Week 6: Defending Your Faith

       What? This post is early? I am such an overachiever. Hah just kidding. But this blog post is early because tomorrow our entire school is going to Auckland for a week! The reason is, the previous school that started in October is returning from their outreach and they are staying here so we are getting kicked out and driving 3 hours to Auckland to stay at that base for next week's lectures. I am so excited! Now about this past week....

       Overall this week was very challenging in such a good way. Our speaker's name was Doug Sparks (I think he has written a book or two), but he literally challenged everything we believed. Only about half of it was his prepared presentation and a lot of it was spontaneous conversation, debating, asking questions, discussion on different viewpoints about war, death, marriage, sex, homosexuality, God's justice, mercy, and goodness. At times the conversation got intense and other times it got really annoying, but overall it was good and I learned to own my faith even more. The general theme of this week was that the reason a lot of Christians aren't very influential is because they know what they believe but not necessarily why they believe it. That's what this week was essentially. We were forced to think for ourselves and not just be force fed information. Literally every single day I left the lecture room with a lot of questions and few answers. When it comes down to it, we really aren't responsible to teach each other anything. Doug told several stories of a ministry he has called the Foundry which is really just a place for troubled teens to come and discover God. Doug wouldn't try and teach them anything. He would simply keep asking why? Why they felt that way about a certain life event or why they believed something about God. He also would just love on them so much and continually ask what do you feel the Holy Spirit is leading you to do? I think that is so cool. Often God teaches us through other people but ultimately He is the one who allows the information about Him to really sink in and resonate. I am quite fond of that. I know some of my fellow students really struggled this week and really were quite frustrated with Doug because he always kept the conversation going which provoking questions. Now that we are out of it, I am really glad I went through it because I have a deeper understanding of who He is.

       In some exciting news, I felt that God was nudging me to get baptised again and that took place on Friday. I did get baptised before and at that time it was a real declaration of my faith but since then I had still lived my life by putting other things above Him. I still put the opinion of man over the opinion of God and identified with how I thought I was viewed. This most recent baptism was a statement to say that I am done with that lifestyle and that God will be first and foremost of my life from here on out. So whoo!

       Fun/annoying story: So last night we had a MASSIVE bonfire, but afterward I got into a really cool conversation with some rad people here (Katie and Christy) and it ended up going from like 12 to 4 in the morning. It consisted of our week and what God was showing us and our struggles and past and was really amazing (I have really learned here that talking through and sharing everything is incredibly freeing). My mindset was that the weekend was before us and I could sleep in until lunch the next day. However, at 5:30 in the morning I wake up to a face saying. "Get up, put on warm clothes, and meet me by the door in 10 minutes" Me being dazed, thought it was my bunk mate trying to go for a spontaneous prayer adventure or something but after a couple seconds I realized it was my stream leader. Turns out our entire worship stream was woken up and we were going somewhere at 5:30 in the morning, after I had a whole hour and a half to sleep. Needless to say I was struggling to stay awake. As we were driving, they told us how their plan was for us to go to the beach and eat while watching the sunrise. They prepared everything: pancakes, eggs, toast, fruit, coffee, tea, and bacon. It was incredible but I was pooped. So the food and the adventure of it was fun but it was annoying how tired I was/still am right now. I'm loving this place and these people and I am learning how to be confident in who I am and to be who I am all of the time. Thanks for reading.