MENU

Resources

YWAM Montana Lakeside

Together we commit to the communication of the gospel by training, sending, supporting and being missionaries.

Facebook-f Instagram
DONATE
APPLY

Category: Student Articles

The Goal: Pursuing a Life of Love

Posted on by

Thinking back on my time in DTS and on outreach, I’ve concluded that I’ve never felt more love from a group of strangers than I did from the little children in the Haitian village we went to on outreach. They are so ready to receive love and that love then pours out of their generous hearts back to those who are loving on them.

I realized this is how it is with God. When we allow His love to wash over us every day, we become filled and ready to pour that love back to Him which means pouring it out on those He loves–anyone and everyone around us. Along these lines, one of my leaders preached a sermon towards the beginning of my time on outreach that is still impacting me to this day. I’ve spent a good portion of my life asking for more faith. I’ve pursued faith, radical faith, continually. Now although faith is a great thing and I do believe God has given me a gift of Faith, I was suddenly challenged and humbled as I listened to my leader preach a simple yet profound message in a very tiny and crowded church in Azua, Dominican Republic.

Why have I spent so much time asking God for more faith and so much less time asking God for more love? I’ve heard and read 1 Corinthians 13 more times than I can possibly remember. 1 Corinthians 13. The “LOVE” chapter. You know, the one that says if you don’t have love you have nothing? The chapter that says there is nothing greater than love? You know…”Love is patient, love is kind, etc….” This is not a new passage to most Christians and it certainly was not new to me. But all of a sudden, it hit me in a new way when I compared it to my pursuit of Faith. “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” [1 Corinthians 13:1-3]

Wait, say what??
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom ALL mysteries and ALL knowledge…ALL KNOWLEDGE!! That means I would know EVERYTHING there is to know! And if I have a FAITH that can move MOUNTAINS…isn’t that the greatest faith we can imagine?? But even if I have all of that and do not LOVE, I am nothing. NOTHING!!

If this really is true, then shouldn’t our prayers every single day be more like…
…”Lord, I need more of your love.”
…”Jesus, teach me how to love better.”
…”Father, I want to be consumed with your love.”

I realized that I do not want to be someone that is characterized by people as just someone of great Faith.
I want to be known as someone of great Love–someone who embodies the love of Christ.
I want to be remembered not as Hannah Pickens, a Woman of Faith.
I want to be remembered as a woman who gave away her life on behalf of other people.
I want to be so consumed with love that people would look at me and my life and as a result would experience the radical love of Jesus.

So from this point forward, my prayer is no longer just to have more faith, though yes faith is necessary. But my new prayer is something like this: “Jesus, I want to let You love me more so that I can love like You have loved. I want to fulfill Your greatest commandments not as a duty, but as a way of life. Let me experience Your love in a greater capacity every day so that I cannot help but pour out that love to the people around me.”

Why did God call me to Mexico?

Posted on by

When DTS began, I was doubting God.

I questioned His existence. I tried analyzing and putting Him into a box. And even though He was performing signs, wonders and miracles in front of my eyes, I refused to acknowledge that His presence was real in my life.

I was scared. I was sure that a King so mighty would never love someone like me. I began DTS as a girl whose heart was so weaved into brokenness that I was convinced my story could not be redeemed. I wondered why He would call me to be His disciple. A girl who refused to proclaim His name.

I walked into outreach still carrying many of those lies with me.

Outreach was difficult, but God is a gentleman. He knew that I needed time to trust that He genuinely wanted us to have an intimate relationship. That His plan for me was far greater than the title of “human.” That I am to be a disciple, a friend, His daughter.

Days passed by quickly during the first few weeks of outreach in Mexico, and my relationship with God still felt weak. I knew that I wasn’t leaning into Him as much as I should. Or as much as I wanted to. My prayers were still desperate pleas for God to show up. I felt unworthy, and I wanted Him to wreck me with a sense of value. To wash over me in great waves of grace and love and restoration. I doubted His existence, but I still was passionate about rising up a new generation of disciples that would love His broken people. That would love people who were scared, and lonely, and seeking Him, no matter what baggage of hurt they hauled everywhere with them. Men and women who had been told that their stories and testimonies were too heavy to be shared. Not pure enough to be brought out of darkness and into light. That their gifts would never be adequate to serve the Most High in the world. People like me.

A few weeks in, I was struggling with questions like: “Where are You, God?” and “Why did You call me to Mexico?”… Why did God call me to Mexico?

I began to pray that He would reveal Himself to me in very specific ways. He was so faithful to those prayers. All of the sudden, it was like a click of a light switch, and He was there. When my heart was empty, He would pour His love into me. On days that I was grieving over moments from my past, God would place someone in my path to show me where He had been. He began to teach me that my past pain can be turned into a ministry opportunity, an empathy that will help heal others. That I can be a wounded healer by sharing vulnerably about where I once was, and with a boldness declare where He now has me.

Mexico is a nation full of broken hearts and people content with living a life that doesn’t satisfy the callings God has placed in them. My presence in Mexico was not necessary for God to work in His people of that nation. He wanted me there so He could work on my own heart.

God is faithful, present and listening. He called me to Mexico to show me those characteristics. He hears my cries, is faithful even when my doubts overpower my belief, and is present by constantly showing me that He wants to heal my heart.

When DTS began, I was doubting God.

I left Mexico confident that I am loved and desired by a God who knows all of me, and still calls me to be His disciple.

God Is Love

Posted on by Creative Media
I wanted to come into DTS perfect. Sounds silly, right? But truthfully, I came into this experience with some baggage. I strove to adhere and maintain strict discipline because I wanted to be pleasing to God and others. It ruled over me to a point where I would be hard on others and their downfalls. The truth is, I was really harboring that criticism on myself. l was not yet perfected in the love of the Father.
Throughout DTS God began to show me that my drive to perform weighed me down. I stretched myself in ways that robbed me of my joy. 
During Father Heart of God Week, our speaker said something profound that caught my attention: “There’s nothing you can do to make God love you less. If you never read His word again or never prayed another prayer, God’s love for you would never change.” This blew my mind. I thought to myself, “Wow! If I didn’t work so hard to try and win His approval, He would love me regardless?”  I didn’t take this as license to rebel because I believe God desires the best for us. But rather, I learned a precious truth that despite how hard I try to earn His love with my tiresome efforts, His love for me was complete. And what’s better is that He actually desired for me to be free from my own perfection! I could serve Him without conditions holding me back.
I can confidently proclaim today that God loves His children because He IS Love.  It is His character! And motivated by love, God sent His Son Jesus to pay not only for our sins but rule-based acceptance! I learned that Love is full of grace and doesn’t point fingers if we don’t “measure up”. His Love for humanity is made complete in Jesus. I learned that there is no other standard I need to uphold other than to love with my whole heart. And to do the best I can in any situation! This is good news!
I am so thankful that God has made His love real to me. I end this story with an awesome revelation: I am loved. You are loved. Look in the mirror today and know God loves you.

The Truth Will Set You Free

Posted on by Creative Media

I had never before seen the Holy Spirit fall with such power and conviction as it did while teaching God’s plan of redemption in a Nepali village. It was beautiful there. Rice paddies and vegetable fields were terraced into the sides of green hills. We slept on the third story of a traditional Nepali house, with goats living on the ground floor. It was our first Bible Overview Seminar and I was apprehensive about how the people would respond. Those in attendance were of varying ages – men and women, old and new believers. A sixteen-year-old girl, who had been a believer for just eight months, sat under the same teaching as a church elder who had been a believer for thirty years.

We started with the character of God and creation. As we worked through the Bible, we could see understanding begin to show in the faces of the people. God was bringing truth into their lives. On the third morning of the seminar, I taught about the coming of Jesus. As I opened with prayer I became so overwhelmed by what Jesus had done for us that it was almost as if God was changing me by my own teaching. As I finished, a woman began to weep. She had been a Christian for six years, but that day she realized for the first time that God had forgiven her past, present, and future sins. She no longer needed to live in fear of un-forgiveness. At the end of the seminar, we lit candles to illustrate how believers are the light to lead people out of the darkness. In the candle-lit room we thanked God for redeeming us. We wept – Nepalis and Foreigners alike – hands held high, crying out to the Lord with our whole hearts. With voices joined, we prayed for power, that the world would know the truth and be set free. May we continue to preach with boldness and be filled with His Spirit.

Love One Another

Posted on by Creative Media

Four weeks into our outreach, my Titus team made a grueling thirty-hour train ride in order to spend a few weeks in Lugansk, an average sized city on the Russian border. In this grey, post-Soviet mining town, our contacts had arranged for us to teach a number of Inductive Bible Study seminars in the local churches. We started without delay. Our seminars were attended by Christians from varied theological backgrounds. In one particular seminar, we noted students from at least four different churches passionately studying God’s Word together and ecstatically sharing their discoveries. In this moment denomination differences meant nothing – Calivinism or Arminianism? Pre or Post Tribulation? Sprinkling or immersion? Women in ministry? Rapture? Tongues? These things which so often divide were never mentioned. There was only God’s Word, the joy of discovering its truth, and living it out together. On the right side of the room, a few rows from the front, sat a group of people that we referred to as “group number three”. Sitting around the desk were three women and one man. Each was in their mid-twenties and each from one of the four churches represented.

Throughout the seminar I watched as they worked together, studied together, congratulated each other over questions well answered, passionately shared their discoveries, chatted and joked through the breaks, and even exchanged phone numbers. The cherry on top of the cake was right after we had dismissed the students at our last session. As everyone rose to leave, I looked over and to my amazement “group three” remained seated, hands clasped tightly in a circle around their desks, Bibles in the middle, heads bowed in prayer. They were thanking God for His Word and their time together. Four churches, one Chief-Shepherd.

This profound and beautiful glimpse of the unifying power of God’s Word is one I will not quickly forget.

Soul Sickness: The Bible Is The Cure

Posted on by Creative Media

One Sunday morning, my team mate Victoria taught the Inductive Method to a congregation in Bolivia. She finished by giving a final exhortation and asked them to join us at our next seminar at another church. When we arrived at our seminar we were pleased to see that a man named Juan had chosen to come. Juan was extremely quiet but greeted all of us with a customary kiss and warm embrace. This seminar ended up being the low point of the outreach. Attendance was less and less each night and those who came didn’t seem to be particularly eager to learn. Juan was there every night though, Bible and note book in hand, hanging on every word, eager to pray and take part in ministry times. God began to lay Juan on all of our hearts and we began to thank Him for our one faithful attendee. In our team prayer times we sensed that we were to teach with all our hearts, even if Juan was the only one who wanted to learn. His genuine hunger kept us going and we looked forward to seeing his smiling face each evening.

At the end of our seminar Juan asked to share his testimony. We learned that the Sunday Victoria spoke at his church he had been contemplating taking his life. Bad choices he had made had destroyed his family’s faith in him and his wife and children wanted to leave him. He asked the pastor for prayer and the pastor told him his soul was sick because of the way he had been living . He said that God’s Word was the medicine he needed and encouraged him to attend our Bible Overview seminar. God brought Juan to our seminar that week and each night He was faithful to teach Juan about His character and to challenge Him to live a godly life. Juan was so moved by what he learned that every night he went home and taught his family all that he had learned. The family repented and recommitted themselves to each other and to God. In closing, Juan said said he was so thankful that we had come to teach and that he was dedicating his life to learn as much as he could about God so that he could use that knowledge to change the lives of other families who are hurting just as his family was. After Juan finished sharing I reflected on all that he had said and came to a better understanding of what it means to teach. I realized that teaching is never about me, my ability or my plan but it is always about God. God sent five ordinary people from the United States to teach one man in Bolivia and through that one man I know that countless other lives will be transformed.

Bringing Hope to Places, Hope Wasn’t Brought

Posted on by JT Pharr

To sum up this experience in just a few words, is more of a challenge than what I had heard. You see, I could talk about salvations and how whole churches were rocked. But to me outreach was something else, something more personal, not about numbering salvation numbers off. It was the worst place I’d ever been, the corruption, the hopelessness. However it was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen, and God gave us the privilege of bringing hope to the broken, the less. And it was beautiful, it was challenging, it was extravagant! But most of all it was spirit lead and God again, and again, proved his eternal glory and his intimate love. It’s funny how you can go into a place thinking it’s you pouring out the love. When it felt like all I did was receive, throughout everything we had done. By refreshing the saints or picking up children who had never had hope.

This is where it all started for me, when it became a little more serious and a little less joke. So what is it about “Hope” that changes a face, that changes a place or a heart? What is it about “Hope” that attaches itself to faith and becomes attractive from the start? Hope that’s for a king ,for a bed-ridden or even the average man. That hope that impacts anyone no matter where they stand. So what’s different about hope, compared to love, life or success? Because today I look around and see that hope and hope itself brings light to the darkest mess. You see hope didn’t start when there was the death on a tree, hope started when Christ rose from the death, thus creating hope…for you and for me.

Hope is the breaking of chains, a comfort to pain, the renewal and gain to what once seemed lost. It comes out of nowhere bringing care to the uncared, and this hope does not and will not ever cost. You see… when Christ died, he died for us all, becoming a part of the fall, falling deeper than us all, pushing us up from underneath to arise to out call!

This.Is.Hope.

That no matter what we face. What were seen as, talked about or known, that Hope is an outpour of love, for the lost, the broken and disowned. It’s this “Hope” that is for anyone, no matter where they stand. Wether from the slums of Rio, the richest of kings or even the average man. It’s this “Hope” that changes a face, that changes a place and changes the heart. It’s this hope that attaches itself to faith and is attractive from the start. Those children became our lives in the slums, attaching themselves wherever and whenever they could. To be honest it wasn’t really us at all, it’s because the love of Jesus, experienced for the first time, is really really good. So for me this was my outreach, bringing hope to the people more so than the place. Because seeing that trash can of a home they lived in, only highlighted the value written across each and every face.

I can honestly say I am totally transformed, something like writing this I never would have done. But God cared for the people just as much as me, and glory be to him for what he did in Rio, Niteroi, the Mountain Churches and the slums.

Christmas in Reykjavik

Posted on by JT Pharr

On Christmas Eve we went to another city to help out the salvation army with like a Christmas dinner that they do for refugees and people seeking political asylum (its like people who had to escape from their countries because of war and they cant live with the rest of the population or work, so they like do nothing). Anyways it was one of the most meaningful touching Christmas experiences of my life! I started by just talking to some young men that were there, they were from all over, Africa, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Romania etc…they were so broken and hopeless. No one wanted them, loved them, and now they were stuck in Iceland! It was like prison to them. My heart broke for them because my dad was exactly like them. Here is my dads story: During the Vietnam War my dad was sent to Poland to study ship engineering. While he was studying he fell in love with the west and europe and freedom and he didnt want to go back. So he escaped and fled and spent many years running and hiding from the police. He ended up in a refugee camp in Austria just like these guys in Iceland. Then on Christmas Eve some YWAMers came to the camp and was sharing the Christmas Gospel with him and he gave his heart to God because he was so hopeless. A few weeks later he was accepted to go to Canada and thats why I am here now!

282893_10152405183130106_471810783_n

So now here I am, 30 years later talking to guys who were in my dad’s shoes…on Christmas Eve! It was like I went back in time and was looking at my Dad! It was so crazy and I was so moved. Before the dinner I was asked to share the Christmas Gospel with them. When I was sharing it I almost started to cry because I thought that if someone like me didn’t come and share God’s love with my dad I might not be here or living a different kind of life. And then I read a part of the Christmas story that my dad says changed his life forever and I almost couldn’t read it cause my throat was all choked up! It was so so so amazing…remember how we were talking about how God prepares us? Even years before? It was what I was thinking, so amazing! How I was born into a family of an immigrant refugee, and now I can relate to these guys and have power to speak into their situation that others dont have! It was a huge blessing and some of the guys that were there were so encouraged and blessed and felt God’s love on Christmas to me I felt more blessed and God was so good and I felt so close to my father and my parents even though we are so far away.

 

Waka Waka – This is Africa

Posted on by JT Pharr

T.I.A – This is Africa. We have the hot African sun, shark infested waters off the coast, the southern most tip of the continent is home, stoplights are called robots, and we have all the time in the world. This is a little look at what has been going on.

Its a lot like home. From the moment we arrived in Cape Town we realized that culture is not very different than what were used to. Modernized, globalized, and even trendy are some of the words I would use to describe the environment, and who knew that they would even have indie/hipster food and craft markets too! The outward appearance seems similar but the people of South Africa are different. They have time, and value relationships higher than a planned schedule. They are friendly and willing to talk, which is really why we are here.

Our team of fourteen have been here since early Dec ‘’working the ground’’ in conversation and relationships, sharing life with people not as teachers but as learners. Our heart is to reach people, the rich, the poor, and anyone we meet. I feel like I have never talked to so many strangers in my life than my time here in south Africa. Its challenging. But here’s a little perspective.

I was in a group with my friends out for the day. It seemed ordinary and to be honest I wasn’t feeling very accomplished or even motivated due to my poor attitude, but I went out in faith that I had a message to share that is greater than my feelings. We pass an old wrinkled man who started to talk with us, trying to communicate his situation. He is a street sweeper. My friends started to talk with him, opening up, and showing compassion. I stood listening and watching his face. He was desperate and dry. And then the opportunity to share Jesus with this man came. I talked grace, forgiveness, and hope. It was simple and definitely not me. I felt the words I said were foreign or at least I wasn’t living them out in that moment because I was so concerned with my own issues and not concerned with the Savior. But here’s the incredible part. This is the reason why Im here. Despite my inadequacy in sharing the message of hope, it got through to him! It was as if, a light bulb turned on in a dark room, and there was for the first time a change in the man’s eyes. His demeanor had a look of mystery. He had never heard of such good news, that God wants to forgive him of his past! He drank in every word that was spoken. And a man who almost died of dehydration now had living water in him never to be thirsty again! I walked away with a deep sense of humility, for here I am a broken man ministering to another broken man. The only difference is that I found Jesus and I got to share him with the street sweeper.

Proverbs 25:25 “Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land.”