Grace

Hello!

This last week a couple of us from Ogden headed over to YWAM Salem for leadership training and visiting friends and family. If you are looking for a place to do a DTS or take some training as a YWAMer they have a lot of opportunities over there! I’ve benefited from their team out there a few times now and love the whole lot of them.

Grabbing the Grace We Need for Leadership

One of the speakers on my DTS, just for a night, was Jim Stier – he and his wife were some of the first YWAMers to Brazil and gave leadership to the pioneering process of YWAM there – he spoke about quiet times. The next time I heard him speak he also spoke about quiet times. At other times, he led discussions at big leadership meetings, I remember him challenging us to go before God in our quiet times. And this last week was really one big corporate quiet time. Each time he taught there was a depth to the topic at hand, but it always comes with the challenge to take time out of you day to intentionally spend time with God.

The point of the leadership gathering was that if we ourselves are not actively seeking God’s grace for continued grace we are going to run ourselves dry. We processed the question of how do we seek God’s grace and it was a fun discussion that caused us all to do a lot of processing.

The big point that I felt God drawing us to is that we find grace when we find Him.

Finding Him may look different for each of us, but it should be real. When Jesus came He really did come. When He sent the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit really did go. He’s created each of us, uniquely demonstrating the image of God, and each of us have really been created. We found God when He revealed Himself to us – it wasn’t by our own effort, bloodline, or spiritual heritage – and when we found God it turned out that He was full of Grace and Truth. He is still filled with Grace and Truth today. As we continue to serve Him, He shows up and changes the desire of our hearts from evil to love.

We can tell when it is real or not – when it is by our effort that we try or when it is by His presence that our heart undergoes its transformation from a heart filled with darkness to a heart ready to love His light.

That’s coming from John 1:1-18, Luke 17:5-10, and several passages of Paul’s letters.

Walking away from the conference, I’ve found that it helps me put both my own commitment to quiet time and walk with God into perspective – and it helps inform what I am looking for in outreach.

Try it out!

We spent our time looking at scripture, asking God to speak into our lives, and then sharing it with the group. Jim would give commentary and share pioneering stories, add some depth to the topic. It was something that was really good for me to reflect on again. There were lots of take away points, but it started with John 1:1-18.

If you’d like to check it out, I’d challenge you to read through that bit of scripture a bit slowly, ask God what He’d like to share, and check back in on the insights I’ll write down below. I’ll share what I got and it will be fun.

Ready?

Jesus, through whom God created the world, who John the Baptist spoke of, came among us.

The people who received Him and believed in His name – to them He gave the right to become children of God.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us … full of grace and truth.

The Law was given through Moses (which was true), grace and truth came through Jesus (because that is who He is!).

What are some of the things that stood out in a special way to you?