Can't believe it's almost November - Only a month and a half left!!

Well it's been a little while since I've posted anything, so I figured I'd give you all a quick update.

Things have been going great here, and God has been continuing to teach me and move in my life. We're kinda on a wave of hard weeks followed by easier weeks, with major prophets one week, followed by a couple minor prophets the next. Right now we've just started Jeremiah and will have our first teaching on Monday morning, which I'm really looking forward to. After just reading the book a couple times, my first impression has been how amazing Jeremiah's faith and endurance were to keep preaching even though nobody was listening to him and were persecuting him for preaching against them and preaching a message of judgment for their continuous turning away from God. I can't wait to dig in a little deeper and really see the full message that God wants to bring me through this book.

Last week we did Micah and Joel, which were both great small prophets, but I think I enjoyed Micah the most. Micah was considered kinda like a little Isaiah. He had a similar message to him, but most likely operated outside of Jerusalem and didn't have the same type of access to the king as Isaiah was. He did bring a similar message though, in that he spoke against the injustice that was happening among the people and among the leadership, and of course, about their coming judgment and the restoration that would come. The main thing that I got out of Micah was regarding leadership and the injustice that was happening within the religious leaders as well as the rulers of the people. It really showed me the importance of being a godly leader and of always looking to God to show you how to be a godly leader and also the importance of having people around you that will help keep you accountable and will help ensure that you are leading in a godly way.

The week before, we did Isaiah, which was a tough book for me, and was actually the first book that I didn't completely finish. My goal in SBS had been not to let this happen, so I was pretty disappointed, but it was something that God helped me accept and really taught me through.

The good part of it was that I was still able to interpret the entire book and was able to do my final application, but I wasn't able to all the insides on my charts and I missed about half of the New Testament references in the book, and there's a lot of them because Isaiah is the most quoted OT book in the NT. The neat thing was that God really taught me a lot about humility through not finishing the book and through being able to accept that I wasn't going to finish and changing my goal to reflect that so that I would still be able to get something out of it and not just go into auto-pilot trying to finish it. For me, this is a pretty big thing because I've had issues with being performance focused and a bit of a perfectionist in the past, so the fact that I was able to give that up and say that I was alright with not finishing so that I could really try to seek God in the text instead of just trying to power through it and not getting anything out of it was a pretty big deal to me and really showed me how much God had taught me through it.

The other lesson that God taught me, through my small group leader and one-on-one Brent, was that although I am a great finisher and always work hard to the very end and won't quit - which was something I was happy with myself about because I didn't just give up and accept not finishing the book, but finished it as well as I could - I don't always work hard throughout the whole process, especially in the early stages of big books. I tend to be one of those, work well under pressure guys, which is good, but God really showed me that I need to also learn to have the discipline to go hard all the way through and to have the sense of urgency that I have at the end all the way through as well. I also learned that I need to set myself up to be able to work hard, which I didn't do in this book because I stayed up to watch the Falcons game on Sunday night, and I ended up getting a little sick because of it and wasn't able to work as hard as I would have been able to if I got enough sleep.

So although I didn't finish and failed the book, I still was able to get a lot out of it and God really taught me a lot about myself, which really is a huge part of SBS, but I'm definitely not going to let it happen again and will learn from my mistakes (that's the good part of SBS, there's always another book to put what you learned into practice).

Starting tomorrow, we will officially be into week 6 of SBS, and I will only have a month and a half left in Taiwan. I still can't believe how fast it has been and it's hard to believe that I will be leaving my family that I've had here the last 7 months, but all good things must come to an end I guess. I've been trying to spend as much time with my classmates and to go for lunch with a lot of people in this term so that I can really connect with people and we can bless each other and speak into each other's lives, which has been awesome and I hope to do it as much as possible over the last month and a half. I'm also starting to have church with some guys on Sunday mornings in the coffee shop near our place where we just read through part of the bible a discuss what jumps out at us. Today was my first time joining them, and it was awesome. We went through Romans 1-7 and had some awesome discussions about it. The discussions that I have with people here is something that I'm going to miss so much because I've been able to learn so much from my fellow classmates just through discussing what we've been learning.

I was hoping to finally know what is happening after SBS for this update so I could let you all know, but unfortunately things are still up in the air. The only update that I can give you guys is that I am no longer doing the Titus Project (where we go teach the bible in 3rd world countries) after SBS as I had planned. I had applied to Titus, but I heard that they probably weren't going to be able to accept everybody, and since I wasn't sure I would be able to do it or not depending on when the Biblical Core Course that I'm planning on staffing in Oxford, NZ starts, I figured I would withdraw my application so that someone who will be doing it for sure could have my place. Also, as I been praying about it, and even when I originally applied, I just really felt that God was taking me in a different direction and that I wasn't supposed to do Titus at this time.

So right now I am still waiting on my acceptance with Oxford, as well as waiting to find out how it's all going to work out with me going there, but I'm just trusting that God has it in His hands and that He will work it out the way that He has planned. Please be praying that I will have peace while I wait to hear from them and that it won't distract me from my work at all.

Anyways, this ended up being a longer post than I planned, as usual, so I should wrap it up, but I hope that you are all doing great and that you're keeping warm as winter comes. Things have gotten a little cooler here, which is awesome because I no longer sweat just sitting around my house, but it's still fairly warm when the sun is out and I was still able to get out surfing with surf ministry this weekend. I will definitely update you all when I know more about the future and how it's going to look.

God bless

Through the first week of 3rd term

Sandiaoling Waterfall

It's hard to believe that we've already started 3rd term. I have already been in Taiwan for over 6 months, and they have been probably the most difficult 6 months of my life, but it's been an absolutely amazing experience and privilege to be able to spend this time studying God's word so closely. The last 3 weeks of 2nd term we did Samuel, Kings and Chronicles (that is not a typo, those 3 monsters in 3 weeks), which was like having a mountain as the end of a marathon. It was insane and I almost felt like giving up one day during Kings, but it was definitely worth it and was amazing to see how God moved throughout the time of the kings of Israel (and Judah) and how even though it sometimes seemed like He wasn't there, He was always moving and active and sovereign throughout it.

Break was definitely a VERY much needed rest. I didn't do anything too crazy, basically just went rock climbing a few times at a bouldering wall that's in a park in Taipei and went on a couple hikes, one of which was an amazing trail with 3 waterfalls that was actually a real hike on a dirt trail, which is rare for Taipei area (usually it just consists of paved or stone trails with lots of stairs). Other than that I did some relaxing and hung out with my friends and with Jesus.

The bouldering wall in Neihu Sports Park

We now have just finished the first week of 3rd (and final) term and it has started off with a bang with wisdom literature. We started out with Proverbs, and it was probably my favourite book that we've studied so far, and probably will be my favourite out of the entire SBS. The former SBS leader, Scott, taught the book and he brought the truth big time and really dug into it and didn't dodge any of the hard and convicting wisdom in the book. We had two mornings of teaching (6 hrs), and throughout the teaching I was loving every minute of it. Studying Proverbs really showed me how much I love wisdom and how much I desire more and more wisdom from God, which was especially cool because I also realized how much God wants us to seek wisdom and loves to see us desire it (Prov 1:7 and 9:10 say that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom/understanding). On the second day of teaching Scott wore his "friendly shirt" because he was going to be delivering some hard truths from Proverbs regarding teachability, money and diligence/laziness, and the whole class I just sat there loving every minute of it and cheering him on in my heart. It was amazing to see how God had put wisdom in my heart and how it made me love it no matter what it meant for my own comfort and no matter how convicting it was. I can't say enough about the book of Proverbs and I 100% recommend each and every one of you take the time to read through it, and better yet, spend some time meditating on different passages. For our assignment we had to choose 4 themes to track throughout the book and do 5 interpretations for each theme. I chose reproof/discipline, pride/humility, the fear of the Lord and anger/temper as my themes, and I plan to colour code all the different themes in my bible so that I can have a quick reference guide to the main themes Proverbs deals with and spend time every week meditating on different passages depending on what I feel God wants to speak to me about.

The 2nd half of the week we studied Job, which was a lot more intensive than we all thought it would be. We did another special assignment for Job where we went through the discourse that Job and his friends had (and Elihu's response to it) and identified passages that we felt were biblical and ones we felt unbiblical, using verse reference outside of Job to support our views. We also had to identify areas where his friends' arguments were biblical, but were just not applied with wisdom. It was a difficult assignment, but was a really good way to go through the book and see how important it is to use wisdom properly, and was a good way to put the knowledge that we've gained about the bible into use. I just wish I would have had a bit more time to do it (may be something to do again in the future).

This week is going to be a bit of a break for us. We are having some mandatory volunteer training as a requirement of getting our Alien Residency Card, so we'll still have classes a couple days for Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes, but we don't actually have an assignment for them, so it'll be a nice little break for us. We also will be starting the prophets with the introduction to the prophets on Friday and our first lecture for Amos on Saturday. It's kinda funny how having a full 6 day week of classes and training is considered a break for us, but that just shows you how intense and busy this school has been for us.

Please be praying for me over the next week or so. In my last post I posted what I felt like God had for me for the future, but this last week when I was about to hand in my Titus application I felt a huge check in my spirit and felt God asking me if I was absolutely sure that this was what I'm supposed to do next. This led me to hold off on applying and spending time in prayer about my future, and I ended up sending an email to the Oxford YWAM base and it's now a possibility that I may be going there in January instead to staff the Biblical Core Course (basically a 3 month version of SBS) as well as the Backpackers DTS in September. So right now I'm waiting on an email back from the Oxford base about some questions that I felt God wanted me to ask before I made a decision, and I should know by the end of the week what the plan is. I still applied for Titus because the application was due on Saturday and just made them aware of my current situation and that I'm not 100% sure what God wants me to do yet, but that I'll let them know as soon as possible. So if you could all be praying that God really directs my path as I plan for the future, it'd be really appreciated. My heart is just to do what He wants me to do and not to do anything just because it seems good or because others think I should do it. He's planned my steps so far, and I can't wait to see the path that He's chosen for me. I'll definitely write a post when everything is finalized to let you know what's happening.

Also, I'm coming home for Christmas this year! I'll be home December 18th, and depending on what I do after SBS, I'll either be leaving January 2nd if I'm doing Titus or 22nd(ish) if I'm staffing in Oxford, so if you're in London, let me know if you want to get together for a coffee or lunch and catch up.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my blog and keeping me in your prayers, it means so much to me.

God bless!