It's All About Jesus!

"Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing...By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." John 15:4-5, 8-10


This week has been absolutely incredible... and I won't be able to fully describe it all to you! The Lord was moving so powerfully throughout our whole group, releasing love and revelation and freedom! Way to much to write about it all but I'll give you some highlights!
Jeff Reid was our speaker this week. Him and his wife, Bethany, started Comm Trans (the DTS I'm doing, Community Transformations) a few years ago and are now living in a Comm Trans community in a township outside of Cape Town, South Africa. It was really cool to hear how the vision and values of the DTS started and what we're all about. It can be summed up in a few things:
1. Intimacy unto Fruitfulness
2. Authentic Community centered around Jesus
3. Transformational Community
Or in other words - Love God - Love Others - Change the World!
SO GOOD! We basically went through different passages in scripture, including John 15, which is our school's theme passage, that highlighted all of these values - which really just are the values that believers  should have. It was presented so simply and real and the Lord just brought crazy revelation to us all!
A huge thing for me is that I tend to struggle with striving and perfection, feeling like sometimes I have to work harder or achieve a certain level to really earn love or favor from the Lord or people. What just rocked me was the simplicity and truth of John 15 - Abiding in Jesus continually and He produces fruit. Not me. My job is to just remain in him, abide in his love, worship Him, gaze on his beauty and focus on his character, fruit from my life will happen. And he is the one to produce it. And the way I continually abide in him is by obey his commands out of affection based obedience. Doing things out of love instead of for love, because he is COMPLETELY WORTHY! He radically loves me, and all of us, right now, whatever we're doing and wherever we're at, at so out of that love I want to obey his commands and love him in that way! And its about simple everyday obedience. This is something the Lord has been growing deeply in my heart to hear his voice in everyday happenings, partnering with him and obeying him in the littlest things, because I love him and want to walk with him closely everyday. I love that its this simple and the best way I do that is by loving him and gazing on who he is and his incomprehensible beauty and his love for me. Jesus is so good. This broke off my striving! Praise HIM! By doing nothing and remaining in his love for me and loving him back - striving and perfection is broken. I don't need to work for love. This is something I've understood for so long and have even had tools to break off these things in my life, but by simply choosing to just be loved by Jesus, remain in his love, and love him back by doing what he asks me out of my affection for him and his worthiness, I'm truly walking out in freedom from this now!
Okay so wednesday the Lord was doing crazy things in our classroom. He was just moving with revelation of our identities in Him and what he has called us to do and how with Him it is completely possible! I am a radical, worshipping warrior who is going to waste my life at the feet of Jesus! He released so much joy in our classroom and just revelation of his worthiness that we worshiped him like crazy for a while. Then Jeff and Johnny felt that there should be a call to baptism. At first I thought... I've already been baptized so I'll just go and watch and support. But then Jeff explained that baptism was way before christianity, it was a part of Jewish culture. And in their culture they would get baptized anytime there was a significant shift in their identity (getting married for example) or started a new signifiant phase of life, and how it isn't just about salvation (it is part of it and super important) but it is more than that and we can do it and declare a new significant season in our life and give it all to the Lord or when we come into crazy new revelation of who we really are. Plus Jesus was baptized and he didn't need to get saved. All that to say... as we were walking down to the pier where we were doing the baptisms, I felt like I was supposed to do it as well. This is a significant, life changing season that I have started that will be shaping the rest of my life. As well as a complete new beginning for me, and I wanted to praise him in this way for breaking striving and calling me to just abide in him! It was so amazing! I think about 85% of our class including some of our leaders got baptized right in downtown Kona at the pier! We were all so full of joy and loving Jesus, giving everything in our lives to Him joyfully because he is so worth it! A group ended up forming around us watching, a cruise ship had just come in as well so we had quite a few people watching us. And at the end, Johnny explained to the people watching what we were doing and why and asked if anyone wanted to receive Jesus and get baptized, and we had one man come forward!!
Thursday and Friday were full of revelation as well. Jeff taught on authentic community centered around Jesus - loving each other and serving one another, and how easy it is when we look at each other through the way Jesus sees us. Jeff actually got me to come up to the front of the class to demonstrate this and asked 10 people to stand up and affirm me. About 25 people did... it was so overwhelming and amazing, people I haven't even really talked to stood up to affirm me. But the whole point was to look at each other through the Lord's eyes and when we do that it makes us want to serve each other and take care of each other needs and love each other! We then talked about transformational community and looked at how the Lord brought revival to Ephesus in Acts and Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Studying the Lord's ways and how he does things. Its all about Jesus and talking about Jesus brings him glory and people lives get transformed by the simple gospel! Pointing to Jesus always draws people to him.
So many amazing things this week! These are just highlights! We're just ready for what the Lord's going to bring us next week! We have an another incredible speaker next week and I'm so excited to see how the Lord's going to move! Thanks for all your prayers and support!!