Campus Preview Weekend

This past weekend, we had here on campus what we call Campus Preview Weekend.  This is basically the opportuinity for perspective interns to come to the Honor Academy and live the intern life for a few days.  During this weekend the participants get to experience our ropes course and obstacle course, be apart of corporate exercise, live in the dorms, hear from our leaders, see what a class is like at the HA, and interact with other interns through smooth music and a dance party!  The best part about Campus Preview Weekend is the participants get to have an amazing encounter with God maybe even for the first time.

I was very excited for Campus Preview Weekend!  My department makes all the calls for this awesome event so I was able to recruit and bring in several of the people that attended.  It was such an exciting time for me to finally get to meet the people that I have been putting in so much effort for.  I personally had high expectations for the weekend and God surpassed every expectation that I had!  A couple of days before the event started, my team and I went into the auditorium and we prayed over the room that hearts would be opened, that God would reveal himself to everyone there ect.  We each took an area of the room and prayed over it.  I went down to the pits (the area in front of the stage, sometimes people will go there during worship) and I also prayed over the altar since there would be an altar call the first night.  God really answers  prayer!!!  During each worhsip session the pits were full of people who were giving their hearts in worship to God.  And during the altar call, that altar was so full you couldn't walk around in it.  God is so faithful to give us what we ask when we ask according to His will!

You RElearn Something Everyday

 

Here at the Honor Academy I have been taking a few different classes that are teaching me about leadership and discipleship.  Among those classes is missions class.  To be completely honest, this class has been my least favorite all year.  I dread going, not that I don't like missions, for some reason I just don't like a class about it.  Our textbook has been Perspectives Exposure: Discovering God's Heart For All Nations and Our Part in His Plan.  Sounds like an interesting enough title right?  It has been a painful book to read in terms of my brain hurts when I read it.  Today I went to complete my final reading out of this book.  I could hear the angels rejoicing with me, I will NEVER have to open this book again!!  Then I opened up to see that I was going to be reading about the power of prayer.  I have a passion and a love for prayer, and through this book that I have been hating for the past 4 months, I grew an even deeper understanding and passion for it.  This lesson talked about the power of intercession and prayer.  Until this year, I never fully understood why we are supposed to pray.  Does God just want us to talk to him?  Does it remind God that there are things going on here on earth?  Why is prayer so important??  Prayer is essential in order for God to work here on the earth.  It makes me think of something one of my leaders here at the Honor Academy said.  Without God, man cannot, but with out man God will not.  We need God to work in our lives, but unless we ask Him for help or ask Him to work on our behalf, He won't.  Why?  God has given us authority and dominion over this earth.  In the beginning He gave the authority over to Adam, and Jesus reclaimed that authority for us.  We have the authority to speak changes over a situation, but God has the power to make that change happen.  Do you see how prayer and God are linked?  So yes, we talk to God through prayer, but prayer is also the link between God and us.  It links God to our lives, our circumstances, our situations.  Without God, man cannot, but without man God will not.

Will Obstacles Stop You?

Here at the Honor Academy, we have a 400 acre campus which means we have lots and lots of woods to explore (we call it the back 40)!  I went for a walk to get away and spend some time with the Lord.  Typically when you venture out into the back 40 you tend to reference everything to scripture or to God, it just happens!  I was walking along and as I walked I came across some areas that were slightly difficult or annoying to go through.  For example, the pathway is covered in thorns or there is a tree in the middle of the path.  As I continued I decided that no matter what came in my path I was not going to turn around or backtrack to get around it.  Be careful what you say because God may put it to the test.  About a minute after I said that, I came face to face with this pond.
This pond had dirty water, there were bubbles surfacing all over the place meaning something lives in it!  It didn't seem deep but how can you tell with nasty water?  I kept looking all around trying to find a way to get out of crossing this pond but looking to the left and to the right wasn't an encouragement.  The only way to get around would be to backtrack  but I had just said that I wasn't going to do that.  I was so intimidated by this little dirty pond to the point that I saw a log and thought it was a crocodile!  Paranoid? I think so!!  For 15 minutes I stared at this pond praying and asking God to give me a new way to get across.  Finally I focused soley on the exact spot on the other side that my foot would hit dry land.  I didn't look around me I just looked straight ahead and before I could even realize what happened I was standing on the other side wet.
How difficult do we make things on ourselves when we look around at the "what if's?"  What if there is a snake in here?  What if I catch a disease from this nasty water? What if that log turns into a crocodile?  How much easier are things when we look ahead to the final goal?  I learned that when you set your eyes on the goal and go for it, you will be standing on the other side in no time wondering why it took you so long to jump in the water.

Opportunities Provided

 

 

 

Lately my job in the Honor Academy call center has been a little off.  People have not been answering their phone which means that I don’t get to talk to very many people.  When you work in a call center, the point is to talk to people not to leave 50 voicemails a day.  I was getting slightly irritated until the Lord led me to the most incredible phone call that I have had so far. 

A girl had sent me an email saying that she was interested in coming to the Honor Academy and wanted to know how to get signed up.   I responded and gave her a call.  When she got on the phone I asked her how she was doing and to my surprise she said she was doing “okay” that there had been a lot of things coming up from her past lately.  I left an open invitation for her to talk about anything that she needed to, and praise God she took it.  This girl talked about how she felt that she was unworthy of God’s love that she had messed up so much in her past that she believed herself to be beyond the point of redemption.  She continued to condemn herself saying that the things she had done, the people that she had hurt, were unforgiveable. 

At this point, I related so many of the things she had said to myself and the way that I was.  I began to share parts of my testimony with her. The Lord kept leading me to passages of scripture that I was able to share with her.  We talked and wrestled with different situations and sins.  It was incredible because in a way it was like sharing the gospel with someone for the first time.  When I told her that Jesus had died for all of her sins, not just some, she reacted in amazement.  When I told her that Jesus still saw her as valuable and that He wants her and pursuing her she was so touched. 

After 97 minutes on the phone, I had her pray, we quoted scripture together, and I prayed for her.  Hearing the sincerity in her prayer and the passion that she had was so amazing.  I truly believe that she fully asked out of the deepest and most inner places of her heart for forgiveness and gave it over to God.  I am always so amazed at the ways that God uses me over the phone and it is such a privilege to be able to interact with His children on a daily basis!

Check out the Dance Party we had in San Antonio!!!

Acquire the Fire!!!

Within one months time, I have had the incredible privilege of traveling to three different Acquire the Fire events (San Antonio, TX: Winston-Salem, NC: Dallas, TX). I also will be heading out to Lansing, Michigan in a couple of weeks for my fourth event. For those of you who are not familiar with Acquire the Fire (ATF) it is an intense youth conference put on by Teen Mania Ministries. At these conferences, young people, and parents, are challenged to go outside of their "normal" Christian lives to do something radical for God. These radical things vary from person to person. For one person something radical may be signing up for a mission trip, someone else it may be coming to the Honor Academy, for some a radical decision may just be committing their lives to Christ for the first time. My first ATF even last year changed my life, God met with me and challenged me to do something radical for Him and He has blessed me every step of the way since then. It has been such an amazing blessing to be able to help with the event that God used to change my life. Being on the other side makes me appreciate everything that goes into these events.

Can I Really Make A Difference?

Yesterday, I was able to see the true impact that I am making in my generation.  This past week, God used me in an amazing way to help a young girl fulfill the call the God has on her life.  Earlier in the week, I had called a girl named Kindle.  For those who don't know, my job at Teen Mania is to call people on behalf of the Honor Academy and share info abour the internship, and help them begin an application with us.  I called Kindle and to be honest I don't even remember the conversation that we had.  I remember it being a really good talk, I shared about the internship, what it has done for me so far, and I just answered some questions that she had.  I asker her if she wanted to start an application and she said that she difinietly did but she had already started an application once before.  I tried finding her in our system to see if we had her application but I couldn't find it anywhere.  I ended up asking help from someone else and we eventually found her application.  The reason why it was so difficult to find was because she had asked for us to drop her application before.  Yesterday, she was called for a phone interview.  Later in the day the girl that had done Kindle's interview told me something that shocked me.  Kindle had told her the only reason she had decided to continue with her application was becuase of the conversation I had with her.  I had shown her love and care throught our talk that had touched her heart and confirmed that God had been calling her to the Honor Academy.  Praise the Lord!  If God can use someone like me, He can most defnitely use someone like YOU!!!!