Week One:Lecture

On Wednesday morning life on the base was so much better than what i had experienced sunday-tuesday night during exodus.
We started off the morning with this amazing powerful speaker and his name is Andy byrd. He's just one of those guys where the light of God just radiates off him as he speaks.
I dont even know where to begin describing about what he was talking about so I will just write down what is on my heart. (bear with me and forgive me if its not making sense)!

God is ready to hand us radical abandonment as long as we are ready to hang on to it.
I wanna leave with saying "the one thing I desire is that i can gaze upon the beauty of Jesus".
I dont wanna live my life focusing on lesser lovers and beauty's. Our hunger will lead us to the beauty of Jesus.
so many of us (me) are constantly dealing with leftover baggage, shame and guilt of our past which causes us to think that we dont measure up to what God has for us. We continue to go in cycles of beating ourselves up for a couple days after we sin until we can no longer beat ourselves up anymore. Then at that point we decided its finally okay and time to confess and repent because we beat ourselves up so much, but then we do the same sin again and go through that same cycle of beating ourselves up and repentance again. Its because we have not yet had a revelation of Gods love for us that we continue to go through this cycle of shame, guilt and condemnation. If we only knew the true beauty of Jesus then we wouldnt get into any of these sins.
Revelation of falleness is crucial to understanding the grace of God, We have all failed Jesus, but we can't dwell on that. God is bigger than our falleness and there is nothing that can qaulify us for unforgiveness.
God wants to use our failures, guilt, and condemnation to give us deeper revelations. We all carry around an incredible amount of guilt and wake up daily thinking we dont measure up to God. We keep falling into the same patterns of daily sin life. but failure of the past and present is what will bring us into a deeper revelation of Gods love for us.
This story in the bible amazes me. John 8:1-3.
it is about the woman caught in adultery. the accusers bring her to Jesus and say "what should we do with this woman"? (the summarized version).
but Jesus says "if anyone of you is without sin let him be the first to throw a stone at her".
all the accusers left and it was only the woman and Jesus left.
This is what Jesus said to the woman "Go and live a life without sin , Neither do I condemn you".
WOW! This woman was caught in the actual act of adultery which would cause her by law to be stoned to death but Jesus just let her walk away and told her to sin no more!
Only when we truely see Jesus as our lover is when we see the damage of our adultery.
Own up to adultery so that Jesus can take it.
Im almost finished (sorry if this is choppy)
Intimacy without surrender is adultery. Its time to come to the point of total surrender. What can compare to the beauty of christ? everything we have is nothing. Surrendering is not about what we are giving up but is actually about what we are gaining.
Today we stand at the point of surrender, only if we have the understanding of a true revelation of who we are surrendering to. Sacrifice is about what we are gaining.
If the world encountered christians who had true intimacy with Jesus, than the world would come running to Jesus. Lets all be sold out for Jesus everywhere!
The purpose of life is to glorify and enjoy Him forever.
Psalms 45 1, 10-11: God is incredibly enthralled with our beauty. He desires his people.
Song of Songs 4:9: You have ravished my heart with one glance of your eye.
God is sitting and waiting for one glance with you and when he does get that one glance He is enthralled with our beauty. What happens when we lock eyes with our savior, if we begin starring at Him? He is just sitting alone day after day and waiting for that one glance.

This is just a tiny bit of what we have been learning so far in DTS. Like i said, God is just begining to give me more understanding of who he is and it has only just begun!