God on the loose

God doesn't fit in a box.

This week's DTS topic is relationships. The ywam base director Shirley Brownhill has been sharing with all three Discipleship Training Schools (Sports DTS, Music DTS, and Classic DTS - the latter I staff). Most of the time she has been sharing about the importance of deep relationship with God. It has certainly not fit in the 'box' of typical relationships teaching. It would be very hard to sum up all that she has shared. Some of the main themes that have been coming through are: the importance of living a lifestyle of hunger for the Lord, His desire and ability to heal us and transform us - out of hurts and into freedom, and our deep need to look more like Jesus to a world that is burned out on Christian hypocrisy.

God has been moving deeply in the hearts of the students and today we took a moment to respond to God - to simply pray out loud whatever was on our heart in response to what He was saying through the teaching. People were praying out deep, heartfelt prayers of surrender, of hunger for the lord, pushing aside passivity and committing to seek Him, prayers of repentance for the way we have not lived out God's character, prayers of praise for how good and beautiful He is. After probably 4o bursts of individual prayer there was a lull... and then another voice... this time in song. Boldly without warning or instruments to support him, one of the students started singing. We all joined in and it kicked off a long period of spontaneous acapella worship. Some of the students (from the music dts no big surprise) were drumming on their chairs and on the walls, there were crescendos and diminuendos, and joyful clapping. Towards the end the voices quieted and just the charged rhythm of the chair drums continued. Then all at once we just started shouting Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! A demonstration of the joy, love, and passion that come with a surrendered, seeking heart.

It was such a precious and powerful time. God stirred up hunger, desperation, humility, gratitude, commitment, love, passion, praise, adoration, worship and desire. In those moments nothing else mattered but Jesus. We completely lost track of time (it turns out what was going to be just a few prayers said out loud turned into nearly two hours of response to the Lord!) It was not just a nice prayer time, it was a deep time of communion with the Lord. And it was just a glimpse of the glory that God calls us to, the kind of life he wants us and enables us to live.