Week 2. Hearing the Voice of God

Journal entry no.2

8/9/13

This week has been c-r-a-z-y.

So much has happened in such a short amount of time!

I think I'll give you the details in a day-by-day account, that will make it easier for me to write and easier for you to understand.

Monday: super cool day.

First day of the school week, and none of us had any idea what was coming.

Our speaker for the week, Josh Cole, entered the room, bringing with him an uncommonly large amount of passion and energy.

The thing that really stuck out to me on this first day of lectures was that not only does God desire my affection (duh..), but He really is the fulfillment of every longing inside of me. (Duh again, right?)

Josh went over the categories of longings that we have as human beings,

1. To be enjoyed

2. To be fascinated

3. Beauty (to be it and perceive it)

4. Greatness

5. Intimacy 

6. Whole heartedness

7. Influence (to be a world changer)

This was a cool lecture for me.... I'm one to daydream about all the cool things that could be coming my way in this life.

Then of course, Josh made the point that we have to hand over those longings to the Lord in order for him to really fulfill us in any of those areas.

My thoughts? "But.. But... That's hard!"

Yes, Really.

At the end of the lecture, Josh turned on music and told us to think and pray for a couple of minutes.

This of course resulted in me on my knees, in tears, with people around me praying for me.

Josh asked if we were ready to hand over the longing in our hearts, and if we were, we were to go to the front of the room. 

The front of the room was quite crowded.

More tears, more prayers, and the first grip on freedom for the week.

Score!

Tuesday: The day that has people talking.

The morning session was awesome (we talked about what God looks like. Read Revelation 4)

That blew my mind.

But what made Tuesday famous around here was the evening session.

Understand that evening sessions are not the most enthusiastically attended lectures.

Almost all of us just felt like sleeping, even though we wouldn't have said so.

Josh started out talking about having vision for our lives, and being ready to step out in faith.

This was immensely hard for me to appreciate, because for some reason, I was feeling particularly     doubtful about my future.

Honestly, this portion of the lecture is still a bit blurred in my mind.

But somehow we all ended up at the front of the room again.

So there I was again, on my knees, in tears.

Suddenly the direction of the lecture takes an entirely different path, and I hear Josh ask for everyone who struggles with self hatred to put their hand up.

I don't recall discussing with myself whether I should put my hand up or not, it just shot right up.

I had been really struggling with this again this week.

Then Josh told us who had our hands up (almost every female student) to stand on chairs and say that we were beautiful. This kind of helped, but didn't quite take us all the way to where we needed to get to.

Josh called all of the young men to follow him out of the room.

The were gone for a couple of minutes.

Then they came back and one by one, knelt down in front of us girls.

Then they began to apologize for every kind of hurt that had ever been caused to us by guys.

For me, this wasn't the big deal.

I haven't been mistreated by guys (praise the Lord),

But what got me was the sincerity in their eyes. They meant every word they said,

Which was what really meant a lot to me as they began to affirm us girls.

Saying, "There is not one girl here who isn't truly beautiful" and all sorts of other things.

After much of this, we began to audibly let go of things that we knew were dragging us down in our walk.

I chose to let go of the fear that God doesn't  really have a plan for me.

What a stupid fear, right? 

Well, it was real for me. So I gave it up.

And you can't imagine the freedom I felt.

At the end of the night, the room felt like we'd just won a war. 'Cause we had.

Almost every person let go of something that was seriously weighing them down.

You should've seen the change in every person.

It was so obviously God.

Wednesday:
We talked about receiving a word from God,
And how sometimes God will give us "what" to say, but we need to seek direction for the "how" to say it.

Thursday: 
This was 'the big day' for me.
Josh was speaking about shame and all the ways it can bring us down.
He told us about the four variations of shame;
Regret, failure, personal embarrassment, and defeat.
He told us the different ways it can harm us;
It can be the root of bad relationships, it can lead to self condemnation, feelings of guilt and unworthiness, it brings constant reminders of the sin in our lives, it makes us unable to forgive, and it feeds us lies, thrives on deception, and packs us full of guilt.

At the end of the lecture, Josh put on music and let us pray.
To be honest, I wasn't particularly interested in having a God moment. I didn't think I had issues with shame.
As I prayed, I felt an arm around my shoulder.
It was one of the leaders.
She whispered, "Chelsea, I don't know if this means anything to you, but I felt God saying that He wants to pour joy into you"
I was now confused. Didn't the other students who were in tears need joy more than I did?
I briefly wondered if she had the wrong Chelsea.
She continued, "and being able to receive it might require you to let go of something. In fact, I think God wants to give you a lot of things, but maybe you can't receive anything else without letting go of some things first"

Then it hit me.
I'd been feeling guilty because I didn't feel like I had enough love for God's people.
In this moment, God showed me that I didn't have that love, because I wasn't receiving that love from Him, because I was too busy feeling guilty about not having that love.
The solution? Throw down the guilt!
God pressed into my heart, saying, "guilt has no place in the hearts of My children"

And I laid it down.
Let me tell you... it's amazing! I can't explain how much happier I've been.
It seems that God really did want to pour joy into me.

So those were the big, huge, things that God has done in my life this week. Some of them, anyway.

:)

Love,
Chelsea