Learning Fear of the Lord

November 12, 2011

Oh. My. Gosh. Most amazing, life changing week I’ve experience…ever. We had Mark Parker this week for Fear of the Lord/ Lordship week. It made me realize how much I don’t fear the Lord and what a misconstrued idea I have about fear of the Lord. I thought fear of the Lord was actually being afraid of God, but it’s more about respect for the Lord. It’s respect and recognizing that He knows best and that He could do anything to disobey Him which gives Him authority to basically make things not so great for you.

He had a lot of good things to say. Here are some key points:

·         Why are you asking God to do all these things for you? You need to do it yourself. It’s like changing the oil; if you ask your dad to change the oil all the time, you’ll never learn how to do it. God asks us to mature and stop acting like children, demanding that He make all our decisions for us. He has trained us with freewill to make decisions for ourselves.

·         Big God=Big vision, Big dreams. If you dream something and it’s possible without God, it isn’t big enough.

·         Don’t work on changing yourself, work on following Him.

·         We need to choose EVERY DAY who you’re going to follow.

·         We need to capture our thoughts. Just thinking about something isn’t sin. When you act on it, or allow it to take over…THEN it’s sin.

·         The source of sin is US. The devil has no authority—however; we give him authority when we resist God.

·         There’s adventure in the journey. And we need to appreciate that.

·         If we lose ourselves in God, that’s when we truly end up finding ourselves.

·         Fear of the Lord is 1) Awe of God 2) Holiness 3) Continued awareness of His presence 4) Radical and Ordinary Obedience 5) Beginning of all wisdom and knowledge.

·         If you want to have a life message, your need to actually get a life! Live the adventure! Don’t live vicariously! Actually get out there and do it yourself!

·         Anybody who’s anybody in the bible spent time in the wilderness.

·         Our biggest fear is that we’re powerful beyond measure.

And yesterday we had a 15 hour long ministry day. It was the craziest, most amazing day that most definitely changed my entire future. It was focused and structured around the 10 steps of the tabernacle of meeting in the OT. We started off the morning with Thanksgiving and then had an awesome time of worship.

We put together two of the pews from the church and had to “cross-over” from one to the next. First the guys all went and it was SO encouraging to see these young men on fire for God! They were all standing up there with outstretched arms just yelling out praise to Jesus—it’s an image I don’t think I’ll ever forget! After everyone had passed through I felt SO free that I started dancing during worship—lyrical ballet! It was so…free. J We continued to just worship and we were jumping up and down and singing at the top of our lungs and it was truly so beautiful.

After that we did our guilt offering and I just gave up my Nikon, guitar, friends, family, future (passport), future husband to the Lord to have control over and I made a two year commitment to YWAM and a three year, four month commitment to stay single and truly serve the Lord with all I have. Then I gave somewhere are $600 to Matt from the Byron Bay DTS then as we were about to end I really felt the Lord was urging me to give away my guitar to Tina (one of the girls on staff at the base). IT WAS SO HARD. I started crying so hard and Tina started crying, but I know that she was the person I needed to give it to. She told me she’d been praying that if God wanted her to pursue worship then she needed a sign and she told me that I completely changed the course of her life. But I know it wasn’t me…I couldn’t have done it without God telling me it was what I needed to do. But I trust God as a great provider and He will come through with a new guitar for me!!

After that we did our sin offering and I got up there and just did my duty and was totally freed from previous struggles! HALLELUJAH!

When that came to a close we had a time of prayer and it was SO GOOD! I really felt like I needed to talk to Alex, Kirsten and Bryan and both Alex and Kirsten said they felt like they needed to pray for me too. Alex’s prayer was amazing. IT was TOTALLY uplifting! She was saying that I’m a leading warrior in God’s army and how she sees me just sweeping over nations. One phrase I won’t forget, “This girl’s story’s gonna be one for the books.” She encouraged me in how she could see that my heart was totally on fire for God and that I left an impression on her before she had even spoken to me.

Kirsten and Bryan and Michelle actually just reaffirmed what an instant impact I have on people and how my heart truly is set on Jesus. Bryan commented on my natural leaderships and said something  about me going to many nations and Kirsten reaffirmed that…she actually gave me a really interesting verse: Acts 4:27 and how I can only see my future as a little circle but God sees a really really big circle..if that makes senseJ So that was good and I felt so encouraged to be in YWAM and that people could truly see God’s light in me. That was awesome.

Next we did baptism of the Holy Spirit. Mark asked if any of us wanted to speak in tongues so I went forward. He made a cross on my forehead in oil and he was touched my mouth with it. He started praying and I can’t remember entirely what he said, but what I do remember was that I felt really excited for my future after he prayed for me. He told me not to just jump into speaking, but that it needed to overflow from me. At first it was just slow but then phrases just came pouring out of my mouth! At some point I raised my hands and I can’t remember when Mark stopped praying, but it was such a heart cry. I remember feeling desperation. I was thinking about Cambodia and the Philippines and Thailand. With each country my brain would zoom into a city and then into faces of children. I had no idea what I was saying, but I knew God heard and it was so intimate. I felt SO close to God. I need more experiences like this.

After that we did a time of prophecy/words. I was paired with Bryan and Kirsten again. Bryan got a picture of me in a desert walking, holding a black baby and Kirsten got a picture of a sort of spring where water comes in and flows through places that are dry and how the spring pours into the dry places and then overflows out. She interpreted it as me bring the water/joy of life into a dry place that needs it. She said she also saw a frog which was interesting because for me that means Fully Relying on God and then today Pastor Brad had a bookmark with that phrase on it. Hmm J Mark thinks I’m meant to go to Africa. However…I have this feeling that I’m meant to be in the Middle East… =/

Oh! Also during the guilt offering when I gave my guitar away I was blessed with $300 from two people on my DTS. Such a blessingJ

With all this talk about my future, it’s fair to say I’m getting really excited for it. :D