Quit Performing and Start Living in Intimacy with Him!

How do you begin writing about something that has absolutely transformed your life?

I have been putting off writing about my whole DTS (Discipleship Training School) experience because of that very question. How can I even begin to explain what God has done so personally in my heart? How can I best share the intimacy He has allowed me to have with Him? How do I share the heart He poured into me while I was in Cambodia and Thailand? Even now, as I begin to write this, the task seems daunting. When I first got back, I failed miserably at trying to explain my experience to my family. I think a major contributor to my stumbling words was my extreme culture shocking. However, I must do my best to explain now. How can I keep silent any longer about what God has truly done? My prayer is that my words to you all are completely led by the Holy Spirit, and that through His words you can catch a glimps of what I have seen and experienced. I think I will be able to do a slightly better job this time around since the culture shock has subdued itself quite a bit.

To begin, I should start at the beginning, lecture phase Colorado Springs, Colorado. When I had gotten to Colorado Springs I was totally unsure of what to expect. I knew that God was about to do something crazy and insane in my life. After all, He had just provided me with 1700 dollars from a woman I had never met before, who had appearently had a dream where God told her she was to give me the money. That was the first, of many, outstanding moments of God's incredible hand at work. I was unaware that that was only the start though. I would see and experience much more amazing displays of Him. Before DTS started I was a girl new out of high school, living out of state for the first time. I had all this head knowledge of God and the Bible. I had all the right answers in my head, and I did have a longing to be a missionary. I thought I had pretty much everything figured out. As soon as I got to Colorado Springs though I knew that something different was to come. I knew God wanted to do something new in my heart. I had written this prayer before lecture phase started. I had no idea how much this single prayer would change and effect me.

Jesus,

I need to give myself up. I am not strong enough to love You and walk with You on my own. I can't do it, and I need You. I need You deeply and desperately. I believe You are worth it, that You are better than anything else I could have in this life or the next. I want You. Be all in me. Take all of me. Have Your way with me.

-Amen.

That single prayer opened myself up to God in a whole new deep personal way. I learned right off the bat about the power of prayer and the effects of it in my life.

To sum up what lecture phase taught me is slightly difficult. There is so much, however the most important vital things I feel I can sum up in four key points. First, I learned how to recognize the voice of God. Second, I learned the importance of fearing God rather than man. Third, I learned to recognize the lies of the enemy in my own life. Forth, and proabably most importantly, I learned about the importance of the Holy Spirit in my life, and how to operate in intimacy with Him. To sum up all four of these things, I learned how to be intimate with the huge Holy God I had so much head knowledge about in High-School. I was absolutely shaken to my core when I realized what it was like to be intimate and close with our Holy God.

I will proclaim this and say this now. We can be intimate and close with God. We can hear His voice speaking clearly and directly to us. God still gives us words today through the Bible, through dreams, through creation, through pictures, and through other people. The Holy Spirit is still at work in large. He never stoped working in miraculous ways through people. In order to know Him in these ways we need to first undersand who He is. We need to learn to fear Him rather than the people around us. We cannot live in fear of what other people's opinions are of us, or how we appear to man. It only matters what we look like to God. We need to recognize that the enemy has placed lies and strongholds in our lives, and we need to address those things head on, and learn not to stand for them. We need to make ourselves humbled before God and others, and admit where we have allowed the enemy to speak lies into our heart, and recognize where we have come to believe him. We need to reject those lies and replace them with the truth that God has proclaimed over us. We need to listen to the Holy Spirit, who speaks life into us. You don't understand the power of a spoken word.

I will share with you one of my most pivotal moments in lecture phase. It proved to me just how powerful the spoken word is, and how I had seperated myself from God by beliveing the lies the enemy had spoken to me. We were in class one day listening to one of our scheduled speakers. Our speakers would come from all over the world to speak to us for a week about a certain topic. Right now I am unaware of who the speaker was that week, and what he was even teaching us on. None of that really matters now anyway because God was working something incredible in my heart. The speaker had stoped in the middle of his teaching and looked at me. He could obviously tell my mind and heart were somewhere completely different. He had stoped to give me a word He felt like was from the Lord. This is not a very uncommon thing, I learned, in YWAM. His word he got for me was this, "It is time to get off the stage and quit performing. It is time to no longer perform for God, but rather, have intimacy with Him!" My heart just stopped. His words struck me right where I was at. I had been struggling because all my life I had learned that I need to know all the right things to say. I need to serve and be involved with the church. I need to volunteer. I need to be in leadership, lead Bible studies, go to Bible studies. I need to perform. All that would make me a good strong christian. In that momement however, all that was ripped away from me right there in front of my whole class. I was immediately put in a postion to be humbled before everyone in that class and God. I was in tears.

All these thoughts came flooding into my mind. The Holy Spirit began moving within me. The question rose up within me, why do I believe I need to perform for God? As soon as that question rose to my mind the speaker asked me that very question. I knew the answer immediately, which I was not expecting. I believed I needed to perform because that was the only way God or anyone else would notice me. Reluctantly at first, I admited this outloud to him and the whole class. Again the speaker asked another question of me, "why do you think God (or anyone else) wouldn't notice you?" It was at this moment it really clicked in my mind. That was such a good question. Why would I ever think God, the one who created me...who thought me up, wouldn't notice me? The reason why was becuase it was a lie from the enemy. The enemy had somewhere down the line placed that thought in my head and I latched onto it and accepted it. Through the acceptance of that one lie I allowed the flood gates of others in. Anger rose up within me. A righteous one. One towards the enemy...and partly myself. How could I allow myself to believe this!? I felt strongly, through the Holy Spirit, to speak up and say something. I got up in front of everyone and started denouncing those lies I once accepted to be true. I began rejecting them outloud for the first time. It started out with, "I reject the lie that God will not see me unless I perform for Him" and it ended with "I reject the lie that I am ugly and of no worth". Where did that one come from, I wondered. I could not believe I was holding onto such a terrible lie, and I could not believe how deeply I believed it. I learned quickly how deeply I did believe it. Only part of the battle is denouncing it and rejecting it. The other part of the battle is replacing it with truth. This part was not so easy for me.

I should mention by this time the whole class had gotten involved with this. All the girls were rising up and denouncing and rejecting the lies that they had and were believing. The speaker thought it would be good for the guys to match up with the girls and encourage them and speak truth to them while they were doing these things. The guys were there to not let the girls slack in anything they said. They were there to push us to really say what was true outloud and really believe it. I had two guys with me that were really pushing and encouraging me. The easy part was denouncing and rejecting the lies. The hard part came when I had to speak truth about myself. One of the guys I was with said, "okay now you need to proclaim your beauty. Say outloud, like you mean it, that you are beautiful." I thought, "hey no big deal. I can do that." The crazy thing was when I tried to get the words out they just stumbled out. They were weak and fake. The guys I was with told me to say it again. So I did. They said to say it again, but louder. At this point God is completely putting me in the most crazy place of humility. I am about to scream at the top of my lungs that I am beautiful, and I am to say it as if I mean it from the depths of my soul. I was getting so angry that it was so hard for me to say it. It made no sense. The anger that rose up inside of me over-rode my fear of what I would look like when I would scream at the top of my lungs. So I did. With everything I had, I proclaimed it. I proclaimed my beauty and rejected the lie that I was ugly. As soon as I did, shoots of pain ran through my body. My arms immediately felt as if I had been laying on them and they had fallen asleep. It felt like pins and needles all up and down my arms and legs. It was the weirdest sensation I have ever experienced. It was at that momemt I finally felt released. It was incredible and wonderful and freeing. However, it troubled me deeply that it physically hurt my body to proclaim that I was beautiful outloud. It was then that I realize just how deeply I had believed all those lies.

Again anger rose up inside me. I was furious with the enemy and the lies he had been placing in my own life. Only now I wasn't just angry for myself. I looked around the room and I could see that he had terriorized all these girls into believing some sort of foolish lie about themselves. I could all at once see the pain on their faces as they all tried to denounce these things. After my dramatic yell from across the room the speaker asked if I could stand and pray for all the girls in the room. I felt the Holy Spirit strongly nudging me to stand and pray, only He was asking me to be even bolder. I felt like He wanted me to stand on a chair so I could pray over all the girls. I felt a little foolish asking but I wanted to be obedient to what the Spirit was leading, I asked if I could stand on the chair beside me. The speaker said I could of course. As I stood up on the chair, I cannot remember all that happened or what I even prayed. All I remember was that I furious, and I was praying furiously against the enemy and against his hold on these girls. I renounced and rejected the lies and the strongholds he had placed in their lives. It was the first time ever, that I really felt like I had let go of myself. I didn't care what anyone else thought about me. I didn't care how stupid I looked standing on that chair. All I knew was that God wanted me to do some serious battling.

I tell you this story because it sums up what exactly God had been doing in me through the whole lecture phase. God was teaching me to fear Him rather than man. That day I learned to not care what I looked like to others. I learned to be real and transparent about my issues and sins. I learned to stand against the enemy and the lies he placed into my head. I learned to recognize the voice of God and hear what truth He had to speak to me. I learned too how to be led by the Holy Spirit and to be unafraid to follow His leading. I learned that I had to tear down those walls in order to be intimate with Him. As soon as those walls came down I was overcome with the extreme love and presence of the Lord!

There is so much more I could write here. So many other stories of how God humbled me and allowed me to go even deeper with Him in intimacy. Like I said, all of this is just the beginning. There is much more to share with my outreach phase. This is a good place to start though.

What I want you all to understand, and hear though, is that God wants to be intimate with you. He wants to be intimate with you in the most unimaginable way possible. He wants to exceed all your expectations. However, He is a gentleman. He will never force Himself upon you. You have to do work on your part. After all, it is a relationship. It takes two. You have to pray and open yourself up to be willing to do WHATEVER it takes. You have to be willing to do WHATEVER God asks of you. No matter how foolish you might think it may make you look. I have learned that in order to get crazy stories with God you have to be willing to risk with Him. Are you willing to risk with Him? Are you willing to go deeper, become more intimate and personal with Him? Are you willing to be made humble before Him and others? Are you ready to quit performing and start living in intimacy with Him?