Perseverance!

Hey guys! So something crazy cool has been happening! This past week we learned about Spiritual Warfare with Dean Sherman. It's a really neat lesson and I'm learning a lot, but the super cool part is that a couple days into the lesson we realized that we were being faced with a spiritual battle! We sent out our second letters two weeks ago today, the letters telling people more about our mission trip to Peru. It should have only taken them about three days to arrive at their destinations, but so far only a few that have been sent out have actually been received. At first we just thought it seemed odd, but as we kept watching our videos on spiritual warfare we realized that this was two things : God putting our faith in His faithfulness to the test, but that it was also an attack from the enemy, trying to prevent our letters from reaching people. During intercession for our YWAM base at the conference two weeks ago, God gave someone the image of a bow and arrow. The tighter the bowstring, the more resistance there is when you have to pull it back; but the arrow will fly farther and with more accuracy to hit it's mark. So that makes sense, it lines up with God testing our faith! Another person heard that Peru would be good for the Peruvians, but that it would also be good for our team. So that also lines up with the attack from Satan - of course he doesn't want us going to Peru and changing lives (including our own)! He wants to do everything he can to prevent that. Someone else got that there would be a time of fasting at our base. Our leader Kristen wasn't at intercession that day at the conference, so when she mentioned that she felt maybe we should fast during lunch and pray about this the other afternoon, it was obviously no coincidence! Our class got together and prayed about it again last night, and asked the Lord what we should do next. We know that He will provide for this trip, but we also know that we can't just be lazy about it, we need to fight for this! So after praying about it, resisting the enemy and his works in this situation, and asking the Lord what our next steps to take were, we felt that He told us to reprint and send another round of letters. So that's just what we did!

About an hour ago I just got back from a jog around the neighborhood. It was hot and sunny this afternoon, and I've been out of my running routine for a few weeks now. Needless to say, it was more difficult than usual and I was tired! But every time I felt like saying "eh, that's enough. I'll just walk it now." I kept telling myself "one more mailbox. just make it past one more mail box!" As I was doing this it totally reminded me of this past week, and what we've learned through this whole experience with our letters. Yes, there will be times when we're tired of fighting and we feel like saying "eh, that's enough now," and we'll want to quit, but that's not what we should do! We need to keep fighting for it and take it one step at a time! Yes, God is always moving and working, but we need to do our part! God moves on behalf of our prayers! So we need to take action, and even when it seems to be getting too difficult we need to persevere!

So, this week I feel that God has definitely been teaching me about perseverance! I think it's really neat that as we're learning about spiritual warfare we get to put what we learn into practice, and I'm super excited to see what God has in store and how this all works out! :)