Teachings so far

Sorry that it has been a little while since my last post. As you can probably imagine, things are pretty crazy over here, and I keep pretty busy between the DTS and enjoying myself in my free time.

We have been getting some great teaching the last couple weeks, Dr. Bruce Thompson came in for week 2 to speak on the Father's Heart, Sam Hoffman, who is actually on staff with the Family Ministries DTS, spoke last week on prayer and intercession and hearing God, and this week we have Mark Parker teaching us about the Lordship of Christ! The teaching has been absolutely amazing! Bruce's teaching on the Father Heart of God was like nothing I've heard on the subject before. He helped me gain a better understanding of how love works and where love deficits come from and how the enemy uses them against us. I know that there was a lot of healing for a lot of people during that week, especially on Friday. The Friday lecture period was used as a time of ministry and prayer, and you could definitely see God at work in the room spreading His love and peace and healing!!!

Last week's teaching on prayer and intercession was awesome! Sam is quite the prayer warrior, and regularly would tell us that He is crazy, but crazy for the Lord!! He has definitely helped me gain new life in my prayer life and has really helped me better understand the power and necessity of prayer, especially when it comes to intercession. Before coming here I had a general idea of what intercession was, but now I find I have a much better understanding of what it is, and why it is so important for all Christians. I'm kinda shocked that I have been a Christian all my life, but have never really heard much talk being done about intercession. I believe more churches in North America should have regular open prayer meetings for intercession for the church and the leadership in the church. I really think we need to wake up to the spiritual warfare that is going on all around us, and recognize the power of corporate targeted prayer. It is great to promote having a healthy prayer life and spending time with God daily, but why are we not promoting people praying for specific things, for targeting specific needs? Is it because we're afraid that if their prayers aren't answered that they will get discouraged and stop?? Last week I heard many stories of people praying and crying out to God for breakthroughs in certain things for certain people and continuing to pray daily for a year or two or however long it takes for the breakthrough to come. We must persevere in our prayers and cry out to God in our prayers, and not just say a quick prayer here or there and hope that there will be breakthroughs.
I have had such a wake up call and have answered that call by setting aside time every day to pray, whether it be in our morning prayer meetings or going to the prayer room for an hour a night. I recommend to all of you to spend more time in hard, heartfelt, meaningful, crying out prayer. I know my excuse used to always be that I don't have the time to set aside 1 hour to pray, but then I would go and play Settlers of Catan for a few hours with friends, or go watch a movie. I always had the time, I just didn't want to sacrifice the fun I was having doing these things. I hope none of this sounds like an attack on the prayer life of all North American believers, because it's not, I know that some, maybe even many of you reading this have a very strong prayer life, but I just felt that this needed to be said to possibly inspire some of you that have been letting it slip, or that have been saying you didn't have the time. Prayer works, but you must be dedicated to it, and corporate prayer is even more powerful.
I'm in the process of typing up my notes from last week for my parents, so if anybody else would like to see my notes, send me an email at stelps1@gmail.com. I can't guarantee that they are the best notes, sometimes the speakers go off on tangents and I just write down whatever is speaking to me, but I think that there is some very valuable insight in them from an amazing teacher who is a prayer warrior in every sense of the word.

As I said earlier, this week we are learning about the Lordship of Christ. I am very excited about this week because I've heard a lot of great things from the staff about this week and about the speaker, Mark Parker. He is a full time speaker for YWAM, and he travels all over the place speaking to DTSs and other schools. He is full of energy and has an amazing enthusiasm for God. I can't wait to see what he has in store for us, and how God is going to be speaking through him! On Friday we are having an all day teaching/prayer/worship/whateverGodhasinstore time with Mark. I don't know what exactly is happening, but I know that from what I've heard, it is a powerful time and a blessed time. So please keep me in your prayers on Friday, which would actually be Thursday for you (for those wondering, I am now 17 hours ahead of you after our time changed this past weekend, so the easy way to think of it is 7 hours before your time, but plus 1 day).

I hope that everybody is doing fantastic back home in Canada! I know that I am absolutely loving it here!! I still can't believe that I get to spend my days praising, worshiping, learning about and spending time with God! It is an amazing life, and I can't wait to see what God has in store for me. I love and miss you all (but not terribly, because I am loving it so much out here!!! Sorry, just want to be honest)!! Please be praying that God will continue to guide me in what He has for me, and especially in what is my next step after this DTS is finished.

God bless!!!