Spiritual Warfare!!

Hey Everybody! Happy late Valentine’s Day! I hope everyone had a great day! I feel like I say this every week, but this past week was awesome! Our topic was spiritual warfare and our speaker was Peter Warren. Peter and his wife, Linda run YWAM Denver! He is a really intelligent man and has tons of experience in dealing with things in the “spiritual.” I learned so much this week about spiritual warfare and that we are constantly battling in the spiritual, every day! There were a ton of things that stuck out to me this week and that I learned! Here is some of what God taught me:

*EVERYONE knows the truth about God’s existence because of creation and their conscience

*Then why don’t people turn to God?? Because they suppress the truth and their eyes are veiled because of the Devil and it keeps them from seeing clearly

*God gave us free will so that we could CHOOSE to be in a love relationship with Him

*If Jesus defeated the Devil why is he still around and powerful?? He defeated the Devil legally or in principle, but God has chosen to work through us to help battle against the Devil

*NOTHING and NO ONE limits God

*Not everything that happens is God’s will

*God is entering into a sequence of time with us. God will get his way in the end and some things in history are set, but our free will means God is subject to getting hurt by our actions

*He valued our LOVE over CONTROL.

*He could have eliminated all the suffering and the junk in this world but that would be taking away our free will. He loves us so much He valued our love relationship. If there is no free will, there is no love relationship.

*God gave us weapons of warfare to fight the Devil!!

*PRAYER CHANGES THINGS!...intercession is reasoning with God

*God sometimes changes His mind in the Bible for two main reasons…Repentance and PRAYER!

VERSES THAT STUCK OUT TO ME:

“Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in his heart.”

-2 Peter 3:11-12

“He holds victory in store for the upright; he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless.”

-Proverbs 2:7

“Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.”

-Romans 12:21

This week just opened my eyes a ton to the spiritual warfare world. Every day we wake up it’s a battle for our hearts and our minds. We need to be aware that we have the authority in Christ to beat the Devil and his kingdom. We can’t be naïve Christians because this stuff is real! If anybody wants more information on the things I mentioned just e-mail! Peter also gave us scripture to back up everything he taught us so I have scripture for the points mentioned above as well! Thank you guys again for your continued prayers!

BE BLESSED,

Amy

Some of us girls decided to dress up to celebrate the love day!! Here are a few pictures...

Chelsea and I sharing the love ( :



Rachael, Sarah and I sporting our red and pink very proudly ( :



KINGDOM OF GOD!!

What a beautiful day in Colorado! Today was just perfect weather and a great day all around ( : This week our DTS joined the boarders DTS at their base which is about 20-30 minutes up the mountain. It is so gorgeous up there with the fresh snow and pretty trees and such! Well this week was a real eye opener for me and I know for a lot of other people as well. We had Don Stephens as our speaker and he taught us on "The Kingdom of God." It was such a powerful teaching and God really showed up and revealed new and awesome things to me! There is so much to share about this week, but I will try to pick out some of the highlighted points that stuck out to me!

-God's glory is EVERYWHERE!!
-God created me to reflect His glory, I am made for HIS GLORY.
-Our goal is to bring the glory of God to people
-Are we living in a relationship with God or are we living with the view that He just judges us?
-We are called to live in the love of Jesus..am I loving God, am I loving others?
-If I truly love God, I will WANT to obey Him.
-Don taught us about many different worldviews including Islam, Post-modernism, pantheism, new age, Marxism and gnosticism and lastly the biblical worldview
-What is the Kingdom of God??...
*Every place where the will of God is being done
*Jesus reflected in anything (movies, books, art, conversations, homes, etc)
*Anything true, anything that glorifies God
-The Kingdom of God grows by little things like buying a meal for a homeless person, holding the door for someone, surprising your friend with a gift, feeding an orphan, etc.
-Satan has twisted this world to a world of darkness when we do things to glorify God we bring that dark kingdom CRASHING DOWN!!!
-Our agenda should not be to make "converts" it is to LOVE. And by our LOVE they will see Christ's LOVE.

This week was crazy awesome. I realized I was perceiving the world through a lens. God wants us to see the world through His lens. It was so awesome to have Don come speak. He is a very smart guy and really awesome. On Monday, we had our small group time. My small group decorated journals and ate popcorn and just hung out. It was so fun! On Wednesday we watched a documentary called "The Finger of God." If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. It is a very powerful documentary about God's power and the Holy Spirit. After the movie ended, one staff member, Temp, stood up and said "if you need healing, come over here." "We have the power to heal and the authority to do these things because Jesus has given us that authority when He left Earth." So many people got healed on Wednesday! It was so amazing and awesome to see the God's power working through my own hands! I always thought that preforming miracles was something that Jesus did in the "bible times." I never understood that as Christians, we have that power too! It was such an amazing night and I had a revelation of God's amazing power and the power of prayer!!

God is so good, so amazing, so powerful, so merciful and so gracious. Everyday I am just renewed by the fact that He loves me, just as I am. He is awesome and everything He made and everything He does is so beautiful and so glorious! Thank you Jesus!!

"Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven..."
Thanks so much for your prayers everyone!
Be blessed!
-Amy