48 Hours of prayer

This past week we had 48 hours of prayer and worship from 6:00 tuesday (may 18th) night till 6:00 thursday night. During that entire time the prayer room had worship sets going on and there was constant prayer and worship.. the Lord layed it on my heart to fast for 25 hours during that and during that time of fasting of food and facebook I felt so less distracted and was able to just spend time in the prayer room with the Lord. so good. The intensity of the week kicked off tuesday night with the start of the 48 hour thing and then all us students had local outreach that night. My group got to pray for a few people downtown. It was really cool and I felt like I was able to branch out a little bit and talk and pray for people. When all the groups got back together at the end we heard that 4 people had accepted Christ :) praise God! so that was awesome..wednesday was the day I fasted and spent a lot of time in the prayer room. While I was praying the Lord directed me to Proverbs 31 and one of the verses that stuck out the most was 8-9 "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly. Defend the rights of the poor and needy."
Wednesday night our class watched a film "Hakani" based off that story of the little girl I shared in one of my earlier blogs. After the film I went back in the prayer room here on campus to pray and worship and soak him in more. It felt so peaceful and fullfilling to just lay in there and pray or read my bible and listen to the people leading the worship sets and play guitar and what not. I ended up staying in the prayer room all night untill 4am (except for when i left at midnight to grab a snack because my fast was finished ;) ). here is an excerpt from my journal.. a prayer..

Its late, my eyes are closed and all i want to do is sleep. But we worship God and will continue to worship, for he is worthy. Encountering him is more important than our sleep. Out pour your spirit Lord, manifest in us Lord..break through our tired bodies, that's the cry of our hearts. barefoot I lay, surrounded by my brothers and sisters. We worship because we were created to Lord. Our beings are made to worship. To sit still in his presence..soak in his love, burn in his spirits fire. My bible pages turn..the breeze fills the room, we pray for an encounter with the Lord, for it is our one desire, to encounter him in his fullness and experience these gifts he has for us. Lord your love is so immense, the community within the room around me right now, Lord. I thank you God for the chance to be apart of what you are doing across the world Lord, we intercede against the evil, the hatred, the injustice Lord. We pray for restoration, healing, love and hope Lord. You deposited your holy spirit and we ask for a fresh baptism. Open our eyes to see you. Open our ears to hear your. Soften our hearts for feel you..

I had wanted to help with a worship set all night but was to nervous to sign up so at three in the morning my friend Nate began leading his set and he was just going to do prayer but I said I'd come up and help lead and play some guitar so I did and we sang out these worship songs and neither of us can sing so it was the most off key thing ever but they real blessing was that there were only two other people in the prayer room besides us and they were fast asleep on the floor haha! thank you Jesus :) Thursday night was another awesome night of worship. We had our typical campus wide Ohana gathering which is usually worship and a speaker but this time is was prayer and worship and it was such an awesome night! so much freedom to just sing out and dance and worship as you want..most of us left sweating from just three hours of worship and dance :D so we ended the night by going down to the pier and jumping off to cool off :) Thank you God that we can worship you and delight in you as you delight in us Lord. We praise you for you are worthy :) amen.

Love Letter From God

My Child

You may not know me, but I know everything about you [Psalm 139:1] I know when you sit down and when you rise up [Psalm 139:2] I am familiar with all your ways [Psalm 139:3] Even the very hairs on your head are numbered [Matthew 10:29-31] For you were made in my image [Genesis 1:27] For you are my offspring [Acts 17:28] I knew you even before you were conceived [Jeremiah 1:4-5] I chose you when I planned creation [Ephesians 1:11-12] You were not a mistake, for all your days are written in my book [Psalm 139:15-16] I determined the exact time of your birth and where you would live [Acts 17:26] You are fearfully and wonderfully made [Psalm 139:14] I knit you together in your mother's womb [Psalm 139:13] And brought you forth on the day you were born [Psalm 71:6] I have been misrepresented by those who don't know me [John 8:11-14] I am not distant and angry, but am the complete expression of love [1 John 4:16] And it is my desire to lavish my love on you [1 John 3:1] Simply because you are my child and I am your father [1 John 3:1] I offer you more than your earthly father ever could [Matthew 7:11] For I am the perfect father [Matthew 5:18] Every good gift that you receive comes from my hand [James 1:17] For I am your provider and I meet all your needs [Matthew 6:31] My plan for your future has always been filled with hope [Jeremiah 29:11] Because I love you with an everlasting love [Jeremiah 31:3] My thoughts towards you are countless as the sand on the seashore [Psalm 169:17-18] And I rejoice over you with singing [Zephaniah 3:17] I will never stop doing good to you [Jeremiah 32:10] For you are my treasured possession [Exodus 19:3] I desire to establish you with all my heart and all my soul [Jeremiah 32:11] And I want to show you great and marvelous things [Jeremiah 33:3] If you seek me with all your heart, you will find me [Deuteronomy 4:29] Delight in me and I will give you the desires of your heart [Psalm 37:4] For it is I who gave you those desires [Philippians 2:13] For I am able to do more for you than you could possibly imagine [Ephesians 3:20] For I am your greatest encourager [2 Thessalonians 2:16-17] I am also the father who comforts you in all your troubles [2 Corinthians 1:3-4] When you are broken hearted, I am close to you [Psalm 34:18] As a shepherd carries a lamb, I have carried you close to my heart [Isaiah 40:11] One day I will wipe away every tear from your eyes [Revelation 21:3-4] And I will take away any pain you have suffered on this earth [Revelation 21:3-4] For I am your father, and I love you even as I love my son, Jesus [John 17:23] In Jesus, my love for you is revealed [John 17:26] He is the exact representation of my being [Hebrews 1:3] He came to demonstrate that I am for you, not against you [Romans 8:31] And to tell you that I am not counting your sins [2 Corinthians 5:18-19] His death was the ultimate expression of my love for you [1 John 4:10] I gave up everything I loved that I might gain your love [Romans 8:31-32] If you receive the gift of my son Jesus, you receive me [1 John 2:23] And nothing will ever separate you from my love again [Romans 8:38-39] Come home and I'll throw you the biggest party heaven has ever seen [Luke 15:7] I have always been father, and will always be father [Ephesians 3:14-15]
My question...
Will you be my child [John 1:12-13] [Luke 15:11-32]
I am waiting for you
Love, your dad,
Almighty God

Makapala!

Our school took a retreat the other week to Makapala..its a retreat center owned by YWAM but its basically a big house with a big yard and a big tree with a swing :D it was such an awesome weekend because it was just our class and it was SO nice to get away from the huge campus :) we played games, worshiped, hiked to valleys, went to a cafe down the road. it was so relaxing and nice :) God is good..it was so beautiful on that side on the island, the place where we normally are, Kona, is very dry and rocky. And here it was lush and green. The one valley that we hiked to was actually where they filmed the opening scene of Jurassic Park! Sunday morning when we had a time of worship and prayer..we split into groups of three and had communion with our group and shared prayed request and such and i just felt like God gave me a new appreciation for communion, I mean how cool is it that back in the day the Lord was doing this with his disciples and now we are doing it in remembrance of him and in hopes of communing with him again :) the weather was so awesome there to, it was like a rainforest so it would randomly rain, i LOVED it :D and there were mango trees everywhere..so i had my first fresh mango straight off the tree! anyways, here are some photos from the weekend!!

Father Heart of God

Its been so long since i've blogged! I feel like there is so much to share :) so bear with me..theres probably going to be like 10 new entries today, but hopefully you'll be able to take something out of my thoughts and processing and stories and such :)
Last week was the father heart of God week. John Leach was our speaker, he is a father of 5 and a pastor from out in colorado. He was a true representation of the father heart of God. Such a good and funny speaker...reminded me alittle of the guy from princess bride who plays the cup game and tries to poison them..a mix of that guy and John Travolta :) haha
SO many good things were said this week i don't even know where to start. I feel so inadequate when it comes to writing blogs :/ i'll just start off with the simple phrase that he started with.. Jesus love me..this I know :) A cool image that touched my heart during this week was when John said "that if we dont know God's heart than it is difficult to love Jesus because Jesus is Gods heart" that may sounds like duh. but think about it.. Jesus is the purest example of the Lords heart to us. He sent us this piece of him..this piece of the Lord, his HEART. Jesus. Jesus is our model, if we have the wrong image of him then we can never be like him. Its like building a lego house with the wrong intstructions/picture to look at.
The Lord created us and only the creator can name what he has created. Think of all the different labels and names and destiny's people have put on us. We learned how much meaning is behind a name using the example of Rachel and Benjamin. Rachel was killed in child birth and names her son Ben-oni meaning " the one who killed me" Jacob didnt want him grow up under that name and label so he changed his name to Benjamin, meaning " the son of the right hand" ..the right hand was the hand that was used for blessing..so Benjamin is the son of blessing. We were challenged to look at the label and lies people have put on us and then go to the scripture and find verses that repudiate thoes labels.. find what God says about you..how you are his child and he cares for you. He is desiring a companionship with you. In the biginning of Genesis it talk about how "they heard the sound of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day" How cool!! to hear God walking with them..i wonder what that would have sounded like.. like thunder or just huge THUMP, THUMP, THUMP haha. The bible says God is reconciling us to himself. (2 Corinthians 5) Concile means "to be in right relationship together" the prefix re means again, back. He is bringing us back to the way it was suppose to be. His original intent was that we would walk with him and talk with him and know him. Reconciling us to himself so that we are comfortable in the presence of him..we dont need to cover up and hide from him. as John said, "Drop the fig leaves!" :)
Most people are either living for (performing) the approval of God, or living from (you have it and can move in it) your fathers approval. We AlREADY have his approval!! and thats the beautiful thing...we need to live from the smile of God and not FOR the smile of God..always striving and performing and trying to impress...we have his approval..we have his smile..now we need to be confident in that and walk into the person hes created us to be and calling he has for us. Hs is the same yesterday, today , and tomorrow. His love NEVER changes. how cool is that? no matter what we do, his love for us is always the same..so much grace there. John also spoke a little bit on identity and what it gives you. Identity determines your purpose, lets you know your destinty, defines your life, give you great boldness and permission. Most people spend their lives trying to "fit in" rather than figure out. "Most people are born and original, but die a copy (of someone else)"
On of the last topics we talked about was blessing. When we speak blessing over someone we are creating and atmosphere, a belief, a possibility, fertility. He told about how we blesses each of his children before they go out the door and this and that, and how in order to give a blessing you must have a blessing. "You can not give what you do not have." So on the last day of the week each of the staff prayed over us and gave us a blessing :) it was an awesome week and I have pages of notes but I will spare you all since I have already pretty much written a novel haha. thanks for reading!

















“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”
-Albert Einstein

WEEKEND ADVENTURES! :D

CLICK PICTURES TO SEE LARGER!
SOUTHpoint! jumping off the southern most point of the US! 40ft jump!

45minute hike to green sands beach. the landscape was crazy! this island is so dry, NOT your typical Hawaii
Green Sands beach..the sand has a greenish tint to it
jumping into a cave..turned out to be slightly dangerous but oh so fun!
we survived!
new friends :) Alyssa from Sarasota, Sadie from Pheonix and Kailyn from Philadelphia
Elizabeth from North Carolina, Erika from Brazil, Natalie from Gernamy, Alyssa from Sarasota
MY PHILIPPINES TEAM!! we have someone from brazil, new zealand, Wales and america :) my leader is sarah haberly the one in the back row on the left

Freedom of Christ

"God wants the very best years of your life, not the leftovers"

Last week our topic was forgiveness and freedom in christ. Our speakers were Faith and Andrew Dutton who lead the Kona base here. It was such an awesome week and they were such great speakers, very approachable and understanding people with a desire to see us set free and walk in the light. We read through Colossians and Philippians looking at the different commands and dos and donts as well as looking at Paul and the role model he is to us and the different things he did.
The week started off with reading these passages and talking about how we need to know what we have been saved from in order to see what we've been saved to. We also talked about how you need to put on Love daily and make sure we are producing good fruit. We then talked about the Law and how if we don't understand the law of God then we dont understand what we have been saved to. If we don't understand the penalty of our sin and the way that is separates us from the Lord then we cant fully appreciate the cross and what he did for us. The fear of the Lord..the falling in love with the lord..is the hatred of evil.
Also, do we settle from secondhand revelation?? Listen to what others say and take that as truth..or do we dig into the word and have God speak directly to you. I know this is something i personally struggle with. I love reading books by other christian authors more than I read my own bible, and I often find myself asking others opinions on things and views on things wether than wrestling with them myself and taking them to the Lord. I think it comes from the fear of not really being able to hear his voice on such things..I want fast answers.
We also looked through the commandments and spent some time on the Honor or Father and Mother... SO THAT YOUR LIFE MAY BE LONG.. this is the only commandment with a promise attached. It is so important to not speak negative about them and to always honor them with our speach as well as our actions. No matter what they may have done or said that hurt you they still are the ones who gave you life. Our parents have value in the eyes of God..as does everyone..when we really start looking at people as children of God we begin to realize how much is hurts him when we judge them, disrespect them, and dishonor them. and just in general how much is hurts our heavenly fathers heart when we sin. I'm blessed to have a good relationship with both my parents..but no relationship comes without its challenges.
Our Conscience is a born sense of right and wrong. Picture is as a heart with a triangle in it.. the triangle "pricks" you and your conscience tells you what you just did was wrong. The more you ignore it the more filed down it gets and becomes round..it no longer pricks you and the sins start gettign larger because you have become numb to this little feeling telling you what your did was wrong. There is also no grade of sin...sin is sin, some just have greater social consequences. We need to find people who will help us out of our struggles not walk in them with you.
We are made up three parts..our spirit/conscience...our feelings emotions and heart and thirdly our body. We need to make sure we follow that from the top down. Are you being led by the flesh or by the spirit. When you find yourself struggling with the flesh, feed your spirit. example: if your find yourself struggling with lust or addiction or judging, feed your spirit. Begin praying and seeing the Lord. Find a verse that takes your mind off of it and begin speaking that out...dont let the devil play with your mind. The more we entertain the thoughts and fears from the devil the more he will play with us. We are also 100% responsible for our own hearts. Picture two kids on the playground..one girl hits the other and the other girl fights back. The sins doesnt get divided up..its 20% the one girls fault and 80% the other girls fault because she started it. No, we are each 100% responsible for our own hears. Each sin is equal in Gods eyes.
Thursday we talked about WALKING IN THE LIGHT! :D and what exactly that means..
it means: a turn around, transparency, break the dark, walking in christ and HIS truth, being open and honest, having humble hearts. When we walk in the light we can have FREEDOM from shame, guilt, and fear. There is power in confessing out and bringing things to the light and repenting them over to the LORD. The biggest lie of your sin is that you are the only one who does it/struggles with it. So much freedom can be found in him. The speakers gave us this sort of spiritual checklist..different things people struggle with. I was shocked how many things i ended up checking off, the Lord was convicting me of all the crap in my life and the little day to day sins I do and don't realize. Once we realize how much that really effects the Lord and hurts him..it makes me feel awful! I want to walk in the light and live free of this because of him.
Friday then we had a time of taking these things to the cross. We had some worship and then placed a cross in the center of the room and we all sat on the floor around it. They places a microphone by the cross and one by one people began coming up and laying these sins down at the cross..confessing them out to us and then asking for forgivness from the Lord. After each person would go a few people woulg go up and pray for them and while they were praying another person would go up and confess and it was just this awesome time of confession and ministering to each other and seeing each other be set free from these things. It took alot of nerve to go up and share but it felt so great to get these things off your chest and begining walking in the light...as Jesus is in the light :) it was such a bonding time for us as a group :) we finished the morning off the with some more worship which is AWESOME as always :D

praise God..for he is good. Who the son sets free is free indeed!

Go here to listen to the lectures on podcast..they can say it much better than I!

Book Report: Making Jesus Lord

This book was written by Loren Cunningham- founder of Youth With A Mission.

The beginning of the book talks a lot about laying down your rights. Laying down your rights to your possessions is a big thing in todays worlds I believe that is hard to follow. Laying down that American dream that you always wanted to giving those thing over to the Lord so that his plan for you can successfully be played out. He knows the desires of your heart and wants to bless his children, so you probably will still get your family and house and live happy. But its the act of surrendering those things to him and being obedient if his plan for you even if it is a little different than your plan for yourself at the moment. In the beginning he also talks a little about hearing God's voice and goes on to tell this story of a team leaving for outreach and two of the kids sitting in the airport unable to go because they still need 100$ to buy their tickets. And another guy over on the other side of LA involved with YWAM hears the Lord speak to him to give money to the outreach team..he know their plane is leaving that morning and doesn't have much time. So he catches a bus to the ywam base and miraculously gets all green lights , and finds a guy who then takes him to the airport, and then he has to run to get to the terminal and all this stuff goes on but it made me think, if God spoke to me would I go to all that trouble to get the to the other side of LA to give these kids some money. I feel like I would probably just dismiss it with the excuse that i'm to far away and i'm busy, God can tell someone else who is closer right now to them, to give. So yeah it just made me think a little.

Another quote from the book that i liked was "..how long has is been since anyone threw a brick at you? If everyone likes you are you sure your following Christ?" haha. Look at all the great christian leaders in history, they were mocked and "faced the scorn and slander of their day." Are we being bold enough in sharing the Gospel? Are we being radical in our faith? Its about dying to your reputation. Not purposefully destroying it by robbing a bank or something. But dying to the standard or whatever someone may have put on you and having self confidence in walking out your faith.

In the middle of the book he talks about how the Lord challenged him to stop setting an alarm clock and let the Lord wake him up. He found that he started waking up very early in the morning. God is wanting our fellowship..its not a hardship, its a priviledge :) He also brought up the famous verse.. "when you fast, .." not if, but when. We are told to spend time fasting and praying.

One thing in the end of the book that really stuck me was when he talked about the spirits and coming at an evil spirit with the opposite spirit.

"There are many different spirits and corresponding attitudes in operation

at any given time. A spirit is a personality, but it also influences our attitudes and

conduct. The Holy Spirit is personal and so are Satan and his fallen angels. You

can be under a spirits influence, moving in the same attitude or you can move

further and actually become possessed by that spirit. But even if you are only

fleetingly influence, for an hour or a day, you can ever win spiritually for God until

you are free from that spirit and moving in the opposite way- Christ's way."

We need to come at evil spirits with the opposing spirit. If some one come at you out of anger, the only way to truly solve it is to come at that spirit with a peaceful one. Loren talks about the spirit of Independence. We as Americans have a lot of pride and independence. This spirit of independence can only be won over by the spirit of interdependence, "recognizing our need of one another and committing ourselves to each other in humility and unity." The spirit of immorality must be met with the spirit of purity, and so on. This book was full of encouragment and good points. I think its a great book for people to read and it goes well with his other book that we previously read: "Is That Really You God."

God Moment! holy cow this blew me awayy!!

Wow, tonight i was so encouraged!! tonight was local outreach night and we split up into group of 3 or 4 people and went into downtown Kona to talk to people and pray for them and ask God to show us people to speak to. My group got to talk to a man and just chat with him..we may have mentioned God once but it was just the action of getting to know him and building that relationship that i think may have spoke to him the most.. he declined out request to pray for him but was very polite and open in talking with us. the cool story though comes from my friend Jonathan and his group..keep reading because this is an incredibly awesome example of God speaking and us being obedient :D :D

So Jonathan and his group were praying together and he was praying saying "God i love you..God speak to me..God your awesome..God i love you" and God just said "shut up and listen." He felt like God said: walmart, girls section, girl named cindy. So they just went..started walking to walmart praying, God just give us confidence..please have this girl be here. On the way another girl in the group, Emily, felt like God was speaking about a floral shirt or dress. Jonathan kinda ignored her though haha because he was so set on getting to walmart and following what God was saying. He felt like God was saying just give me 25 mintues. When they got to walmart they went and booked it straight to the girls section and started asking people..are you cindy? are you cindy? and they all said no and so they waited for a little and right as 24 minutes came the Lord spoke again to Jonathan and said isle 9. so Jonathan ran (leaving the other girls behind haha) off to isle 9 and was looking around and asking people and Emily, running up, was like what about that girl in the flower dress?? So Jonathan asked..is your name cindy? and she was like yes!. haha and he just stared at her dumb founded..he couldn't believe how specific God spoke. and just started talking to her and telling her how God led him here and asked if any of this was making sense and if there was something he could pray for and she mentioned how she just found out she has a cyst on her breast. and Jonathan was like wow my mom had breast cancer! so he just prayed over her for healing and that she would see his love. and it kinda stank because her husband was sort of pulling her out the door and so they finished praying and the couple headed out to their car and Jonathan was inside and forgot about a ring on his finger that God told him to give her so he ran back out and right there they were in the first car in the lot and he gave her the ring. we don't know if there is huge significance with the ring but now she has this constant reminder about this night. when he shared this with us we prayed so hard that at her next doctors appointment she would get the news that she has no cyst!! what a revelation that will be for her!! please join us in continued prayer for this! God is so great and we just need to allow him to speak to us and follow his direction. thought this was an awesome story, check out his blog for a better version of the story haha :) www.jonathanzerkle.blogspot.com

VIDEOS :)

my friend Sadie made some videos from a collection of clips from our time in Kona..trust me there is plenty of learning and lectures and worship going on even if these look like all we do is hangout and have fun hehe ;) my DTS=awesome :) CLICK ON LINKS BELOW!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy21LuSAiro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZazCG4LqHyI

OUTREACH confirmed! :)

Recent Photos...updates below so keep reading!

sea turtles!! we had an ice cream social when they announced our outreach locations so we all got to dress up a little

dodgeball tourney! we're lumberjacks..and

our team name was JACKED UP! holla!

sooooo I am officially going to Philippines for outreach! :D we unsure of what exactly we will be doing.. but here are some possibilities.. working for two weeks with World Impact Tour http://www.ywamcampaigns.com/Groups/1000008553/Impact_World_Tour.aspx it uses BMX sports, dance, music, the arts and all kind of crazy things to bring people to christ. After that we will most likely be working with a prostitution restoration center working and ministering with the women as well as photographing then and getting their stories. these will go into a publication of some sort most likely. Next, is what i am SUPER excited about.. spending two weeks going to unreached tribes and villages. i'm super excited about going and bringing the gospel to someone who has never heard of it..as well as the adventure of spending time wiht these tribes and photographing them :) then we'll have a month left that we arent sure what all yet we'll do. Outreach dates are july 1st (ish)- September 20th (ish).

God really been teaching me alot lately about how important "the secrect place" is and how valuable that quiet time with God is. I realized how I keep asking God for more or him and more of him and I want to feel his spirit but yet I dont spend enough time alone in prayer with God. "once you have good times in the secret with God, he will reward you in the public" -speaker Cristin Williams

We had Cristin William speaking this past week and Cindy Ruakere was the worship leader. Thursday night we got to hear from Loren Cunningham and Mike Bickle (International House Of Prayer) so many amazing men of God speaking this week, there was so much to take in. It feels good to be the weekend :) yesterday i relaxed at the beach and today i did alittle as well.

Friday night we had a huge dodgeball tournament. its a big deal here every year. so a few of us signed up and made a team..we didnt win but it was TONS of fun :D :D

quote: prayer is the exchange of love.