As of last night we have officially been in Texas for a week. Wow! God is already doing so much. We've been having great responses at all of the schools and churches we've gone to and God has also been doing some amazing stuff just within our team. And, to my surprise, I actually like Texas! I never expected that but it's actually really nice.
People always ask me what exactly blitz is so I'm going to try to explain it. On Blitz, we go to different churches and schools and we present opportunities for teens to get more involved with missions and stuff. But really, the heart of what we're doing is to encourage teens to get to know God better and to make him known. Like I said, we provide opportunities for them to do that but we're not about promoting ourselves, we're about promoting God. We do this through dramas, videos, and testimonies and then after the program, we just spread ourselves into the crowd and get to know people.
So far, we've spoken at 6 different schools and churches.We even got through the back door and spoke at a public school! This was definitely a God thing seeing as the principal didn't know we were coming but we got to speak anyways. We've had the opportunity to talk and pray with a ton of students and we have several who have committed to coming to Royal Servants and Kairos. It is so cool to witness God at work and to see how he uses our stories to change these students lives. It's also cool because each one of us students has to give our testimony at some point in time and a lot of our testimonies had to do with Royal Servants or Kairos but God has been having each one of us change them so that the focus is now on him. Speaking of which, I'm giving my testimony tomorrow at a christian school so please be praying for me. I'm actually pretty excited about it because I am one of the ones who had to change it (twice actually) and I really believe that I had to change it for a reason because there's going to be someone in the audience who needs to hear what I have to say. It should be good.
You can also be praying for me because lately I've been having a lot of anxiety attacks. This isn't normal for me. I mean, I've had them before but it was maybe one every couple of months. But on blitz, I've already had like four or five and we've only been here a week. One day I even had two. I'm not completely sure why it's happening but it is so please be praying for that because it's really hard to do my job and talk to people when I'm freaking out.
Other than that though, Blitz is going really well. If you want, you can check out http://www.reignministries.org/topic/kairos-discipleship-school/ and you can read more specifically about what we've been doing as well as what the Georgia team is doing. Our class was big enough this year that we were able to split into two groups, one to Texas and one to Georgia/Tennessee/Alabama. My team has 14 people- Drew, Kaymi, Tony, Phoebe, Dean, Chad, Jason, Leandra, Acacia, Lindsay Lair, Megan, Kate, Cindy, and me. I love our team! We've been getting a lot closer to each other and it's great!
So anyways, that's pretty much it for now. Please keep praying for me, my team, the Georgia team, and everyone we're speaking to. Thanks!
~Emily
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
Best week ever
It's been over a month since I last wrote. Sorry about that. I've just been busy and when I wasn't busy, I had a crazy amount of stuff to think about because God has been messing up my mind with everything he is. But finally, here I am. I think I'm going to start with this week and work backwards.
This week was just incredible! Our speaker was Doug Easterday and he talked more about the father heart of God. This topic has been coming up A LOT in Kairos and even outside of Kairos and I know that for me it's because I needed (and maybe still need) to hear it. So Doug came and talked and God has been using a lot of things he said to just rock my world. Everything he said has been great but since I can't fit 5 days of teaching into a blog, I'll just share a few points that really stuck out to me. Some of them are pretty minor but they hit me hard so we'll just go with it.
First of all, God is blessed when I experience joy. Like a father, he likes to see his children happy and that's not only a blessing to me but to him as well. So I got to thinking about this and I realized, when I don't let myself be happy or experience joy, I'm not only making myself miserable, I'm withholding a blessing from God! That is NOT something I want to do!
Another thing I realized is that since God wants to bring me joy, it's ok for me to ask for things I want. I've never really thought I was "allowed" to pray for things that I just wanted but didn't need. I mean, God has so many more important things to do so even if I asked, he wouldn't answer anyways. That's a distorted image of God! I'm not saying that if I asked for a pony or something it would just suddenly appear or that God's going to spoil me. I'm just saying that it brings him pleasure to see me joyful so he wants to give me what I want and IT'S OK TO ASK! Whether he gives it to me or not, that's up to him, but it's certainly not going to hurt to ask.
One of the bigger realizations I had seems pretty basic but I think it's something we often overlook. We can't focus solely on Jesus. Ok, just hear me out. Jesus is absolutely crucial to us in our faith. I mean, without him there would be nothing. BUT that's not the whole picture. A lot of times, I think we focus just on Jesus or just on the Spirit or maybe both but, even though we acknowledge his existence, we kind of overlook the father. What I'm saying is, Jesus is just a portion. We also need to know the father in order to experience the fullness of God.
Anyways, if I keep explaining more points this is going to get really long so I'm going to move on. Later in the week, I had some more huge revelations about restoration and the weight of the burdens I'm carrying and where God was in the midst of my pain. It was just wonderful. On Friday, we ended the week with a session on forgiveness. We learned what it was and wasn't and then we spent over two hours in prayer doing it. We started going through a list forgiving all sorts of people and then forgiving God (not that he needed it, it was more removing the blame from him), and then forgiving ourselves. It was powerful and freeing in a lot of ways. The week was so great!
On Saturday, after some intense games of foam hockey, I went to IHOP(prayer) and I spent a few hours just resting with my Abba. It was so comforting and much needed after a great but exhausting week. Sunday was pretty uneventful. I spent it memorizing my testimony for speaking blitz (we leave Friday!!!). Today, we were supposed to present them to the class but it finally snowed in Kansas so we had a snow day!!! It turned out to be really great. I got to hang out with my fam-jam (my host family) which hasn't really happened since I got back from Christmas break. It was a lot of fun to just play in the snow with the girls and just relax.
Ok, so I said I'd start with this week and work backwards but I may have lied. . . This took longer to write than I expected and I'm tired now. But I'll try my best to write more later in the week and give those updates. So that's all for now. Bye!
This week was just incredible! Our speaker was Doug Easterday and he talked more about the father heart of God. This topic has been coming up A LOT in Kairos and even outside of Kairos and I know that for me it's because I needed (and maybe still need) to hear it. So Doug came and talked and God has been using a lot of things he said to just rock my world. Everything he said has been great but since I can't fit 5 days of teaching into a blog, I'll just share a few points that really stuck out to me. Some of them are pretty minor but they hit me hard so we'll just go with it.
First of all, God is blessed when I experience joy. Like a father, he likes to see his children happy and that's not only a blessing to me but to him as well. So I got to thinking about this and I realized, when I don't let myself be happy or experience joy, I'm not only making myself miserable, I'm withholding a blessing from God! That is NOT something I want to do!
Another thing I realized is that since God wants to bring me joy, it's ok for me to ask for things I want. I've never really thought I was "allowed" to pray for things that I just wanted but didn't need. I mean, God has so many more important things to do so even if I asked, he wouldn't answer anyways. That's a distorted image of God! I'm not saying that if I asked for a pony or something it would just suddenly appear or that God's going to spoil me. I'm just saying that it brings him pleasure to see me joyful so he wants to give me what I want and IT'S OK TO ASK! Whether he gives it to me or not, that's up to him, but it's certainly not going to hurt to ask.
One of the bigger realizations I had seems pretty basic but I think it's something we often overlook. We can't focus solely on Jesus. Ok, just hear me out. Jesus is absolutely crucial to us in our faith. I mean, without him there would be nothing. BUT that's not the whole picture. A lot of times, I think we focus just on Jesus or just on the Spirit or maybe both but, even though we acknowledge his existence, we kind of overlook the father. What I'm saying is, Jesus is just a portion. We also need to know the father in order to experience the fullness of God.
Anyways, if I keep explaining more points this is going to get really long so I'm going to move on. Later in the week, I had some more huge revelations about restoration and the weight of the burdens I'm carrying and where God was in the midst of my pain. It was just wonderful. On Friday, we ended the week with a session on forgiveness. We learned what it was and wasn't and then we spent over two hours in prayer doing it. We started going through a list forgiving all sorts of people and then forgiving God (not that he needed it, it was more removing the blame from him), and then forgiving ourselves. It was powerful and freeing in a lot of ways. The week was so great!
On Saturday, after some intense games of foam hockey, I went to IHOP(prayer) and I spent a few hours just resting with my Abba. It was so comforting and much needed after a great but exhausting week. Sunday was pretty uneventful. I spent it memorizing my testimony for speaking blitz (we leave Friday!!!). Today, we were supposed to present them to the class but it finally snowed in Kansas so we had a snow day!!! It turned out to be really great. I got to hang out with my fam-jam (my host family) which hasn't really happened since I got back from Christmas break. It was a lot of fun to just play in the snow with the girls and just relax.
Ok, so I said I'd start with this week and work backwards but I may have lied. . . This took longer to write than I expected and I'm tired now. But I'll try my best to write more later in the week and give those updates. So that's all for now. Bye!
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