Evangelist?

Well, I'm now finished my second week at BSSM and it continues to be amazing but I will tell you more of that in a moment. First I just need to say that God has shown me that my heart surgery last week grafted my heart into Jesus' heart, not on to it. Wow! How awesome is that, my heart truly beats as one with Jesus. Awesome!

So back to the first couple of weeks of school. The words I would use to describe them are (not in any particular order):

Blessed

Challenging

Tiring

Busy

Mind blowing

Worship filled

Fun

Community

Fellowship

Joyous

In the first week we were blessed with great teaching from Bill Johnson and Kris Valloten every day. It truly is a blessing to be able to sit under their teaching and all the other wonderful teachers we are going to have the privilege to hear this year. The scriptural truths about identity and purpose came thick and fast and often left us feeling overloaded. Thankfully, we will hear them all a lot more before we are done!

We also got to meet our Revival Group Pastors and the 3rd year interns that are supporting them. Revival groups are smaller groups (about 65 students in each) that make it much easier to build community and family. As you can imagine that would be quite hard with 1200 other students all at once! My group are lovely and we had a great party on Monday to begin to get to know each other. We went to a place called Whiskey Town Lake which was beautiful and I spent the afternoon (in the shade) laughing and getting to know a few of the ladies in our group. Next week we are not in school but going away for 3 days on retreat with our groups. Have very little idea what it will be like but am pretty certain it will be good fun and full of worship and good teaching.

So, for those of you who are interested, here are some of the nuggets that I have been touched by so far:

If all we do is feast we just get tired and lazy, we need to give what we get away (this is very pertinent to being here as it feels like an amazing feast).

Authority comes from identity but anointing comes from encounter.

You are not the temptations you resist but the virtues you embrace.

Testimony brings glory to God, if we don't minister to the sick we don't give God opportunity to heal so that we can have testimony to bring Him glory.

We become what we see in the watering hole of our imagination, that is, what we think the most important person in our own personal world thinks of us.

The church is the gateway between heaven and earth.

Both God and Satan want us in the wilderness sometimes they just have different intentions, the devil wants to defeat us but God has given us all we need to win.

If we want the peace that passes all understanding then we need to give up our right to understand and be obedient when we speaks not when we gain understanding.

Delayed obedience is disobedience.

These are just a few that stick out to me and we have only been in school 2 weeks! Truth is though that we will not have Bill and Kris every week as our full timetable kicks in as we will have Advanced Ministry Training (AMT) and City Service to do as well. I have signed up for AMTs (have to pick 3 but get one) that are all focused on going deeper with God, building your secret place and your intimacy with Him. This was key to me as I feel it is the sure foundation that everything else will be built upon. For City Service we had to select 5, my number one choice is outreach in San Francisco as I had this on my heart before I ever came but I have also selected outreach in Reno, bar ministry, women's drug rehab and homeless breakfast. Will tell you more about AMT and City Service when I know what options I have got. So excited though and in just know that I will get the ones Papa wants me to have.

Personally, the 4 weeks I have been here have been amazing but at the same time very hard. My last post spoke a little about this, I have had to deal with several lies that I thought were long ago dealt with and they were all around my identity. Thankfully, Papa knows His timing and I got a great word from my roommate Lizzie this week that reminded me that the enemy wanted to take me out because he was scared of my destiny because I am an overcomer! Wow! Immediately, my perspective began to change and my confidence grow. This was helped too by knowing I had an amazing group of ladies praying for me in the UK as my initial reaction to the word was, help! Papa finished the week by giving me a new gift, the gift of evangelism and declaring over me that I am an evangelist. Now I know many people have told me this over the years but I have never believed it. Now, however, I have received it and believe it. I am an evangelist, called to love the hell out of people and see them encounter God!

Looking forward to this week as we go on retreat as a revival group for 3 days and I am excited to see what God wants to do. There is lots of reading for school but I am reading (as an extra) Bob Johnson's Love Stains, he and his wife reach out to the world's trash in San Francisco to treat them as heaven's treasure. I thoroughly recommend it to you all. It is amazing and has only confirmed that I am an evangelist and that I want to reach out to the least and the lost in San Francisco.

Thanks for reading.