Freedom

This week has been a very freeing and emotional week. We had speaker Ken Bluemel and he spoke on freedom from personal strongholds. I honestly had no idea what to expect going into this week. I had heard the word ‘stronghold’ thrown around here and there, but I never really understood it completely. God can be a stronghold in our lives. When we are weak, we find strength in Christ. Strongholds can also be personal or even demonic holds on our lives. These can come from sins or traumatic events that occur in our lives. This week God brought up trust. In my life there have been situations where someone I trusted a lot has let me down or disappointed me. I subconsciously connected trusting people to trusting God, and that since this person had let me down, then God would too. Which is a HUGE lie! I really processed a lot of things and learned how to bring down strongholds layer by layer until I get to the root.

Once again God poured out His love on me this week. He kept just telling me how much He loves me and how all He wants is for me to receive His love. It’s hard to grasp that all of God’s love is for me and all of His love is for you. That no matter what happens He accepts me. The hardest part that I have faced has been making it a heart connection. Moving it from my head to my heart. It’s so easy to say, God loves me, but to believe and receive it can be so difficult. We had a time of prayer during one of our lectures and God continued to speak of His love to us, and at one point in time Ken came and prayed over me. God was just saying through Ken, “Receive My love, receive it.” That was a very touching moment and I finally made that full connection.

This weekend is the end of Chinese New Year celebrations, and our village, Shui Tau Tsuen, has been very busy. It is the oldest village in Hong Kong and there are many temples, so around 1000 people have been celebrating around the temples. There have been lion dances, concerts, and a lot of food. It’s really cool to learn about this culture and be immersed in it.

Thanks again for all of the prayers! This week we are learning about Evangelism and we will be doing an outreach on Thursday. The outreach will be similar to Christmas Outreach, and I will actually be involved in the dance “Sometimes” that I was in at COR. It will be lots of fun! Love you!

Reaching Out

Hello everyone! I didn’t get a blog posted last week, so this one might be longer. Last week we had Bill Payne speak for the week. He spoke on the character of God. It has been so amazing to look at how much God truly loves us. That it’s not just that He loves us, but that throughout all eternity God’s love has always been the same. Nothing we do or the failures we’ve had can add or subtract from His love because God loves us with ALL that He is. Bill talked about Jesus’ death on the cross. We all know that He was crucified and died for our sins, but you know about how the Bible says that He was speared and blood and water flowed out of Jesus’ chest. Well, when someone is stabbed first water would come and then the blood because the heart would be punctured last, but it says blood and water flowed out together, which means that a blood vessel or Jesus’ heart would have had to burst for it to be mixed. Jesus literally died of a broken heart because of His love for us. That just amazes me!!!

God has been continually pouring into us and reminding us of His love. He just keeps saying “I love you, and you are to love people like I love them.” He longs for everyone to love Him, but since love is only love if it is freely chosen, He gives us the free will to choose to love Him. When we choose to follow Jesus, we are commanded to love others. We learned more about that this week when Joe Rystrom, one of our base directors, spoke on missions. We as Christians are called to go out and spread God’s love with every tribe, tongue, nation, and people. This is God’s heart to see them all worshipping before Him (Rev. 7:9). God speaks of love around 559 times in the Bible. He speaks of reaching the nations around 559 times. Do you think there is a connection? God loves everyone, but He needs us to go out into the world and share Him with them. I never realized how few cross-cultural missionaries there are in the world. There are only 400,000 full-time missionaries in the world, and they are working to share the Gospel to around 3 billion people in the unreached nations of the world. The sad things is that our churches aren’t supporting God’s call to reach the world enough. Statistics show that a total of $330 billion are spent in churches a year, but of this money only .1% ($400 million) is spent on missions to reach the unreached people of the world. And only 5.9% ($19.6 billion) is spent of regular missions. How will every tribe, people, language, and nation come to know Christ if people are willing to go and to help?

We had a time to think about what we learned and to pray and ask God how He wants us to help in reaching these people. I feel that God placed me in Lincoln for a reason, but that I’m called to raise up students and take them out into missions. To open their eyes to reaching out to people around the world. I know that I just need to trust God and He will guide me to where I’m to go and who I’m to reach.

So I’m learning a lot, but I’m also having a lot of fun too! Last weekend was Chinese New Year so a group of us went to a parade in the city. Next weekend there will be a huge celebration in the temple area next to our village. It’s so fun seeing this culture and learning about it. We have also have been hanging out a lot and just being crazy, which is normal for us :) Last weekend a few of us climbed the mountain that is behind our village. It was quite a hike, but I pushed through! Sadly, it was cloudy on the top and we couldn't see mainland China, but it was still a fun and challenging adventure I enjoyed!


Please continue to pray for me and all of us here. Next week we will be learning about personal strongholds. If you could just pray for me to continue to be open and willing to learn and to let my heart be molded into what God wants it to be. Thanks so much! Love you all

Men are a sack of dirt without God's breath.

This past week we had Dean Sherman as a guest speaker. He spoke on Relationships and Spiritual Warfare. God revealed many things to me this week, especially in the relationships teachings. Luke 10:27 says: “Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” This is our greatest commandment. This is what our religion is all about because this is what Jesus did. God has been working in my heart to love myself and others as well. It’s hard to always choose love, but we are commanded to do so. Another thing was that ALL love comes from God, and no one can show true love to anyone without loving God. We must choose to love God and love others even when the feeling is gone. Love is a choice, an action. It’s one of those things that I have to remind myself to do. I have to choose to love people when I’m happy, tired, frustrated, or hurt.

Like I said before, we also learned about spiritual warfare which was very interesting. I hadn’t realized that our authority over Satan in Jesus name was so great. I knew we had authority, but I didn’t realize that God doesn’t intervene in spiritual matters unless someone is willing to be used. He can, if He wants to, but He loves us enough to let us choose to be yielded to Him. God won’t force Himself upon us. We as humans must yield to God and allow Him to work through us.

There are so many things to process, but it is so good to learn all of these things. Love you and I will update you next week!