Week Seven - Healing Within

Day 42    Tuesday      11-9-10

Hebrews 12:1b

And let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us.

Today in my Life of David class, my teacher Dale Anderson shared stories of his time in Jerusalem these past couple weeks (Eddie B was our sub while Dale was gone). There is one story that I loved. Dale went to the "wailing wall" (or "western wall") where there is 24/7 prayer. Now I don't know anything about this wall but it is very famous, especially in any religious culture. When people pray there it almost looks like they are praying to the wall, but they aren't. Religions and races from all over the world go there to pray. I'll have to do more research as to the significance of this wall. Anyway, Dale is standing at the wall praying and out of the corner of his eye he ses this Rusian man approaching the wall. He has on one of those Jewish hats, a prayer shawl and is holding what seems to be a piece of paper with a prayer he is reading. The Russian man is slowly approaching and is in a very spiritual moment, when all of a sudden, a bird flies overhead and poops all over him! Dale said that this an had a friend tat happened to be video taping this whole thing and they should send it to America's Funniest Home Videos...hahaha! So this friend takes a cloth out of his backpack and helps the man get cleaned up. The man then proceeds to drop his paper with the prayer, leans his head on the wal and begins to weep crying out to God. 

Dale's moral of the story was, "No matter what life craps on you, keep pressing into God." 

When times are hard, that is the best time to be pressing in even harder. Because you are at your lowest point which allows God to build you up even more. And God will give us the endurance we need to keep pressing onward. He won't let us down!

Day 44    Thursday   11-11-10

These last two days the whole Fire in the Night Internship went through an intensive called "Relational Wholeness" (It's very similar to Cleansing Stream, for those of you from my church). It's basically inner healing stuff. It brings up a lot of pain and wounds from the past. Some of the subjects were, the "mother wound", the "father wound", "forgiveness" and a few others. It was incredible. God showed me a lot of stuff. For example, I didn't think I had a mother wound, but I totally did. So, you ask, "Why would you want to bring up old pain?"

Psalm 51:10,17; 147:3

Create in me a clean heart, Oh God. Renew a right spirit within me. The sacrifice You want is a broken spirit. A broken and repentant heart, You will not despise. He heals the broken hearted, binding up their wounds.

If that doesn't answer your question, then I guess all I can tell you, is that now, I know a lot of what caused pain in my heart. And because of that, I am able to ask God to help me with my pain, give it to Him and therefore grow deeper in my relationship with Him (and other people) without walls hindering me.

On that note, I just wanted to share that I feel so privileged to be here. Sometimes I'll be sitting in the prayer room and I'll think, "Wow. I am so blessed! I am able to be here for 6 hours, 6 days a week worshiping my God, without the worries and busyness of normal life to distract me." I love it! I was so worried coming here. I thought 6 hours was impossible. But honestly, it's a piece of cake. Yes, there are some hours that go slower than others, but that is perfectly normal. I love the fact that I can just sit at the feet of Jesus. That is my school. My "Higher education".....literally! Haha. I can't think of any place I'd rather be. IHOP has defiantly become home to me...along with Plymouth, Elk River and Papillion...I am hoping that this is where God wants me to be for a long time! :D