:::The Original Design...

My heart breaks when I think about how many days I've lived my life for myself. I've twisted everything around me into something that always results in being about me... and that fact alone disgusts me.

We had a speaker this week named Tre Sheppard, who's a member of the band called One Hundred Hours in the UK. He lives in Northern Ireland and came to speak to my DTS for 3 days about the Kingdom of God... and a lot of what he's had to say has really shaken me up.

He started by stating that the Gospel message isn't ABOUT ME. It's not about MY LIFE. Its more about how my life should influence others.
The Heart of the Gospel Message is this: "Come back to your original design."

God's original design for us was the Garden of Eden.... that is purity, no shame, literally walking, talking, and communing with God. Sexuality without shame. Unity with God. Paradise:)
You were never DESIGNED to have your heart broken.
You were never DESIGNED to experience things like hatred, divorce, rape, etc.

Do you realize that? Those things weren't part of God's original design!!
People know it too.
Even people with evil hearts and desires, who don't know the living God, they know and can TELL that something in the world is broken.
It's written across the earth. Pain, brokenness, depression, lust, hatred, war, murder. There must be more than this...

And that is what the story of Jesus is all about - to taste paradise, and be RESTORED to what we were originally DESIGNED FOR!!
Humanity was designed for Eden.

...
that's huge.

Thats why marriage is such a sacred thing. Think about it... it's an original covenant. Marriage is a celebration of the original design!! That's something that God intended from the beginning. That's amazing.

So. God's plan obviously changed as it needed to contrast with the Fall of Man. He needed to restore His Kingdom!!!

Gameplan: Jesus:)

Jesus stated over and over to the people that they needed to "Repent! For the Kingdom of God is at Hand!!"

Bam. Jesus came, defeated sin on the Cross, rose again on the third day, and made His permanent Kingdom in US. That's AMAZING!!

The Kingdom is in US!! Think about how amazing that is!! We are the hands and feet of God... WE are the Kingdom!

This is the sad part tho. We are the Kingdom of God... YOU are His plan to reach the world. Just about everything that God does, and every way He moves, is through His people! (That's us.)

Here's the problem.
Satan knows that we are God's plan. We are here to advance the Kingdom that can't be shaken and that is living inside of us... we are God's plan.
So what does satan do? He keeps us from it.
Instead, he consumes our minds and hearts to twist the Gospel and make it about US.
We change the living word, sharper than a double-edged sword, that can peirce the mind and soul... change THAT into a simple handbook that we occaisionally read and use for our information on how to be a better God-person.
We spend our lives trying to become "the best Christian we can," to get our lives "back on track."
Our prayers are filled with cries to God to STOP our lustful thinking, to increase our self-image and confidence, to BRING us a perfect future spouse, to help us overcome our porn addiction, etc. etc. etc...

We turn the Gospel message to a focus on us instead. INSTEAD, of lifting up prayers for the millions of people who die from HIV/AIDS. The millions of women and children who are kidnapped and sold into Sex Trafficking - modern day slavery. The millions of children that are given no chance of life and aborted day after day - modern day genocide.

Instead of moving and acting and advancing and LIVING within the power thats inside of us, the KINGDOM that's inside of us, we spend all our lives trying to be better people and trying to clean up our lives.

Don't get me wrong, I think that's so so important. You're not going to live passionately for the Lord if your heart isn't right and if you're living in this sick double life. But the thing is, we make that our sole focus. We are consumed with it. It almost becomes an extremely selfish thing... like, I pray for God to come take away the pride in my life because I want to be known as a humble person.

When, in fact, if I would spend my time and MONEY and efforts into becoming obsessed with an injustice in the world; praying against it, researching it, getting involved to help it, that alone would CHANGE my perspective into a much more Kingdomly one, where there wouldn't possibly be room for me to be prideful anyways.
Does that make sense?

I dunno if it does or not. I dunno. All I know is this speaks huge to me.
Just about all my prayers up until now have been somewhat selfish... God, help my parents stop fighting (because I want to be known as a girl who has it all together with an amazing family and everything), God, help me get rid of my pride (because I want to be KNOWN as a humble person), God, help me be a woman who chases after your heart (becaues I want to attract a man that chases after your heart as well), God, please bless me with this, and this, etc. etc etc.

I ask all of this from Him, with such an "expecting" heart, yet I continue to live my life the way I wanna live it. Selfishly. Absolutely no sign of me taking up my Cross, and definitely no sign of me dying to myself, to my desires, to my dreams, to my hopes and little girlish wishes.

I don't know. I don't want to live for myself anymore. I want to be consumed with God, and with that be consumed with what He is consumed with. I want to dream what He dreams. I want to love what/who HE loves. I want to move how HE moves. I want all of Him to be fully alive in me... because His Kingdom is in me anyways.

I read Ephesians 4 this past week and it hit home:

"Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires; and be renewed in the Spirit of your minds, and put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and Holiness. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with His neighbor, for we are all members of one another." (4:22-25)

Dang that's perfect. Do you see?
Guys, thats another thing I'm learning since I've been here. I'm realizing more and more just how GOOD the Bible is. There's so much truth in this book, so much LIFE. It literally is alive, and is constantly hitting my heart and changing and moving me and changing the way I want to be and the way I think.
SO much truth in one book... its unbelievable. I want to make it my best friend!!

ALSO---------------------------
Another idea that Tre spoke about.
He said that we all carry fhe Light of Christ in us... but sometimes we really don't realize JUST how brought that light in us is. Why?? Because we're trying to shine OUR light in places where other lights are already shining... *translation*.... we are surrounding ourselves with Church, Youth Group, Christian this, Christian that, etc. Getting BLENDED into the light around us. You know what I mean?

I'm SO guilty of that. I'm so guilty of thinking its a "Christian vs. the bad world" type of situation... ya know... us against them. I have that mindset and THAT heart set... yet, I'm still praying "God use me, God use me. God, let my light so shine before men that they may see my goodworks and glorify YOU!!"
Wanna see your light shine BRIGHTLY??
Go to the darkest places in the world. And it will shine.

Cool idea huh? I never had thought about that before. Amazing. (I can expand further and further on this idea... but for the sake of your absolute boredom and my sleepy eyes... I won't. Just know that this idea is freakin amazing.)

Anyways.
Wrapping this little guy up.
That's kind of what God's been doing in my heart... just a SMALL peice. The past 3 weeks have been huge... so much breaking down of my old life and learning patterns of the new life that I want to live.
- Learning a lot about myself and who I am... which is really good.
- Learning to love my neighbor... even if they take too long in the shower! Ha! Community living has definitely been a learning experience in itself.
- Learning to be away from somebody I'm in love with... learning to communicate effectively and try my hardest to show that person just how much I really, really love them. (Counting down the days til I see him again! Right now... we're at 134... ha. How cheesy! *smile*)
- Learning to be SPIRITUALLY DISCIPLINED... to be intentional in my walk with Christ. To have disciplined "Quiet Times" and really pursue His heart and learn more about who He is.
- Developing a PASSION for the world and to see Jesus really move in it and reach out to a humanity that is broken, depressed, hurting... and restore it to the original design. The Echo of Eden. :)

Lets just say that I'm freakin in love with Jesus for laying down His life for me and for the world and saving me and calling me back to the original design... unity with God. Walking with God. Talking with God. Because He loves us. Oh... how He loves us. :)

Praise Jesus!!!

:::And my Outreach country is.... :)

Got it yet...? :) Haha...

KYRGYZSTAN!!!!!!!

:)

We will first be living in the capital of K-Stan, a city called Bishkek. It's in the northern part of the country.

Some quick facts about Kyrgyzstan (thanks to google)::::

- Major Religion is Sunni Muslim

- The Country is about the size of Minnesota

- The "Tien Shan" Mountain Range dominates the country. (Translated as "Heavenly Mountains" in Chinese!)

- Part of Soviet Union until Aug. 31st, 1991, now recognized as their country's independence day.

- Surrounded by Kazakstan to the North, China and Tajikistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the east.

- It is among the poorest of the former Soviet Union Republics

- Kyrgyzstan is a secular state, altho Islam has a strong and growing influence in politics.

So yes. Here are some little facts that I've found out after about a half an hour of googling. I'm SO excited. As soon as they put the options up on the board for us to choose, I felt drawn for this one for some reason. We will be moving there from the beginning of December to the beginning of February.

There are about 10 DTS students on my team, a couple from Switzerland, a guy from Korea, a guy in the US Army, a couple girls from Canada, a kid from Alaska, a guy from Maryland, and a girl from Houston!! Our leaders names are Brandon (21 from Ohio) and Katie Miller (20-something from... Colorado Springs!!!) :)

Our leaders are really different from each other; Brandon is very loud and theatrical, probably one of the funniest guys I've ever met, while Katie is more quiet and gentle, but I'm really excited for how each leader will contribute differently to the team.

We will be staying with these long-term missionaries that are involved with YWAM and that have already been living out there, I think their names are Jeff and Gabrielle? And we will be assisting their ministries for the two and a half months that we're there.

I'm SO excited.

I feel SO at peace about going to this place and am so excited to see how God is going to move and prepare my heart and the heart of my teammates in these upcoming months before we fly out!!

Please pray for the safety of my team and for God to really bring many opportunities to share His gospel with the Kyrgyz people. Feel free to google/lookup any info of the country and send it to me if you like!! I'm so excited to research it and learn more about it before we move there.

I'll keep you all updated for sure... and in the meantime Im just excited for God to move in my heart more and more, drawing me closer and closer to Him.

"Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation..." - Mark 16:15

:::John 15 Anyone??

Freedom

Desperate

Consecrated

Peace

Redeemed

These are just some of the words that have been on my heart since I've been here. God is so so good. He's showing up here in every area, every worship session, every new relationship, every random conversation and hangout time, every quiet time in the mornings, every time of prayer and intercession.... all over the place. It's amazing.

So a few days ago, my little sister and I were talking and she said to read this chapter in John. I couldn't read it right then so I said I would read it later, but as I went back to my Bible I read John 13 instead and it was ok but I thought that was it for now. So I kind of let it go until last night, when I saw that her status on facebook said "John 15".... and I was like "ohhhhh, I read the wrong one eh?" I decided to read John 15 this morning for my quiet time instead, and I LOVED IT.

"I am the true vine, you are the branches, the one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me."

Amazing.

I feel another theme for me throughout this time is to recognize my complete, absolute dependency on God. That apart from Him, I am literally nothing. Everything is created by Him, through Him, and for Him, and without Him, we are NOTHING. Do you get it? I think you should.

Anyways, that spoke huge to me in my quiet time this morning. God was messing me up a lot.

THEN. We had our very first lecture, where Chris Johnson, the director of the school, spoke. He shared a little bit about his testimony, how he's from Manatoba, Canada and was obsessed with hockey, moving to Hawaii to do his DTS 8 years ago at age 20, and God's been moving in his heart and shaking him up ever since.

Then, as he was sharing a little bit, he started talking about God and how we should base everything that we're going through in life, every decision, every situation, and every response to those situations, on TRUTH rather than feeling. Base my life on God's word and the truth He says about me, rather than how I'm feeling in one particular situation or on one particular day.

Anyways... he asked us to open our Bibles, and the very first scripture he read aloud to us was in... you guessed it.... John 15. :)

(I love how clever God is.... continually reaffirming and bringing up something that He obviously wants me to understand. You know, John 15 John 15 John 15. It's like "Ha, ok God I get it!") :)

John 15 talks a lot about bearing fruit. It talks a lot about abiding in Jesus and letting Him transform you to the point where His will, becomes my will. Not Jesus moving in the direction I want Him to go, but rather me realigning my heart up to match where HE wants me to go. I dunno. Just something God's starting in my heart.

Right now I'm struggling with being in a desperate, needy position for God. I want to be so set on Him and so desperate and hungry to know Him better, and I'm trying to cultivate that in my life right now.

I'm excited because YWAM enables me to develop discipline in my life and with my quiet times, meaning we HAVE to get up at 7 every morning, have breakfast, and then have our quiet times for an hour from 7:30 - 8:30 each morning. Some people might hate that, or find it too legalistic, but I'm really excited to have that and develop that discipline so I can really make it part of my every day life... that is, seeking Him, spending time with Him, really KNOWING Him. :)

Anyways. Chris Johnson is speaking again for lecture tonight. I have a feeling its going to be so so amazing, I'm excited!!

Praise Jesus for reigning on the throne forever and ever.

:::Hawaii and Schedules:)

The verse you see up there, Joshua 24:15, is the verse that the leaders felt would be the 'DTS' verse for this semester. It really hit me hard, and I'm really excited about this and what we will be learning this upcoming season of my life!! The other pictures are hanging in what we call "The Tin Cathedral", the large meeting place where we have prayer, lectures, worship, or just full DTS meetings. These kind of describe the focus and passion of YWAM and DTS. I love it.

Being here for the past 3 days has been AWESOME. I LOVE the DTS staff, and love the students even more. It's awesome to be in a new place, and KNOW that everyone else is in the same, vulnerable, nervous position that you're in. I know I'm going to love having different cultures, life stories, and backgrounds collide with mine over these next 6 months. So far I've heard stories of girls struggling with eating disorders, fathers dying a couple years ago, girls being trapped in drinking and party scenes, and lives literally falling apart in a matter of days. We're all combined here with new EVERYTHING, and its great getting to know everybody from point blank:)

Everybody here is so beautiful. I'm LOVING getting to know everybody, especially the girls. They're all so sweet and out-going, and there's something so BEAUTIFUL about every single one of them, it's awesome to see their differences in personalities and preferences. Its been so fun. :)

We met yesterday and went over rules and legistics a little bit. Got folders with our weekly schedules in it, and heres a copy of it for those of you who really care enough to know what I'm doing at what time during the day. :) (REmember, I'm 4 hours behind so it's a little bit of a difference for sure.) :)

My DTS Weekly Schedule:
Monday
7 am - Breakfast
7:30 am - Quiet Time
8:30 am - Base Worship
9:30 am - DTS Intercession
10:30 am - Lecture
12:30 pm - Lunch
1:30 pm - Team Time/Work Duty
5:00 pm - Dinner
6:30 pm - Lecture

Tuesday
7 am - Breakfast
7:30 am - Quiet Time
8:30 am - Book Reading
10:30 am - Lecture
12:30 pm - Lunch
1:30 pm- Team Time/Work Duty
5:00 pm - Dinner

Wednesday
7 am - Breakfast
7:30 am - Quiet Time
8:30 am - Community Outreach
12:30 pm - Lunch
1:30 pm - Community Outreach/Work Duty
5:00 pm - Dinner
6:00 pm - Worship
7:00 pm - Lecture

Thursday
7 am - Breakfast
7:30 - Quiet Time
8:30 am - Base Intercession
9:30 am - Bible Reading
10:30 am - Lecture
12:30 pm - Lunch
1:30 pm - Work Duty
5 pm - Dinner
6:30 pm - Community Meeting

Friday
7am - Breakfast
7:30 am - Quiet Time
8:30 am - Break Out Groups
9:30 am - Bible Memorization
10 am - Video Time
10:30 am - Lecture
12:30 pm - Lunch
1:30 pm - Small Groups
5 pm - Dinner
6 pm - Evangelism

Sat and Sunday we have off except for church. :) It's pretty chill here over all, no curfews, a lot of freedom. They figured since we're adults, they're gonna treat us like that. Which is nice. :)

They've given us 3 books that we're required to read while we're here and write reports about. "Is that Really You, God?" - by Loren Cunningham (the man who's the founder of YWAM):::: "When Heaven Invades Earth?" and "Imprisoned in Iran" - by a YWAMer named Dan Baumann, which is a true story of his experience in an Iranian Prison. The week of October 17th, my DTS is flying over to Kona, the Big Island, to have joint classes with all the Hawaii DTS's, and Dan Baumann is coming to speak to all of us while we're there! I'm so excited for that. :)

We have the "Manoa Market" about 5 mins walking distance from where we live which is really nice. There's a Safeway, Starbucks, Subway, and McDonalds there.

Yesterday morning, we had worship session with the whole school for the first time, which was AMAZING. The first song we sang was "You're Grace is enough" from Chris Tomlin, then "King of Glory" from Chris Tomlin, then "In Your Freedom" by Hillsong (favorite!).... it was so cool to have all these different cultures and people, from all over the world, joined together... in Hawaii!!... worshipping the same God with the same worship songs and in unity. Amazing!!

God is so good. I feel so free to worship Him here. I feel so comfortable and I feel like there's so a yearning in everybody to be real with Him, to know Him, and to make Him known in the world. There are so many amazing testimonies here, it's amazing. God's done some pretty amazing things, like deliver drug addicts, alcoholics, people with eating disorders, etc. Into freedom.

The verse in Joshua, "Choose for yourselves, this day, whom you will serve," really just forces each of us students to come face to face with a decision. Who am I going to serve? Who will be my primary audience in my life? The world? Myself? or my Savior?

On the plane ride over to Hawaii, I was re-reading a book from my friend Mark called "Pursuit of Man," by AW Tozer. It was amazing. It talks about how incredibly vital it is for a Christian to view God correctly. In other words, the way a Christian views God really shapes the way they live thier lives. For example, if they view God as an angry, mad person who's ready to strike lightning at you with the first mistake you make and who will hold a grudge with everything you mess up on. Or they can view God as a God of love, and He just LOVES us, but can also overstretch it to the point where you take advantage of His Grace. "Oh, its ok if I get drunk tonight, its ok if I sleep with this person tonight, because God knows I"m a sinner and I'm not perfect, but God'll still love me."

God calls us to live a life of freedom, but He doesn't mean freedom in that sense. I feel like He's been speaking that so strongly in my life while I've been here. I'm not sure exactly where's He's taking me with that, but I want to learn how to properly live in His freedom and rest in Him.

I dunno. Its getting late and I'm tired, but I'll definitely elaborate more on this later. Count on a blog coming up here soon.... :)

Anyways. Loving Hawaii. Missing Colorado. Trying to find out how these two worlds can mesh... Gods good and I know He has it all in His good, perfect timing. Praise Jesus. :)

Love and miss you all, so so so much!! Praying for you. Keep in touch!! :) (21jocelyn@gmail.com)

:::First Couple of Days!! :)

I'M HERE!!! :)

... sitting in a Mcdonalds and enjoying the wifi that I found... for free! Ha I'm so sneaky:)

Anyways. Got here yesterday at around 3 pm. Got here with 3 other girls, all from Canada, and have 4 staff people pick us up at the airport. They played a little prank on us which was funny... broke the ice a little bit for sure. :) Got to the YWAM base, and set myself up in a room. My room has two bunkbeds and I share it with 3 other girls. One girl in my room is from Houston, one is from Canada, one from Brazil, one from the Netherlands, and one is from Norway!! All are very very sweet and beautiful. Then after trying to unpack a little bit, went and lined up for dinner around 5:30. Dinner was nice because I got a chance to know a lot of the staff a little bit better.... It's hard differentiating between staff and students because everyone is around the same age... from like 24 - 18. Everybody is SO nice, the staff are really welcoming. We have 4 students from Switzerland, a couple from England, a couple from Norway, one from New Zealand, like 8 students from Canada, and then more from all over the US, Maine, Ohio, Colorado, Houston, Washington State, New Jersey.

I'm LOVING getting to know the different cultures and LOVING the accents... especially that of my friend Izzy, from England. She says "Fizzy drinks" for soda's and "the Loo" for bathroom, and for the word "guys," she says "bloke's." I can listen to this girl talk all day. Amazing. :) I forget how different everything is in different parts of the world!! It was so weird when Izzy asked me what a "penny" was... I was like.... "It's a coin?" then I remembered she's from England. And then I explained to her what each coin meant... like 1 cent, 10 cents, etc. Ha! Also, it was fun watching the Norweigen girls look at us strangely and ask "whats that?" pointing to a box of Goldfish that some girl was eating... all the Texan girls were like "Oh my GOSH you've NEVER heard of Goldfish?" And then the pretty Norweigen girls ate some of the goldfish and thought they were gross and spit them out! Ha! And also, none of them have heard of Oreo's, so my friend Amy (also from Colorado Springs!!) and I are gonna go buy them some Oreo's next time we go to Safeway. :)

So after dinner we went to and played volleyball (... amazing!!) for about 2 hours. THAT was fun getting to know all the staff guys and seeing their competitive sides.

Then today, I woke up to the sound of POURING RAIN. :) It was beautiful. I woke up at around 6:45... which was like 10:45 in CO time... so it was weird to not be too tired when I woke up even tho it was early. After waking up, went to take a shower, finished unpacking a bit, and then a group of 12 of us girls decided to walk to the beach. ...After a nice 2 hour walk.... we FINALLY got to the beach. :)

I didn't mind the long walk because it was fun seeing the city and talking with the girls and just walking around downtown Honolulu... but I was definitely a little tired and ready to take a nap when we actually got the beach.Oh, my gosh the ocean was beautiful. Clear blue water. It was amazing. :)

Walked around the mall a little bit, which was right next to the beach we were at, called Ala Maona. Ate in the food court, went back for another nap on the beach and took the bus back. Except for NONE of us knew where we were going... so I think we missed our bus stop the first time. An hour later... we finally decided to get off and walk, which was good because we were only like 10 minutes away from the base. What an adventure. :) Got back to base. Showered, and hung out with different girls. Everybody here is seriously SO nice, outgoing, loving, its great. I'm enjoying not having a schedule... but looking forward to starting a more serious routine. Tomorrow we start lectures and everything, its awesome. There are about 35 students at our base and I'm excited to meet everybody officially tomorrow!!

Hopefully I'll be able to update a little more soon... excited for all the little adventures God's yet to expose me to! :)

:::Sitting, Waiting, Wishing...

Right now.... Sitting in C. Springs airport.
So sad to leave my parents... :(
Another tearful goodbye. Had plenty of those last night as I bid my darling PW's, and my love Billy farewell, and plenty of that this morning as I said goodbye to my brother and sister.

I hate goodbyes. :'(

Yet, in the midst of it, I'm calm.
As I sit here, a sense of loneliness creeping up on me, I feel at peace. I'm so glad to have absolutely nothing but my Lord waiting for me in Hawaii. I'm excited that He's numbered my days and planned my future from the beginning, seeing all of this taking place and knowing before I was even born, that I'd be entering this stage of my life at this time.

I'm excited for these next 6 months. I'm excited about being surrounded my like-minded people, living in complete freedom to worship my God and draw closer and closer to Him.

I'm going with such great expectations. I'm not setting aside these six months just for nothing, I'm planning on being worked on hard.
I want to be ruined with His love so no other will ever be enough.
I want my heart to be the altar and His love to be the flame.

I'm so grateful for the opportunity and for the friends and family who are covering me with prayers for safety, comfort, and nearness of the Lord.

I can't wait for whats yet to come... as far as growing more in Him and having the separation deepen my relationships with the people I love back at home.

Next time I post::::::::: I'll be in Hawaii. :)

Praise Jesus.