After getting ready, we went over to the main house and had breakfast with Tammy, one of Dan and Olivia's cell group girls. Dan and Olivia were just heading out for the day, so Dan put the kettle on for me and left Tammy with SC and I to host us for breakfast.
Around 7:50 I headed across the field to the church:
It was a gorgeous and chilled walk, but in a total of 4 min, I was walking through the doors of Southland church.
We went through Sessions 3-7 from 8:15am - 8pm. In session 3 we did more confessing under the topics of "impure to pure" and session 4 was looking at "the cross"
It was a bit hefty confessing to our triad of lust, soul ties (emotional attachments and bonds), first thing in the morning. However, it was a bit easer to do after we got into our groups and the first thing I asked for us to do was pray before we got into it.
After our time of confession, we had a break then watched as series of edited clips from the "Passion of the Christ."
.... .... ..... So... Even though I am a Christian, and it seems like a given that Christians would have watched or seen this movie by now... I have not watched this movie in its entirety. I have seen clips here and there from youth groups and easter services, but not focused scenes or let alone the whole movie. We were given the permission to not watch if it was to much, but were encourage to watch with the mindset of this was a small way to actually see what Jesus went through as he died.
So, I watched... but once it got to the flogging, I couldn't do it. The way the whip shredded his back and then he was flipped into his stomach to be whipped more and the blood drenching the floor... I had to cover my eyes. So obviously I was sobbing as Jesus was nailed to the cross and how he would arch his back in pain as they pounded into him... his swollen face, and bloodied and battered body hung from the cross. In one scene, where they have Mary breaking the fourth wall. Her face etched with anger and pain, as if it seemed to say, "What have you done... what have WE done?"
We had communion and sang our praises to God, knowing he didn't remain in the grave, that he rose again, and that he will be returning again. It was good.
It was during lunch that I managed to sneak away and get a 20min nap at the billets house. Best. Thing. EVER. Word got around in our traveling group from Hillcrest that I was able to do this, and they were happy for me.
The next Sessions were 5: From a Divided to a Single Heart (dealing with occult stuff), and 6: Inner Healing (confessing our unforgiveness, and invitation for Jesus to speak truth into our woundedness).
Those sessions were surprising, intense and yet... helpful.
I was surprised how some occult suff can be weaseled into one's life without straight up doing things like sorcery, witchcraft, and ouija boards.
Stefen gave an example from his own life where he had neck problems and he sought prayer and had an image of black hands around his neck with the word "death." He was resistant at first, but as it grew worse he had someone pray over him and they had the exact same image and word association - when he prayed how this got into his life, God revealed the memory of doing kickboxing and going around the room tapping the walls as a way to ward off unwanted spirits so that it was just him and the other person kickboxing. Something so small and seemingly insignificant was all the enemy needed to get a hold on him.
So me and the two other women confessed the big and small things that have connections with the occult, and moved on to the next part of 'inner healing.'
The inner healing was a process of allowing God to show us the root of our problems - like with Stefen and his neck problems relating to his time at kickboxing.
First we were to confess any unknown sins and unforgivness to God in order to be humbled as we sought out clear guidance to some or one of our problems.
It was in this time that God revealed to me some recent events that I sought forgiveness for, and a surprising event from my past that influenced the way I carried myself mentally.
As I asked God what was one major problem I was struggling with - "Fear" came up and in relation to "weakness", and I prayed for a memory or event that related to this, I was taken back to the time when I was a little girl and in Calgary for my great grandma's funeral. I will not go into further detail on the memory, but it was one that had been raised during my time at Briercrest that I had almost forgotten and I was ashamed and confused over it.
After the memory surfaced, we were guided by the leaflet to ask God what he saw in that memory, and the word I got was "Innocent."
When it came time to confess - up till this point I always volunteered to go first... but this time I really struggled with what I would have to say. What will these women whom I JUST met think of me? I said to them, "this gets weird, I hope I don't freak you out by saying this... God, have mercy."
So I walked through the memory with them, sobbing as I said, "I knew something was wrong... but I allowed it anyways... I didn't know, we didn't know, we were so young."
The woman we had been the one to pray over me asked, "did God reveal anything about what He thought about the memory to you?"
I nodded as I said, "Innocent. I got the word 'innocent'." As she prayed over me I was sobbing brutally:
I didn't say this to anyone after this session, so you dear reader will be the first to know, during the break, I had this slight sensation that my shoulders (specifically my trapezius muscles) felt less tense then they had in a long time.
After supper we had our last session - which ended up being a time of learning who the Holy Spirit is and thankfulness for the time spent together and what had been revealed and restored.
Dan and Olivia picked SC and I up after the last session and we had some time to talk to them about the experience and about themselves, along with their cell group girl Tammy. They were delighted to hear that I got to nap during the afternoon at their house and said I could even use the main houses' living room to chill out if I so desired.
This is where my next mistake happened - We played a game called "guess their age" with each other. When it was Dan's turn, SC guessed 31, where I was admit about him being 37.
CONTEXT - before playing this game, we found out he was a young adults and young married Pastor, and even before that he gave this encouraging analogy of a barrel with holes and that God reveals some holes at a time to work on us and once we've accomplished that He reveals more and sometimes deeper ones we need to work on with His help. SO IN MY HEAD I figured he looked young but was probably older than he looked and with his wisdom on some topics I figured he was 37.
OH GOSH - was I wrong.
He looked at SC and I and with an amused smile on his face. As he chuckled, in his New Zealand accent he said to us, "I'm 25."
I was like:
"YOU ARE NOT!!!!"
Oh, man, we had SUCH a good laugh about that. When it came to my turn, all of them guessed above 25 and below 30, so I said, "I'm younger than 25" and they guessed around my age again, so when I stated I was "23," even then they were surprised.
Before we headed off to bed Dan prepared us for what the "Prayer Summit" would look like tomorrow evening, thank the LORD for this because when the "Prayer Summit" time came I would have been SO CONFUSED and timid - but more on that later.
Around 10:45pm, SC and I headed back to our room and as we walked through the garage, I turned to SC and said, "25." Then for the next 5min, I stumbled into the room, leaned against the wall, fell onto my bed and died laughing.
It was a good way to end the evening and I thank God for all that happened that day.
More to follow, stay tuned.
~To God be the glory
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