Beginning Again

The end of August more or less marks the end of one year, and the beginning of a new one. Our biggest outreach is on the last weekend, and after that, we begin again planning for the next year. Our interns have graduated, and we have our DTS students on a mini-outreach in Brighton this week. With the interns, we went on outreach to Brussels and the north of Spain, and we spent two weeks with the Salvation army in Chelsea, an area in southwest London. The Salvation Army was a small building located in the middle of an estate. Estates are government housing, usually big buildings with lots of small apartments, not very friendly environments, and too many people with low income living inside. This specific estate is largely populated by Muslims. In the physical, it didn't seem like we did much. We had a few times of prayer and intercession, in the Salvation Army, but also around the area, some times of evangelism and worship, and we worked a few days with the children's program in the estate. But more than that, we were able to invest in the spiritual atmosphere that is present there. The impressions that we had there were a mix of despair, fear, hopelessness, and intimidation. But in praying over that, we felt that God has a lot in store for them, with hope, his provision, his protection, and his restoration. Restoration is the theme we had the most for that area.
After those two weeks, we moved to our home church in Notting Hill to begin preparations for the Bones Camp. This is our annual camp held for our outreach during the Notting Hill Carnival, and this was our 8th year being involved with the carnival and running the camp. Personally, it was my 5th year this year, and God always manages to surprise me. In some ways, this year felt like less work, but also felt like we had less time. This year we changed the focus of the camp to include the whole city of London, instead of just the area of Notting Hill. During the afternoons we went out in groups to the city centre, to the east, to main international train stations, and a few other places, to worship and perform and declare the kingdom of God all over our city. Miraculously, as always, things came together, and we went out the two days of carnival with our drums, stilts, face paint, cut-out promises, and hearts of worship. The theme of this year was based around Revelations 4, of the 4 beings that are worshipping around the throne of God constantly, so our theme was WORSHIP. We incorporated more times of worship and intercession into the timetable of the camp, and also into our personal lives.
I learned that the Hebrew word RUACH means breath, but it also means Spirit. So it says that God breathed life into us, he breathed his spirit into us. And it also says in the Psalms, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. In this way, our lives should be a cycle of inhale Spirit, exhale praise. This confronted me a lot, because how much of my day is spent complaining, controlling, speaking with anger or frustration, gossiping. None of that is praiseworthy. I want more than anything that every time I open my mouth, it praises the Lord. But how can we do this, when we are always at odds between our spirit (that is in connection with His spirit) and my own flesh and desires? The answer is: I can't. God has been speaking to me over and over again about what it really means to FALL on His grace. That means I don't deserve it, I don't have any right to have it, but He gives me the chance to fall into it, with all my mistakes on the daily, my failures, and even my "successes" are all a part of walking in His grace. And by His grace, we are able to walk in the fear of Him. Another thing God is clarifying for me is that its very easy to welcome Him to my life, to make changes, to bring revelation and healing, whatever; but to actually walk in fearing God and making decisions based out of that kind of love and awe of who He is, that is a whole other way to live. This is impossible without His grace as well, because we will continually fail if we try to do it on our own merit. At first, I felt completely overwhelmed, but God has been speaking so gently to me, to just see how I need His grace to walk in fearing Him, and I need to walk in the fear of Him to understand more of his grace. They go hand in hand, and its actually quite simple when I stop trying to over-complicated the things of God. He is completely beyond our understanding, but that doesn't mean it is complicated to follow Him and live my life in obedience to Him.
Now that we have finished the Carnival outreach, we will continue with our DTS students until the end of December. We are planning an outreach in October to Italy, including the annual International Arts Gathering. These are two things we really need prayer for, for contacts, and for host locations. We have a few teachers coming in the next few months from different places in Europe and South America, and I'm so excited to see what God will do with this group. Each school is so different, and God has amazing plans for them, and for the ways that they will impact us full time staff, the city, their outreach locations, and wherever they go afterwards.

Things to pray for:
-Italy outreach
-visa process (waiting for them to respond)
-new house in September

Thank you all for you love and support!