Throne Room

Hey guys! Back again with another update~ This month was filled with a lot of events including my birthday, a mumps outbreak, Canadian Thanksgiving, my new haircut, and a Baptism night. This post is titled Throne Room by Kim Walker-Smith. The reason I chose this song is because of the chorus where I was reminded of how holy God is and that before Him, I can only bow before Him and praise Him. Due to my struggles in the past with depression and suicide ideation, I always viewed God as a friend and a Father and forgot that He is also a God, Almighty and powerful. This song was a great reminder to me of how the God I know is above all things.

Here were the results of the poll!!

And here is the result of the haircut!!! (yes I need to shave, sorry)

Before moving on to some testimonies, I wanted to thank everyone for the birthday wishes and gifts. I am always so grateful that God has placed such loving and generous people in my life.

Now onto the testimonies!

Baptism

This month we had a night of baptism. One of our speakers took the time at nights to have youth events to minister to the children that were present at our base. Because my discipleship training program was also with a family discipleship training program there were plenty of children at the base constantly from newborns to teenagers. For those of you that know me, you know how invested I am in children and youth ministries and to see and hear the reasoning of the kids and youth that want to know more of Jesus reminded me of what it felt like to just believe without the world's input. Putting aside what the world offers and looking at what Jesus does and seeing so clearly that what Jesus has to give is so much more.

6 year old boy that wanted to accept Jesus' love!!

Miracles

The month of October was also full of miracles! One day as a group of my classmates and I were on a hike, one of us lost the car keys that we had borrowed from our leader. We immediately prayed and asked God to show us where the keys were and a few of us felt that the keys were right next to the car. So trusting what the Lord gave us, we walked back and to our surprise there was a note on the car along with the key! It turned out that someone had found our key along the trail and felt led to put the keys on a car they thought was the right one. We were all relieved and thankful that God had provided for us in a big way. Another miracle occurred on my birthday. The past week, I had been having really bad neck pain and on my birthday was the worst it had ever been. I woke up without being able to move my neck to the left or right with pain 9/10. After contemplating whether or not this was worth going to the ER for, I decided that as long as I didn't move my neck I would be ok for the day. It was a tough morning as I tried to continually remind myself that even on days that are hard, that God is good. After the first lecture, someone approached me and asked if they could pray over my neck for healing. And to my joy and surprise, after his prayer, my neck felt significantly better! I could actually move my neck 180 degrees with a pain level of about 6-7/10.

The note we found on the car!

Kingdom Identity

This last testimony was about a teaching that shifted my past and present perspectives on who God is and who I am in God's kingdom. The speaker this week talked about how God is not a controlling God. That there were so many instances in the Bible where we were allowed to make our own decisions and also intercede and appeal to God to change his decisions. That really changed who I thought God was. Before coming to YWAM, the picture of God was one who would push me into places where He needed me to be, no matter what I wanted to do. A large chunk of my life to me seemed like God was forcing me into paths in life that I really didn't want to, such as when I wanted to go to a college not named Rutgers, and then getting rejected by every college but Rutgers, or wanting to leave my community to go take a job in Boston, but then losing the job opportunity via unforeseen circumstances. These instances in my life led me to think that it didn't matter what I did in life because God would have his way. However, this week, I was reminded that that was not the case. I had been putting the blame of my failures and random circumstance on God when I had not even asked God to provide me with any of my above desires. I was trying to live off of my own talent and when life showed me I cannot truly live without Jesus, I took that as God rejecting my decisions because I chose wrong.

This reshifting of perspective led me to another revelation. This week we also learned about 3 basic needs that humans have. It's to be accepted, to feel secure, and to be comforted. In the past I wanted to leave communities or family whenever I felt they didn't provide security or if I thought I wasn't accepted. After God opened my eyes to these needs and showed me that only He could provide for them, I started to see those around me not as people failing my impossibly high expectations, but as brothers and sisters also trying to find these needs in other people. It's a constant battle to remind myself that God is Jehovah Jireh and I hope we can all come together to keep ourselves looking toward Jesus.

My reaction to the fact that true joy can only be found in Jesus

Thank you all for reading through this update. I hope you are all being blessed by the Lord's abundance and grace and that the colder fall weather isn't keeping you from forming deeper relationship with your community. This last month will mostly be planning for my outreach into Romania and Ukraine so my November blog will most likely outline the specific ministries we will be doing there! I have a couple of different prayer requests for this month so please check my partnership tab to see the updates. A friend of mine asked me if I was missing home recently and I said not really, but I realized though I am not necessarily missing the structure I call a home, I am missing the people that make it a home, my family, my friends, and my church.