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Esther 6 Months Forward
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Outreach york 2 Best weather those days
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A week that could be titled just about anything
Hellur
Step 13: A picture is worth 23 words
Not much I can say about this week. We were prepping for outreach. So what I’m going to do is summarise and then just load the blog with pictures.
Cool?
Cool.
So we had a continuation of outreach York week here we hectically finished all our pieces and got them sent over to a church for them to be exhibited in the cathedral the following Sunday evening.
Jaima, a DTS student had her birthday so the weekend before, we blindfolded her and took her to see the most recent avengers movie(awesome by the way).
As preparation for our outreach, our leaders taught us how to make balloon animals and paint faces. This involved me trying not to scream every time a balloon popped and trying not to punch Hannah who was taking her role as a little girl waaaaaay too seriously while I tried to paint her face.
On Friday we stayed at the house to pack up all the stuff and thoroughly clean every centimetre of the place. Then in the evening we went to our leader, Doug and Beth’s, house for a going-away meal. It was salmon. Ohhh salmon! And potatoes salad that had bacon in it. Bacon. Ohhh bacon! Very good night. It was the perfect weather too that day, warm sun, light until 10. Just lovely.
On Saturday evening I took my sister out for a birthday supper as I would miss her actual day. We got ice cream from Tesco’s and sat but the river while the sun was out then went to Jamie’s Italian to eat his pasta. The place is gorgeous. The walls are all exposed brick save one wall that’s artwork melds into the colour of the ceiling. We sit at a gorgeous little wood table with rustic lamps hanging from the ceiling. It beats me why people spend so much time drinking beer and not at this place for the same money and a better time.
Next week Prague my dudes.
Yours Esther
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Local outreach #3
Hellur
Step 12: Aslan... just Aslan
13th May
So we had a night class....
I believe this week to be one of the weirdest weeks so far. Not the teaching itself but because lectures and outreach clashed dramatically and I don’t know what happened. We were set to do this local outreach in York in collaboration with this prayer festival happening around the country called Thy Kingdom Come. Basically the archbishop of York or somewhere says to the churches ‘yo, let’s do some outreach’ so we do.
So as YWAM’s part, we set up three exhibition thingys on the streets of York. One is a a triangle 8 foot prism blackboard that is wiped clean each day so people can write ‘what heaven on earth would look like’, and ‘what their ideal York would be’. Then there’s a concertina looking thing with two interactive murals on either side where people can join in with. And then there’s the station I’m working. This is also a 8 foot triangle prism thing but it was painted white like a canvas so we could paint on it. I’m doing an Aslan on it with the
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
When he shakes his made we shall have spring again
quote.
And in the other side is a tree of life that is split between summer and winter(I’m not doing that one).
We’ve been coming and going from these street booths since Thursday, save Sunday, for a couple hours between lectures and we end on Tuesday. It’s quite fun running around, it feels important.
Last week of lectures before Outreach was funnily enough about evangelism, the base leader of Harpenden, Carl came. He told THE best stories. And taught us what it meant to be in relationship with a missionary God. It was good because it wasn’t all about ‘converting souls’ because as he said, not everyone is at the same point in their search for God.
I like that he didn’t try and intimidate us by how great evangelists do their stuff and convert 500 people in one day type of thing but just being outward focused and aiming for God. It was pretty helpful if you’re scared of strangers and not everything was focused on preaching to the nations. He framed it as story telling more and all the weird nuances of your life are interesting.
Oooo, I’ll put pictures of the outreach so far up.
Prague in a week!!
Yours,
Esther
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The One God of Two Covenants
Supses
Step 11: Your perceptions can always change
6 May
A week where it finally all clicked into place. He left us everything in His will.
For ages I struggled because I couldn’t believe a God that says He is love could be the same God that sentences His own people over and over to horrible and abandoning punishments over and over again. Sure, I got how bad and how much of a traitor Israel was but part of me still couldn’t grasp it. And I was trying. I mean reaaalllly trying to look at Him as a loving God, but He was just so... different in the Old Testament. Made it look like He went through a character adjustment in the New Testament.
We looked at it over and over, from different angles, as a Father and his children, as the Leader of His people intent on saving his designated race and other sides. All of those made sense for a time. Made sense for the individual but it was nothing I could try to explain to someone without feeling slightly like my heart wasn’t in it. How do you explain to someone that my God is loving and cares for everyone and has stayed the same from the beginning if you have no idea why he is caring because of all those times he allowed the slaughter of nations and allowed his own people to be taken in to exile and murdered and captured time and time again.
I was once asked why I thought God loved me. I could honestly answer because I have felt his love. But ask me why I follow a God that seems so two faced and I’d get super defensive because I had no idea. Don’t get me wrong. I believe God was loving in the Old Testament, I can see it in all his dealing with his people, His patience, his care, Him always understanding the little weaknesses of humans and always providing. I can hear it in all the songs and poems pouring out love for this loving God who stays himself throughout. I just felt he was a different person.
Helena came this week and taught us on covenants. She started with giving us a super cool chronological outline of the Old Testament in over 100 hand gestures (super fun). Then she looked at the different covenants made in the Bible between the people of Israel and God. We saw seven of them and specifically what was promised. Then she explained how these covenants were structured. There was:
1. The Benefits
2. The Conditions
3. The Penalty
Basically, they looked like a peace treaty. The benefits of making this treaty with God was he gave them many descendants, provided for them, protected, loved them, blessed them etc. He basically lavished on them, the only condition being ‘be my people and I will be your God’ (a real honour btw) and don’t follow other gods. Basically just only follow the Living God. The penalty: all the blessings are taken away.
The cool thing is, these covenants, six of them scattered across the Old Testament, are legal and binding, like a conquering king promising protection and provision for the people’s loyalty, or else he has a right to punish offenders. They have the right to say no of course, in a conquering king’s case though, I doubt he’d just let them live but God would (He’s a very nice guy).
So these covenants made with the Israelites kept on being broken by the Israelites. They just could never hold up their end but kept swaying to other gods. Here’s where it’s interesting for me because of how God’s character is shown. As part of breaking the covenant, legally, God has to carry out the penalty of disobedience/betrayal, if he doesn’t then he’s an inconsistent, unjust God, and as a result we wouldn’t even want to follow him. Because who could trust an unjust God? He’d be able to run around being a tyrant and just be all untrustworthy and nasty.
Anyway, when he punishes it’s because he’s just, which shouldn’t make me so happy, but it does; it makes things make sense. The best thing though is after the breaking of the covenants and the follow through of the penalty, God has no further obligations to the Israelites, but time and time again he saves them from their demise and continues to love them. There are so many records of the Israelites calling out to the Lord from their punishment and him swooping in and saving them only for them to betray him all over again. And I could see the love of this God who couldn’t bare to see his people suffer in the pain they had put themselves in. It was beautiful.
You could also see this thread of echoes of God ultimate plan, that he knew that humanity was never going to get it, never going to live up to their end of any covenant with God. So he made the New Covent (or Testament) this he made with himself and laid it out in the form of a will.
In this will(as Helena described it) he left everything he is to us, free of charge, no strings attached, no obligations. But for a will to become active, the owner has to die. God had to die. Jesus let himself die to leave us everything.
It has no obligations, it is a gift. But such a gift draws people to him and to his grace. It makes us want to love back and give back even knowing it can never repay him but because it is our purpose in life. This amazing outpouring of love is so affirming and comfortable and warm it consumes, has power to completely change lives. But with it comes the responsibility to serve and love and be God’s chosen race in deed but in also attitude. To love the difficult, love the easy and love constantly, even if that’s all you have to offer the kingdom, because it’s all for Thy Kingdom Come.
So I know now the one God, the God of the two Covenants.
The God of Love.
Yours,
Esther
P.s. I also spent the weekend with my family where I thought I’d not see any of them until the summer. But my Granny’s Birthday celebration was this weekend and I got to go!
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Double week of Doug
Yo yo yo
Step 10: don’t overdose on Doug (tehehee funny)
Ok so we had two lecture weeks with our base leader doing lectures so I’m going to stick them all together. One week was the cost of discipleship and the other was relationships, so... not exactly related.
In complete Doug-fashion he asked us all our dreams one by one. As we foolish students do, we got really into it, kept adding to the list past our turn and really giving it our all. He then went ‘what if God asks you to give up all of your dreams for him?’ And BOOM Doug had done his Doug thing and flattened our cute little dreams.
He gave us a good while to think about our answers. Evelyn and I went out to the playground and sat on the really big swing thing and talked about it for a while. I think the initial panic had wore off and we could think rationally about it. By rationally I mean she thought rationally and I continued having an emotional breakdown.
I remember getting back to the lecture room and unloading all the negative emotions I might feel about not being to do all I ever wanted to do.
Resentful
Angry
Frustrated
Betrayed
Suicidal
And then Doug pointed out that these were all words associated it death and doom and basically the opposite of joy, ie. not of God. It made sense after he explained it that if our whole life depends on our dreams and hopes then what’s the point in living for God because all we depend on seems to be our hope for our own aspirations.
When it came down to it, i looked at it with God, and if He told me to let everything go for him I’d just do it. In theory I’d be depressed and refuse and have all these emotions but in real life I’d just do it because I rationalise that He’ll always know what’s best for me and He loves me. What I would be more concerned about would be me resenting what he told me to do.
I feel I’d never want to be in the situation where I am silently hating God for where he’s put me. If he’s a loving God I’d very much like to believe that I’d be very happy to be wherever he’d put me, but the idea that in an uncomfortable situation I might blame him for it and resent him for me being where I am terrifies me.
At the end of the week I went with my sister to see my new university. To be very honest I didn’t know how to feel. I stepped onto my future campus and didn’t know what to think, should I be excited by how awesome it was, or should I listen to that little voice telling me that this was a big place full of people who aren’t going to want to be my friends. I blame the little demons trying to take over my brain, I refuse to listen. It’s an amazing school and meeting new people is a good challenge no matter how daunting.
Doug’s next week was about relationships.
He took a more scientific and slightly haphazard route. It involved a 3 minute hug; a session on conflict; a session of getting to know someone more emotionally; a listening workshop; and a negative and positive energy experiment. Let’s just say not the standard or simple ‘different types of relationships and how to nurture them’ kind of seminar.
In all these two weeks were probably most chill out of all of the weeks just because we had someone we knew and so we didn’t have to project a slightly faker Christian person but a bit more normal Christian type of person.
The next weeks are coming up to be the last of lectures, as Doug reminds us. I’m going to miss like like nothing before. I loved sitting and learning cool things about God.
Yours,
Esther
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Free
Hej
Step 9: GH will never let you leave
This week we had my uncle who’s not technically my uncle speaking to us. The only thing was, I didn’t know he was coming and so I sort of got really flustered and confused and surprised when he showed up at the base that afternoon. I spent the rest of the day sort of fumbling through work duties not really sure of how to behave.
(Uncle) Emmanuel. What a surprise.
It was cool for the rest of the week to feel like I was in on my own personal joke every time he made a statement about Ghana. It was like an inside joke only with a lot more pride in on my end. There were Ghana quips and references and it was just so nice to be a little closer to home.
We were on freedom in Christ. A statement that can sort of be seen as slightly contradictory if you’re thinking of Christianity as a rule based religion. But where we were looking at a love based belief it turned it around from there. One tactic Emmanuel used was turning a question around and getting you to think of your own answer, but not just that cos that’s never satisfying enough, he made everyone discuss it. It was cool because soon we were asking bigger questions and such because the questions were answered with wider responses and with several viewpoints to take from.
Galatians 5:13 TPT
Beloved ones, God has called us to live a life of freedom in the Holy Spirit. But don’t view this wonderful freedom as an opportunity to set up a base of operations in the natural realm. Freedom means that we become so completely free of self-indulgence that we become servants of one another, expressing love in all we do.
That verse was the whole week wrapped up with a nice ribbon.
You ever wondered why don’t we just do what we want if God is just going to forgive us? I did once or twice and rationalised both sides in different ways.
God gets hurt.
But he’s God so how can we hurt him?
Because he loves us and sin pushes us away from him.
Well.... really?.... how much can you really love someone.
Well he does love us and forgives us.
Well I do stuff wrong anyway which he forgives so can’t he just forgive everything else I do? Don’t they say you can always go back to God? (Just hope you don’t get caught in the end in one of your sinful streaks). But really though, freedom in Christ right? FREEDOM to do anything, or?
But freedom in Christ isn’t some self-seeking state where it’s all about your freedom. Ironically it seems freedom in Christ is so reliant on love and Christ that the freedom is in love and love isn’t self-seeking, it spreads.
Freedom in Christ is to be free from self.
At least that’s how I see it.
Yours,
Esther
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This is an identity art work. 5 pieces on our faith story
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I am a Warrior Sheep
What up nerds
Step 8: always wear onesies.
I’d say meeting the dog from next door and going on a daring and dangerous mission to find his owner was the highlight of my week but I don’t suppose that’s true. I mean I was wearing my onesie which has been debated to either being a sheep, a bear or a bunny, so it could be argued that this was the best moment of all. The bunny/bear/sheep on a secret mission with her compañeros to fight and defend the lost and friendly.
For this blog post I will be keeping my identity anonymous because it’s identity week and I must speak about it from a passive point of view, so we will just call me the Sheep.
(Jokes! I just want to call myself the Sheep because I’m writing this in my onesie)
Yeah but identity week.
It was probably the most unorthodox week in terms of style. The lovely German lady who came to teach us, Holle(and her husband Neil), spent the first day with us sitting in a circle and talking about our grandparents, parents and ourselves in order to know who we were. It was interesting to say the least (not in a bad way like ‘interesting’ or ‘special’ but actually interesting to hear people’s stories). The next day she turned our tables in on each other so we could all see each other. The next couple days we spent sitting on the floor and a plank of wood crying, but I’ll come to that later. She also had this thing where she’d just kneel and teach kneeling and it felt really natural which I only noticed 30 minutes into her kneeling down. I just sort of went ‘wait, is she kneeling?’ And realised it oddly wasn’t weird. She was also super huggy, like a mummy and she made you feel so loved from the first moment of her appearing. It was so odd how easily we fell in love with her but she was just so lovely and now I miss my mummy.
Two of the days she focused heavily on Jesus’ baptism and the phrase that applies to us saying
‘This is my beloved Son/Daughter, with whom I am well pleased’
She looked into our identity and who is in charge of giving us that in the beginning of our lives and how we develop our identity throughout life. But that is, we are beloved children who God loves entirely and unchangingly and if we fully come to grasps with that then there would be no self-hate, jealously or insecurities because who we are in Christ very much defines how we treat ourselves and see who we are. Therefore, the lies we believe, the vows we make to ourselves and all that, just stands to drag us away from who we should be. The general trend is the enemy often hits and picks at exactly where your calling is.
When Jesus was tempted, the three temptations attacked
1. His identity
2. His calling
And that what the enemy aims at.
For example, if a person is called to lead others, the enemy will attack their identity as someone who could never amount to anything or show them how awful being a leader is or something and POOF! No more calling or identity.
Holle brought in a big plank of wood representing us and our identity and put it on the ground and stood on it. If someone pushed her she stood pretty secure on the plank. She then put a drumstick under the plank and when you stand on it it shifts and wobbles and tips; the stick is the lies we believe. It actually made for a very good illustration. Also it was fun to stand on.
That afternoon, which was Thursday, we had this thing called ministry time, which I still haven’t the foggiest clue what it is. During that time we sat in a circle with the identity plank of wood(decided that’s what I’m now calling it) becoming part of the circle and we had an opportunity to get rid of lies we believed or vows we had made to ourselves that were only hurting or that we felt the Lord wanted us to renounce. It took time. Each person in the end had something to give up, to let out, to cry about. And let me tell you there was a lot of crying.
The Sheep was strong of course and didn’t cry a bit.
I lie.
Sheep bawled.
Like a fish.
Or a really emotional puppy.
I’m not going to say what Sheep was crying about because that’s confidential and none of your business. But I will say Sheep is currently feels a little freer and lighter. Just waiting, pumped for the enemy’s next attack. He’s got another thing coming.
Yeah, but our identity plank session took a significant part of two days. It was very, very good to do, even if we used too much tissue for the tears.
But on Friday, we went to see Black Panther, which was very impressive. Might not have been the best movie marvel has made and not my favourite but it was definitely better than Thor. And the cinematography, scale, fight scenes, concept and detail was amazing. Oh, and it was funny. Also the costumes/fashion was just beautiful! Like I was very very tempted to cry at one of the coats the Black Panther wore. Not the one with the Kente, though that was nice but the one with the compressed wool. Uuurrrgh and the women’s clothing? Like, what? The costume designer must have had the best time of their life. Like it was just so beautiful, everything. Chale, it was overwhelming. Secretly I think that’s the part of the movie I liked most. Wait, no that’s not a secret that’s fact.
But yeah, this week was very well achieved. Very happy.
I wonder when I will be able to describe myself with joy instead of just happy?
Till later dear ones.
Peace out suckers.
Yours
The Sheep
(it’s me, Esther)
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Cathedral Friday, Beyond the Surface
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Reaching Out With Birmingham
Sup y’all
Step 7: never ever never believe stereotypes
I spent two weeks on outreach in Muslim Birmingham in a convent.
Ok, so it was technically 13 days, in the predominantly Asian/Muslim/sikh/etc community of Alum Rock, East Birmingham, so not the whole of Birmingham is Muslim, and it’s an old convent so I haven’t been turned into a nun....yet.
Not sure how to write about a whole outreach, maybe I should have been writing this as I went through the weeks... nah! Sounds way too responsible.
Ummm, I suppose I should start with the prayers we had for the week. A big one that I particularly prayed for was rest and peace in God. I really wanted the weeks to feel relaxed and that I wouldn’t work myself up into a panic for no reason and wouldn’t suck up people’s stress and let that make me feel soggy and panicky.
Also praying for the actual outreach we kept getting the story of the Samaritan woman at the well who met Jesus. The leaders really sensed that for the whole trip, so we went into the trip with hope as our theme.
Another prayer was that God would be the centre of all our work and the focus would be about Him and not about church politics or about the art itself.
We got to Birmingham on Monday and met the people who lived there and were showed our rooms and blah blah blah. We especially met the two people who one of our staff members, Julia, works with and who came with us for most of our outreach activities. They were Amber and Helena and they were my favourite people of Birmingham(not taking into consideration our YWAM members).
The first week was predominantly focused on the work we were set to do with the cathedral in the centre of Birmingham. The cathedral and a lovely lady called Louisa gave us permission to put our artwork around the cathedral, initially on the walls but later they said we could only put them on the ground(which was better in the end because it looked weirder and made people look at it more than if they were just on the walls.
On the Tuesday we went out into Birmingham City in groups of 2 or 3 to take pictures of strangers and get a bit of their stories. This was for a project for Friday we were calling Beyond the Surface In the group I was in for the first wave before lunch there was Hannah and one of our leaders, Dave. We were sent off to a very abandoned area of the city as we found out after wandering around for half an hour or so. We spent half of the time punching each other when we saw yellow cars, but I don’t think Dave really got a hang of the ‘cars’ part and punched for dumpsters and a baby’s blanket in its pram.
When we moved further into the city centre, there were about 20 other people trying to stop people to sell them something and we soon found we started looking like them anytime we tried asking for a free picture from a very fast moving passerby.
People in Birmingham seemed even more unhappy about stopping than in Manchester and York combined. Funnily enough when our groups got together and compared how many photos we all got, some had like 8 and others had 2 so I’m not sure what happened.
On Wednesday was a day for getting all our photos and additional activities ready to be used on Friday. I was in a group supposed to do a response to the photos and quotes being exhibited. What had brainstormed a week before or something and come up with something. This initial idea was scrapped.
We decided to go for an instalment type thing where people could write their hopes and dreams on pieces of tracing paper, make them into paper aeroplanes which we could then string up to a giant cube frame that we would build. The idea is write your dreams and let them fly in away, but not really because they’d be in the cube frame.
The next part of the response was portraits. We decided to do 3 types of portraits. One would be literal portraits which I’d be doing, then there’d be poetry portraits which Jaima and a staff member called Garrett were to do, and last there’d be bracelets that Hannah would be doing. So once we had sorted the logistics and made a list of things to get we went on a road trip to shop, which was awesome. We went to a wood recycling company to get the wood for the massive cube and had to get it ordered for the next day. We then picked up some art stuff but not everything so we’d have to get some on the Friday.
The Thursday was different. We were going to a ladies group that takes place in a church and is mostly Muslim women so none of the male leaders could come. We joined in on their exercise activities while others did the crèche and others helped in the kitchen. It was awesome because after lunch which was a really nice soup, we got to do henna and stuff for the ladies. The other activities was a print making station where we’d ask the ladies to print things that meant treasure for them and we’d then exhibit them during a dinner the next Wednesday at the convent.
Let me be honest. Henna is hard. I mean difficult. Like really hard. Struggle type hard. Hurts your hand, always seems to co e out looking messy when I do it, just a stress. But I suppose it was fun...
The day that comes after Thursday is Friday. That day was the cathedral day. It started off super slow and I think it could have really stressed everyone out but I felt a weird calm over the stressful things of the day. Hannah, Julia and I went running around Birmingham for the first hour looking for alphabet beads, and tracing paper.
But once we had put down all the quotes, images and put up the cube, eaten lunch, and settle down to do the portraits, this went ok. It was a weird day because we got maybe 4-8 people to do the responses but it felt just the right amount. It was super calm even though one of the leaders threw pressure on me to start my portraits waaaaay before I was ready and 15 minutes before I was set to start. Not naming any names but (*garrett) was very mean to do that.
In the evenings of the Thursday and Friday that week we also got the opportunity to go on a night watch with some of the community members who had taken cleaning up the streets on themselves and so they sort of walk around and scare druggies and dealers off with a big torch and watch out for prostitutes so they aren’t abused or anything. The cool thing is they started in September when it was awful and now there’s literally no drug dealer or anyone anywhere. The park is clear when there’d been stoners everywhere and out of the 15 prostitutes, 3 or 2 have already gone to rehab or managed to get off the streets (the last two are going to rehab soon I think).
Anyway, the night watch was on Thursday and Friday at like 10-11 (they continued till 2/3 am but we had to go bedy bye).
Saturday we drove a lot to get to a pink church for something they call word by heart. This nice man basically gets us to act out Bible stories which meant we remembered them by the time we were done and they became relevant to us the closer we got to the characters.
Week 2
After a free Sunday we began the week going to ladies groups around Birmingham to get them to participate in the treasure project we had set up the previous Thursday with the printing. While some of us from Monday to Wednesday went in twos to these meetings, the others began individual art projects about the treasure we found in alum rock. It was back breaking trying to do our waaaaaay too elaborate projects in time for the Wednesday exhibition. I know me and Hannah stayed till 2 one night trying to get them done.
(You know when you’ve worked on a piece and sweated away and then you realise it doesn’t look very impressive to you and you just wish you could have made it 10 feet taller?)
On the Wednesday evening families from the community groups we had been to came to look at the exhibition of their art work and ours while enjoying some lovely food.
I hid with the kids.
Events are getting less and less detailed as this blog gets longer and longer.
Thursday was another date with the ladies’ day. Some more exercise which is always welcome. There was a play about Easter. There was lunch and I played with the kids again.
Then there was Good Friday! One of our staff, Julia had an exhibition she was doing for her church during an event called 12 hours where for each hour something was happening at their church. It was absolutely electric! We got there for 12(or was it 1?) and there were these dancers that used hoops hanging from the ceiling. All the way around the building were instalments and art pieces that were both visual and interactive and it was all so creating and touching and beautiful and it literally was one of the best things I have ever seen. Each piece was done by someone else but for some reason happened to work so perfectly with everything else.
Julia’s work was the Garden of Gethsemane and she did it by suspending sheets of translucent fabric from the ceiling of a darkened section of the church and using many projectors to project videos of trees and greenery. Then she had prayer sheets and cushions and you could go in about the strips of trees and meditate and pray. The overall effect was a gorgeous calming place. It was just so beautiful.
That day I got to see what art could really do in serving God’s people in not just a cheesy way it normally does.
To be very honest I’m really tired of this blog but I have now given a full if scanty account of all the happenings of Birmingham.
Tomorrow we are planning to have a special Easter meal at our base back in York. Just have to bare the bus ride back and tally-ho!
Note to all in case you cared: I for some reason don’t feel hungry anymore unless I’ve gone most of the day without food. Should I be worried?
Yours
Esther
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Guns and Warfare
Step 6: Get a thick Irish accent
Why hello there
18 March 2018
A man called Micheal Montgomery walked into our class and made us feel strangely royal.
The week started seemingly ok. I found an Irish stranger in our bathroom on Monday morning, we had a good chat, seemed like a pretty nice chap. This week started just like every week except this week was SPIRITUAL WARFARE WEEK(echo echo echo). I thought it’d be scary, you know demons and fighting them, but a man called mr Montgomery showed us first our reflections before he showed us the monsters we were facing.
I’m being very dramatic. We saw no demons. But it’d have been cool right? The answer is no. Demons are not nice things. They are not cool. They are not likeable pets.
Micheal kept repeating over and over the fact that we as human beings who have been saved by the cross and been given back the power taken from us during The Fall, we are powerful beings. We are so powerful we are the only ones who can say no to God. Wait, no. That’s not what I meant. He didn’t teach us to say no to God, he was just trying to show us the extent of how powerful we are, not that we should reject our Lord. That is not what they are teaching us here in York at all.
Anyhooooo
Basically we are powerful and our natural state is power, whereas when Jesus died the power the demonic had was stripped from them and now their natural state is authority-less. So demons attack us because they want the authority we have because they have none anymore and authority is all they ever wanted since they fought against God.
Now that sounded super scary but Michael said that the enemy’s power is only over our lives to the degree we allow it which means we can’t just be possessed out of nowhere and we can always fight against the enemy. But he said the war is not always in the big things like demonic possession but the little lies that the enemy has told us and we agree with and subscribe to.
Such lies like ‘I’m unloved’ ‘I’m not pretty or slim enough’ ‘I’ll never be good enough’ and other absolute rubbish is the type of thing the enemy feeds into our minds, which is basically the only place they can get to us. By believing these things for whatever reason, you make a covenant with the enemy and give them power in your life. Good news is you can renounce them and break covenants with them and take control of your thoughts so that those thing no longer play a part in your life.
This is just an overview of what I learned, it felt important to share ever if it was very, very hard to understand from how I wrote it all out.
The basic gist is I loved this week. It was so cool. Not that anything phenomenal happened to me, but I feel like I reached a new level of understanding and a lot of things began to slot into place. Micheal was super intentional with his words and taught us the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer which became quite serious and turns out does not mean what I thought it did. The whole ‘your kingdom come, your will be done’ thing? That is not saying let your will be done, please Lord. It is saying we as humans and as the children of the Lord will make your kingdom and heaven come to earth. Make earth into heaven. Bring his kingdom down to earth and his people. That it’s our promise, our conviction, we will do it and make Christ known on earth. I was, like, mind blooooown (please excuse the inappropriate use of ‘like’).
At the end of the week I sort of feel slightly more energised than I did before , maybe just because I am now getting a hang of the extent of my power in Christ and have a whole new understanding of the phrase ‘made in the image of God’ where we have such a large inheritance that we can’t ever get our heads around. God and I haven’t tag teamed with anything yet but I’m interested to see what we carry out together.
I sounded really old just then.... interesting.....
Let try this, my favourite part of the week was Michael Montgomery’s imitation of a Californian accent which I’m told is actually not accurate but seems very on point to me.
I feel this is just the week I needed after last week, just to come to grips with the concept of lies of the enemy and how much he’s robbed me of life and happiness. I think the biggest lie of ‘God doesn’t want to speak to me’ was made into recycled toilet paper. I have the new conviction, after asking Micheal to pray with me, is to just relax in the Lord and let him show me his glory in my life.
Note to people: I’m going on outreach to Birmingham. Yaaaay!
Yours
Esther
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