Thoughts on The Holy Spirit

Sorry it has been a while since I’ve caught you up on life here in Georgia, I was having some technical difficulties with my computer. :P Anyway, here's the run down since last time I wrote:

Two weeks ago, our teacher was Mr. Mike Esposito and the topic was the Holy Spirit.  Mike and his wife Terrill are actually on staff here at YWAM Atlanta.  Terrill helps out in the kitchen (She's the one that makes sure I have allergy friendly food!) And Mike does...other things? He's a busy guy, he teaches at other DTSs and he and Terrill have a pretty big ministry in Mexico as well.  All that to say, Mike taught us about the Holy Spirit.  Now when last week rolled around, I was excited, because Mike is a pretty dynamic speaker, and its always interesting to see what people have to say about the ol' Spirit o' God.  I mean, being raised in the church and my mom being, well my mom, I am thinking that I have just about heard everything you can hear about this Holy Spirit Guy.  I figured I would of course pick up a few new good tid bits, but for the most part, I felt like I had a pretty good understanding on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and all that jazz.  WHOO BOY. I was in for a treat!  Because the thing is, I was kind of right, I did know a lot of the information he gave us, Id heard it all before (with a few exceptions).  What Mike did however, was take all of that information that was scattered and unorganized in my brain, and presented it in such a way that I was able to clearly understand process it all as a whole.  To borrow from my classical education, it was like moving from Grammar to Logic.  I already knew all the pieces, from there it was just learning how they all fit together; then going one step further into Rhetoric, learning to put those concepts and principles into practice.  

BUT! I like sharing, so if you don’t really feel like a bible lesson you should just keep scrolling until I say stop. Ready Go! For those of you still with me, here are some of the main points and my favorite tidbits I got from Mike’s teachings: 

Secular versus Sacred- it doesn’t exist!  You belong to Christ, and that being said, any ground you walk on is sacred ground.  It is our job to bring Christ into EVERY SINGLE SPHERE OF SOCIETY.  We cannot just relegate him to the church on Sunday.  Government/law, Arts/entertainment, Education, Media, Business, Family—God fits in every single sphere. 

YOU DON’T LEAD PEOPLE TO JESUS.  You share what you know.  The Holy Spirit convicts and works in their life.  HE and he alone gets the credit for leading people to Jesus. 

OLD COVENANT VERSUS NEW CONVENANT—Ex. 30:30 is the first documented time of someone being anointed with oil.  This anointing was symbolic of the anointing of the Holy Spirit, it represented the person being set apart for God’s purpose and the Holy Spirit coming upon that person and equipping and changing them in order to accomplish that purpose.  According to the Old Covenant, only a select few received this anointing, and IT COULD BE REMOVED.  Take for example Saul (First King over Israel), in 1Samuel 11, he receives his anointing.  4 Chapters later in chapter 15, he disobeys God’s commands, and the Lord REMOVES his spirit, and rejects him as king.  However, in the New Covenant, we receive the Holy Spirit when we accept the gift of salvation.  Let me reiterate, everyone who accepts salvation through Jesus receives the Holy Spirit, not a select few, everyone.  And he’s there to stay; he doesn’t get taken away from us.  Additionally, we also receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and that’s where people’s doctrines get muddled.  But for the sake of time, I'm just going to assume that you all believe in said concept, and if you don’t, well we can argue that in the comments or something.  So that’s all really cool, but that’s not everything!  Do you all remember the story of Jesus getting baptized by his cousin John the Baptist?  Well if you don’t, the jist is this.  Jesus is like “Hey! I'm here to be baptized!” And John is like “Whoooaa bro.  I cant do that! You’re the messiah! YOU should be baptizing me!” Jesus kind of rolls his eyes and is like “Just do it.” So he gets baptized and the spirit of God comes upon him like a dove, and God speaks from heaven and announces to everyone “THIS IS MY SON IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED.”  Also very very cool.  And then Jesus goes and starts his ministry.  So, here’s the point I want to make.  Even Jesus had to receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit before beginning his ministry.  He told the disciples not to leave Jerusalem until they received it.  So if both Jesus and his disciples had to receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit, why shouldn’t we?  God doesn’t need our help, but we need his.  So he commissions us to go and make disciples of all nations, but he doesn’t send us out all on our lonesome! God chooses to partner with us and gives us his Spirit. 

STOP

Okay, now that we’re all back together, lets move on.  To those of you who read through my theological ramblings, I hope you enjoyed it.  If you skipped through them, I cannot say that I blame you; I probably would have skipped through it too.  My conclusion to last week is simply this, God’s pretty stinking cool.  He doesn’t need our help, and yet he chooses to partner with us, and more than that, he pursues relationship with us.  Take a moment to really think about that.  Think about how massive the earth is, now consider its place in our solar system.  Now think about the size of the solar system in relation to the Milky Way, then take it one step further, and think about the fact that the Milky Way is one galaxy in billions.  Can you comprehend the massiveness of the Universe?  Now think about how small you are in comparison.  The God, who painted the night sky, who created each and every planet, solar system, and galaxy individually and knows them all by name, wants to partner with you. You, a tiny little spec on the sneeze of a planet we call home.  He is pursuing YOU.  And that is why God is so cool! Which brings me quite well into last week’s topic, which was “The Father Heart of God.”  Stay tuned. J

Culture 101-- compliments of Sarah Lanier

GUYS. IVE FIGURED OUT WHAT I WANT TO BE WHEN I GROW UP.

I want to be Sarah Lanier.

Not really. But kind of. I'm not sure about the full time missionary part, but she has been to 76 countries, speaks several languages, and is like THE ywam person for cross-cultural relations. So basically she's my hero. (GIFT IDEA: her book "Foreign to Familiar") But anyway, Monday and Tuesday's classes were on going cross-cultural, which was fascinating. Also, I have beautiful notes.

I can ramble on and on and on about her teachings, but Im not sure any of you will find them as interesting or enrapturing as I happen to, so I wont bore you with all the details, just a quick recap. Everyone is either from what is called a hot-climate culture or a cold climate culture. 80% of the world is hot climate. From there, subdivisions can be made like high context and low context cultures, but there are some basic overarching personality traits that can be found in hot climate versus cold climate cultures. The fact that you can begin to understands the basics of someone's culture and how they think just by determining where they're from is amazing to me. But the most important thing I think I learned from Sarah is just to meet people where they are at. In America we are very low-context, but most of the world is very high context. Tradition matters, EVERYTHING MATTERS. And to disregard that (even unintentionally and out of ignorance) can be very offensive to people. The Apostle Paul wrote in a letter to the Corinthians:

"Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings." (1 Cor. 9:19-23)

Paul met people where they were at, related to people in whatever way they could best relate to, in order to show Christ's love. And that is a concept that is still very much applicable today on the mission field.

In other news, things here are going really well. I miss all of you very much, although the weather here is much nicer...Soo as far as visiting goes, y'all can just come down here. ;)

Oh. Also. Send me mail! I LOVE MAIL. Im also still roughly $3500 short for outreach, please please please pray about supporting me on my trip, and as always, your thoughts and prayers are important as well. God has been doing some really cool things here over the last 2 weeks and I know he is going to continue to work here over the next three months.


Much Love,

Ali

Friday Atlanta Tour

On Friday we went to tour Atlanta. Government shutdowns are stupid lame guys. I actually was kind of looking forward to walking around all of the MLK stuff. But nooooo. But here's what we did see. 

The walk of fame. 

The ghandi statue outside. (Greg talked about it for a while)

The mural on one of the walls. This is a normal picture because panoramas are surprisingly difficult.

And The house Martin Luther King was born in. We couldn't tour inside though because the government is shut down. It's really inconvenient. 

Luckily, aside from the cool historic stuff, all of the other touristy things in Atlanta were up and running. Something I've learned about myself: I'm an awesome tourist. I love taking pictures of everything, and me next to everything. I must have taken close to 200 pictures on Friday. It was a little ridiculous...

ANYWAY.  After we attempted to learn all about the civil rights movement and were only partially successful, we headed to the park. The one between the Atlanta Aquarium and the Coke Factory (the new one...the old one is by Underground Atlanta and is just kind of empty now.) we didn't tour either of those because we didn't have enough time and both are a little bit pricey for poor Jesus School kids. But we did go inside the World Of Coke (that's the coca cola factory) gift shop and buy bottled Coke. Good stuff. 

This is the World of Coke. 

Nbd. But shared a drink with John Pemberton. I know y'all are jealous. 

Inside the gift shop! Every kind of coke paraphernalia imaginable. From shirts to dishes, purses to shot glasses. And of course lots of coke. One of these weekends I want to go back up to the city and actually take the tour. I heard at the end, you get to try something like 100 different flavors of coke from around the world...crazy! 

Our next destination was across the street at Centennial Olympic Park. This is where the 100th year anniversary of the Olympics was held in 1996. We stopped and had our picnic lunch there. 

Our next stop was the massive CNN headquarters. Home of the largest freestanding escalator in the world. 

The escalator is that white thing that goes into the globe. Also it's not really curved. Did I mention panoramas are difficult?

Overall it was a lot of fun! I would definitely recommend visiting if you ever have the chance! 

Out next destination was underground Atlanta. Which is an original street from civil war era Atlanta, lines with shops and other tourist traps. But the trick is, it's all underground. It's like in a tunnel and the city has been built up and around it. It actually reminded me a lot of an underpass in Singapore. On the way we saw some other touristy sites though:)

Here we are walking down to underground Atlanta!

After that we visitors the capital, all sorts of fun times here. I posted most of these pictures on Facebook, so you all are welcome to check them out! 

Much love,

Ali

God is good? All the time.

Today was a whole string of awesome and weird and amazing, and I'm really really exited to share it with you guys. 

I think that a lot of times, we forget how good God is. I mean, we remember he is good in a very broad and general sense of the word, but we forget that he is also good in an up close and personal way too. He's actually a real sweetheart. I also think that we tend to forget that we can like God. I'm not sure about all of you, but there hasn't been a single day where I didn't love Jesus. But lately, I think I'd forgotten how to like him. But I was reminded today, which was really cool. :)

So I'll start my story off by explaining that my day yesterday started off not so great. First of all, somehow I managed to get contaminated this week, so I have not been "up to snuff" the last few days. I also woke up this morning pretty tired and a little bit grumpy. Breakfast was early, and class was long. After lunch and clean up, I had a couple of hours free, so I took a nap. I had all kinds of weird dreams, and I woke up with a horrible headache. I was not a happy camper. Which made working joyfully for The Lord while cleaning up the house slightly difficult. Now I'll be the first to admit it. This day was turning out less than ideal, and I had a really bad attitude about it. I asked The Lord to help me out and give me patience and his joy...It didn't work. By the time dinner rolled around I was as grumpy as ever, and my head ad stomach felt like they were at war with the rest of my body. And I was about ready to snap the head off of the first person who looked at me wrong. 

At dinner Bobby (one of the base staff guys), asked if we wanted to go to IHOP with him this evening. Now if you are anything like me, you're probably like, 'pancakes...?' Well. That's the wrong one. IHOP as in the international house of prayer. Not pancakes. I can't say I was super inclined to go. I was grumpy and my roommate, Rachael, and I made plans to go into town and do laundry and stop at Walmart so I could pick up some apples (I've been having a huge apple craving you guys. It's bad).  But I just felt like I should go. I was going to say I didn't want to, that I had plans. But every time I was about to, I felt guilty and like I really really should go. It made sense at the time, nothing seemed strange about it. Although in hindsight I can't tell you why I would feel guilty for not wanting to go. It's a weekly thing, I could have just as easily gone next week.

But back to my story. We get to the IHOP young adult service and Mickayla and I make a beeline for the bathroom. We walk in and there is a clique of girls hanging out and chitchatting. They laugh and say apologize for being in the way, making a joke about having a bathroom club. They were friendly, but not unusually so. The weird part was as we were walking out the door they all introduced themselves to us and proceeded to invite us into their conversation. Now if you aren't a girl, this might not seem unusual. Girls clique in the bathroom all the time and chat. They just usually keep to their own group. I have never seen a group if girls just so easy and willing to invite someone new into their group. Especially in the bathroom. I was really surprised. And that's just the beginning. 

We waited outside for worship, and people came up to us to introduce themselves just because they didn't recognize us. When worship started, I was a little weirded out. The IHOP church service is one of those places that encourages people to worship god however they see fit- dance, flag things, jumping and shouting, they have tables to the sides with art supplies, you can stand, you can sit, you can run. Now I personally see people dancing and jumping and waving flags and my first instinct is to roll my eyes and assume they're just showing off. Which is a horrible reaction. But it all just seems so hokey to me. But as I was worshipping, the presence of the Holy Spirit was so strong; I looked at the faces of the people dancing and shouting and drawing, and I was amazed. Every single one of them had the same look of joy an complete rapture on their face. And suddenly I knew that it was real. These people were actually dancing and worshipping in the throne room of heaven.  They were bowing down and laying themselves completely bare at the feet of their Heavenly Father. I can't even begin to explain to you what a humbling realization that is. I have always believed that the arts have a special place in The Lord's heart, and this just resolidified that in my own heart. The Lord continued to work on my heart throughout worship, and we had a good talk. The sermon was about Love and writing the word of The Lord on your heart and really developing a love for the word. It was a good sermon. But what comes next is really cool, we went into the prophecy rooms after service. Each of us signed up for an individual time slot. I was slightly weirded out at the idea that a bunch of people were going to pray and God was going to tell them things about me. But they prophecy according to Corinthians , which is to bring encouragement, comfort, and exhortation. And guys, God is just really sweet. I was told exactly what I needed to hear, and reminded how much The Lord really loves me. And that's a good feeling. Have you ever just walked away feeling like you got a giant hug from God? It's such a cool feeling. But my story doesn't end there! Earlier in the day, I confided in my parents an area I was struggling with. And I prayed all day that The Lord would help me overcome my nasty attitude about it and that he would help me step out of my comfort zone. While waiting for the other girls, I was talking with one of my leaders, Mickayla, and I suddenly had a peace about the whole situation, and I knew that God had hear my prayer.  Which, ironically, I'm now realizing was one of the things they told me in the prophecy room not 5 minutes before. God's good huh? And the next part is my favorite part of the whole day. When we were driving away from IHOP we noticed a car was following us. They followed us all the way back to ywam. Bobby, Mickayla, and I went to see what was going on. There was this little old man in a car full of brea boxes. He rolled down his window and asked for Greg. We were confused. Did he mean Greg our base leader? He wasn't there... The old man asked for Franko (an IHOP staff guy we met), I explained to him that we weren't part of IHOP's ACTS school, that we were ywam. He got so excited. "Ywam?! I love ywam!!" He hopped out of his car and I kid you not, talking a mile a minute he tells us that his ministry is giving away food. He raises support so that he can work for an organization that gives food to people who need it or other ministry organizations. He the proceeds to pull out a dozen boxes of bread and tell us to take as much as we want and that ACTS can have whatever is left. How cool is that??!! It was such an amazing blessing. God is so good you guys. 

And so it begins! (My late post)

Hey Everyone!

For those of you who are not aware, I am currently in Georgia participating in a discipleship training school through YWAM (Youth With A Mission).  The program is six months long and includes a three month lecture period, where we stay on base here at YWAM Atlanta (which, funny enough, is actually located in Loganville, GA about an hour to the east of the city) and take classes to deepen our relationship with the Lord and our understanding of him, as well as learn some basic principles of evangelism.  After a short break for Christmas, we leave for the next portion of our school, outreach.  Our outreach location has yet to be determined, but our leaders and staff have all been praying very hard about where God will be able to use us the most.  But in all likelihood, we will probably end up either somewhere in South America or Asia.  :) I am so excited for what God has planned over the next 6 months, and I know I am going to learn and grow a lot! I'll give you all the update on how the first week has gone, since I know you all have missed hearing my long rambling stories! ;)

I left on Saturday from Portland at roughly 10 am, and let me just start off by saying planes are an awesome invention.  There is something distinctly thrilling about a huge metal contraption hurling itself down a runway at 500mph in an attempt to gain lift off.  Oh wait, actually, I think I might just puke.  Its a love-hate relationship really.  I love looking out the window and seeing everything from way up high (those of you who know me well know that climbing a tree is my normal avenue, but flying works too!)  However, take offs and turbulence freak me out.  My head knows that there is no way we are going to fall out of the sky, however; that does not stop the stomach clenching, heart racing, "Oh Lord, Im gonna lose those peanuts I just ate" feelings that always seems to accompany turbulence or take offs.  And do not even get me started on landings. Those are thrilling. I mean apart from that moment right before you touch down, when you're convinced the landing gear isn't going to come out and your plane is just going to belly slide down the runway? Or when you touch down and the breaks suddenly don't seem to work? Anyone? No, Just me? Cool. Okay. Well in short, I have a serious love-hate relationship with flying.  I promise I was going somewhere with this though, just stay with me.

Upon arriving at the airport, I promptly hopped on the "Plane Train" to get to baggage claim. For those of you who have never been, the ATL is huge. Gigantic actually.  Walking to baggage claim sounds a lot easier than it actually is. It came highly recommended to me to take the train. The train comes about every 40 seconds, and is roughly a 10 minute ride to baggage claim.  If you are going to take the train, (and I recommend that you do, did I mention how huge that airport is?) I highly suggest listening to the robotic voice when she tells you to grab hold because the train is leaving.  It moves a little faster than a MAX Train, and falling on one's face in a train full of people is embarrassing. You're just gonna have to trust me on this one.

After retrieving my luggage, I met up with DTS Staff; Mickayla, Alyssa, and James.  I got the full welcome wagon because I arrived a day earlier than everyone else.  They took my luggage and walked me to their car, informing me that we had a mini road trip ahead of us to get to the base (because YWAM Atlanta is in Loganville, remember?)  The rest of the day was pretty quiet.  I arrived on base at roughly 6:30pm local time and after taking a tour, I spent the evening unpacking and getting settled in my new room.

Sunday, I went to church and waited patiently as the other students arrived over the course of the day.  By the time the welcome reception rolled around at 7pm I had met both my roommates, Paige and Rachael, and we had all hit it off well.  The reception was short and sweet and involved all of us introducing ourselves.  Paige is 19 and is from Thermopiles, Wyoming.  She loves horses, has a goat farm with 120 goats and is obsessed with zebra print.  She's also my special food buddy, since she's got a mild peanut allergy. :P Rachael is from Monroe, Georgia and is...oh how do I explain Rachael? She's got a really big, loud personality.  We're getting along swimmingly. She's actually really fantastic. :) Angela lives in the room next door, she is 23 and is from Kalamazoo, Michigan.  She gets grumpy if I tease her and say she's from Wisconsin though.  I cant tell the difference between the accents, but apparently it exists! Erin is Angela's roommate and is from Greenville, South Carolina.  She was homeschooled her whole life, but is a real doll.  All of the girls are really awesome, and I have had a really awesome time getting to know all of them. Our only guy student is 18 and from Maryland.  His name is Alex and he has a real passion for ministry in the realm of the arts.  DTS staff include our fearless leader Tae Oh Kim (pronounced tEHoh), Alyssa (20 and from New York, but not NYC), Mickayla (19 from Federal Way, WA), and James (24 and from somewhere in Texas).

I cant believe how long ago all of this seems, really. I feel like Ive known these people for weeks as opposed to just a few days.  Monday and Tuesday involved a lot of orientations and getting settled.  We compared accents, and spent a lot of quality bonding time both as a large group, and as roommates. Today, Wednesday, we were assigned our work duties and had our first real class on intercessory prayer.  It was really cool! I am not sure how much I can communicate to you how excited I am to be here at DTS, and all of the amazing things that God has already done since we've arrived.  This is truly going to be a year of adventure for me.


On another note, I sent out support letters before I left, but I am still trying to raise support to be able to go on outreach in December.  If you did not receive a letter and would like to support me either financially or prayerfully, you can let me know and I will send one out to you!  To those of you who have already commited to supporting me in either of these aveneus, I cannot thank you enough.  Your prayers ARE IMPORTANT! I so appreciate each and every one of you!!

Much Love,
Ali

In the air!

I really don't like flying...

Landed! Safely arrived at ATL. 

My beautiful house!

Day 4

Day 4:


So I've now been in Atlanta for 4 days and have completed my second official day at DTS. I'll give everyone the full update of how the first couple of days went next time, but I have some things on my mind I want to get down before I forget.

First off, DTS is amazing. I've only been here for two days, but I absolutely live my roommates and the other students and I can already tell that the next few months here in Atlanta are going to be crazy for all of us. God definitely has some big plans for us here.

Honestly, DTS isn't really anything like what I expected. There are 5 girls and 1 boy who are students. Most everyone is 18 or 19, just graduated from high school. Angela is 23, making her the oldest out of all of us. I think I'm one of the only ones not interested at all in becoming a missionary.  But on to what I wanted to talk about. Have you ever asked God for a change in your life. And then felt like that was a horrible idea? Because that's kid of where I'm at right now. It's that sinking feeling in the out of your stomach you get right before you know everything is going to change. I'm both excited and terrified for this change. On one hand, I know hat ever plan The Lord has for me will be awesome. But I have this funny feeling that this I not a change that in going to like very much. In fact, I have a pretty strong feeling that God is about to disrupt my plans in a big way. But maybe I'm just being paranoid. Either way, I know The Lord has some big things planned!

Ali