Hi everyone back home in the UK. Greetings from Redding, California.
Just wanted to give you all an update of some of the things we've been up to this week and some of the teachings.
After being away on retreat last week, it was a little bit tough to get back into the routine of going to school again. We had the added pressure of Kris Vallotton teaching all this week on basic training for the prophetic, something which normally takes longer than one week, so we had a lot to squeeze in this week. However, it was great, really amazing.
All week Kris covered a manual aptly named 'Basic Training for the Prophetic Ministry', where he would teach for an hour or two and then get us to put into practice what he had been teaching about. Which was a little scary, we often had to grab someone we didn't know and either name something about them that we felt God was telling us or call out a prophesy over them that we felt the Holy Spirit was telling us. We all had mixed results! But we all feel more comfortable doing it and practice does make perfect. One of their big things here is that faith is spelt R-I-S-K, so although it's often scary, we wont learn or progress without doing it. Some of Kris' insights on the prophetic were awesome. He's been in ministry over 30 years so some of his stories are just amazing. And it's so encouraging and exciting to hear his vision for it and where he wants it to go, especially at Bethel. Prophecy has been misused or misunderstood in the church for so long and he wants to cultivate a prophetic culture which is both accountable and edifying.
One of the big things that struck me this week was when Kris was talking about why Jesus often spoke in parables and seemed to conceal or hide the truth. He said that in the modern world, and I guess throughout history, knowledge has meant power. So Jesus would often conceal the truth from the prominent members of society or powerful people, and leave it for the humble and hungry to search out.
Proverbs 25:2 says
'It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,
But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.'
And once we've been saved we're now kings in the Kingdom, so it's up to us to stay humble (not thinking lowly of ourselves, but thinking highly of our God) and be hungry enough to search out the wisdom of God. God doesn't hide things from us, He hides things for us. It was just another priceless lesson in how the kingdom works, which is often contrary to how the world works.
We also started our activation this past week. Izzy and me are doing the Community Activation which involves us going to a local town just up the road called Shasta City, and basically seeing what we can do each week. We're just going to show up and see what God has for us to do, whether it's hang out in a coffee shop chatting to locals or something a bit more practical. We're in a group of about 12 and the others seem great. Should be fun. We also chose our missions trips choices. The whole month of March is designated as missions month and as part of the school course we are required to go on a trip. They range from a trip to a local church down the road for 2 or 3 days, to 2 weeks in Africa with Iris Ministries. There's about 40 or 50 trips to choose from all over the world and we had to select 5 that we wanted to be on and they'll most probably put us on one of those 5 trips, depending on numbers. So we chose which trips we liked and we'll see where we'll be going soon I think. It was hard to narrow it down to 5 trips because there's a lot of amazing trips, but hopefully we'll be able to afford where they select for us.
Weather-wise the week started off quite mild (Think it got to as low as 25 degrees centigrade!!-chilly!) but towards the end of the week it's gotten back up into the early 30's which has been nice. The forecast for this week as far as we can tell seems to be early to mid 30s again which will be nice. Especially as our friends have a pool!! They are also amazing at baking and this week gave us a container full of banana and chocolate chip muffins which were amazing. If they're reading this then thanks very much guys! We also watched a film last night called Furious Love. It's absolutely amazing, if you've watched and liked Finger of God then definitely get yourself a copy of Furious Love, you'll be changed.
This coming week will be an interesting one, we have a bit of homework to catch up on, but also at the end of the week is a conference so we wont have any school. On Wednesday we have Che Ahn coming to talk to us which should be very interesting. Che leads a church in Southern California which by all accounts is amazing and he's written a few well received books. Should be insightful and inspiring.
Anyway, hope everyone is good back home and things are going well. Please do write to us and let us know whats been happening and whats going on, anything we can pray for etc.
We really do love it here, we feel it's absolutely the right place for us at this time, so thank you so much for everyone who has been involved in making it possible.
We pray God's rich blessing on you and hope you all have a great week.
God bless
Izzy and Lil x
Proverbs 25:2
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,
But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.
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