More than ever I feel that this is exactly where I'm supposed to be and exactly where God has brought me. I love the wide and spacious place He has brought me into (Psalm 18)! I cannot help but proclaim the goodness of God over and over again as I sit here surrounded by such beauty: coconut trees swaying slightly in the breeze, fluffy off-white clouds hanging low in the sky, and a blue, blue sky.
This is the perfect place for God to romance your heart. You cannot help but fall more madly in love with the Creator after seeing the expressions of His creativity and beauty in the nature here. And that's exactly what's happening to me here: I'm falling more in love with Jesus every single day.
I struggle to put into words what all has happened so far. When I look at the person I was before I came here and the person I am now, I can confidently say that I am not the same person I was. God has already covered so much ground and given me freedom in so many areas and we're only two weeks into the three months that I'll be here! They say that these three months of teaching will be like seven years of church teaching. Talk about majorly compressed!
From the first day, everyone, including the leaders, knew that God was going to go to new places with this Fire & Fragrance school that previous schools had never gone before. Andy Byrd (who was teaching day 1 and the rest of the first week) got to the first point of his notes which was to ask for the spirit of wisdom and revelation from Ephesians when the Holy Spirit's agenda took over. We spent the next two hours or so crying, singing in the spirit, and contending for God to break in with His freedom specifically in areas of unbelief, shame, and self-hatred in our lives.
It was intense.
We realized that God had answered our prayers of asking for the spirit of wisdom and revelation right then and there. When that very Spirit comes in, everything that's not of God (like our shame, self-hatred, unbelief, etc.) squirms, disliking being exposed.
The rest of the week was focused on laying the right foundation: the foundation of the love of God. Our cracked and weak foundation of us trying and striving to love God rightly must be replaced with the foundation of His love for us. It's all about Him. Jesus needs to be put back in His rightful place in the gospel at the center of it all and we need to learn to simply receive that love which He has lavished on us. It's not about us loving Him, but it's about Him loving us. We love because He first loved us. God's love has wrecked me this week. He has given me fresh revelation on exactly how much He really loves me. Zephaniah 3:17 is something very special that I absolutely must share with you. It says this:
The LORD your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.
Andy broke it down into something quite spectacular. The Hebrew words (or something like that) for "rejoice" and "singing" mean two completely different concepts than we'd usually think or associate with those two particular words. To rejoice means to spin around with wild emotion and to sing means to scream with a shrill voice at the top of your lungs.
Picture God rejoicing and singing over you like that and I can guarantee that you will get so wrecked by His love. He's wild about you! He's crazy with emotion over you! His heart is RAVISHED by just one glance of your eyes.
Jonathan David Helser, an incredible prophetic worship leader who's with us this week, has this song that puts it perfectly. It goes like this:
You are an endless ocean, a bottomless sea...
There's no end to the affection that you have for me
The ocean of His love for us is so vast, so limitless that we'll still be swimming in it for all of eternity and still we will not find any shore or any bottom. I'm letting that love come and change who I think I am. God is redefining the way that I look at myself. He is releasing me into the fullness of what it means to be a daughter of the King of Kings. He is giving my rightful authority because of how He has seated me in heavenly places. I am a co-heir with Christ! He is restoring my dignity and royalty. He is showing me who I really am. He is giving me freedom to walk that out.
I am my Beloved's.
I am my Beloved's.
I am my Beloved's.
It's who I am and who I will forever be.
That's just a little taste of what God's been speaking over me this past week and a half. So much has happened, and yet I still want more. Who knows what these next weeks will hold?
Thank you so much for running with me on this journey God is taking me on! May you be rocked by a fresh revelation of how much the Father loves you.
