God is Good, All the Time. All the Time, God is Good.

It's 6:37am and the orange sun is bursting into the little student library where I am sitting. Another great day :)
Last week we had our base director, Lynn Toney, as our speaker. She was incredible! And not to mention one of the funniest people I have ever met! Her lectures focused on fully understanding God's love for us and how to get out of the spiritual fog and into the life He wants us to have. First we had to make up a mission statement for ourselves. This was mine:

Love. I will love. I will recognize being love. Others will recognize my love and seek the same love that was given to me. Seek. I will seek God with my whole heart and soul (Deut. 4:29). I will not be abandoned because my God is a faithful God who keeps his promise of love to a thousand generations (Deut 7:9). Trust. I will trust in God with all my plans for I know that he has a prosperous and hopeful life planned before me (Jer 29:11) I will remember that everything good comes from God (always) and that he has my best interest at heart. Serve. I will serve. I will serve my God by serving others and do so with the joy God gives me and with unconditional enthusiasm. And above all, I will adore and worship my savior and friend.

 The next day she taught us the importance of forgiveness. We learned that forgiveness is simply not forgetting and moving on and it is not waiting for others to ask first or even waiting for feelings TO forgive. It is a choice, and when we ask God to convict us and open our hearts to see what we need to let go of, it is incredible how He will work in our lives. Not only forgiving others for how they wronged us either, but also repenting for holding anger against them in our hearts. It's so freeing when we step out and stop saying "I can't" and start saying "I will." We also learned how to differentiate our own thoughts and what God is trying to tell us and also how to tell the difference between condemnation (from the evil spirit) and conviction (from God's Spirit). My favorite acronym was B.U.S.Y. (Being Under Satan's Yoke) and we learned to live free of our burdens by taking Jesus' yoke (Matt 11:28-30). Lastly we talked about fear and how perfect love from God drives out all fear (1 John 4:18) and how to receive that love. Basically, everyone cried all week (good crying though). There is a difference in everyones posture this week. God is moving and transforming our lives... our speaker this week is Jeff Pratt and our first lecture was yesterday and he already had everyone crying before the first break. Haha. I love YWAM.