7th week: Missions, the Gospel focus

As a Christian, I have a purpose.

There. The full week message on a phrase. Whew, I'm good.

We can go home now, kitty.
I like kitties.

... not enough? Ok, let's take a deeper look.

Now, about what that meant to me, it's amazing. It's challenging, obviously. It's also beautifully simple. Our mission is the Great Comission. We have known God's grace, and it's so magnificent, so life-changing, it gives us such freedom, that we can't help but share it. It's the message that can stop crime, provide with jobs and prosperity to everyone, end political corruption, defy our very concept of human nature. Is that powerful. Of course it has enemies. How couldn't it?

This mission has so many battlefields, that we must make choices, always following God's guide about when to move and where. There's a full third of the world unreached with the Gospel. A third, in the so-called Age of Communications? Shocking. But it's true, because is a message stopped by frontiers, difficulty and distance. I get it: on our actual countries, there's a lot of work to do, and that kind of work, in our usual mindset, is needed to support more ambitious outreaches. Or, as it usually happens, more ambitious local work, bigger concerts with more expensive and famous Christian music stars, bigger churches that are needed as the number of people grows...

I don't care about you worldly, unbelieving opinions. That was TOTALLY necessary.
How else would anyone believe that God is great?

And still, no lifestyle changing at a local level. That's frustrating, but the statistics say so. Now I'm a bit outside of the rail, I know it. That's not what we were speaking about this week, but it's a big deal for me. Right now, we're not making a difference. Or maybe we are avoiding things to get even worse, I guess it could be argued. But it would be a false statement; we see every year how new laws are approved, and now taking them back will be taking rights out for the people, so they will fight against that and everything seems more and more difficult, and Christianity focus seems more and more unstable...

Then we have the spirituality issue. Going to church is spiritual. Of course, serving at the church is being more spiritual. Being in a ministry full-time is even more spiritual. Being a missionary is seen as the most spiritual, and a missionary for the unreached zones it's obviously the most high spirituality. Oookey, kind of can understand what gets you into that line of thought. If you feel that there's a difference between secular or worldly and spiritual, you can't see yourself called to missions if God Himself doesn't call you, and then we'll see what happens. You're, simply, not so spiritual, so it's not your thing. There's even some paraboles about that. You're not the five talents guy, you're more of the two talents one. Of course you aren't the bad servant, is just that your portion of spirituality is a small one. Elijah had twice of the blessing of Eliah, so there: the Word supports why you mustn't be the person that goes further than your church's walls on Sundays.

That is manure. Of the bull kind, I presume.

That would be disgusting. Let's better see some cute kitties.
Seriously, don't you like kitties?

The Word never speaks about a difference between what's spiritual and what not. There are earths and heavens and were created at the same time. They mutually interact. How we eat, how we speak, how we think and how we dress in our culture are such important things that the Word itself adresses them. The Great Comission is for everyone, all parts of it. From local activity to the end of Earth, we are called to everything. We can go ourselves, we can support, we can make disciples.

My first contact with YWAM was, as you may remember, Josh, with El Lokal. I arrived to them just in time for a leadership course, and I took it. Then I listened, for the first time, the theory of what would happen if one Christian developed a fully capable disciple during a year, and the next year both of them would repeat the process, and then the network kept being increased.

Seriously, we only need to get it started!

We spoke then only in a numbers basis, but there's so much more. The Great Comission calls us to make disciples. The focus this days is on making converts. A convert accepts Christ and receives salvation, and that is great. But they're receiving Heaven's citizenship and their rights, but aren't teached about their duties as members of the Kingdom. They're the spoiled sons of the King, never interested in being any else, never growing, never maturing. And in fact, never leaving fully the worldly way of life and never achieving the full blessing that they were in fact called for.

That saddens me. That's my feeling every time we go to Overcome. Where's the powerful difference? Why are most of the people we speak to in there Christians and still the change is not visible between a believer's and an unbeliever's shack? Are they innerly richer and that's all? I can't know. It's possible that they are Christians who don't live on obedience, or that they still follow other traditional religions that interfere with the blessing that awaits them. I only can guess, from my privileged first-world mindset. I won't judge them, it's not my duty; I don't have the adequate tools, information or righteousness to do it, either. However, I'm sure they are not being correctly reached. They need discipleship as much as my own country's people. All of Prosper's strenght and passionate energy is into preaching, praying and deliverance. And again, how can I say that that isn't exactly what God is calling him to do?

I can only use this week's teaching to strenghten myself and avoid comitting the mistake of just doing what is being done on churches, instead of what God's word and God's spirit have called us to do for two thousand years. That's my goal.

6th Week: the Holy Spirit and me

I will never be able to understand God. I will never grasp what God is. I can be conscious of some aspects of Him, powerful aspects, any of which would take a lifetime to understand and probably not in full. It's crazy, and it makes me humble. You know, I kind of have the feeling that everything can be understood by my mind, absorb the knowledge and give it a good use, changing my way of life according to what I know now.

Yeah, good luck trying to do that with God. Or with the Holy Spirit alone. It's impossible. Totally impossible. And now I know that, but it's really difficult to asume! I'm proud in that. Got an IQ of 136, I'm clever, have an academical viewpoint of, well, everything... It's cool and helpful if I need to understand algebra. It makes enjoyable learning and memorizing historical dates. But about understanding God is useless.

Oh, this? Just an image of my last brain scan. Nothing out of the usual.
For me, I mean.

Useless. My intelect is useless. Wow. Writing it hurts. Thinking it hurts. I've feel really bad this week because I have to admit that I am made at image and likeness of Him, and still there's no way in Hell for me to comprehend my spiritual Father. Of course, I can find comfort in His promises. It's true that there's no way in Hell nor in Earth. But there's a way in Heaven; the Bible says that in Heaven I'll know God in full. That's amazing, and helps me to cope with the frustration of not being able to just, you know... putting God into a box where I could analyze Him. Again, as we said a couple of weeks ago, I don't wanna worship a God that I can see in full. I don't need to understand Him to love what I can see when I'm in his presence. It's just sometimes when I'm simply amazed and in awe and a bit, a little bit, frustrated, because I'm used to get to know everything I put my mind on.

This week, the Spirit came to the classroom and enjoyed us. In the sense that He made us all feel so full of joy that we couldn't stop laughing, and running, and dancing, and being crazy. A couple of us became drunk of the Spirit. Yeah, now I read quite differently Acts 1 and 2. I can't see anymore a great group of Jesus Christ disciples, receiving solemnly the fire that came from heavens over their heads and claiming the Gospel on any language known by mankind. That happened, for sure: they were claiming the Gospel and everyone understood them on their own language. The Bible says so, I'm no doubting that.

It's just that, around them and at the same time, and while claiming the Gospel too, they were a lot of people dancing spontaneously, laughing until their bellies hurt and then some, singing, clapping, jumping. I know understand why a lot of people saw them, God's chosen disciples, and thought "wow, I haven't seen so many drunkards at a time since Herod bachelor's party". Now that I've seen what they saw, such thought makes a lot more sense.

Not pictured: people people about to wet himself laughing

I've been in an emotional rollercoaster the full week. I hoped miracles. First day, Kevin talked to me and told me that God knows my heart and my creativity and is going to use me in that terms. That was amazing, and so fulfilling! I attended every class with hunger. Then, in wednesday, we were told that God will reveal to us and that there would be healings. And every time I think about God healing, I cover my myopic eyes and pray to receive it. I put a lot of hope on this. In fact, with my faith strengthened by the DTS teachings, it was obvious that God was going to fully heal my eyes! And maybe my broken wisdom tooth too!

And then nothing happened and I experiences in twenty minutes a whole depression. Wednesday's morning class ended and I wanted to kill myself, because God didn't love me enough to heal my eyes, or maybe He never had existed and every miracle that I witnessed until now were some kind of coincidences and I was trapped in South Africa and indebted and nothing was right.

Of course, I immediately ran to Nathan, because he's the kind of gentle giant that makes you feel safe and has the same kind of heart for worship that I want to develop on myself; I told him everything, he and Arno prayed for me, and as suddenly had come, the bitterness disappeared. Also, that night we were going to have the ministry night. I had hope again.

The night started fine, the tongues were unleashed, we sang and laughed, and then that was all again. My eyes were still untouched. Everyone started to burst in laughter and happiness and joy, and there I was, feeling so hurt with God and without being able to fight the same negative thoughts that harrassed me in the morning. I just cried trying not to draw anyone's attention, because they were being happy, and probably they deserved it. But not me. Maybe I had crossed some line on my time in occultism: my soul was scarred and impure, unworthy to God, in a different way than the flesh sins, so Jesus blood wasn't for me. Old fears and rationalizations were all over me. 

"Also, you're fat and have smelly feet. And now,
I'll start with the 'your mom' jokes."

Then someone came to me and prayed me. As he prayed, again the fears and the suffering couldn't stand. I was free to receive again, and I called for the Holy Spirit to give me his joy too, and it came, and I laughed and laughed while holding my sides, while crying and dancing.

I was focused on God's hand, more than in God's face. I wanted magic instead of intimacy. I was wrong. Now I feel stripped of all my pride, and in fact my self-esteem is stablishing itself again, slowly. I feel vulnerable and dependant. It's kind of awful, but also feels right, if that makes any sense. Today I belong to God more than before, because He has touched deep rooted issues that troubled me to take them away forever. I'm really grateful for this week.

Identity - 5th Week Journal

This week has been a tasteless, subtle, slow-acting poison. Rebecca, the speaker, administered it to us last Monday, and it took the full week to make effect. And then it killed everyone of us, and returned us to live transformed in a different thing that will never go back to what had been before.

Identity. By definition, who I am. Also, who I know that I am. It's a bit painful to admit that both concepts are not the same. I think I know who I am, I have a self-image, a self-esteem. I've defined them based on what I know about myself, what's my opinion of myself, what do I think other people thinks about me... And actually that hasn't to mean that I let other people define who I really am, but of course it contrasts. I know guys who think that they are really suave ladykillers, while everyone else who knows them have seen them trying to pick up a girl and failing miserably. Due to each of us being subjective beings, we need to relay on our peers perspective to get a (more) objective sight of reality.

I'm getting ahead. Or not. Everything we learned this week was connected. Our actual identity it's defined by our real identity, as stablished by God, seen through the filter of our own and others' oppinion. So, the search of our real identity needs for us to discard our subjective view of ourselves. And a great way to start is learning to discard our subjective view of other people. It's, again, an undeniable fact that we judge everyone we meet.

We have prejudices about people. Stereotypes on ethnies, countries, jobs, social status... Prejudices means previous judgements: they can be positive as well as negative. I can think that it's much less likely for a rich white woman to attack me than for a poor black man. I can even develop statistics that will support that opinion! And still, it's awfully wrong for me, as a Christian, a person who seeks having a mindset of loving everyone, to think bad of a poor black man or to be tense and alert, worried about the possibility of him trying to rob me.

Writing this remembers me about Mother Theresa of Calcuta. She was working with lepers on a daily basis. Someone told her that that was too dangerous, and that he wouldn't do such a thing for a million dollars. Mother Theresa answered him saying that she wouldn't either. She did that for love. Guess that's God's perspective on us: unconditional love.

We can't grasp that. Unconditional love? Ok, I love my fiancée. If she hurts me, I will be angry at her. If she betrays my trust, our relationship will be damaged. Of course, I'm ready to forgive her if she apologizes. Is there a limit to what would I forgive? I guess. Still, she has shown to me a true understanding. I have hurt her and she has always forgiven me. She is far from being perfect, but I can say that she loves me unconditionally.

We have worked on that relationship for seven years. Can I be a reflection of Christ good enough to do the same for everyone I meet? Wait, not enough: I'm going to work for bringing the gospel to everyone, including people who I'll never met, but I have to develop a caring heart who loves them too. An unprejudiced love. A mature love. And it's clear for me that only through my own relationship with God will I be able to understand and achieve that kind of love.

I'm thinking about prayer. This next week I'm going to leave my Bible aside and start to find more time on intimacy with God. I need it. I need Him. I feel something inside of me changing, but I can't conclude the change only through knowledge. I'm going to meet God and talk to Him, so I'll become the man that He planned for me to be.

I can