Week 4 - Short and sweet update

---

Ok so I'm just going to write a short update this week because last week's was so epic and i think you could all do with a little break from my essay-like blogs!

So this week we have been learning about Worship (praising God) and Intercession (praying for things outside of yourself whether it is a country, person, situation etc). If I'm being completely honest I don't think I've learnt as much this week as I have the past 2 weeks, or at least everything I've learnt hasn't really instantly rocked my world like the other things. Prayer is something is always something I've struggled with as I have always focused on what isn't happening rather than what is so when I see that the things that I've prayed about haven't changed instantly and in an amazing way I tend to get disheartened and my prayers get fewer and shorter. This isn't what prayer is about though. God is not like a vending machine where we put in our requests and get instant answers. Instead prayer is about faith, bringing your thoughts, feelings, requests and praise to God and completely handing them over to God with an expectancy that God is hearing them and will answer. Not every prayer is going to get answered and not every prayer will get answered in the way you want them to but God is a faithful and powerful God who longs to see people praying in faith about things which are close to His heart.
2 things which have stuck out to me this week relate to the words which are used in the bible. The bible wasn't originally written in English and because our language is so different from Hebrew the significance of some of the words are lost in translation.
For example: God's love, there are many words for it, one being agape (unconditional love) and one being fillio love (friendship love). God loves everyone in the world with agape love - unconditionally, but God cannot love everyone with fillio love as friendship cannot be onesided, this love can only be felt towards those who are open to a relationship with Him.
The other example is about God's will. God has given us freedom and in order for this to happen, God's will is not always being done on earth. God's 'boulema' will means God's unchangeable will, the things which are set in stone and are going to happen (e.g. Jesus' second coming) whereas God's 'thelema' will is God's desire/wish which is not set in stone. God desires everyone on earth to chose to be in a relationship with Him but because He gave us all free will it cannot be set in stone that it will happen, otherwise it would not be free will. Even those of us who are christians have stepped out of God's will for us and do so on a daily basis through not abstaining from sin and not praising God in everything. Because of these things which are not set in stone we can pray to God knowing that the outcome is not a definite but can be changed through us standing in the gap (between that situation and God).
God changed His mind 36 times in the bible through people choosing to stand in the gap in prayer. If something was fixed, by definition God could not change His mind. Our prayers do have an impact not only to who we are as a person, how we see God and our relationship with God but they impact the situations we're praying into.

So yer that is what I've learnt this week. If you're feeling a bit confused after reading that I'm really sorry! I'm still processing it in my mind and I do struggle repeating things I've learnt in a simple way! I think it's going to take time to really have faith that my prayers are getting answered but through continuously reminding myself of the truth my attitude towards prayer will completely turn around. Prayer is a powerful weapon, I've just got to keep reminding myself of how powerful it really is, how much of a priviledge it is and how much God loves us and wants us to intercede, to fill the gap and have His heart towards situations.

In terms of things I've done this week...I did a group presentation on Hospitality! Basically each week a group creatively presents a foundational value of YWAM (something which each base has and is crucial to day to day running). My group was me, Koko (my Korean/south african friend), Ross (canadian), James (amercian) and Elisama (mexican) and we did 3 stations to demonstrate hospitailty. I did the food station (whatever foundational value we did i was going to bake so they just let me have free reign over the food), Koko and Elisama gave people a massage and James and Ross washed feet. Everyone seemed to really like it! Was a bit stressful doing group work to begin with. As I am quite a shy person and not a very dominant personality I really struggle with group work as my automatic response is to back down from the louder and stronger characters but when this idea was suggested we just all got involved and it just worked really well. I did have a little issue tho as I had no idea about quantities as our DTS has over 50 students on it so i bought enough food to actually throw them a party which Koko found hilarious. I think i'm pretty much sorted for sweet food now from now until outreach!
Money on the other hand seems to be disappearing fast! My card actually got rejected when I was paying for the food as I didn't have enough money to pay for the food so I just paid with all the cash I had. Was a little nerve-wracking. I'm not going to lie, the whole money situation has been stressing me out a little and has been taking up too much space in my thoughts. It is definitely going to be an area where I am going to have to practice praying to God and leaving it with Him in faith that He will provide both the money I need for every day things and the outreach fees (of about $5,000).

Speaking of outreach...it won't be long now until the leaders tell us the options of where we're going and we'll be able to pray about them so maybe this time next week you'll actually be able to hear where I'm going. There have been some rumors of what the options are but I'm just going to block them out of my mind. The whole process of praying for outreach will be hearing the options and the leaders for each of the options then spending the following days praying about them and NOT talking to anyone else on the DTS about your thoughts as they want to discourage people going where their friends are going. It's all about where God wants us to go and when the going gets tough at outreach (which we're told it will at times) we need to have complete assurance that God sent us there.
So watch this space!

Ok so it looks like the blog wasn't as short as I originally hoped but I hope it was still nice to read!

Hope you've all had a great week!

Blessings and love,
Rachel

p.s. happy 20th birthday for tomorrow Becca 😊 can't believe my little sister is growing up so fast! no longer a teenager eh! hope you have a fab day! much love and birthday kisses!

---

Comments

[Amy]

Loveage
Loved your entry this week Rachy: ) all my love xx

[Sarah L]

Rachel I learnt so much from this Blog, the part on Greek words was particularly insightful. Thank you for taking the time to write it. Love you loads.