Lisa's Aussie Tales

Lectures last week were on the topic of Lordship, which we defined as having a heart like Jesus... surrender, yielding, obedience, releasing and empowering, giving up our rights to Him, It was good stuff... and it's commonly labeled the "intense" week because it's a time to examine the things/areas of our lives we put in place of God... or things we want to control or feel we value more than Him. On Thursday we learned all about the tabernacle and the meaning of each area. If you don't know much about the old/new covenant and about the old and new covenants, etc. It's really interesting, something I had never really studied before. If you haven't, I'd suggest reading Hebrews, that's where these things are explained. On Friday we were brought through the "tabernacle"... our meeting room was set up as such and we entered the the gates with thanksgiving and His courts with Praise! When we finished with that we went on to fellowship offerings... which were things like career/future/family/money... and then to burnt offerings, which were repentance, asking forgiveness or forgiving someone, confession of sins.
This was a very powerful time of brokenness before God. For the first offering I brought my laptop and paint brush as a symbol of my future career/plans. And then also later I realized that I hold on to my family (specifically my sister and her kids) and sometimes I worry too much about them. The burnt offering was harder... I know God has been showing me the ways I have an inferior pride.. about my artistic abilities and not feeling like I could ever compare to the designers I deem the best, and also in the spiritual sense I compare myself to other christians in my age group and see how much I think they are more spiritual because of this or that and somehow see them as better than myself. I also decided it was time to speak out loud forgiveness of my grandma on my dad's side.
There are many of you who don't know my family history, but to make a long story short, issues were revealed and she chose to not believe them and somewhere in all the crap we (mom, dad, sister) haven't spoken to her since I was about 12 years old(except maybe 2 or 3 conversations my dad had with her). What hurts the most is that I feel she picked death over life. It's hard to say that, because I have no idea where her heart is or the other family on that side is either. I don't think they are a lost cause, I just see how much life there is when our immediate family with Karen, Pat and the kids are altogether and having fun, I see all that she's missing out on and wonder what my grandma was thinking.
You can imagine the things that our whole DTS were bringing... it was a day of victory over darkness... strongholds being broken and new life being breathed over everyone. After the offerings we prayed over the individuals who had confessed sexual sins (either done or been done to them) and then prayed over others around us. And then, we were anointed with oil by the staff.... had a time of communion and then ended again with praising God for the things he had done that day.

What I've been learning lately is to hear God in the ordinary times, when I'm not overwhelmed with emotion. Not to say it's bad to move on emotions, but sometimes my emotions get in the way of what He really is trying to say to me. I don't know if that makes sense, but as in life as well, we can't just always make decisions based on our emotions.