Fragrance

Ministers of the New Covenant

 ¹⁴ But thank God! He has made us his captives and continues to lead us along in Christ’s triumphal procession. Now he uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere, like a sweet perfume. ¹⁵Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. ¹⁶ To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume. And who is adequate for such a task as this?

 ¹⁷ You see, we are not like the many hucksters who preach for personal profit. We preach the word of God with sincerity and with Christ’s authority, knowing that God is watching us.

Wow talk about the meaning of fire and fragrance. Many people I talked to wondered what Fire and Fragrance was what it means. This verse gives me such a good picture of what it means to be the fragrance of Christ. I want my life to be a Christ-like Fragrance rising up to God. Day and Night. I want to continually praise Him. I think the fragrance that smells differently to people is just portraying the people who are not physically dying, but internally. There are just so far from the Lord that the fragrance, the joy the happiness, seems somewhat rotten. There hearts are so hard they don't understand. But to the hungry one, seeking God the perfume is sweet, and life-giving. Teaching and showing them the LOVE and the Fragrance they can also receive.  Then vs. 17 it's not for my personal profit that I preach the good news of the Lord. It's not about me. Sometimes people get caught up like its a game, how many people can you save? But it's really about loving God. God saves. Not me. Thank you Jesus because I am so broken I could not save anyone but by your grace, mercy and love you have entrusted me to be a vessel for your Kingdom to come. Your will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Then the next part says, we preach the word of God with sincerity and with Christ's authority, knowing that God is watching us. WOAH! We preach with sincerity, and with AUTHORITY. We know GOD is watching us. Have you ever really thought about that. God is watching you preach. And He is always so loving. We miss the mark so many times, but He says, "well done good and faithful servant."

Man. I want to be a good and faithful servant. God make me a good and faithful servant. Refine my heart. Make me pure so I can see your face. I am yours!

Ice Cream

This is what happens when Auntie Elisabeth babysits for the week...

week

The weeks here now go by so fast, since there is a routine. I feel like routine is very fun but also makes time fly by. I can't believe were almost half way done with lectures. I have really learned so much from every speaker that has come, and feel like my knowledge has just increased so much. This week the speaker is Cory Stark from IHOP (International House Of Prayer) He is talking about the importance of 24/7 prayer and worship and what that means and how to really dig deep into scripture. He is so informational. I think he might be one of my top speakers. He gave us so many notes and I'm just going to post the notes that I took below.

Corey Stark

Intercession- Prayer and Worship

Prayer is simply communication with God. It’s our hearts conversation with Him and His response back to us. Prayers may be expressed through speech, writing, hrpahic or dramatic arts or set to music as in Habakkuk’s prayer or the pslams. All psalms 1-72 are described as prayer

From God’s perspective the totality of our lives are prayer before Him. Jesus not only interceded with His words. But was intrinsically an intercessor in His very being by bringing the knowledge and will of God to the eath in Himself, as expressed through His life. He was the Word of God made flesh (Jn. 1:14) We too have been given the same invitation and privilege.

 5 basic types of prayer

Devotion- enjoying communion with the Godhead in love unto personal transformation by revelation using the “becoming by beholding” principle

Supplication- Asking God to bring change to our personal life circumstances.

Intercession- Asking God to change the life circumstances of others; individuals or people groups in geographic regions, generally focused on the “big picture” or total fulfillment of God’s plan. Mt. 6:10

Declaration- The word of the Lord received through scripture or prophetic revelation and spoken in faith, bringing change to either personal life circumstances or the life circumstances of others. Generally focused on the immediate will or specific “now word” of the Lord to relsease a partial fulfillment, not total as in intercession.

Tongues- speaking in “tongues” or praying in the spirit as the Holy Spirit gives utterance.

LIFE

Whoa the last few days have been quite experiential something that I have NEVER experienced in my life. We learned and read the book called Pure Heart. We all long to have pure hearts before God, not just for ourselves but for others as well. We want to have a heart that forgives. Forgiving is different that trusting. Forgiving is saying, I forgive you for what you did, but that doesn’t mean I will continue to trust you. Forgiving is so hard to learn because we don’t understand the importance it has on our life. When we forgive we are breaking down walls for Jesus to come and heal those places completely,  so that Jesus can forgive us too. It says in the Bible that when we get to heaven we will be rewarded. Donna said, “I don’t want to stand before God and He tell me I’m only 95% forgiven because I had left this part in my heart and didn’t forgive. And God said so justly and kind, I’m sorry but you can’t have these other rewards. God wants to give us rewards. He knows exactly what we love exactly what we want. He is going to bless us with those things.

            Its so hard for us to fathom heaven. Because we are not there, and it just surpasses our understanding. Heaven is filled with streets of gold, where the grass is full of life, with mansions of rooms full of everything we love, especially JESUS walking and talking with us.  For so long I use to be afraid of heaven. This fear was so irrational, because heaven is a wonderful place, it’s a real place.

          I use to be afraid of not being able to go to heaven. When my sister died I was 6, I didn’t understand what death was. What does it mean to die? I had never known anyone to die before my sister. It was unfathomable to me. But my mom said Sierra is in Heaven with Jesus, walking on the streets of gold playing and dancing and living a life we could only dream about till one day. I asked, do all people go to heaven? And my mom said, no only if you love Jesus, and believe that He died for our sins. I acknowledged I believed and that day became a Christian. However since that day, I wanted to go to heaven to see Sierra, I wanted to die before I became older to guarantee my spot in Heaven. I never wanted to doubt whether or not I was going to be in heaven. Every day I would wonder and think about this. When I was 13 I thought, oh no is this the age where I can’t get into heaven automatically anymore? And I convinced myself it had to be older… SO when I turned 16 I realized I can no longer get into heaven because I am too old. I have to really believe that God is who He says, because if I don’t I won’t go to heaven and I won’t see Sierra. Since then the enemy took captive that thought and twisted this view of God. He made me always question, resulting in a fear of death. A paralyzing fear, one that I could not handle and it came out through rebellion, or anxiety. I often thought, I shouldn’t do that because what if I die. This thought continued. I started to believe that God just wanted me to die, but I was so afraid of it. Many times I would find myself thinking about my funeral, who would come, how it would play out who would sing. What would happen to my family. The enemy completely took my thoughts and twisted them and made me so fearful. BUT this week I learned, there is NOTHING to fear. I have been redeemed and the Lord speaks LIFE over me. The Lord has plans for me, huge plans. He has my destiny and I will not afraid any longer and I will no longer let the enemy lie to me and there is NO FEAR IN DEATH because that is only the beginning. Heaven in a beautiful real place, there is NO fear in Jesus Christ. He died to take away my fear, pains, sickness, iniquity. God is a good Father, who is always protecting us and comforting us. DO you really understand what this means? It means I don’t have to fear because Abba God has me in His hand. He is watching over me, not just peeking over my shoulder, but standing in front of me. Showing me that His heart for me and plans for me are bigger and better then I could ever imagine. God brings life. I can’t wait to share this LIFE with the people that I meet in Poland and that there is no death in God, He speaks life over His children. He speaks hope and joy that we don’t understand. He gives us a PEACE that we can learn to live in. Wow I cannot thank Him enough. Thank you Jesus for what you have done in my life and your story of redemption continues to live on. 

As some of you may know, I am in Kona Hawaii working with a missions organization, and 11 of us are going to Poland/Germany to do a missions trip for 3 months. I need $1,100 by tomorrow at 2pm. Please pray about supporting me finacially and in prayer. Message or comment if you are interested in supporting me.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=94NJLS7DUW7YL&lc=US&currency_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donateCC_LG%2egif%3aNonHosted