A Week of Prayer

We have just come to the end of an amazing week of 24/7 prayer on the campus. The best thing was that when we first started talking about having a week of prayer we thought it should be focused on the U.K. but when we got together, prayed and asked God how the week should look we felt He said that we shouldn’t have a focus, but that it was about Him and intimacy with Him. This by far has been my favourite week of prayer that I’ve ever done because we had no agenda. The week was His, not ours.

It was such a special time for everyone who came. We had a small team to cover the prayer room for every hour which meant that everyone else here was free to come and go as they pleased. Allowing them to spend time with God, no pressure and only His agenda. It was a time of freedom for a number of people, and God spoke a lot about who He is, and who we are. A time of firming up our identity in Him individually and as a campus. 

As the week started we felt like we should have a day of pure worship. So on the Wednesday we set up some times of live worship and had an ipod at the ready to cover the rest. In the end the ipod didn’t get used much as many people came in and picked up the guitar to play and worship, which was awesome! By the end of the week God had spoken a number of very specific things for this next season for us as a campus and also a number of things for the U.K. as we move toward the Olympics.

All in all it was an incredible week. The younger people on the campus stood up and declared that they are not satisfied with where they are and want to see more of God. That they want to see God’s kingdom move in this world. All of the people who made up the core team and organized this were under 35, most in their late teens or early 20’s. God is awesome.

Reflection of identity

I finished staffing a Discipleship Training School (DTS) about a month ago and after the trainees graduated I suddenly found myself quickly moving from doing a lot of stuff to doing very little. This was difficult for me because I like to be busy, as it makes me feel needed and effective. I discovered that I’d been believing some lies, that ‘what I do is who I am’ and ‘what I do makes me valuable and important’! It was only when I slowed down that I realised this. I was suddenly thinking, “Oh no! now what do I do? I need to be doing something or people will not want me around.”

It was in this struggle that God spoke to me and asked me a question; he asked me “Why are you doing what you do? Does being a DTS leader define who you are? Or are you defined by your character, who I made you and gifted you as?” Then God took me to a verse in the Gospel of Mark where He says to Jesus “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Even though I had read this verse a number of times before and had been told that God said this to Jesus prior to Him doing any ministry, I was greatly challenged because this thought went through my head ‘So God is pleased with me not because I do things, but simply because I am who I am.’ This was my revelation; I don’t need to do things to please God or to be accepted by Him, but he accepts me whether or not I do things. He accepts me for simply being me, just as I am.

As we spend time with God and discover more of who He is and who we are in Him, we will find our peace. It is not the things we do that define us, but who we are. Why should we strive to be recognised and accepted by the world, trying to show the people around us that we are good at this or needed in that, when we are already accepted and good at what God wants us to be? No one can be better than you at being you and the only way we find out about who we are is by spending time with God, in His word and seeing who He is.

A School Graduates

The Discipleship Training School (DTS) I have been staffing graduated at the start of September, which was such an amazing evening. It was really good to look back over the 6 months of the school and see the growth of all the trainees, and us as staff also. It’s funny, just because you are staffing a DTS definitely does not mean you have all the answers. I have certainly grown and been more challenged doing this school than when I was a trainee a little over a year ago.

It was such an amazing experience to be able to hand each of the trainees their certificate and bless them. They have all come such a long way since we started the school and I have had so much fun living and traveling with them all. The thing I loved most about the graduation was to hear each of the trainees tell the community here at Youth With a Mission Harpenden (YWAM Harpenden) what God has done in their lives over the time of the course.

Being a part of this school, part of this process, has really brought home to me how powerful discipleship actually is. Staffing the school  really helps to bring to life what Jesus did with his followers and the transformation you see with all of them after Jesus has gone to heaven. Being on both ends of the process of the DTS has really opened my eyes to what it means to really speak truth into someone’s life and talk through the hard stuff, to truely challenge someone to grow. I really appreciate those people in my life who challenge me and bring correction to me in areas of my character that are a little rough!

Discipleship is such an amazing gift that God has given us, and brings such amazing revelation about who God is and transformation in the lives of those we invest into, it is such a privilege and a hard thing to do at times, but it is so worth it.

DTS Outreach

I have been a bit silent the last few months, but what an amazing few months it has been! I have spent the summer taking a small team of people to 5 different nations on a short-term mission outreach. We started off in Macedonia, then moved to Romania, from there we headed over to Israel and Palestine before heading back to the UK, where we spent our time in Manchester.

It was one of those experiences that I will always look back on in amazement, one of my favourite summers so far! The group we took were from a discipleship training school (DTS) that I have been involved with this year. This trip was the practical part of their course, where they got to put into practice the things they have learnt. I have massively enjoyed working alongside the trainees and have seen God work some amazing things in their lives, some amazing transformation, both in them and in myself also. I have certainly been stretched a lot doing this school, and I am really looking forward to staffing the next school in January.

The whole trip gave us chances to do a good range of ministry, ranging from simply face painting and balloon modelling in local parks, picking up litter, to speaking in churches, doing dramas on the streets, and praying for people to be healed all the way to intercession and prayer walking.

The most incredible thing about this outreach was how much we saw God provide for us as a team. We felt strongly that God had spoken to us about going to all these different places, but we did not have the funds to be able to go everywhere, so we left the base in faith, trusting that God had spoken to us as a school. The best story about this provision was halfway through our trip when we were on our way to Israel. When we got on the plane the guy we were going to see still did not have any accommodation for us, but by the time we landed he had found us a place and not only that, it was free for us to stay! Even more incredible was that we were also given a place to stay for free when we reached Manchester, but not only that, we were given a gift of Tesco vouchers which covered food for our entire stay in Manchester. It has been a real journey of learning more about what it really means to step out in faith, and to trust in the word of God and to act on it, even if it does not make sense.

We also saw God move in some pretty amazing ways in all these countries, people were so open to talking with us about what faith is and who God is. We saw God move in power and heal whole villages of people, as well as so many people inviting God to be part of their lives. We saw God transform others as well as ourselves. I know that everyone on the team was massively impacted by the amount that we saw God do when we stepped out in faith.

One of my favourite examples of this happened in Romania. We did a lot of work in some of the local gypsy villages there. They are the poorest group of people in the country and really cannot afford anything, including medical care. You often find that a whole village will get together to be able to buy a horse to help with the work. We were able to do some teaching with the kids, helping them get a basic education. This lead to the kids taking us into the village they live in to meet their families and because we had people in our team from South Korea and Africa, we were instant celebrities! This lead to us being able to do a drama and pray for a few people for different pain they had. The fun thing was God healed those few people and so the kids started to run through the village telling everyone what had happened, taking us with them. We were able to pray for people with sight problems, kidney pain, back pain, joint pain, other illnesses, and they were all healed, every single one! I got to pray with one woman, with her grandkids, who was so sick she did not have the strength to even raise a hand. We were told she had been like this for a few weeks, but once she had been prayed for she got up and started doing stuff, she even went to draw water from the well in the village. We saw God turn the village upside down while we were there, one of the women even wanted to turn her house into a church.

Another incredible experience was when we were in Palestine, just outside Bethlehem. We did a lot more intercession in Israel and Palestine than anything else. One evening we felt God had told us to go to worship and pray in an area called Shepherd’s field, where it is thought that the angels appeared to the shepherds when Jesus was born. So we went, and it was the most powerful worship time I have ever experienced. God showed us prophetic pictures for the nation, He gave us words to speak out over the situation that is happening, we ended up staying for about 5 hours. It was such a special time for everyone, we all left having met God in a very different way to what we had ever experienced before.

It has really been an amazing few months, and I know that my relationship with God has grown greatly, and so has that of those who were with me. It still amazes me how truly awesome God is and the way he provides when we think that it is impossible. I am constantly seeing more of who God is and who I am. It is such a humbling experience, doing what I am doing, but I love it and am so excited to be able to do the things God has called me to in this season.

God is so good.