revelation + application = life change

Hello friends.

So its been another two weeks so it is time for another update. Just to start out with I will say that I am leaving for a three week long camping trip today so I won't have internet for three weeks. So if you try to contact me I won't be able to see or answer, also I won't be posting any Blogs or Vlogs for at least three weeks. Also as always feel free to comment and give me advice on my writing. Thanks!

So again I will just have to start at where I left off of the last blog and try to get you updated, I am sure there is a lot I will leave out but I will try and keep it organized and include all the important parts.

The third week of classes was repentance and forgiveness, this class was taught by the director of this YWAM base. Its not my place to say to much about her, but she has a very cool testimony. She did a great job of teaching. As I said in the last post there is not a ton of content in the lectures that is new to me, but I still always get new revelation from the classes. One thing that I have heard said around the base is: Information (or revelation) plus application equals life change. Or at least its something like that that they say. I think that is why every week of YWAM has been hugely transforming for me. Bible college gave me tons of information, I had tons of revelation, but it didn't really bring about that much lasting change. YWAM reminds me of what I learned during Bible college, and then adds application, and the combination of the two really has been much more life changing then I expected. To use another illustration, which I seem to have grown to really like using illustrations, its like I could teach someone the theory behind shifting a manual car, I could explain in vivid detail the actually process of shifting a car, I could show them how to shift a car. However, if I never actually let them shift the car themselves they would not be able to do it. Bible college would have spent a very very long time explaining how to shift a car, but then would have stopped before they let you shift the car, YWAM gives you a quick lesson on how to shift and then lets you practice it while they sit their and coach you. I think this is why YWAM is transformational.

Anyway for the repentance and forgiveness week I had heard a lot about the “application” time we have every Friday. I had heard stories that the application has gone on for over fourteen hours before, and that it will start at 8:00 in the morning and go until 1:00 or 2:00 the next morning. So coming into the class I was expecting that it must be something pretty major. During the lectures we pretty much just went though the scriptures saying we should repent, then the scriptures describing what all sin is, then finally we went though the scriptures saying we should forgive. Like always it was pretty much nothing new to me, I had heard this stuff before in college, but then we got to the application. For the application they told us to spend a few days in prayer and make a list of any unconfessed sin we had, and anyone who we hadn't forgiven. Then they would have three chairs in front of the class, the teacher would sit in one, the school leader would sit in one, and then a student would sit in the middle. The student would then come up and pray and confess to God and the class there sins and ask for forgiveness, then they would forgive anyone they hadn't forgiven, and then the school leader and the teacher would pray for them. So yes this was all in front of the entire class, people could here you, but you weren't just telling the class your sins, you were praying, and we just happened to be in the room. So we could here, but you weren't like explaining your sin to us. The shortest answer as to why we do it in front of the whole class is James 5:16. Now this wasn't actually required, it was just highly encouraged. I was glad to see that everyone did it though. It did take a long time, some people came from pretty rough back grounds so it took a while to confess and forgive, and then the teacher would tend to pray for probably twenty minutes per person. I kind of want to go into more detail to give you all a better picture of what happened that day, but it is not my place to share other peoples experiences since this is a very personal matter. As for me it was good, and I think it did help me break some sin patterns in my life that I didn't even realize where there before. Though since I have lived a pretty sheltered life, and pretty much everyone has been nice to me I didn't have much to forgive people for, which I am very glad about that, but I think for some people finally forgiving people must have been a huge relief. So I was glad to see the life change that took place in others peoples live, and it was also a big help in my life. It did take from 8:30 in the morning to about 10:30 at night. But it was good.

Then, as if confessing all your sins to a group of 28 people wasn't enough for one day we now get to Friday night. So as I said we got done around 10:30, several of the students were hungry so a group of us decided to walk to a nearby dominoes pizza. Now for those of you who don't know, the YWAM base is in a bad part of city. To me, a sheltered child from a rural part of the world who has spent about 2 days in a city in his entire life, walking around in the bad part of a city at 10:30 sounded fine. I mean I thought maybe there would be drunk people out, and maybe there would be some other not so great people walking around, but I didn't really expect to have an issue because just ignore the people and you will be fine. So right across from the base there is a train station, the train station is a bridge that goes up and over a highway and the train tracks, and then there are ramps that go down to different trains, or you can just keep going and use it as a bridge. To get to dominoes we had to walk over this train station, as we were walking over we past two aboriginal guys. Both the aboriginal guys smelled of alcohol and one was smoking, they left us alone so we left them alone and it seemed fine, then as we got to the other side of the bridge at the top of the stairs before going back down to the street, there was an aboriginal women crying. It was dark so we couldn't see super well, but she was crying and obliviously seem pretty distressed one guy in our group asked if she was okay, she responded with what I thought was “I want to die” then she turned away and started walking down the stairs. I assumed that she was someone who was going to go up on the bridge and jump off to commit suicide or something. The guy who first talked to her and a couple other people from our group walked after her and kept talking to her while the rest of our group stayed back a little ways, we thought it would be better not to overwhelm her with so many people since there was about eight of us. A little ways down the sidewalk there was a street light. After getting to the light the people with her could see that she was bleeding from her head, she had a big bump that was swelling more, one of her eyes was already swollen closed, and she was clearly hurt quite badly. They called us over and we got some napkins and tried to stop the bleeding. She had said that the guys we just passed had beat her and then left her there, one of them was her husband and we don't know who the other guy was. Two of the girls in our school tried to help the woman as much as possible, while other people called the police and people at base to let them know what was going on. I didn't know what to do so I pretty much just stood there to make sure the guys wouldn't come back. We did see the two guys start coming back so part of the group walked with the women down to the next street light. Two of the guys from our group stayed behind at the first street light. I guess the two aboriginal guys walked by looked at the two guys from our group. Looked down and saw all us with the women then they just paced back and forth for a little while, then left. Then we just waited for the police to arrive. I don't know any medical stuff so I couldn't help the woman much, but I just stood there and watched for anyone coming and prayed. The people who did know a little medical stuff tried to help the women, and they talked to her to keep her awake because she was barely conscious. She told us she was from “the desert” she said her husband had beat her up because he was jealous. He was jealous because she was dancing at the Australia day festival the day before. She kept telling us she would be fine and we should just go, she said she has been beat before and she will be okay, she said she had been burned and beat by her husband and others, and that they actually broke her arm recently and that it was still broken. She was supposed to go for X-rays that day actually. She also said she had two kids, but that they were safe. She also said she was a christian and that she goes to church, she was glad to have us praying for her as well, even though she was hurt quite badly she was still super nice, she swore at one point and then was like “oh sorry, sorry guys”.

Eventually the police showed up and then the ambulance got there shortly after them. They took her to the hospital, she was barely conscious by the time they got there and she had several injury's to her head plus her neck hurt whenever she moved it. The police took her information and got our stories about what happened. Then they looked around the area some. They said that they looked at her record and she had been involved in domestic abuse stuff before, and that she does have kids but that they should be safe. They also said that even though they know her story was true they are not allowed to do anything unless she decides to press charges, and that women around here almost never will. So it was sad that probably nothing would happen from it.

It wasn't that dangerous of a situation for us or anything because we were in that big of a group. But it was kind of eye opening since I came from such a sheltered home, and sheltered part of the world actually. I mean I knew domestic abuse was a thing, and I knew it was a very serious problem, but since I had never seen it before it was quite eye opening to see it. It was kind of the same thing as in class, the class content was stuff I knew already, but applying it brought life change, I knew facts about domestic abuse, but seeing it was life changing. One way in which it was life changing was just realizing that we had just walked by the people who did it, and they tried to come back. That brought on a certain fear, I mean we were in a big enough group that I knew we would be fine even if they came back but there was still a fear. I talked to one of the staff who grew up in Perth, and he said that before he came across a situation similar to this but he was by himself, he tried to help the girl and the guy came back saw someone helping her got mad and tried to stab his eyes out with a pair of metal shears. So to me there was just this thought and fear of what might happen, what could happen. Now I am not like afraid to walk around this part of town now or anything like that, and I wasn't actually even that afraid when we were helping the women, but to me it was just a realization of maybe this is what some girls and other people feel like all the time. I knew before that a lot of people, girls especially, were afraid of walking alone and or staying the night in certain places and etc. and I just didn't get why. I mean I would still walk with them and be nice to them and stuff, but I never understood their fear. Now I think I understand part of their fear. Also it was life changing because I realized just how real this is, and that I might see it again, and I would need to know how to react. So it made me feel the need to talk to a few people and try and get more information about domestic abuse. I mean I don't really have a ton to say about it, but just realizing how real it is has changed how I view and think about a few things. Also just seeing this stuff and hearing people talk about how common of an experience it is in cities has changed my life. I am from a smaller town, but I always thought I would be happy living in a city, but living here has totally changed my view of cities. I mean I could probably still live in one, but I definitely like small rural areas more. But just the realization that the majority of the population lives in cities, and that this is what cities are like has really changed me. I have realized the world is more broken as a whole then I thought. I mean I knew about this things, but I never really realized what it was like.

That whole situation plus other ones that I have had recently have change my view of cities a lot. The night after that happened I was walking from base to my dorm and I was stopped by two girls who try to get me to pay them for sex. A few nights later I was yelled at by a drunk person. I was in town and heard two girls get in a screaming match and possible get in a fight after I left, I say a guy take off his shirt in front of a group of teenage girls, trying to get the girls to look at him. So there is nothing that bad about living in a city, and I could live here for longer, I just really didn't realize that everytime you go anywhere in a city you see something bad going on. Perth is actually a good city but it seems like still every time I go into the city there are bad things happening. Which again I knew stuff like this happened, but experiencing it, changes the way I see things. And there was a realization that most of the people in the world live in cities, so this is normal life for so many people.

Anyway the next week was worship and intercession. This week did actually have lecture content that was new to me, plus the application was new as well. I mean it wasn't really that new, I had heard most of this stuff before, but I hadn't heard it in a classroom setting. This was not the same type of prayer they taught in bible college. Pretty much the whole idea of intercession is to ask God to tell you what to pray for, and then pray for what He tells you. To me this was a totally new concept. I mean I knew about listening to God before, and I knew about prayer before, but I had the understanding that when we prayed it was when we spoke to God so it was coming from us not him. But when we are praying for other people, which is what intercession is about, it is good to ask God what specifically we should pray about. To me that was new, also Bible college did teach that we should pray, but to them we should pray because we were commanded to in the Bible. Where as here we pray because praying can actually change what God does. During the class we also talked about how to pray, I thought the best thing they said was to not pray the “typical prayers” things like “Lord just be with... or Lord bless... or etc” those are the sort of prayers where you say a lot but actually say nothing at all. Don't be vague about what you are praying about, pray about specific things. If you are praying for someone who is about to go on their outreach don't pray for God to be with them. Pray for all fear to be cast out of them, pray for them to have the words to speak to certain people, pray for them to hear Gods voice clearly, etc, etc. Pray for specific things, don't pray vaguely.

The week was good but I don't think I have any specific stories or illustrations from that week, but it was good. As always there is more I could write, but I think I mentioned the most life changing things so far from the last two weeks. There are little stories here and there of unimportant things. And there are just little fun things like games and activities that happen around base. But I think I mentioned the most important stuff so I will probably end this blog here. Though something I really want to write about is some of the other students. I have been realizing that I write mostly about class, though I am changed a lot outside of class, changed a lot by the people I am living with. There are a few students in particular who changed my life a lot and I think on this camping trip I will talk to them and see if I can write about them and share some of what they have taught me and then post several updates right after I get back, a few about people, a few about the stuff we have done, and then a few just general ones like this.

If you have actually read this far, thanks you very much. Honestly it is pretty disappointing when I write something like this and then no one reads it, but there are people out there like you who do take the time to read it, so when I thank you, now that I truly mean from the bottom of my heart, thank you for caring enough to read about my life.