A Holy Week.

It feels like I haven’t written anything in a couple weeks; though it has been about 10 days know since I last updated the blog. This past week was very different from other weeks for the DTS. We had a friendly face come and sweet this week, Stefaan hugo, who was the base leader down at Worcester where I did my DTS 2 years ago. He came to speak on the Holy Spirit, which he also spoke about during my DTS. What made the week so different was that we did our lectures at a church in town, the one that I normally try to go to on Sundays if I’m not sick and am around the area. The idea was that there would be people that would come from the church and the surrounding area for the teaching, though not many did sadly. But every day from 12-1 we had an interdenominational meeting for those who were on their lunch break which was a blessing.

In writing about this week I’m a little nervous as I know many people from the western world know little about the manifestations of Holy Spirit, and though we pray at times that Holy Spirit would come, we aren’t as open to its movements. I know that was very true to myself before I did my DTS and even after and something that I am still getting use to and getting more in tune with. But moving with the Spirit is incredible powerful and can lead to some amazing things and is a real blessing. So as you read this know that is all by the power of God that it is done, and the movements of the Spirit are all Biblical and I can give references as well to these things. But I don’t plan to try and you teach you at this moment in time, though I would love to be able to teach on the movement of the Spirit in the western world someday. (possibly something I’ll look into more when I come home)

The Gifts of the Spirit are listed in 1 Corinthians 12 if you are interested in reading about them. I’ll also try and give some passages as I go along.

The first two gifts of the Spirit that we talked about were the gift of wisdom and the gift of knowledge. The gift of wisdom is all about being able to apply the knowledge that you already have, and the gift of knowledge is knowing that’s about someone or a situation that you normally wouldn’t, here’s an example of my own. Last week Sunday a couple people I went to a church to preach and do some ministry, while one of my team members was preaching, in Chichewa so I didn’t understand, I was suddenly struck with the thought that there was someone in the local area that we had to pray for, as we always do healing calls where ever we go I knew that no one would come forward but that there was an older lady close by that we had to go pray for. So at the end of the service before we left I got up front and mentioned this to everyone at the church (only about 10 people or so) and they knew of a lady about 5 minutes away that was sick. So we went and prayed for her and then left, not exactly to my easement though as I was hoping to stay and keep praying for her but I was no longer “leading” the group and people were already leaving before I could say anything. I don’t know if that lady was ever healed or not, but I know that God was pleased with me as I walked in faith that day. You’ll see that many of the gifts of Spirit are like that, that they are all about taking a step of faith and trusting that if you do your part, God will do His part as well.

Next we talked about the gift of Prophecy, this is a gift that I know I have and am really starting to enjoy and getting stronger and stronger in stepping out in this area. Know Prophecy is basically just getting a “word”, as we would say, for someone. There are three things it could be, and has to fit into at least one or it’s not truly from God, they are as follows: To strengthen someone, to encourage, and to comfort. (1 Cor 14:3) As I said before the gifts are all about stepping out, in prophecy, you are just getting some random word or words to say to someone. It takes some faith to go and talk to them saying that you think God wants to say something to them, though you never said “God says this” you normally would start with “ I think, I believe, or I saw this picture/word for you” and so on. In the last week it has been really amazing being able to prophecy over people, on the day we were taught about it we had a time where we just go to meet up with some stranger we didn’t know and prophecy over them and then later during the interdenominational meeting we met in small groups and prophesied over people and it was moving to see how correct some of the words that people got were. Also how God can give multiple people the same word to one person just in a different way. When prophesied over, it’s always important to not let it change who you are, or where you are going. It’s something to pray over and also a good idea to talk to others about, but as an example we used, if someone prophesied over me the word China, I wouldn’t back up my whole life and move to China. But if over a couple months many people kept getting that word over me I’d really have to ask God what He wanted me to do.

After the gift of Prophecy we moved onto the gift of Tongues. This is something that I really struggled with during my DTS. I saw many people receive this gift and prayed that I would receive it myself but I didn’t fully understand it and couldn’t grasp how I could do it. But within a couple weeks of being here, and talking to Daniel about it some more and studying it, I was able to grow in this area and now feeling pray in tongues all the time. I’ve had days where I find myself praying in tongues through-out the whole day, as soon as I wasn’t doing anything my mind would go back to speaking in tongues. It was an incredible time and I really felt blessed through it, as the gift of tongues is something that is just between the person and God that only He can ever understand. Tongue’s is normally something that people get confused about as there are three different types of tongues. The first is Human tongues (Acts 2:4) this is when you are suddenly able to speak in another human language. (This still happens today but is pretty uncommon)Next is the gift of “church tongues”, this is when you speak in tongues that no understands but God speaks to someone and gives them an interpretation of what you are saying. (1 cor 14: 27) This is more common than human tongues today but only view Christians have the gift. Being able to give an interpretation of tongues is also another of the gifts of the Spirit as well. The last one is the personal tongues that I starting this topic with. It’s something that is just between you and God, normally we use it when we don’t know what to pray for or have lost words for our prayers. It also helps you pray longer and as you can just pray in tongues and never know what you’re saying or praying for. It was amazing to see people receiving this gift this past week, on Thursday Stefaan one other person and I went to the church (as the rest of the team was at the base) and we were praying for people to receive the gift of tongues and God’s presence just fell on each one of them and they all spoke in tongues within seconds of us starting to pray. It was miraculous just to see these people step out and open there mouths to be God’s presence.
There are many thoughts that run through our head when we think about this personal tongues manner. One is that we expect God to come and move our mouth and just speak through us, but a big part of it is just taking the first step and opening your own mouth and just letting any sound/noise come out and go with it. My personal tongue changed many times in the first two weeks till it became what it is today. Know that each and every follower of Christ is able to receive this gift, though some people don’t for some reason, but it is possible for all to receive it.

Most of my blogs are filled with the gift of healing so I’m not going to touch on that one at all and we didn’t really see much healing this week though we had some. But I know that during the rest of my time here this gift is just going to grow and grow and I’ll write more about it as time goes on.
Going with the gift of healing is the gift of Miracles. I personally have never seen an example but they are normally when something is replaced or made new with someone, for example someone has an amputated leg and it suddenly grows to normal length again, or broken bones are completely healed. I’m excited to see some miracles in my time here and am really trying to open myself up to see them and also putting myself out there to be used in doing them as well.

On Thursday afternoon we had a time of worshiping in a different manner them I’m sure you are all use to. It normally happens on the Holy Spirit week and we did it on my DTS as well. It’s a giving worship party, we all pray in the morning and ask God to show us something, or many things that we need to give away and then also to whom we need to give them to. It was moving to see how the Malawian who most of them have very little of their own where giving away so freely, people were giving away t-shirts and full suits to each other as well as a group of people pledging to give a total amount of $80ish dollars a month to one of the guys here. The whole idea of the party is to bless others but also to trust that God will bless us as we bless others and Him in our giving. We are not working towards blessings on this earth but are working towards rewards in heaven and our giving and trusting more and more in God is doing that. Though He normally blesses us here on earth later on in time but we must trust that God knows what is best and will provide even when we give our last cent of money to someone else.
One of the things I gave away was really hard for me as I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get another one while here in Malawi and something that I used almost every day (it’s not my computer as I’m own my own while writing this) and at first I was really holding onto it, thinking that I needed it during my time here but finally God did His work in me and I knew who I had to give it to and did so. The guy was so blessed and I know that he will enjoy it for many years; I also know that someday I’ll be able to get another one, whether God blesses me with someone giving one to me, or buying one myself.

As I said before, this week was very different from any other, but it was truly incredible. I know that God has started something wonderful within each one of us this week and hopefully this week will have started something powerful for our team and the way we work and minister to others.

Prayer:
This weekend one of your teams went down south to do some ministry and as while on their way home on Sunday the car broke down. So if you could pray that we can get the car fixed but also that God will show us what His plans are for this, as Daniel said, in these situations normally its God’s way of speaking to us and getting us to go His direction and now our own.

Thanks again for all your prayers and support,
Many blessings from the YWAM Blantyre Team.