I´m going to BRAZIL!!!!!!!!!!!
we have just beentold our outreach groups and I am going to Brazil! I can´t beleive it. I am so excited!!! My team should be realy cool as well. I don´t know them as well as I know some people at the school, but they are all lovely. So anyone know any Portugues?
Also I must appologise if I don´t write for a while. My computer has died- won´t boot up at all, so it might be a bit before I have good access to the net again.
But until then,
So long
Monday, 31 March 2008
Friday, 28 March 2008
I have no breath to shout, I have no breath to sing, I have no breath to dance, but I will praise you
LONG POST ALERT!!!! (well it was a long weekend!)
Fresh wind is the youth conference that TACF puts on every year. It is aimed at teenagers and is always on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of Easter weekend. This year there were about 2 or 3 thousand people there at the peek, and it was… intense.
Each of the school of ministry students had a work duty assigned to them where they had a job for 4 hours each day. Some people were on security, some were car park attendants, some where serving the speakers in ‘Speaker’s lounge’ and some where on maintenance. I got kitchen duty!! I have to say that I was not particularly thrilled about this to start with, but Francis who runs the kitchen here is so lovely that you can’t help but enjoy yourself when you are with him.
So my shift started at 8 in the morning and we were supposed to work until 12 each day, but for the first two days we had a really light load. The kitchens were running a meal plan for delegates at the conference and it was to be served in one of the overflow rooms in the back of the church. So the first day we cut a few peppers, and arranged some pieces of chicken on trays (OK so over 400 pieces of chicken). Then we loaded up the trolleys with all the equipment we would need for the overflow room, set that up and that was about it. The second day we needed to check the overflow room, take over a few extra drinks, and that was about it for day two. Day three was more eventful as we had to take lots of new stuff over to the overflow room (crisp, bread rolls, a huge bucket of mayonnaise), then we had to pre-mayo about 300 of these bread rolls. It was disgusting! I am not a fan of mayonnaise in anything but tuna mayo, so having to dollop out this jelly like white gloop and then splatter it over some poor person’s lunch, was just not nice. However in all of that I learnt a lot about what is needed when catering for 500 people, and gained a new respect for the kitchen staff.
Apart from work duty all of the students were expected to be somewhere at all times. We had to be in the worship sessions (not that many of us would want to miss them) and attend on of the workshops, and in the evening we were part of the ministry team. Meal times were our only free time at all. I made full advantage of my first batch of free time by catching up with my beautiful friends, Becky and Lauren Ede. It was so nice to see more familiar faces and to be able to chat and catch up. We went out with Maretha to Boston Pizza,
where we had a lovely time and the other girls decided to stretch their prophetic wings and left messages on the napkins for our waitress, hee hee. After that though I spent each meal time in my room getting a bit of quiet and recovering a bit.
So the timetable for the day was as follows:
10:00 – 10:45 = Worship
10:45 – 12:30 = Workshop
12:30 – 14:00 = Lunch
14:00 – 14:45 = Worship
14:45 – 16:30 = Workshop
16:30 – 19:00 = Dinner
19:00 – 10:30 = Evening meeting
There were 4 streams in the workshops – Intersession, worship, prophecy & lifestyle. I went along to the worship ones (when I wasn’t working). They were so cool! One of the sessions was about using dance and art as a form of worship. The church for so long has taken sung worship as being the only type of worship that we have in church that the other creative arts are often overlooked. In the Freshwind band, who played for some of the worship sets, the group consists of about 15-20 people (all on stage at one time) and they include three dancers and two painters. It is so inspiring to see people giving their all in more than just their voice. This session gave us all the chance to stretch those dance and artistic muscles. So the room in which we were meeting (and it was filled to capacity) was dancing and stamping and marching around as they worshiped God and interceded for our generation. It was exhilarating, but so exhausting. At the end I just collapsed into a heap and wrote on my pad “I have no breath to shout, I have no breath to sing, I have no breath to dance, but I will praise you”. That is so how I felt. God was so real and so close and even though I had used up every ounce of my physical self I could to praise him, my whole being was still praising him. When I gathered enough breath and the meeting had finished I ran across to grab some lunch and headed back to have a shower. Worshiping God with all you are can turn into a rather hot and sweaty affair. Actually I discovered this many times over during Freshwind. Each day was at least two outfits, because in each time of worship I was jumping and dancing and shouting and just generally having fun, but when there are a couple of thousand people doing that in a confined space- well it gets a little hot.
The worship was great though. It was very much a concert where everyone was worshiping with the band, with house lights down, concert coloured lights going and speakers loud enough to make your ears ring (I had ear plugs in a couple of times :S what an old lady! But at least I can still hear!).
I know a photo doesn’t give it justice, but maybe it gives you an idea.
We had Starfield playing for some of the time, and the in house Freshwind band for some. The energy of all the youth was incredible and God’s presence was so tangible. It was so obvious to those who didn’t already know God, that many of them decided to give their life to him there and then (I know it was at least 200, because they did an alter call, where people are asked to come forward if they want to respond to a word spoken).
In the evenings we were on the ministry team which was very exciting. Each night at 6:15 we had a time of soaking and prayer- such a good idea for a ministry team!! It was very cool that on the first night we also got to pray for the speaker and the band, which for that night were Starfield. So yeah we all got to pray for Starfield, which was really strange because at the back of your mind you were thinking “These guys are internationally famous, and I get to pray for them!! AAAHHHHH” but they were just regular worship leaders who needed prayer for the work they were about to do. I actually felt that it was a huge privilege to be given the opportunity to minister to them.
Then we were on call for any of the alter calls that I mentioned earlier. And if people were called to go forwards then one of the teams would go to the front and pray for them, or if they were just asked to stand then the other teams would pray for those in their sections. The speakers were all really good and talked about the revival generation that we have called to be. It’s so exciting. It was really nice, and again a great privilege to be able to pray for people during those meetings.
The last night was a special one though. At the end we did fire tunnels for everyone! For those of you who can’t remember what that is (or are new to this blog and don’t know), a fire tunnel is when the ministry team stands in two long lines and prays for everyone as they walk through between the lines. They are so much fun and most people end up being really drunk on the Holy Spirit at the end. They went on for ages and ages, but we were all having such a good time, praying and being prayed for as well, that no one cared!
Eventually the conference was over, the tunnels had dissolved and it was time to start the clean up. The task of encouraging people to leave was given, in part, to me. So I wandered round firmly telling the groups of people lazing around that they really did need to go home. It was nice doing it in a Christian environment where everyone was so understanding and agreed at once to move. Like any other crowd though they promptly forgot and had to be re-reminded in Sarah’s “I am going to impress this thing on you so strongly but kindly that you are just going to be compelled to do it right now” attitude (those from LINKS will know the one I mean). Eventually the room was pretty much clear and we could hoover, pick up litter, put away the rope barriers and put out the 1500 chairs that were needed for Sunday church. By the end of clean up it was about 2 in the morning and I was tired enough that I literally had difficulty staying on my feet, so despite the promise of pizza in 10 mins for those who had helped with clean up, I headed back to my room. I had a quick shower before bed. Though my shower was a little strange, it started off fine- like any normal shower, but after a bit the who room went rather foggy. No people, don’t worry I was not passing out, I was so tired that I had forgotten to take off my glasses before getting in the shower! So I was giggling at myself as I crashed into bed, where I slept long and deep, well until I had to get up for the Easter morning service at church of course!!!
Fresh wind is the youth conference that TACF puts on every year. It is aimed at teenagers and is always on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of Easter weekend. This year there were about 2 or 3 thousand people there at the peek, and it was… intense.
Each of the school of ministry students had a work duty assigned to them where they had a job for 4 hours each day. Some people were on security, some were car park attendants, some where serving the speakers in ‘Speaker’s lounge’ and some where on maintenance. I got kitchen duty!! I have to say that I was not particularly thrilled about this to start with, but Francis who runs the kitchen here is so lovely that you can’t help but enjoy yourself when you are with him.
So my shift started at 8 in the morning and we were supposed to work until 12 each day, but for the first two days we had a really light load. The kitchens were running a meal plan for delegates at the conference and it was to be served in one of the overflow rooms in the back of the church. So the first day we cut a few peppers, and arranged some pieces of chicken on trays (OK so over 400 pieces of chicken). Then we loaded up the trolleys with all the equipment we would need for the overflow room, set that up and that was about it. The second day we needed to check the overflow room, take over a few extra drinks, and that was about it for day two. Day three was more eventful as we had to take lots of new stuff over to the overflow room (crisp, bread rolls, a huge bucket of mayonnaise), then we had to pre-mayo about 300 of these bread rolls. It was disgusting! I am not a fan of mayonnaise in anything but tuna mayo, so having to dollop out this jelly like white gloop and then splatter it over some poor person’s lunch, was just not nice. However in all of that I learnt a lot about what is needed when catering for 500 people, and gained a new respect for the kitchen staff.
Apart from work duty all of the students were expected to be somewhere at all times. We had to be in the worship sessions (not that many of us would want to miss them) and attend on of the workshops, and in the evening we were part of the ministry team. Meal times were our only free time at all. I made full advantage of my first batch of free time by catching up with my beautiful friends, Becky and Lauren Ede. It was so nice to see more familiar faces and to be able to chat and catch up. We went out with Maretha to Boston Pizza,
where we had a lovely time and the other girls decided to stretch their prophetic wings and left messages on the napkins for our waitress, hee hee. After that though I spent each meal time in my room getting a bit of quiet and recovering a bit.
So the timetable for the day was as follows:
10:00 – 10:45 = Worship
10:45 – 12:30 = Workshop
12:30 – 14:00 = Lunch
14:00 – 14:45 = Worship
14:45 – 16:30 = Workshop
16:30 – 19:00 = Dinner
19:00 – 10:30 = Evening meeting
There were 4 streams in the workshops – Intersession, worship, prophecy & lifestyle. I went along to the worship ones (when I wasn’t working). They were so cool! One of the sessions was about using dance and art as a form of worship. The church for so long has taken sung worship as being the only type of worship that we have in church that the other creative arts are often overlooked. In the Freshwind band, who played for some of the worship sets, the group consists of about 15-20 people (all on stage at one time) and they include three dancers and two painters. It is so inspiring to see people giving their all in more than just their voice. This session gave us all the chance to stretch those dance and artistic muscles. So the room in which we were meeting (and it was filled to capacity) was dancing and stamping and marching around as they worshiped God and interceded for our generation. It was exhilarating, but so exhausting. At the end I just collapsed into a heap and wrote on my pad “I have no breath to shout, I have no breath to sing, I have no breath to dance, but I will praise you”. That is so how I felt. God was so real and so close and even though I had used up every ounce of my physical self I could to praise him, my whole being was still praising him. When I gathered enough breath and the meeting had finished I ran across to grab some lunch and headed back to have a shower. Worshiping God with all you are can turn into a rather hot and sweaty affair. Actually I discovered this many times over during Freshwind. Each day was at least two outfits, because in each time of worship I was jumping and dancing and shouting and just generally having fun, but when there are a couple of thousand people doing that in a confined space- well it gets a little hot.
The worship was great though. It was very much a concert where everyone was worshiping with the band, with house lights down, concert coloured lights going and speakers loud enough to make your ears ring (I had ear plugs in a couple of times :S what an old lady! But at least I can still hear!).
I know a photo doesn’t give it justice, but maybe it gives you an idea.
We had Starfield playing for some of the time, and the in house Freshwind band for some. The energy of all the youth was incredible and God’s presence was so tangible. It was so obvious to those who didn’t already know God, that many of them decided to give their life to him there and then (I know it was at least 200, because they did an alter call, where people are asked to come forward if they want to respond to a word spoken).
In the evenings we were on the ministry team which was very exciting. Each night at 6:15 we had a time of soaking and prayer- such a good idea for a ministry team!! It was very cool that on the first night we also got to pray for the speaker and the band, which for that night were Starfield. So yeah we all got to pray for Starfield, which was really strange because at the back of your mind you were thinking “These guys are internationally famous, and I get to pray for them!! AAAHHHHH” but they were just regular worship leaders who needed prayer for the work they were about to do. I actually felt that it was a huge privilege to be given the opportunity to minister to them.
Then we were on call for any of the alter calls that I mentioned earlier. And if people were called to go forwards then one of the teams would go to the front and pray for them, or if they were just asked to stand then the other teams would pray for those in their sections. The speakers were all really good and talked about the revival generation that we have called to be. It’s so exciting. It was really nice, and again a great privilege to be able to pray for people during those meetings.
The last night was a special one though. At the end we did fire tunnels for everyone! For those of you who can’t remember what that is (or are new to this blog and don’t know), a fire tunnel is when the ministry team stands in two long lines and prays for everyone as they walk through between the lines. They are so much fun and most people end up being really drunk on the Holy Spirit at the end. They went on for ages and ages, but we were all having such a good time, praying and being prayed for as well, that no one cared!
Eventually the conference was over, the tunnels had dissolved and it was time to start the clean up. The task of encouraging people to leave was given, in part, to me. So I wandered round firmly telling the groups of people lazing around that they really did need to go home. It was nice doing it in a Christian environment where everyone was so understanding and agreed at once to move. Like any other crowd though they promptly forgot and had to be re-reminded in Sarah’s “I am going to impress this thing on you so strongly but kindly that you are just going to be compelled to do it right now” attitude (those from LINKS will know the one I mean). Eventually the room was pretty much clear and we could hoover, pick up litter, put away the rope barriers and put out the 1500 chairs that were needed for Sunday church. By the end of clean up it was about 2 in the morning and I was tired enough that I literally had difficulty staying on my feet, so despite the promise of pizza in 10 mins for those who had helped with clean up, I headed back to my room. I had a quick shower before bed. Though my shower was a little strange, it started off fine- like any normal shower, but after a bit the who room went rather foggy. No people, don’t worry I was not passing out, I was so tired that I had forgotten to take off my glasses before getting in the shower! So I was giggling at myself as I crashed into bed, where I slept long and deep, well until I had to get up for the Easter morning service at church of course!!!
Tuesday, 25 March 2008
Week 3 - Healing Life's hurts
Ultimately this week has been about Forgiveness and repentance. It has been about forgiving others for the hurts that they have done to us, forgiving ourselves for the things that we have done or not done, and forgiving God for anything we hold against him for the situations we have been in.
Forgiveness is not excusing what people have done. It is not saying what they have done doesn’t matter or that it hasn’t affected you. It is merely choosing to give them grace, just as God gave to us.
For each of the following sections we were taught about what they are and then given a chance to ask God to come and work in us with regards to that issue. As with everything I am only giving a very brief overview of each one. If any of these speak particularly to you, you feel that what I have described fits you, they I would suggest that you talk to God about it. Even if talking to God is not something you normally do. Ask him about it and see what he does. If you are brave enough invite him to sort out some of it. I can also try to give you more information if you want.
Heart of Stone:
Ezekiel 36:26 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you, I will remove from you your hearts of stone and give you a heart of flesh”
A heart of stone can’t feel God or know him. Our aim to know God to the full, so we need to get God to remove the hard places in our hearts.
A heart of stone (or stony places in our hearts) is a defence mechanism, built up inner walls which we have put up to stop our selves from becoming vulnerable. They are often formed as small children, though you can of course develop hardened hearts later on in life too.
Checklist for a hidden heart of stone
Any of these can be an indication of a stoney heart, you don’t need to have all of these.
Inner vows
These are things that we have made promising our selves that we will never, or we will always. There are some inner vows that are totally right and godly (such as marriage vows) but may other vows, even if they are constructive on the face of it, can be ungodly and destructive.
“I will never let anyone hurt me like that again”- You stop letting people close, close of your heart and so keep God at a distance as well
“I will never get angry”- This can result in people shying away from even a good debate or discussion, because it ‘might’ end in people getting angry.
Soul Ties
A soul ties is a joining of peoples spirits so that they have a bond with each other.
As with inner vows, there are good soul ties. Us and God, Good friends (David and Jonathan – 1 Sam 18:1) family. These soul ties will lead to wholeness and good things will come out of them.
But soul ties can be warped and created wrongly.
Ungodly beliefs
Ungodly beliefs are as they say on the tin, beliefs that we have formed due to experience, lack of understanding, or misinterpretation of events.
The thing with ungodly beliefs are that often they aren’t obvious until someone points them out to you. To break out of it you write down your Ungodly beliefs.
“I am not important because my dad never had time for me”
“My life is a mistake”
“God loves other people more than me”
Then write down godly beliefs that counteract that (not necessarily the opposite, because sometimes ungodly beliefs are warped versions of the truth)
“I believe I am important, and my heavenly father will always have time for me”
If it is too hard to say “I believe” then write that you choose to believe (you’re not there yet, but you are working towards that)
“I choose to believe that I am not a mistake. God planned me. He chose for me to be born when I was and where I was”
“I chose to believe that God loves me just as much as anyone else”
It’s always good to find scriptures from the bible to match up to your godly belief.
Then read these each day until you start to believe. It’s not easy and it’s not quick but with God’s help, it’s perfectly doable.
Forgiveness is not excusing what people have done. It is not saying what they have done doesn’t matter or that it hasn’t affected you. It is merely choosing to give them grace, just as God gave to us.
For each of the following sections we were taught about what they are and then given a chance to ask God to come and work in us with regards to that issue. As with everything I am only giving a very brief overview of each one. If any of these speak particularly to you, you feel that what I have described fits you, they I would suggest that you talk to God about it. Even if talking to God is not something you normally do. Ask him about it and see what he does. If you are brave enough invite him to sort out some of it. I can also try to give you more information if you want.
Heart of Stone:
Ezekiel 36:26 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you, I will remove from you your hearts of stone and give you a heart of flesh”
A heart of stone can’t feel God or know him. Our aim to know God to the full, so we need to get God to remove the hard places in our hearts.
A heart of stone (or stony places in our hearts) is a defence mechanism, built up inner walls which we have put up to stop our selves from becoming vulnerable. They are often formed as small children, though you can of course develop hardened hearts later on in life too.
Checklist for a hidden heart of stone
- Keep people at a distance
- Protect yourself
- Keep up a good front but have trouble being real
- Find it hard to show emotions in front of others
- Stuff your emotions down
- Or maybe you can’t feel emotions
- Live life “Keeping it all together”
- Have the role of “the strong one”
- Find it difficult to ask for help
- Minister to others but can’t be ministered to
- Wish other people would/could keep it all together like you do
- Look down on those who express emotions as being immature or weak.
Any of these can be an indication of a stoney heart, you don’t need to have all of these.
Inner vows
These are things that we have made promising our selves that we will never, or we will always. There are some inner vows that are totally right and godly (such as marriage vows) but may other vows, even if they are constructive on the face of it, can be ungodly and destructive.
“I will never let anyone hurt me like that again”- You stop letting people close, close of your heart and so keep God at a distance as well
“I will never get angry”- This can result in people shying away from even a good debate or discussion, because it ‘might’ end in people getting angry.
Soul Ties
A soul ties is a joining of peoples spirits so that they have a bond with each other.
As with inner vows, there are good soul ties. Us and God, Good friends (David and Jonathan – 1 Sam 18:1) family. These soul ties will lead to wholeness and good things will come out of them.
But soul ties can be warped and created wrongly.
- Parents and children – When the parent doesn’t allow the child to individuate and become a mature adult independent of their control and domination.
- Child and parent- when an undisciplined child manipulates and controls the parents
- All abusive relationships which are or have become manipulation
- With sexual partners other than one’s spouse
- People who use occult power to exercise control over you.
- Two people who share amounts of personal information more than is appropriate for the relationship.
Ungodly beliefs
Ungodly beliefs are as they say on the tin, beliefs that we have formed due to experience, lack of understanding, or misinterpretation of events.
The thing with ungodly beliefs are that often they aren’t obvious until someone points them out to you. To break out of it you write down your Ungodly beliefs.
“I am not important because my dad never had time for me”
“My life is a mistake”
“God loves other people more than me”
Then write down godly beliefs that counteract that (not necessarily the opposite, because sometimes ungodly beliefs are warped versions of the truth)
“I believe I am important, and my heavenly father will always have time for me”
If it is too hard to say “I believe” then write that you choose to believe (you’re not there yet, but you are working towards that)
“I choose to believe that I am not a mistake. God planned me. He chose for me to be born when I was and where I was”
“I chose to believe that God loves me just as much as anyone else”
It’s always good to find scriptures from the bible to match up to your godly belief.
Then read these each day until you start to believe. It’s not easy and it’s not quick but with God’s help, it’s perfectly doable.
Friday, 21 March 2008
Rollercoaster
I thought last week was an emotional rollercoaster, but that was nothing to this week! This week was “Healing life’s hurts” and basically it is giving God permission to root out anything in our past that has created problems in allowing us to meet with him. I’ll go into that a bit more in the teaching summary post.
But we started with some teaching on Monday morning, lunch time to recover and then more teaching in the afternoon. The day hadn’t finished there though, after the afternoon teaching we had small group and I have to say it was the scariest small group session ever! Emily took us to the upstairs storage room, and we all sat there in our duvets (because it was really cold in there). Then we did a thing called ‘Walking in the light’. Basically Emily sat us down and we were given the chance to confess any deep dark secrets, any hidden sins, that we felt we should share. Although I trust my small group this was not nice. However there is something very powerful about confessing yours sins out loud. It means they are no longer secret and the devil can’t hold that “Oh you could never tell anyone about that, you are so awful, no one will ever like you if you tell them that” kind of line on you. I was of course adamant that I wasn’t going to go first as we all sat there for a minute, two minutes, five minutes with no one saying anything, I realised that I was going to share first, so I promptly shared half of mine. You kind of feel that you want to know how bad everyone else’s is before telling yours. However once one person had gone everyone went and many people’s were very similar. To be honest despite it being horribly scary, it was incredibly releasing. Emily prayed for each of us after our turn and it was so releasing we went round again to add if we wanted to (so I said the second half of mine). We then did some painting :) and we were all chatting much more than before which was cool. Each of the small groups had done the same thing and so it was really odd talking to everyone after because obviously you can’t share what people in your group said (the whole point of small group is that it is a safe place), so we were all talking really abstractly about what we had done and the experiences we had had. It was quite strange.
Tuesday was another hard day, but made much better by the fact that I got a couple of parcels through the post. One was some birthday presents that mum sent on, the other was from my wonderful friend Jo who picked the best day for her ‘Chocolate ministry’ package to arrive. It was a lovely bar of English galaxy, and I finished the whole thing myself (except for two squares that Sophie had). I felt piggy but I felt much better afterwards! We had soaking in the afternoon which was very much needed. It helped to calm everyone down, catch up on a bit of sleep :-p and meet with God.
Wednesday afternoon was small group again. This time though it was all about having fun. We teamed up with Kaleena’s small group and spread out some large sheets of paper, then went wild with some paints.
Some people finger painted, some brush painted, I hand and foot painted! It was so much fun hee hee.
So now we have finished healing life’s hurts (the teaching at least, I have a feeling God will carry on working in us on this for quite a while to come). Now it’s on the the “Fresh Wind” youth conference!!!
But we started with some teaching on Monday morning, lunch time to recover and then more teaching in the afternoon. The day hadn’t finished there though, after the afternoon teaching we had small group and I have to say it was the scariest small group session ever! Emily took us to the upstairs storage room, and we all sat there in our duvets (because it was really cold in there). Then we did a thing called ‘Walking in the light’. Basically Emily sat us down and we were given the chance to confess any deep dark secrets, any hidden sins, that we felt we should share. Although I trust my small group this was not nice. However there is something very powerful about confessing yours sins out loud. It means they are no longer secret and the devil can’t hold that “Oh you could never tell anyone about that, you are so awful, no one will ever like you if you tell them that” kind of line on you. I was of course adamant that I wasn’t going to go first as we all sat there for a minute, two minutes, five minutes with no one saying anything, I realised that I was going to share first, so I promptly shared half of mine. You kind of feel that you want to know how bad everyone else’s is before telling yours. However once one person had gone everyone went and many people’s were very similar. To be honest despite it being horribly scary, it was incredibly releasing. Emily prayed for each of us after our turn and it was so releasing we went round again to add if we wanted to (so I said the second half of mine). We then did some painting :) and we were all chatting much more than before which was cool. Each of the small groups had done the same thing and so it was really odd talking to everyone after because obviously you can’t share what people in your group said (the whole point of small group is that it is a safe place), so we were all talking really abstractly about what we had done and the experiences we had had. It was quite strange.
Tuesday was another hard day, but made much better by the fact that I got a couple of parcels through the post. One was some birthday presents that mum sent on, the other was from my wonderful friend Jo who picked the best day for her ‘Chocolate ministry’ package to arrive. It was a lovely bar of English galaxy, and I finished the whole thing myself (except for two squares that Sophie had). I felt piggy but I felt much better afterwards! We had soaking in the afternoon which was very much needed. It helped to calm everyone down, catch up on a bit of sleep :-p and meet with God.
Wednesday afternoon was small group again. This time though it was all about having fun. We teamed up with Kaleena’s small group and spread out some large sheets of paper, then went wild with some paints.
Some people finger painted, some brush painted, I hand and foot painted! It was so much fun hee hee.
So now we have finished healing life’s hurts (the teaching at least, I have a feeling God will carry on working in us on this for quite a while to come). Now it’s on the the “Fresh Wind” youth conference!!!
Sunday, 16 March 2008
Familiar faces
Saturday morning I woke up feeling nicely refreshed after sleeping from 11 till 9:30. On getting out of bed I did find I was not just a little stiff. It looks like although getting drunk on God means you don’t get a hangover you still get the aches from the amount of activity you did at the time. My calf muscles were so sore from so much jumping.
Like last week we had brunch at 10:30 where people were all still really upbeat and in such good moods. After brunch I hung around in my room for a bit then went out to meet my friend Kevin. Kevin is a friend of mine from university who is doing a term in a university over here as part of his degree. He was picking up his girlfriend from the airport later in the afternoon so we arranged to grab some lunch first. Poor Kevin had a bit of trouble with the car rental place, which meant he was a bit late picking me up, but I didn’t really mind as I got to take some pretty pictures of the snow in the lovely sunshine. It’s strange at the moment as there is always the sound of running water from all the melting snow, and things are so warm (well chilly for England but glorious for what we have had here so far) but there is so much untouched snow around. I can understand why the Canadians get bored of snow, I’m quite ready to see the world without it. However Kevin did make it and so we headed off for lunch at… well where else… Montana’s! It was so nice to have a good face to face chat with someone who I know and who knows me. I trust everyone here and could tell them anything, but there are some things that you just can’t talk about because they just don’t know about it. For instance I have told pretty much everyone here all about Charl, but they have never met him and so chatting about what we have done and little things he has said doesn’t mean much to them. Kevin knows Charl though and so such things mean more to him, and make more sense. So we could chat about friends, churches, the odd Canadian paper sizes and the difficulties of being away from boyfriend/girlfriend for a couple of months. It was so lovely, though did make me feel a bit home sick when he left. The rest of Saturday I just chilled with Sophie (who isn’t feeling very well at the moment) and blogged my little heart out. Unfortunately the internet is not letting me onto msn or blogger, not sure why, so I’m hoping that I can post this up tomorrow.
Prayer points:
Like last week we had brunch at 10:30 where people were all still really upbeat and in such good moods. After brunch I hung around in my room for a bit then went out to meet my friend Kevin. Kevin is a friend of mine from university who is doing a term in a university over here as part of his degree. He was picking up his girlfriend from the airport later in the afternoon so we arranged to grab some lunch first. Poor Kevin had a bit of trouble with the car rental place, which meant he was a bit late picking me up, but I didn’t really mind as I got to take some pretty pictures of the snow in the lovely sunshine. It’s strange at the moment as there is always the sound of running water from all the melting snow, and things are so warm (well chilly for England but glorious for what we have had here so far) but there is so much untouched snow around. I can understand why the Canadians get bored of snow, I’m quite ready to see the world without it. However Kevin did make it and so we headed off for lunch at… well where else… Montana’s! It was so nice to have a good face to face chat with someone who I know and who knows me. I trust everyone here and could tell them anything, but there are some things that you just can’t talk about because they just don’t know about it. For instance I have told pretty much everyone here all about Charl, but they have never met him and so chatting about what we have done and little things he has said doesn’t mean much to them. Kevin knows Charl though and so such things mean more to him, and make more sense. So we could chat about friends, churches, the odd Canadian paper sizes and the difficulties of being away from boyfriend/girlfriend for a couple of months. It was so lovely, though did make me feel a bit home sick when he left. The rest of Saturday I just chilled with Sophie (who isn’t feeling very well at the moment) and blogged my little heart out. Unfortunately the internet is not letting me onto msn or blogger, not sure why, so I’m hoping that I can post this up tomorrow.
Prayer points:
- Huge thanks to God for all he has been doing in me, and in the other guys here
- Thank you for the lovely group of friends I have got here. They are great and we have all be sharing experiences and working through everything together.
- Pray for good sleep. The beginning of this week I wasn’t sleeping very well. Friday I got my small group to pray and I slept right through, so pray that God would continue that and I wouldn’t have problems with getting to sleep.
- Energy. Next week is going to be exhausting, especially with fresh wind, so energy for everyone would be great
- Healing for Sophie, my room mate, who has got a horrible cold and is feeling rotten. Pray that she gets better really quickly and is back to full health.
Saturday, 15 March 2008
Tears into dancing
So this week has been a bit crazy. It has been father heart week and so there have been a lot of tears as God deals with stuff, a lot of fun playing new game (signs being a school favourite). We have had exciting things to look forward to (bought tickets to go and see the Toronto Blue Jays vs Boston Red Socks – baseball) and few things I’m trying to look forward to (I’m working 8 to 12 thur, fri and sat in the kitchen for the up coming conference at the church :S).
Most of the days are settling into a sort of routine, but only sort of because the first month is always a bit crazy. We’ve had teaching and small groups and soaking again. On Thursday we had something completely new and different though. We were introduced to our work duties for “Fresh Wind”. Fresh Wind is possibly the biggest conference that the church puts on. It is aimed at ‘youth’ but anyone is welcomed and tends to fill the church pretty much to capacity. Because there is so much to do the students from the school are all assigned to a job to help in the running on the conference. I am on kitchen duty, so we toddled off to talk to Francis the cook. He is lovely and was basically stressing that the main priority was us and that we weren’t to burn ourselves out with the work, and just basically being very nice. We will be preparing the lunch and dinner for the 800 odd people that are likely to want to take advantage of the meal plan offered. Should be interesting as I have never work in a kitchen before (well anything but a home kitchen). After that we were given a lesson in the guidelines that TACF has for its ministry team, because from now on we are all part of the church’s ministry team who will be praying for the people who come forward for prayer in church and at conferences. They have guidelines because obviously the people getting prayed for need to be able to have confidence that the person praying for them isn’t a complete nutter dragged off the street, and just to ensure that people don’t get carried away and do something inappropriate. So we had the small group leaders doing a hilarious demonstration as to why some of these things were not the best idea.
They also reminded us that as we were representing the church we had to be careful about our conduct and our appearance. We don’t want to be distracting to anyone or offend people with the way we dress or present ourselves, so we have to even more conservative when on ministry team than we would normally.
Thursday evening was the first evening that we hadn’t been completely exhausted, so Sophie and I decided to supplement our dinner with a good old pudding session. So we headed down the road to Montana’s to get some pudding (or desert as I had to remember to call it). Despite the fact that they are advertised as ‘to share’ we got one each! Hee hee. Hilariously Sophie’s apple cobbler came in a jug! Was good fun.
Friday was the day of the week I cried the least. I only shed a couple of tears when David Dalley was talking about the penultimate scene in the railway children- “Daddy, my daddy”. If you have never seen the railway children, I thoroughly recommend it. The rest of the time we learnt about being a child with God and not letting our fears of what people thought of us, or what we thought was right and proper get in the way. After the teaching the small group leaders and staff did a fire tunnel. This is basically where they all stand in two lines and people walk through the middle. Those in the lines then pray for each person as they go past, so you get prayer from about 20 people in the space of about 10 meters. We had on some loud bouncy music and everyone just completely let go. We were running and jumping, bouncing up and down, dancing, shouting, singing, laughing and just having a fantastic time. Everyone ended up making a circle and rotating through the tunnel several times. It was so cool. I haven’t used that much energy in a long time, nor have I had such fun. I was so hot by the end that I ran out, minus the shoes and coat I normally don, and went and jumped in an untouched patch of snow. Then I lay down! I could feel myself sinking as my body heat melted the snow beneath me. Some of the other girls thought this was such a good idea that they joined in and we had a snowball fight. I was just a little soggy by the time I went in for dinner, but surprisingly not too cold and still buzzing with excitement. It must be why people act so crazy when they are drunk from alcohol- they have no inhibitions and just don’t care. I guess we were all drunk too, just on God rather than alcohol. Hee hee score, drunk but no hangover!! Lol.
Most of the days are settling into a sort of routine, but only sort of because the first month is always a bit crazy. We’ve had teaching and small groups and soaking again. On Thursday we had something completely new and different though. We were introduced to our work duties for “Fresh Wind”. Fresh Wind is possibly the biggest conference that the church puts on. It is aimed at ‘youth’ but anyone is welcomed and tends to fill the church pretty much to capacity. Because there is so much to do the students from the school are all assigned to a job to help in the running on the conference. I am on kitchen duty, so we toddled off to talk to Francis the cook. He is lovely and was basically stressing that the main priority was us and that we weren’t to burn ourselves out with the work, and just basically being very nice. We will be preparing the lunch and dinner for the 800 odd people that are likely to want to take advantage of the meal plan offered. Should be interesting as I have never work in a kitchen before (well anything but a home kitchen). After that we were given a lesson in the guidelines that TACF has for its ministry team, because from now on we are all part of the church’s ministry team who will be praying for the people who come forward for prayer in church and at conferences. They have guidelines because obviously the people getting prayed for need to be able to have confidence that the person praying for them isn’t a complete nutter dragged off the street, and just to ensure that people don’t get carried away and do something inappropriate. So we had the small group leaders doing a hilarious demonstration as to why some of these things were not the best idea.
- Have something to freshen your breath so you don’t pray halitosis into someone’s face
- Making sure that the something you use to freshen your breath is NOT gum. Leaning over someone to pray and having it fall out your mouth onto them would be awful.
- Don’t wear skirts or baggy shorts, people lying down don’t want an eyeful of that if they open their eyes!
They also reminded us that as we were representing the church we had to be careful about our conduct and our appearance. We don’t want to be distracting to anyone or offend people with the way we dress or present ourselves, so we have to even more conservative when on ministry team than we would normally.
Thursday evening was the first evening that we hadn’t been completely exhausted, so Sophie and I decided to supplement our dinner with a good old pudding session. So we headed down the road to Montana’s to get some pudding (or desert as I had to remember to call it). Despite the fact that they are advertised as ‘to share’ we got one each! Hee hee. Hilariously Sophie’s apple cobbler came in a jug! Was good fun.
Friday was the day of the week I cried the least. I only shed a couple of tears when David Dalley was talking about the penultimate scene in the railway children- “Daddy, my daddy”. If you have never seen the railway children, I thoroughly recommend it. The rest of the time we learnt about being a child with God and not letting our fears of what people thought of us, or what we thought was right and proper get in the way. After the teaching the small group leaders and staff did a fire tunnel. This is basically where they all stand in two lines and people walk through the middle. Those in the lines then pray for each person as they go past, so you get prayer from about 20 people in the space of about 10 meters. We had on some loud bouncy music and everyone just completely let go. We were running and jumping, bouncing up and down, dancing, shouting, singing, laughing and just having a fantastic time. Everyone ended up making a circle and rotating through the tunnel several times. It was so cool. I haven’t used that much energy in a long time, nor have I had such fun. I was so hot by the end that I ran out, minus the shoes and coat I normally don, and went and jumped in an untouched patch of snow. Then I lay down! I could feel myself sinking as my body heat melted the snow beneath me. Some of the other girls thought this was such a good idea that they joined in and we had a snowball fight. I was just a little soggy by the time I went in for dinner, but surprisingly not too cold and still buzzing with excitement. It must be why people act so crazy when they are drunk from alcohol- they have no inhibitions and just don’t care. I guess we were all drunk too, just on God rather than alcohol. Hee hee score, drunk but no hangover!! Lol.
Friday, 14 March 2008
Week 2 - The father heart of God
Father Heart
This week has been run by David and Faith Dalley. They are a fantastic English couple who are from a church in Bath. They are also the parents of Sarah Dalley (for those of you who know her).
I have to say that this teaching stream is really summarised in the following:
God love you. He loves you because you are you, not because of anything that you have done. There is nothing you can ever do to make him love you more and certainly nothing you can do to make him love you less. His love is perfect and unceasing.
Right at the start David got us to pray a scary prayer. “God I give you permission to dig in my heart and root out anything that is stopping me from receiving your perfect love” Now this is a scary prayer for two reasons. Firstly we have all had imperfect parenting and so all have issues with the way we relate to people (and so consequently to God), Secondly because if you ask God to do something… he does it!
Much of the teaching has been a lot of testimony, David and Faith explaining what in their hearts God has changed and what the result of that change was.
We have all only ever had one set of parents and the way the behaved subconsciously shaped much of our basic impressions about what people are like and how we expect people to act. If your father was a workaholic and didn’t have much time for you, it can leave you with a feeling of low self worth “My dad doesn’t have time to spend with me, I must not be worth it”. If one of your parents left you (or just was never able to connect emotionally with you) it can leave you with a fear of abandonment, and you can in the back of your mind be always afraid that those around you will abandon you at some point as well. As we get into adult life we can understand and rationalised all of this, but when things happen to us as a child it forms thought processes that are not easily broken, and often you probably aren’t really aware of.
By asking God to dig in our hearts we were giving him permission to show is the things from our childhood that really hurt us. We went through teaching on forgiving the person who hurt us, ourselves and God. We looked at the concept of honouring our father and mother. We looked at the different sides of God. God made us in his image, male and female. So the protecting, fathering side of God was put in man and the nurturing side of God was put in woman.
All of these issues brought up a lot of painful memories for many people and it was a bit strange being in a room where almost every single person in the room is bawling their eyes out. But in the end everyone felt much better for it, as God dealt with issues. None of us are finished with, but we are getting there.
The last day was the most fun, no tears just pure fun. We were looking at being children before God. Jesus himself told us that we have to be like children to get a full revelation of God:
At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children Matt 11:25
Now there are certain characteristics that set children apart from adults:
We spend years growing up and the God asks us to become like children with him again.
This week has been run by David and Faith Dalley. They are a fantastic English couple who are from a church in Bath. They are also the parents of Sarah Dalley (for those of you who know her).
I have to say that this teaching stream is really summarised in the following:
God love you. He loves you because you are you, not because of anything that you have done. There is nothing you can ever do to make him love you more and certainly nothing you can do to make him love you less. His love is perfect and unceasing.
Right at the start David got us to pray a scary prayer. “God I give you permission to dig in my heart and root out anything that is stopping me from receiving your perfect love” Now this is a scary prayer for two reasons. Firstly we have all had imperfect parenting and so all have issues with the way we relate to people (and so consequently to God), Secondly because if you ask God to do something… he does it!
Much of the teaching has been a lot of testimony, David and Faith explaining what in their hearts God has changed and what the result of that change was.
We have all only ever had one set of parents and the way the behaved subconsciously shaped much of our basic impressions about what people are like and how we expect people to act. If your father was a workaholic and didn’t have much time for you, it can leave you with a feeling of low self worth “My dad doesn’t have time to spend with me, I must not be worth it”. If one of your parents left you (or just was never able to connect emotionally with you) it can leave you with a fear of abandonment, and you can in the back of your mind be always afraid that those around you will abandon you at some point as well. As we get into adult life we can understand and rationalised all of this, but when things happen to us as a child it forms thought processes that are not easily broken, and often you probably aren’t really aware of.
By asking God to dig in our hearts we were giving him permission to show is the things from our childhood that really hurt us. We went through teaching on forgiving the person who hurt us, ourselves and God. We looked at the concept of honouring our father and mother. We looked at the different sides of God. God made us in his image, male and female. So the protecting, fathering side of God was put in man and the nurturing side of God was put in woman.
All of these issues brought up a lot of painful memories for many people and it was a bit strange being in a room where almost every single person in the room is bawling their eyes out. But in the end everyone felt much better for it, as God dealt with issues. None of us are finished with, but we are getting there.
The last day was the most fun, no tears just pure fun. We were looking at being children before God. Jesus himself told us that we have to be like children to get a full revelation of God:
At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children Matt 11:25
Now there are certain characteristics that set children apart from adults:
- Children are very dependant
- Children are very trusting
- Children find it easy to receive
- Children are spontaneous
- Children love to be loved
- Children love to have fun
- Children are totally unreligious.
We spend years growing up and the God asks us to become like children with him again.
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