Thursday, August 28, 2008

A Week In Mexico









Week 8-Dean Serman-Spiritual Warefare
We spent this week in Ensenada, Mexico, which was fabulous!!!! I think it was good for all of us to be in a bigger place where there is more breathing room and new faces. August 2nd and 3rd, we spent building a home for a family in Ensenada. This family was such a lovely family, and many of our students were able to form relationships with them. They were wonderful, and joyful, and so grateful for the home that was built for them. Their family made us delicios empenadas and tamales on one afternoon of the build. We were very blessed. They have one daughter who was 15 years old and she said after hanging out with us and working alongside us for two days that she wanted to be a missionary like us, and she wanted to be doing what we were doing some day, which was so awesome and encouraging to all of us. It is so cool to see how you can make such an impact in such a short amount of time!
We had Dean Sherman as our speaker this week, which was great! He spoke on the topic of spiritual warfare, which sounds really scary and intimidating, but Dean breaks things down so easily and concisely, that it is so easy to grasp and apply. He starts out by breaking things down into Kingdom dynamics and World dynamics, which looks like this:
Kingdom World
love selfishness
serving controlling
submission rebellion
humility pride
generosity greed
justice injustice (bias, prejudice, favoritism)
integrity corruption
Biblical truth the way that seems right to man

Dean just explained how God built HIs Kingdom to be and how sin and Satan brought destruction to that Kingdom. He explained how God is not a controller and that is why He lets us sin. How God does not send people to hell, He is just loving enough to let them go there if they so choose. He is a gentleman and He will fight and fight for our affections and our heart, but we have free will to choose to love Him, or not. It was just awesome to understand God more, and what His desire is...how God's kingdom is built on righteousness and justice.
Another point that Dean really tries to convey is who we are in Christ and the powere we have in His name. Because Jesus Christ lives in us once we have accepted, we have His power in us, and have power against evil and darkness. We have power against Satan and demonic powers in Jesus' name. God gives us weapons to fight against darkness throught the Word od God, and through Jesus' name. Spiritual Warfare is: recognizing the strategies of the enemy, refusing to cooperate with him, resisting aggressively in the name of Jesus.
Dean gave a lot of time for questions and answers, and out students ate that up. It was awesome to see the hunger to want to understand spiritual warfare, and understand the power we have in Jesus name. My prayer for us staff and the students is for all of us to really recognize the power we have within us through Christ, to not be afraif because we have powerful in Jesus name, and step out in that power to push back Satan and his demon powers, to fight for justice, and stand against the schemes of the devil.
On a more personal note, it was just great to be in Mexico for awhile, hang out with my good friends there, and just be right in front of the beach. All of our students really loved being there because the Ensenada base is open and full of people. Sometimes it's just nice to have variety and be around other faces. We all walked away feeling pretty refreshed, I think, and also walked away with their eyes being more opened to other ways of the world, and what other people live with or without.

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