1st week of teaching...

This past week was on the Father Heart of God, and it was taught by Ezra Griffiths from the YWAM base in Orlando, Florida. He was a really cool guy, very down to earth. He began the week with Isaiah 61:1-3 which tells us that God has anointed all Christians to share the Good News, proclaim freedom, comfort others, etc. - basically telling us that as Christians we have responsibilities, and that service should flow out of our relationship with God. We talked about God's character, and the importance of loving and trusting Him. 

When we began talking about the Father Heart of God, Ezra asked us to write down how we viewed our own dads at age twelve, and then how we think our dads viewed us. Luckily, I have been blessed with a loving and supportive father, so when Ezra told us to relate our experience with our own father to that of our relationship with God, it was very easy to understand God as my heavenly, well...dad. My whole life I've known that God should be like my "daddy", but this week was the first time I truly understood God in that kind of way. I have felt a closeness that I've never felt before, because I know that God loves me just because I am his child, and that I didn't have to do anything at all to receive this fatherly love except be born again in His name- how cool is that?! Ezra was a great teacher for this week because he used a lot of illustrations from his experience as a father to three girls. We finished up Friday afternoon with a lesson on forgiveness and the power of the spoken word. And after the teaching we broke off into smaller groups and verbally forgave anyone who has hurt us. It called for a heavy end to a long week, but I think we all learned how freeing forgiveness is. 

This coming week we will have teaching on Spiritual Warfare.