week 2 in Kona!

this was Corporate Week where Loren and Darlene (founders of YWAM) talked!

Recently I've been really learning about the power of prayer! Prayer and communicating with God is so necessary no matter how small or big or significant or insignificant you think the topic is! God wants you to talk to Him about EVERYTHING! He's a personal God and He truly cares. And I love that about Him! He wants us to have a relationship with Him more than anything else.. just like we'd have a relationship with a best friend!

Lately we've been hearing these radical stories about God and when I hear the stories I ask myself, "how is that even possible?! feeding 5,000 people with a loaf of bread and a fish..?" After hearing more and more stories I realize that God is testing my faith in a way.. do I have faith in Him? Do I believe He is a great and BIG God? How powerful do I think He is?" It's easy to sing about it and say it but believing it - that God CAN and does do great things is what I'm working on! Also, I realize that I believe so many other things in the bible but struggle to believe some things. How can I pick and choose what to believe.. dooooesn't work that way! lol.

Often I ask myself, "Am I giving all the glory to God?" Because I tend to lose sight of who I'm living for!

"This is what hearing God's voice is all about, isn't it? Getting to know Him better!" - Darlene. You "hear" God's voice and have better discernment and communicate with Him more deeply when you know Him intimately.. when you know His character! I'm so working on knowing more of His attributes.. what He likes, what He doesn't like, what He finds joy in.. etc!

Another quote that I love from Loren - "Put your dreams on the altar. They will be resurrected into something grander!" The past couple of months I've been working on this! Since I was 11 years old I've LOVED music and about 3 years ago I felt a huge calling into the music business industry! As much as I've tried, nothing has come of my dream and love for the music world. It's discouraging and upsetting but I'm surrendering that dream, giving it to God and trusting.. KNOWING that He has everything under control! It's a process but I'm getting there!

"God puts in us ALL the stuff we need to do His will!" Love that so much! So much truth! I really need to be bought back to the reality of our awesome God sometimes! God simply calls us to do the possible.. and let Him do the impossible! :)

Loren talked about giving up our rights.. giving up our rights to sleep, food, understanding, life, family, marriage, our future, etc. Jesus is MY EVERYTHING! And He deserves control of all my life! He blessed with but all these "things" are not mine!

I want out of the comfortable, safe world I live in. And I mean that in the sense of living in poverty for a day, working at a homeless shelter.. a women's center. Something of the sort. Realizing how tons of the world around me lives.. which is nothing like the way I am blessed to live!

Thank you, Lord that you do not remember sin against us!

I pray that the joy of the Lord can be my strength ALWAYS!

I loved when Darlene said, "remind yourself of what God has done in the past." That is SO good and such truth! Go back to how God was faithful, merciful, loving.. remember specific stories.. It's just a great to bring you back to the reality of Jesus!

Yesterday was just comical! So a huge group of girls from Compassion were going snorkeling and I felt kind of uneasy about going but you know me, I'm not a risky, adventurous person. But I've been working on being a "safe risk taker" if you know what I mean. So I decided to go.. even if I didn't swim I would just relax on the beach but little did I know. I'm looking at the beautyyy of the beach, enjoying sea turtles on the shore and just totally intrigued with the beauty so I decide to just go look at all the fish for a few minutes just to say I did. It was a super rocky area so in order to get into the water I had to dive over some rocks. There was one spot that wasn't really rocky but not many of the girls were going that way. So three girls go ahead of me and I'm like "alright three girls just went ahead of me and they were fine.. I can do this. And right before I dove in I said, God protect me please!" aaaaaaaand i jump in and realize I had cut my foot. sooo, I get out of the water, go to the life guard stand to get a bandaid and it was worse than I thought.. I had to get stitches. So after many hours in the ER with five amazing friends I get stitches. Just so typical. It was bound to happen. lol. But before I knew I needed stitches we went to Target to get bandaids and such and while I was there I got a FAN! You don't even know how many times I looked for a small fan. It was the most joyous purchase of this trip. lol. And I've slept SOOOO stinkin well since then! Oh Hawaii, I love you!