Journeys With God, Journeys With Friends

These past few weeks, God has really been taking us on a wild ride of faith. We hope our experiences will encourage you, challenge you, and lead you to keep us in prayer.

:: JOURNEYS WITH GOD
Many of you heard that we had a leader on our team (Kateen) fall deathly ill. She was initially fighting the flu and pneumonia and caught another virus that began aggressively attacking her body. Long story short, the doctors said that in order to save her life they were going to need to amputate her leg (the area that the virus began spreading from). As you can imagine, this was a huge shock to our team…especially since we had spent hours praying for God to save her leg. And we all stepped out in faith because not only did we pray for healing; we believed God would do it!

Since the initial news and shock of the amputation, our team has been on a wild ride of holding to God’s truths even in the midst of tragedy. God’s word says he is faithful, he is merciful, he is loving, and he hears the cries of his people. It says that he is good and worthy to be praised. Can all of this still be true when it seems that God doesn’t answer our prayers? When we have an unmet expectation of how God should care for his children? Yes! God’s word also says that his ways are higher than ours. We will probably never know why God did not intervene to save Kateen’s leg, but we have already been able to see how he can make beauty from ashes.

First of all, Kateen has seen a work in her family that she could have only hoped for. She has seen not only unification (her parents are divorced) but she has also seen them lean into God in ways they have never done. Another miracle has come in healing. God did spare her life! And not only that, doctors had anticipated it could be months before she would be well enough to fly back to America, but they are currently trying to arrange a flight home for her.

Finances have also been a miracle. Kateen is not covered in England for medical care, but through some research it was found that because of her missionary status she would be covered. The one thing we are waiting for right now is a medical flight back for her. This will cost 30,000 GBP. That is around $60,000! YWAM has put the word out to different bases and raised around 15,000 GBP. Not only did England respond, but we had bases from Hong Kong and Germany raise a total of 8,000 GBP. How exciting to see the body of Christ come together to care for Kateen and her family. Just today, our base at Holmsted prayed and asked for God to bring in the remainder of the money and through pledges made from staff and students, we raised an additional 6,000 GBP.

And God has shown himself through Kateen’s strength as well because there has been a news contact that wanted to run her story to help raise support, but after praying Kateen felt that that would be man’s quick solution instead of trusting God. So she said no to the offer and is trusting that God will provide in other ways. She does eventually hope to share her story with people, but not just for money’s sake…she wants to point people to God’s goodness.

Some other areas that God has been growing Sean and I in is through our understanding of the Holy Spirit. We’ve always understood that the Holy Spirit is the third part of the trinity and that it is the Holy Spirit that brings conviction to live a righteous life. And these things are true, but it is also just a snapshot of the role of the Holy Spirit whom we’ll lovingly call HS. Something that I had never thought of was that the HS was not just an influence but a person…giving it a personality and character. It’s not just our conscience. (ie The HS brings comfort therefore he is comforting.) We also talked through “controversial” topics such as being baptized in the Spirit (different then baptism by water) and what comes with this baptism. In many cases in Acts, when people are filled with the Spirit, it also mentions them speaking in tongues (a spiritual language). This was a huge challenge for Sean and I. First of all, why is a separate baptism needed? And secondly, we had never understood that anyone could receive the gift of tongues. So after wrestling with these concepts, this is what we walked away with…

First of all, we can’t put God in a box for doctrinal sake. There are times when God has given the gift of tongues after being filled with the Spirit and there are times when tongues were not received. At the same time, we understand God to be a good God who wants his children to receive all that he has for them, and that very well could include speaking in a spiritual prayer language. And we walked away understanding that being baptized by the HS doesn’t make you any more or less saved…it is simply asking for a deeper awareness of the HS which will help bring forth a deeper understanding of the will of God and should produce more fruit in our life. It says the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. By the end of the session on the HS, I think we both felt that we had our own “God” moments where he revealed a little more of himself to us.

:: JOURNEYS WITH FRIENDS
Scheduled into our schooling is the ever-so anticipated “Long Weekend.” We’re given 4 days to explore Europe and relax. Sean and I decided to stay in England and explore. There were five of us total: Liz, Simon, Lacie, Sean and I. Liz and Simon are locals from the London area and Lacie is from Atlanta. We rented a car (Liz drove so we wouldn’t have to adjust to driving on the wrong side of the road!) and we headed towards our destination of Swanage…a lovely seaside village on the southern coast of England. We stayed at a wonderful Bed and Breakfast and had a traditional English breakfast each morning…beans and toast, sausage, eggs, and tea.

One of our first destinations was Corfe Castle. The castle had undergone attack so it was not fully in tact. It was mostly ruins, but you still get the idea of how majestic it must have been. We had so much fun running around pretending to “storm the castle!” When you are surrounded by so much history, it is easy to envision what this little village could have looked like in it’s glory. The castle as the icon, protected by castle walls. The village and the church just outside of the castle walls where all the common folk resided.

We also visited Jurassic Cliffs. They are cliffs off of the ocean where fossils of millions of years old have been found. We had fun hiking and enjoying the view. Our next stop was Stonehenge. It was so strange because you are on a motorway and as you look up you realize….Oh, there is Stonehenge! We chose not to take the audio tour, but we took a ton of pictures. It was hard to believe that we were looking at a monument that was thousands of years old. I felt like I was walking through an episode of National Geographic. (Cue National Geographic theme music.)

On our way home, we stopped in a town called Salisbury which reminded Sean and I of steak. Mmmmmm…steak. And although we didn’t find juicy slabs of meat, we did come across Salisbury Cathedral which is absolutely gorgeous. The craftsmanship that went into this building is amazing. As we were walking around, we entered a room that has the story of Genesis and Exodus carved in the walls. In that same room also happened to be one of the 5 remaining copies of the Magna Carta. Wow! We just happened to come across one of the most important documents that set up English law. I couldn’t believe that there was nothing but glass separating us from a document written in 1215…it is almost 1,000 years old and VERY well preserved. In fact it was the most preserved of all the copies that remain. My favorite thing about England is that you are surrounded by history. You come across it even when you’re not looking for it!

So that is the ride we have been on. Could you feel the crazy dips? Could you feel the excitement? We hope the pictures help you enjoy some of what we shared.

Cheers!
Sean & Sarah