you all, and thanks again for your prayers and support. I'll be updating you all again probably after I graduate from the school.
Praying... God bless you!
ReplyDelete