A weekend in God's playground...

If I had the option to go to any type of amusement parks I would definitely choose the water slides over the roller coasters and other rides. I absolutely love water parks, and a couple of weekends ago, I got to play in God’s water park. There was a small group of us that headed off to a small town that was up in the mountains about 4 hours from here called MonteVerde. It was absolutely amazing. It’s like one of those little tourist towns that you see in the movies.

Once arriving in Monteverde, our day started with enjoying some delicious coffee from the Tree House Cafe. Not only did they have absolutely amazing coffee, but it was a real tree house! Down below you can see some pics of both the cafe and some great animal latte art. We were all loving the different animals our server was making for us, so before leaving the cafe he invited us to come and watch him make a few of them.

From there it was off to the water park of God for some water fall repelling. I wish I had some pictures to share with all of you, but essentially we repelled down a series of 6 different waterfalls. Some smaller, some larger, some more slippery, and definitely some where I wasn’t sure what I had gotten myself into, but it was so much fun.

The most fun part of the day was yet to come though...zip lining! This was the one thing that was on my to-do list for in Costa Rica. As you can see from the pictures below we got to go on the longest & highest. I would say that the pictures say it all, but in all reality, I was way to scarred while on the zip-line to take any pictures, so I had to settle with taking from the different platforms that we were on. We went on a series of 9 zip lines, with the longest one being 2460 feet long, going at a speed of 75 km/h. There is not really any way to describe the feeling flying over top the canopy of the rainforest, or how much fun it is! Definitely a weekend to remember.

Being the hands and feet...

The week after the Father heart of God we studied the Character and Nature God. Now each week is different, but this week entailed some great ministry opportunities to live out the Character and Nature of God, and to be His hands and feet.

Straight off the Monday night we headed to a couple of different parks downtown San Jose for prostitution ministry. It’s a very sad fact that firstly prostitution is legal, and secondly a lot of Costa Rica’s tourism rests on the prostitution industry, along with tranvestite prostitution. It’s a very sad and heavy fact. There are people here at the YWAM base that have been expending a lot of time and energy into building relationships with the prostitutes of San Jose, which is awesome. For us as a dts though, even though we did not talk to any of the prostitutes that night it was powerful just to be able to stand in the gap, and to be able to intercede on behalf of them. I challenge any of you who are reading this at the moment to take the next minute to lift up a prayer on behalf of them, along with those that ministry to the prostitutes on a regular basis. Something that really hit me the night we were interceding was that we might be the only ones praying for the prostitutes of that area, and something l have been learning more and more, is the power that there is in prayer!

That next morning we had the opportunity to go to the Salvation Army, to serve breakfast to the homeless. Something that hit me this morning, while serving breakfast was how incredibly much God loves them. In God’s eyes the sins that they have committed, and the sin that I have committed, and the sin that you have committed are all equal in His eyes. God loves them just as much as he loves me! As sad as it was to see the situations they were in, it was fun to try interact with them as much as one could between the broken Spanish on my part, and the broken English on their part. Clearly there are always those who are there just for the meal, but then others that just long for that attention and pure love.

A highlight of this week and something that spoke to me through the lectures was learning what it meant to have a healthy fear of the Lord. What it means to be in awe and reverence of God, and how we need to live our lives in both fear of God and in intimacy with Him. With this in mind the story of David & Goliath really spoke to me. When David battled Goliath he approached him with so much confidence. This confidence did not come from himself, but rather was an unshakable confidence in who God is. David knew the God that he served. David had such a healthy fear and reverence of who God is, and walked in that. I felt really challenged with this in my own life. To walk in that same fear and confidence of knowing the God that I serve, and knowing that he is big, and he is good!

Something for all of us to remember!

God's personal love...

So much has happened here in Costa Rica since I last updated my blog that I don’t even know where to start...there are so many things and stories that one could tell from the time between my last post and now, that I can’t possibly just pick up from today’s date, so bare with me through the next few posts as I go back in time a little...

Firstly a small testimony of God’s personal love...

It was during the week of learning about the Father Heart of God, which was obviously my last post. Throughout the lecture phase we are required to read and complete a book report on a few different books written by Loren Cunningham, the founder of YWAM. It was this particular week that we were receiving our second book to begin reading. Now being the procrastinator by nature that I am, for the first book I only started reading the book not too long before the book report was actually due. So this time as the books were being handed out I decided that I was going to start reading earlier, so that I wouldn’t be scrambling last minute. Sounded good in theory. The only problem I saw was that if I were to start reading the book early, and obviously reading it over a longer amount of time I easily forget main and important points in the book, which obviously makes writing the book report a little bit more of a challenge. As I received my book though, I open up the front cover, and on the inside cover is a page full of little sticky post-it tabs. Something to stick into the book at main and important points that stuck out to me. For myself, it just spoke of God’s incredible love for myself, that He would even care about little things like that. It also showed me of how personal God is to each one of us. The way in which one person feels loved, is totally different from the next, because each of us is different and unique, just as God has created it to be!

What if God came to your house...

This was a question that was posed to us in the beginning of our lectures with Jack Kody, who taught us about the Father Heart of God.

My response...

If God came to visit me at my house...the moment I would realize who it was I think I would fall to the ground out of reverence and a feeling of unworthiness. I don’t think I would even know where to leave myself. Honestly I think I would run through the house making sure everything was in its proper place, fit for a King. In my head I would be going over everything that happened in that day, and previous days, and make sure there was not anything that I needed to repent of.
I would probably try to scrounge together something to serve Him...at least some coffee or something :)...desiring to give him my best, and then when that is all said and done I would sit back in his presence as we visit. Excited to just sit there and listen to HIm.

After we were asked this question, and all wrote our responses, Jack, our lecturer, shared with us as to how this is a honest way of sharing who God is to each of us, and the image that we have of Him. This exercise totally wrecked the image I had of God. In a very good way though! Before this I saw God as someone that I had to clean up my life for before coming to him. I had to make sure everything was in the right place, both spiritually and physically. To me in a sense He was someone that was unreachable. Thank goodness, that’s not at all how it is though! God wants me, and each one of us, to come to him just as we are. Allow Him to do the work within us that needs to be done. He is not standing there in a police uniform, ready to reprimand us because of all that we have done, but rather He desires to be in relationship with us. He was us to come just as we are. After all, it is not by works that we are saved, but by God’s grace. (Ephesians 2:8)

This was only the start to an absolutely amazing week that lay before us. Not only did Jack share with us about the Father heart of God, but truly displayed the heart of a Father towards all 19 of us in dts. It was as if each one of us had permission for just one week to be little kids again. Evenings spent bowling, eating ice cream, watching movies...doesn’t get much better than that!

The rest of the week we talked about how our image of God is very influential in our lives. How God desires so deeply to be in relationship with each one of us. Each and every one of us is different. We are all created in God’s image, but God has made each one of us unique. Because each of us is different, each of our relationships with Him is different, which He absolutely loves! But this also means that God will interact and deal with each of us differently. We see this throughout the entire Bible, because the Bible is a book of relationships, not a formula. Throughout the Bible God does not change, but each relationship that He has with someone is different, and therefore will deal with them differently. So what God does for one person, may not work for the next! We have to remember that God’s ways, and His thoughts are way higher and better than ours! We need to expect that He has great things for each of us, and for each of us that will look different!

My revelation from God to all of you!