Spiritual War

This happened about three weeks ago. I’m falling behind on the events.
John Knoch is the base leader of the Eagles Nest Ranch YWAM. He is married and has three kids; His wife’s name is Janna, and their children are David, Joshua and Sarah, very biblical names. One day, John got a call from one of his mentors who resides in California. He tells John about a dream he had the night before. In his dream, John dies in a car accident and they went to his funeral. Kind of a scary type dream, but it is good that the person had the courage to tell John about it. So, that night, John tells all of the staff and students about his dream and we all come together and pray. John told us that most time vehicles are in dreams they relate to ministries. So we prayed for safety and also for blessing in there ministry out at the ranch. Two days pass, nothing really happens. On the following Saturday that we went into Medicine Hat to do some community service/ministry, we arrived back at the ranch to hear that Janna had been in a car accident! No joke. Some people began to tell us how Janna was taking her three kids in to town and ended up sliding on some ice then gripping the road again and rolling her vehicle. Amazingly, and totally by the grace of God, she and her three kids walked away with out any injury. And I mean nothing. Janna said that she broke a nail, but that’s it. I actually saw the vehicle and it was pretty bad. It was a miracle that they were ok.
Janna shared with the students what had happened and how the family had stood together after it had happened and laughed in the face of the devil. It was pretty crazy.
After writing something like this I have to ask my self Coincidence? I think not. For John’s mentor to have a dream like that and then for this to happen is more that coincidence, and it has impacted me to ask God to speak to me in my dream life. Now I’m not a shake and bake charismatic type, I am charismatic with a seat belt and on a side note: it sucks that the word “Charismatic” has a bad reputation because in the Greek it means: Grace Gift, which we all have. But now more than ever, I want God to speak to me in all ways that he wants to and I want to submit my dream life to him and be open to all the gifts of God no matter how freaky they look.

Thoughts from the mind and life of Luke

I was digging through my computer and I came across some files that I had written quite a while ago so these are some not so recent thoughts that I have had over the past three years.

When You Lose, Don’t lose the lesson. Right? Maybe. Well I am not sure what to say about this. Have you ever lost something that you thought was a sure thing? Like God had told you that this is it, this is what you have been waiting for. All you had to do was just keep it true and then you would get it in the end. Well Trying not to get to big in to theology and such but I now feel like you can lose something that God was going to give. Have you ever been there? I have, and it doesn’t feel nice. Well the only thing to do now is to turn life around and that’s all we can do, that is the only thing to do at this point. I don’t really know where I am going with this writing but I know this, God Is faithful even when we are not. Don’t worry about blowing it because God is there to pick us up again. That is the most real statement that I can utter at this point because God loves us so much it’s, for lack of better words, crazy.
Thanks be to God for his grace mercy and love.

Saturday outreach

So we have been doing a lot of interesting things during this time in DTS, but two Saturday's ago was particularly stretching. We are called to make disciples of all nations so, why not start with where you are at? So, on Saturday we went into Medicine Hat to do some street ministry. Initially we were supposed to team up with a church that has an actual street church and walk around the Hat and invite people to the service. On Friday, however, we got the unfortunate news that the street church had been canceled do to so circumstances, bummer. But, the leaders decided that we should just go in and do something anyway. I was a little freaked at this because now we have no real ice breaker but- Jesus is Lord. So we went into town, not really knowing what to expect. When we arrived in town, we met in a parking lot down town and began asking God about who and where we should go to minister. We were all silent before the Lord for a while then, someone spoke up about ministering to a lady in a pink shirt another talked about ministering to a man who was walking with crutches and probably the most crazy one was "there will be a girl in playboy bunny pants that we need to pray for". After we discussed and devised strategies, we paired off and began walking, looking for these different people. Naturally, Barbie and I went together, talking about how crazy it was that we were doing this. We began walking, asking God to direct us as to where to go. As we walked, I felt God leading us down certain streets and avenues until we came to a four way stop. We stopped and stood there for a moment and out of a building emerged a young lady and her young daughter. I felt really strongly that we were supposed to follow them, which sounds totally weird and creepy, I know. Well, we walked behind them, with uncertainty as to what exactly we were doing. They stopped to do some window shopping and we continued past them as to not appear totally creepy. We were now walking ahead of them down the street wondering 'what we were going to do?'. I heard the Mother say "we should visit Doris, do you want to go visit Doris today?" I began thinking, who is Doris? Then up ahead I noticed a store called Doris' Baby clothing store. Booya. We were still ahead of them at this point, so when we arrived at Doris' store we stopped and looked in the windows. The two went in and we followed, knowing that there was defiantly something about these two. Now in the store, we began wondering, again, 'what are we doing?' We just followed these people into a Baby clothing store and we defiantly don't have a baby or the desire to buy anything baby related. The Mother and the store owner, Doris herself, began talking and we, trying not to appear like we were trying to steal something, were eavesdropping on their conversation. As we slowly got closer to the till I noticed that they were talking about biblical things. The mother mentioned something about Noah's arc; They were talking about many well known Bible stories. As we got closer to them, I noticed that they had some really sweet little kid bible stories books on the counter. Doris began saying how great this one book in particular was. Now that we had an ice breaker I approached them and picked up the book. The book was quite awesome it had a lot of really good stories and a good sized write up about each one. So I cunningly commented "so you guys must be believers?" Doris immediately said "oh yes Jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour." Then she just opened up about all kinds of things. We asked her where she went to church and she commented that she hadn't been to church in quite some time because her and her pastor had some disagreements about some things. The more we talked about it, the more Barbie and I saw that her pastor had seriously hurt her and others in there church by offering some wrong teaching and just being all together cruel. We encouraged her to check out the Bridge church since we had the pastor of the church lecture here and we were able to build relationship with him. Our conversation went on about forty five minutes and we discussed a lot of things about Christianity and had a really good time with them. Before we left we prayed for Doris, Jen and Rosie and encouraged them to journey together in there christian walks. Yes it was amazing. We left that place floating and giggling like school girls and praising God for using us in this way.
God is awesome. We are persuaded that this can happen any where we go if we are obedient to the leading of the Holy Spirit and we are trying to live this out in everything we do.

Luke Ch 5 revisited

Today during lectures the speaker hit Luke Ch 5. For God to revisit this today is significant. Last night (December 2nd) at dinner we were talking about direction and God giving instruction and how hard it can be. Shane said that we have to go back to those moments of complete soberness that God gives. Sometimes it’s difficult because the further apart these moments are the more things that can get in the way such as our own emotions, thoughts and feelings. I began to share how in May 2008, I heard a sermon on this text and it spoke to me about leaving what is familiar and doing what God is telling me to do. Just as Jesus called Simon to follow him, Jesus is calling me to go out in to the deep for a catch. (Luke 5:1-11) So today in this crazy lecture where the speaker just asked me to go in front of the class and practice my one two punch combo on his hand, we are talking about it again, well kind of talking about it.
God is the same yesterday, today and forever. God is bringing me back to this original illumination that I had in May. I am called to leave all I have, (which is not always selling all of your possessions for the record) it is what I know. Friends, Family familiarity and follow him. I want to be a true disciple of Jesus! I want to listen to the leading of Jesus and not just do things. In this D.T.S I am learning how to be a true Disciple of Jesus and I am finding out that it takes listening more than doing. If God has good works stored up for us (Ephesians 2:10) then we need not focus on doing works, but listening to God. I have been doing a lot of works and it has been good, don’t get me wrong, but God is calling me to just listen to him and do what he says.