Character of God

It’s been over a month since I’ve blogged, I’m so sorry I’m just now writing. How time flies, I have so much to tell y’all!

This past month I’ve learned heaps of stuff that I can’t wait to share (I’m going to go week by week from where I left off over the next few days to hopefully make more sense).

Week 3: Character of God

What do you think God’s like when things are going well in your life, when you’re happy? He’s good, He’s Faithful, He’s kind, etc. What do you think God is like when things aren’t going well, when you’re upset? He left me, He’s punishing me, He doesn’t care, etc. I don’t know what you think in these everyday situations, but often times I tend to base God’s character off of my feelings and my emotions, but that’s not who God is. During this week we were challenged with so much theology, I felt like my mind was running a race, but I loved it! There was one thing that stuck with my more than anything else-Exodus 34:6-7 “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed ‘The Lord, the Lord a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.’” This verse is God telling us who He is…can’t argue with that, right! It’s so simple, it’s so true, this is who God is, this is what He calls himself, and this is who He’s proven himself to be. Our God is so merciful, so gracious, so compassionate toward His children, and He’s so patient (seriously though, our God is so patient, think how much we mess up, why doesn’t he just zap us? Cause He’s slow to anger and so stinkin patient). This is who our God is and I need to start living like this is the God I serve. He is constant and He has given us this verse to hold onto and remind us of whom He is (cause as dumb humans we need that, to remember how great our God is even though He created everything). I challenge you to put this verse on your bathroom mirror, your pocket, in your room, around your house, in your fridge, or wherever, put it somewhere so that you will read it everyday to be reminded of the character of our God and how good it is that no matter our circumstances and feelings He is who He says He is (mines currently above my bed so I can wake up with the reminder and go to sleep resting in who He is). Go for it! See how this one verse can change your total view of our God.

Hearing God's Voice and Father Heart of God

Sorry it's been a while since I have had the chance to update everyone!

Life in Newcastle is awesome, I'm absolutely loving it! Spending time in this community of students, leaders, and staff while learning more and more about The Lord is such a blessing. I just want to say thank you again to all of you who have supported me both financially and prayerfully, I wish I could express how thankful I truly am!

To give you a little run down of what has happened so far:

Tuesday Oct. 8- Sunday Oct.13 was orientation as well as lectures with the topic of Hearing God's Voice. We had an incredible speaker come to teach us on how to Hear our Father. I'd love to share with y'all a few things I learned about His voice and other random bits of challenges from this week.

• Step into obedience the rest will follow.
• If God speaks to you and you don't share what He asks you to share with others you're robbing them of joy, celebration, and confirmations He gives.
• Your testimony is about the one who brought you out of the mess not about the mess.
• We tend to think the space God speaks in is narrow, it's wide.
• He uses all of our human senses to speak to us, make them all available.
• Being burned out an stressed isn't he place of the Father.

Hope that was as encouraging and challenging for you as it was for me!

Tuesday Oct. 15- Friday Oct. 18 the topic was on Father Heart of God, His heart for His sons and daughters and for us individually. Some of you may feel like Spiritual Orphans, believers that don't always feel as though His heart is always for you. The core issue of that is identity, which satan uses as a form of spiritual warfare. The Father tells us who we are, nothing else does. Allow that to sink in, pretty tough but it's truth. And the thing that really took a nail at me was "Trauma you've experienced is not your choice, desolation of spirit is." This means that the mess of things you've been put through may not be your fault, it could be your family's, friends, or anything but the desolation of spirit is, the way you react is your choice. You can chose to let it mess with you, to change the corse of your life for the worse or you can chose life, you can chose that your identity is not found in those things but instead found in Christ and who He says you are. His heart is for each of us, each of you, allow yourself to receive Him, what He says about you, and what His heart looks like for you and all His children. The last thing I really took away from this week was "He doesn't want us to go back to being a child, He wants us to become a child." Most of us have heard of child like faith, to have humility and faith like a child. Sometimes we think this means we need to go back to our child like ways, false. He wants us to become so reliant on Him as our Father that we come into a place of constant communion and conversation with Him, as a child does with their parents.

Lots of things that I'm still processing myself but I want you all to be apart of this journey with me. Please pray about everything I posted. I encourage you to seek out time to spend time with Jesus this week. Listen to Him, allow yourself to be in a position of hearing His Voice and receiving what He says about you. If you don't believe me ask Him to show you, He will.

Until next time, Love you all heaps (aussie lingo)

Outreach

…I'M GOING TO RUSSIA AND LATVIA FOR OUTREACH!

That feels so good to say!

After so much prayer and listening to what God wants, this is where He has led me, and I'm so excited to see what He has in store. 

We welcome your prayers for unity, safety, protection against the enemy, discernment, wisdom, and finances to come in. There are four teams within my DTS- Mexico, Argentina & Brazil, Australia & Nepal, and Russia & Latvia. Each one needs covering in prayer. God has so much in store for each team, Satan doesn't like that and as a team we need to resist his attacks, pray for the armor of God to protect us. Pray against fears, worries, and our families at home who may be worrying as well.

Thank you each who have been praying for me during this time, it's meant so much and has been very impactful!

Heaps of love!

Compassion

Have you ever wondered why there are so many bad things in the world? Why does aids exist? Cancer? Murder? And being a "good Christian" of course God didn't make them happen, but if God didn't, why does He let them happen? 

I wonder this.

This week we had these questions and challenges about the Character of God and today we watched a documentary on a missionary, Mama Heidi. She lives in Mozambique with her husband and kids and felt that God called her to bring the native children "home," to take them in and care for each of them. She has 500 children.

So back to the first couple questions, why does God "let" bad things happen.

To answer simply, He doesn't. There is sin in this world. When Adam and Eve partook in sin they allowed room for satan to do work, they allowed room for brokenness, injustice, pain, and hurt. Then Jesus came-He took on all of this sin and pain and made a way for freedom. Now the question becomes not why does God let these things happen but why don't you do something about them? 

What if He created you to bring justice in this world? 

What if He created you to cure a disease? 

What if He created you to make a home for orphans who are starving, abused, and have nothing? 

What if He has called ALL of us to look at the person in front of us and say "I love you because He loves me?" What if He is asking us to lay down comforts, selfishness, and pride so that He has room to take hold of our hearts to break them for His lost children? 

Our lives were not meant to be "convenient" it wasn't convenient for Him to die on the cross. It wasn't convenient for Him to live with the poor and sick. It wasn't convenient for Him to make Himself human to show us an example of how to live. It was inconvenient, yet He did it, perfectly. He did it with compassion, with a broken heart for His people who were and are still looking for an answer, looking for help. Can you see that there is more to life than what we are taking a hold of? He's offering life and we are taking hold of a life that's full of insatisfaction. 

What are you breaking for? Are you breaking for anyone or anything? There's a world out there that needs us. That needs your gifts, your talents, and most importantly NEEDS Jesus. If your heart isn't breaking cry out to Him and say "Father break my heart for what breaks Yours, I want more!" 

I just did. I need more of His heart, I want my heart to be so broken for people, to crave justice and love for people that everything else in comparison looks like trash. I want Him to love so much through me that it flows out in every single conversation I have. 

I want compassion. Do you?

Newie Life

...and we made it to Newcastle!

School officially started today and it has been great! I've had the opportunity to meet my leaders, the staff, and the rest of the students-all I can say is I am blessed. All these people simply love Jesus, it's beautiful to see all cultures come together to glorify Jesus. The base itself is beautiful, it's actually a little  cold here in Aussie but it's getting into their winter so soon it will be warm, yay!

This morning we started with base worship and the first song was Oceans...I was really excited! Jesus has been moving so much already, through my classmates, my leaders, words that God is giving random people, it's seriously awesome.

I do have a quick prayer request, I'm pretty under the weather, very bad sinus' and it's really distracting, prayer for healing would mean so much!

Thanks y'all!

We made it!

Sorry I have yet to write here, it has been a crazy past few days, but we made it! It was a long plane ride, but 25 hours later of traveling, we are in Sydney.

We (Emma, Sydney, a girl that we met up with at the LA airport and is doing a DTS at our Newcastle base, and I) are currently staying at the Sydney Island Breeze base before heading to Newcastle tomorrow and I am so grateful we could stay here with such kind and welcoming people.

When we arrived on Friday it was early in the morning so we had to stay awake all day to adjust to the time change...we made it to 7pm, good enough! We slept very well.  On Saturday morning we were lucky enough to tag along with the Island Breeze team and go to Featherdale Wildlife Park where we got to pet and feed Kangaroos, see Koalas, and experience the Aussie wildlife! Needless to say, it was awesome! Afterwards, Emma, Sydney, and I got to explore Sydney. We road a train into the City and found out when we got there that 1.5 million other people were there as well to see ships in the harbor, it was quite the adventure! We were able to see the Sydney Harbour and the Opera House, both so beautiful, and we basically got to live the city life, it was an awesome experience. But over these past three days, this morning was my favorite, we were able to go to Hillsong Church. The main Hillsong team is actually in New York right now for a Hillsong conference so it wasn't the typical set up, but was still so cool to be apart of. The service began with worship which was incredible, then the kids came out and gave us a little example of what they do in kids service by putting on the bible story of Noah. Lastly, they had a guest Pastor, Robert Madu, from Texas speak. The message he gave was about Comparison.
He started out with the question "Who are you racing?" As in who do you look at to compare yourself too? What person are you racing and trying to beat? As these questions were asked I immediately thought of a few people i'm trying to "beat" in life and thought why do I do this, why do we as believers try to measure ourselves to each other? When we are running the race for Jesus our eyes are suppose to be fixed on Him, not looking at the person to our left and right. Something Robert said was "Comparison will consistently cloud the work God is doing in your life and the purpose for your life." This is what Satan does to us, one of his biggest tricks is to get us to compare ourselves to others, that's why he fell in the first place, he tried to compare himself to God instead of glorifying God. We need to call him out, we need to say "No, I'm not going to compare myself to her/him because I am a masterpiece, I was made specifically, intricately, and with a purpose by my Creator." When we compare ourselves to others we are looking at God and saying "What you made isn't good enough" and who are we to tell God what He created isn't good? But what He made is good. When He creates He creates with a purpose, for a purpose.
All I can say is, I was challenged, but it was so good to hear and be challenged with, I pray you are as well, that the next time you look to that person do not let envy and pride sneak in, do not let satan get victory over who you are and who your identity is in, it's in Jesus, not in anyone else. Simply, Jesus.

Here we go!

I can't believe the time is finally here, I'm leaving for Australia at 4:30pm today. I feel like I've been preparing for forever and now it's time.

These past few weeks have been crazy; getting everything I need, packing, making sure my phone and bank companies know where I'm going, and so on. But the hardest has been seeing people for the last time for a while. I don't do "goodbyes,", I do "see you laters." But , even the "see you laters" have been tough. Out of all the craziness that has gone on while getting ready, I have never felt so loved. From prayers to notes, to phone calls and encouraging texts, to meet ups and meal dates-I have so much peace leaving because of the supporting community I have at home. I know that these people are next to me even when I'm halfway around the world. So, thank you. Thank you all that have supported me in any way, I truly feel loved and blessed.

A few things that would really help if you prayed for within these next 3 days: First, that everything will go smoothly getting through the airports ( that our bags and all of our stuff will make it there safely), flying, getting to the place we are staying in Sydney and getting to Newcastle. As well as healthiness. Airports aren't the cleanest of places so we definitely need some armor for that. And above all that we will be reminded why we are doing this. As I have been preparing it's been very easy to get caught up in the business an lose sight of why I'm even going. And anything else y'all fell needs to be prayed for is welcome.

Here are some ways of communication if you would like to stay in touch.


POSTAL ADDRESS:Autumn Gwaltney (make sure to put my last name, there is another Autumn on the base, how crazy!?)
C/- YWAM NewcastlePO Box 162The Junction  NSW  2291AUSTRALIA

Email:
autumngwaltney@yahoo.com

And feel free to Facebook inbox me any time!

I don't know how easily I will be able to reply but I will try my best! Thank y'all!

Here we go, our adventure awaits!