:::Lessons learned from the Prisoner in Iran

Ahhh.... where to start.
Honestly, my heart is about to explode!!!
God is SO GOOOOD.
I've been here at Kona, the YWAM base on the Big Island Hawaii'. Its freakin amazing.
The campus is HUGE... it has about 5 individual Discipleship Training Schools with about 50 students in each... and about 20 staff for each school.... along with a separate School of Biblical Studies, and another Korean Discipleship training school for Koreans!!!
Needless to say... every meeting time, about 400+ ppl get together to listen to the lecture and worship God.
Ahhhh.... the size of this place hits so close to home being that I go to a HUGE church in Colorado Springs. I've been missing those large gathering!! Its definitely refreshing to be in this place of Kona and have an extreme contrast from the life I've been living in Honolulu for the past 4 weeks, with only 37 students and about 13 staff. Very small. :)

BUT. Honestly, I'm SO glad I chose to go to Honolulu instead of Kona. While I do like the size, this place can't even compare bond and relationships you can build in the small, humble, mini Honolulu base. There are way too many people here in Kona, its literally like a University, and its virtually impossible to get to know everybody, so I love the smallness of the Honolulu base and how close all of the students and staff at my school have gotten.

And by close, I mean CLOSE!! For only having lived with each other for about 4 weeks, we're all so tight and real with each other and everybody is so hungry for the Lord and just deepening our desires to get to know Him!! The students here each are SO anointed in their different ways and we're constantly laying hands on each other and praying for healing for head aches, sore knees, broken backs, stomach aches, and even oversized pimples.... all which have been healed by the way. :) (Praise Jesus!)

We're all seeking God and intimacy with Him and desiring more and more of Him and developing an unsatisfying hunger and increased chasing after Him. Growing closer with the Lord as He invades our lives and refines our character bit by bit. Growing closer to each other and learning to trust each other and push each other closer to the King of Kings.

It was cute, when we got to Kona and saw the HUGE size of the base, the reaction of about half of the students was opposite than what you'd expect. Instead of seeing the finer facilities, the A.C., the huge split level apartment style rooms that we would've had, most of the students were like "Aw we don't wanna be here, we wanna go back to honolulu!!" (IN a joking way of course, but in a sense serious because that smallness and closeness to everybody has become home to us!!)

And in response to those complaints, one of our leaders named Chris Solima said to us, "Guys, just think of this as a little family vacation." :) Ha I loved that. God is so blessing the relationships here in our Honolulu DTS and thriving so much in this place and in our hearts. He's bonding our hearts with one another as brothers and sisters in Jesus and we are all LOVING it!!! :)

Anyways, even tho God is uniting my own Honolulu school together in the midst of this time and new surroundings of the Kona base, I'm still definitely loving it here.
God has OPENED MY EYES to more revelation of Him here than I've realized in a long, long time. This past week at Kona especially has been a very enlightening week for me.

Our speaker since Day 1 is a guy named Dan Baumann. He has an AMAZING testimony, and has a PASSION for the Lord that HE LIVES OUT DAILY... and that completely blows my mind!!

He joined YWAM and did his DTS back when he was 18, and now he's 44, so those years in between he has really grown close to the Lord and become so KEEN to hearing His voice!



The Lord told him to go to Afghanistan and work in a hospital there, so after living there for about a year or two, the Lord told Him to go to Iran for a little bit right before Christmas in December to kind of feel the country out and see if he could establish any connections for future visits into the country to share the Gospel with the Iranian people. After several weeks of wrestling God with the idea, and several instances where God's command was clearly reinforced, Dan went with a friend of his and they both planned a two-week trip to go into Iran and establish connections. At the end of their trip, when they're trying to cross the border OUT of Iran, the Iranian police took Dan's passport and when he was finally able to go to another city in Iran to retrieve it, they kept it and began to accuse Dan of being a spy from the United States and beat him and held him in a room until he "told them the truth of why he was in Iran."



He told them He was a Christian and that the only monetary support came from churches and that he was there only to spread the good news of the Gospel, and the Iranian police didn't believe him so they threw both him and his friend in prison.... for 9 weeks.



He wrote a book about his story and testimony called "Imprisoned in Iran," and he shared a bit about his story with us this past week during our lecture times with him. Basically, it was a very, very rough time for him. He went in and out of times of deep depression, at one point even planning out ways to kill himself. He would get called out of his tiny cell every day to get beaten and tortured until he "gave them the right information about him being a spy." But his experience in his time of prison ultimately just deepened his trust for God and deepened his faith in God.

The thing I liked about Dan Baumann is that he was REAL. He didn't try to pretend that this journey of trusting God and surrendering everything to Him and listening to His voice was an easy one... but the picture that he painted for us really helped me.



So many times, especially since I've been here in this DTS, I've had dreams of what I wanted to do for God and all these plans about going into missions, and questions like "God is THIS what I'm supposed to do? Or is it this? How do I know your will for my life? How do I know I'm not called to Thailand? Do you want me to sell everything and go into the missions field? Or is that just my own voice trying to play God?" ALLLLLLL these things and MORE have been going through my mind... soooo much stress huh? It's crazy really.

And whats even crazier is that I let these thoughts stress me out when, in reality, I have NO POWER over them!! I worry about the future all the time which is ridiculous because I KNOW the Man who holds my future in the palms of His hands, and I KNOW His Character!

I can trust that He LOVES me with a love that lasts through anything and everything, and with a love that will NEVER leave me.

I KNOW He has a plan for prosper me and give me a future and HOPE.
I KNOW He died on the Cross to set me free and wants me to walk in that freedom!!
I KNOW that all things work together for good for the people who love Him!!
I KNOW that there is NO truth apart from Him, and He is the Way, Truth, and Life!
I KNOW that He longs to give us life more abundantly!

So KNOWING all these things, Dan Baumann said that he feels like Gods just saying, "Take these dreams I've given you, hold them in your heart, and watch what I do with it." :)



Ahh, amazing! I don't have to work out the timing or the place or how this is going to fit in with this area of my life or what I should do now or what I should stop doing, I know I can just Go and TRUST and seek intimacy with Him above everything else!!

I believe that's what He's longing for more than anything else in our lives. I believe He's longing to be SO very intimate with us. For us to keep it simple and just ABIDE in Him... that is, know Him! Know His heart! Be close enough to hear His voice and constantly dwell in His presence and seek Him out in every area of our lives:) I love it.

Dan said that everything we do for God is out of our overflow of intimacy with Him. So before we should start seeking to bear fruit in our lives... like, "God make me more patient. Help me love that person. Give me peace. Give me self-control in this area...." and before we focus so so much on bearing the fruit... Jesus has made it simple. He says simply to abide in Him. Seek intimacy with Him first! Above everything else!! The fruit will come naturally as you spend more and more time in His presence:)

SO SIMPLE!!!!! Rest in it. God is good. Nothing less than Good. Rest in that!

::Fellowship of the Unashamed...

A teenage boy wrote this and was martyred shortly after for his faith.

“I am a part of the fellowship of the Unashamed. I have the Holy Spirit Power. The die has been cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I won't look back, let up, slowdown, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, and my future is secure. I am finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tame visions, mundane talking, chintzy giving, and dwarfed goals.

I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don't have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by presence, learn by faith, love by patience, lift by prayer, and labor by power.

My pace is set, my gait is fast, my goal is Heaven, my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions few, my Guide is reliable, my mission is clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, deterred, lured away, turned back, diluted, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of adversity, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity.

I won't give up, back up, let up, or shut up until I've preached up, prayedup, paid up, stored up, and stayed up for the cause of Christ. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I must go until He returns, give until I drop, preach until all know, and work until He comes.

And when He comes to get His own, He will have no problem recognizing me. My colors will be clear for "I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.." (Romans 1:16)