Original design

Let me start by saying I wasn’t sure if I was going to share with all of you what God is showing me right now, because I think a lot of people won’t understand, but I’m not here to tell you what you want to hear… so I pray that you read this post with an open heart and not be judgmental..also some stuff is hard to put into words but I will try my best.

First YWAM is not affiliated with any denomination.. they simple believe in following Jesus. One thing that we are learning to do is hear from God directly, which is a lot harder than you would think especially if you have ADD and you always have these random thoughts in your head and you are like ok… Is that you God or is that just me thinking?? Before I came here I learned that when you pray you can’t just say words but you have to have 100% faith that what you were praying would come true and God would intern be faithful. (Hopefully you get what I’m saying… I’m not saying oh I will pray for one million dollars and my wish will come true!) Being here is so crazy because we will all be in a room wit a 80 people and we will ask God to show us, for example how to witness to people on the slopes. We will all be praying and with in minutes people will say “God showed me this!” And “God told me to do this!” So remind you I have never been around anything like this before because I mean in a Baptist church you don’t see people just stand and say “God gave me a vision!” I had many negative thoughts about this… I said stuff like.. those people are just making up some crazy pictures, God didn’t really give them a vision…. And…. God didn’t just speak to you that was just your imagination.

My thought got even more negative when a group of two couples came from a church in the states that has a special focus on listening to God’s voice and also hearing from God what your original design is. What the heck is an Original design?? Well I learned that it is the desired will (plan) that God has for our lives. They get this ides of original design from the bible in Ephesians 2:10 “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” There are also many other verses and they just believe that in this world today we get really distracted and set apart from what God really had planned for our lives.

So they did 3 days on teaching about original design which was really good and made a ton of sense and then they said that we could each get prayed for individually where they would ask God what our original design was. I didn’t sign up at first because I didn’t know how I felt about it and everyone that had got prayed for was saying things like, “Oh my goodness that was so crazy everything they said was so true!” While I was trying to decide if I should get prayed for God proved to me that he can speak through other people! (Long story and probably wouldn’t make sense through text) So I decided to get prayed over to figure out what my original design was.

I didn’t really show my personality around these people because for example I didn’t want them to know that I was shy and then them pray and be like..God is showing me that you need to stop being so shy! So see I was very skeptical about this whole deal. The people who were praying for myself was Laura and Andrew, and I like how they started because they said, “ This is a time where we ask God to show us the plan that he had for your life before the world started to get involve and corrupt the plans, but please do not take everything we say here to heart because sometimes we misinterpret what God is saying, so we very much encourage you to take all of this back to God yourself and ask he him what he means by all of it.” Ok so they are praying and like I don’t even close my eyes because seriously I couldn’t even think straight.. I was just thinking oh my goodness are these people really hearing the voice of God right now about me?!?! Then after praying and sitting in silence for a minute or two Laura asked me and if I had a desire to do missions, (even though the answer was yes, I still didn’t want to give her any ideas, if this whole thing was true I wanted it come from God and know that is wasn’t just coming from these two people sitting in front of me.) So I said I don’t know. She went on to say that she saw a picture of me reaching out and ministering among an unreached people group. This made me smile because as my mom would tell you, she thinks I should do missions in the USA, but I have told her that in the US there are churches on every corner and I want to go somewhere were people have never even the heard the words Jesus Christ before. Then they thanked God for that image and prayed for more things that he has planned for me life… They then heard that I’m a defender of the defenseless, they saw a picture of me being motivated by some injustice and me being angry about it. This is true too because as most people know, I have a passion to help people with Aids, and this passion started when in my government class we had a project in which we had to design our own country. One of the groups made a country with rules like you can drink beer when you are 12 yrs old and some other crazy laws and also all the people with aids would live on one remote island so they wouldn’t infect anyone…ya talk about injustice. They were about 8 other key points that would take me about 10 pages to explain to you!

So this was a time just to get my original deign but then Laura and Andrew saw something that was negative and that totally crushed my heart. They saw that the enemy (devil) has had a lot of impact on my life. They said that they saw the enemy making me “mousy” meaning quite like a mouse and also he was making me timid. They went on in more detail saying the Enemy has tried to weaken my confidence to even speak out what God has shown me. If you don’t already know this is true let me take a trip down memory lane… In high school I would go to weekend events/ conferences with my church woodland, like Passion 07 and Dare to Share. I don’t know exactly when it started…but I realized that I hated speaking in front of people about my faith or even about anything.. actually not hated but was terrified to speak out. After these amazing conferences that changed my way of thinking over and over again we would all share what we had learned…everyone had awesome stories about what God had shown them and when it got to me all I would do is cry because I was so scared to share if front of people. It was like I thought what God had shown me wasn’t as important or awesome as he had shown the person sitting next to me. To hear them say that God was showing/telling them this was heart breaking because it just makes me want to be totally done with this stage of my life where I’m scared to speak out about my faith! Knowing that they heard this from God was insane because obviously these people could not just make that up!

They also said God has shown us that he has giving you specific directions and we see you in a group of people and everyone is going in one direction but the Lord is showing you that the group should go in a different direction..The direction that you are going in..the right direction. Then to close they said the Lord is telling us that he is very proud of you and he wants you to press into all he has for you in the DTS. He wants you to take risks and to step out with him… and not play it safe. Holy Cow talk about exciting! The God of wonders beyond our galaxy just told them that he was proud of me and he wants me to take risk with him!! I LONG TO step out and take risks with my God!! Like I said there are still more things they said but it would make this post even longer than it already is. J But we ended and prayed that I would take this all back to God myself and seek what he means by all of it. They asked what I thought about it all and asked if I could relate to any of it and umm I said about 3 words because I was in extreme shock! And I think God was laughing because I had doubt in this whole thing and I could just see him sitting there smiling saying I told you I could do this, as I sat there with my mouth open.
Since finding out my original design I have been talking to a lot God about it and he hasn’t said, “Yes Leslie you are to be a defender of the weak!” But he has placed some things on my heart that I would like to share with you. (This blog is pretty long so you can take a break right about now if you would like, you could get some water or go to the bathroom J or as they would call it here the washroom) One… being here is hard because you want to know everyone on a really deep personal level, so it is like having 30 best friends! Which is really coold. So I ask the questions like what are some of your passions? What is your story about God and his Glory, like why are you here being YWAMER right now? What do you think you are going to do after YWAM or what do you think God has planned for your life? I think you get the point… as people answered these questions I learned that people are so different and have really different passions! One Guy is really interested in the business world and wants to bring God there, another wants to totally change the whole film industry to where films would bring God glory. This one gal has a desire for leaders, like not being a leader herself, but she really enjoys praying for them and encouraging them to keep doing what they are doing. Isn’t it crazy what God has placed on our each of our hearts, like I hate business! And I know nothing about the film industry! But these people have a passion for these subjects. Having said that it has become so clear to me how God has planed my life, or in other words, I understand the reason why I am the way I am. I don’t have a serious boyfriend who I want to get married to, I have never had an intimate relationship with a boy so I don’t know what I’m missing out on and I don’t desire to be in love with a man right now. I don’t have a passion to become anything like a doctor or an accountant which means I don’t have a desire to go to college. You might be saying wow Leslie you are one boring person and you have no idea who you are because you want to do nothing in your life! When in contrast I think I God has planned the most exciting life for me which looks like this…. Following him. He has been preparing myself for my whole life for this moment right now, where I decided that I want nothing unless it involves following and serving God.

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” Ephesians 4:1

Paul Hawkens was our teacher this week and he shared with us this verse. He also shared with us that the word calling is more of a relationship word than a vocation. So when people ask me what is your calling or what do you want to do when you get older. My response is I want to walk in an intimate relationship with the Lord. “ I desire to do your will, O my God.” Psalm 40:8. Being here has already stirred up so many things that I want to do. I love Europe and the people from France that are here were telling me that is very hard to be a Christian in France, so how awesome would it be just to travel around France and all of Europe just sharing God’s Love. YWAM has many more schools that just DTS and one of them is a bible school ( I can’t think of the name right now) where you study the bible for 9 months! There is a girl who that attend that school and over dinner that is all we talked about one night. She said you go through the bible 5 times! This first time you just read it all the way through because really it is just one really long story so it helps to read it all the way through to get the whole picture. Then the other 4 times I can’t remember how they exactly do it, but it is just and intense 9 months of study the book of life! INSANE! I would love to do that. So being here has just totally gotten my exited about all the things I can do to serve God. Also it is hard not to get nervous though, like will God show me what he wants me to do after DTS, and am I worthy enough for him to use me, But I try not to have those thoughts and just completely trust in him.

I will close by saying this..our speaker Paul also taught me, when you are in love with someone you hang on to every last word they say, you think about them when you first wake up, you think about them right before you are about to fall in sleep, they make you smile when no one else, and you always notice when they come into and exit the room. Well in Psalm 13:2 it says, “You know when I sit and when I rise.” God is totally and completely in love with each on of us!! But as I asked myself if I acted like I was in love with God the answer was not yes. I have said for so long that God is the lover of my life and have sung that song that goes, Jesus I am so in love with you… but now I’m realizing what it really looks like to be in love with God and I’m not there yet but seriously I know I say the word desire a lot but being in love with God is truly what I desire, desire meaning wish, want, longing, craving, yearning, need, hunger, thirst…. I desire to be in love with God.

So I don’t know what life will be like after DTS or even what my life will look like in general but I know it will be the best life every if I’m fowling God and the will he has planned for my life. I’m not saying it is going to be easy, fun, effortless, or some glamorous adventure, but I do know it will be absolutely amazing and breath taking………………… + Peace