Fearing God

Bonjour!
I have been learning so much lately! The hard part is trying to find time to sit down and write a blog! So I’m sorry I don’t have a new one every week and I’m sorry that when I do I have on they are so long! Haha. And I’m sorry that when I do finally write them they are so long! Oh Lauren put up a really cool blog about what her schedule is and a ton of pictures of the base, and my schedule is pretty much the same but the base is so big it would take me forever to take pictures of every room, but they have such a good website that has so much information, and you there are actually a ton of pictures from my DTS that you can see! so the website is www.ywamlausanne.com if you want to check that out!

But I just want to quick tell you about my work duty because I love it! We have work duty, everyday from 1:30-3:30, and I am on the hospitality team/special projects. We do a lot of baking! Because each time someone has a birthday we bake them a birthday cake! (And there is around 150 people here including all the staff) Also we bake and set up for community night, which is every Thursday night. The whole base gets together ( because there isn’t just a DTS school going on here right now there are different schools all together) So we all get together and have worship, have a guest speaker and then go town to the dinning hall and have yummy snakes and it is all decorate cute. And then on Tuesday we clean the hospitality house which is where all the guest speakers stay. My River Landings Animal Clinic friends would be so proud to hear that I sweep the whole entire house, which is huge!( And I always think of you guys when I’m sweep.. J) So that is my work duty and I just love it! Because the other work duties are like housekeeping, kitchen cleaning, and other stuff, and I get to bake! I love my leader too, her name is Tanzi and she is from Alaska and she is just the cutest!

So the title of this blog is ‘Fearing God’ and I’m so excited to share with you what God has been showing me! Ok so, I need to stop saying so, anyways…….before coming here I DID NOT know what it meant to fear God. Well I thought I knew what it meant; I thought it meant to be literal scared of God. I mean when you fear something you are scared of it, and that is why I never understood when people were saying they fear God because that is just crazy because God is love. Well it is all come together this week when I found out what is meant to fear God. Fearing God means: to be more concerned with what God thinks and feels rather myself or anyone else thinks and feels, to be more impressed with God’s reactions to our actions than with other people’s reactions. What does this look like.. In Genesis God tells Abraham to take his one and only son up to a mountain and kill him as an offering! Just as Abraham was about to kill his son God said, “Don’t lay a hand on the boy! Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.” (Genesis 22:12) Abraham was about to kill his only son because God told him too! Abraham didn’t stop to think, ‘well what will my wife think when she has seen what I have done?! ‘ AND he didn’t ask a ton of his friends, ‘Hey guys God just told me to kill my son and what do you think I should do?’ NO Abraham cared what God’s reaction would be to his actions, rather than worrying about other peoples reactions. I know this story is a little hard to apply to today because we don’t kill/ have sacrifices/ burnt offerings, but I think you get the main point.

The first week I was here one of my friends asked me if I feared God more or people. And I said people, no doubt. But I didn’t really understand my answer until we had some teaching on fearing God and until I read more about it in the bible. I was shocked to find out that my whole Christian life I have not been fearing God.

I have a really Good example for this…. Before coming here I had a passion to help the poor. But I thought everyone had that passion! Because I mean who wouldn’t want to say I want to help the poor. And I especially thought, “How cool I’m going to YWAM where everyone there is going to be just like me, these young adult who are loving God and recognize that are so many people suffering in this world.” Anyways being here you get to know everyone really fast and there is no small talk when you first meet people, it is more like what are your passions? How do you think God is going to use you? How were you raised? I was so shocked to see that God gives us so many different talents and passions! Like one girl is an amazing dancer and she wants to bring God into the Theater business. Another guy is really into technology, like films and stuff and he wants to show people that films can be a beautiful way to express God. This other guy is into the diamond industry and he wants to have a Christian jewelry store. Why do I tell you all of this?? Because I’m a really bad dancer, because I know absolutely nothing about films, and I know nothing about diamonds besides that they are pretty!

What is my talent and my passion.. to help the poor. I want to help those people who don’t have clean water to drink, but if they walk 5 miles they might get half way clean water. I want to give food to people that haven’t eaten in a week. I have such a desire to work with kids and people who have AIDS. I want to love on the millions of orphans in Africa that have AIDS or that have been orphaned because their parents have died of AIDS. I want to show them God loves! I want to tell them who Jesus is and what he has done for them.

Helping the poor isn’t just a dream of mine, but I truly believe God gave me that passion and he gave me the heart to do so. Because being here I thought everyone would think that way, but they are too busy thinking about the theater they are going to open or their diamond business, which it is totally awesome that God gave them that passion!!! But he didn’t give those kinds of passions to me. Last night the owner of the YWAM base took up an offering because he wants to purchase a workout set here on the base that everyone can use, that is really nice but it costs A LOT. As the baskets are being passed around, I’m thinking first of all, walk outside if you want exercise and also all of you guys are Christians and what about the 30 thousand children who die of starvation each day, do you know that is like six September 11ths happening every single day?!? So as the baskets went around I just sat there really confused and really realizing that I am different, because God made us all different with different passions and desires.

So what was that whole tangent about?.. was I have been fearing man, rather than fearing God. Because it when come to this subject, I have always cared what people thought of me, people have thought I was strange because I think this way, some people think I live in la la land, where i think that I can help who ever I want. People have told me I can’t. People have told me I won’t. People, people, people… see it is easy to be concerned what people think of you and be concerned about their reactions to your actions. BUT we are to fear God not man. God has given me this heart that is unique and return I have been like, “Thank you God but I’m going to have to give it back to you because people don’t accept that.” No I should be being concerned what God thinks and feels and being so excited that God has giving me these desires, not try to hide them. Ok I’m going to stop talking about this because I sound like a broken record, but that is something I have learned that has taught me so much. I use to hide my heart and my passions because I feared what people would think of me, but I don’t anymore, (I’m not saying I don’t care about your opinion or you anymore, I mean like if you tell me I can’t and God tells me I can.. I will listen to him). So I’m so excited because I learned what it means to fear God and that is something I desire to do! Because these are all words that I just typed but now I need to live it out!