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!