Week 1 - Leadership Track

Friends!!!  Oh I am so happy that I get to share a little bit of whats happening around here!  It's already been over 2 (almost 3) weeks since I arrived in Hawaii.  Part of me feels like I just got here, and the other part of me feels like I never left.  With each and every day that passes, the confirmations about me being here have increased so much.  Not only have I had words from people confirming it, but the work that the Father has done in my heart already is unbelievable.  Needless to say, thank you for supporting me so much in coming back - the Lord has blessed it!

For the first couple days I got here I just rested, tried to get over some jet lag, and was getting settled in to my place here.  I thought I was going to have a week to get settled, when all of the sudden I was asked, with another friend, to take on a huge role on the campus.  With the Leadership Track, you have a practical service that you are committed to for 4 days a week about 3 hours a day.  It's part of the Servant Leadership that they value here.  So for mine I was asked to take over as Work Duty Coordinator.  Basically what this means is Erin and I have the job of connecting with every department on base (about 50 different ones), and placing 400-500 students in those departments for a certain number of hours a week for the students community service.  So we took it on!  Now if any of you know me, you know I love that type of work... computer & administration, so I fit right in.  Just yesterday we were able to get everything settled, and man did it pay off!!  It's so good to work hard for something and see the result of it.  So many lessons come in serving not for your own gain, but fully for the enhancement of others.

The Leadership Track officially started Monday!!  About 50 of us are here now, living in community with each other to the best of our abilities.  I have only known these people for not even a full week, and our hearts have grown so close.  That's part of the confirmation for me.  I love relationship, I love community, I love fighting for each others hearts, I love the messy & the reward... It's where my heart comes alive, and the Lord knew that.  So He surrounded me with 50 fired up women & men who want one thing: The fullness of Jesus in every area of their lives and the lives around them.

Before I was a little vague on what the Leadership Track is, only because I myself really didn't know, haha.  I knew the Lord wanted me here, and I knew it was to deeply challenge me, to sift me, and to raise me up as a leader - releasing me into the fullness of what He has.  But I didn't know how they were going to walk that out.  So here is a little bit more in depth of what we are doing.
- Memorizing Scripture (I am memorizing the Sermon on the Mount right now)
- Reading A House That Contends, A Tale of 3 Kings, and Daring to Live on the Edge
- Contending & Intentional Intercession
- Intentional Relationships (Family BBQ nights, coffee dates, Dessert nights, etc.)
- Practical Training & Teaching

With that, here are some of the core values of what makes up the Track:
Flexibility, Zero Entitlement, Ravenous Hunger.
Self-Motivation, Teachable Hearts, Gratitude.
A Heart Without Offense, Boldness, Personal Revival


That is a little of what our week has looked like, and it has been amazing.  I have experienced so much freedom in my heart these past 2 weeks.  One thing that the Lord spoke to me when coming here was that if I allowed Him, He would really ground me in ways I had always dreamed of, but never believed for.  But one of the ways He was going to do it was that everything that I was afraid of, when the opportunity raised, to run fully ahead into it.  So I have started to do that, which has been terrifying and shaking, but SO rewarding & freeing.  One of the ways is that I am singing on one of the teams for the Prayer Room.  Which is basically 2 hours once a week while we have a corporate session of worship & intercession.  I have only done it once, but the enemy is being crushed one step at a time and it's awesome.  It's amazing to see the Lord do some crazy life changing stuff in you, not even when you are seeking it out, but when you're just available and open to Him refining you.  And I really believe that is a lot of what this season is about.

Another part of the Leadership Track is having steady supporters.  When you are in a setting like this, having a lot to do and just serving in so many ways, having a lack of finances can sometimes weigh on you.  I fully believe the Lord wants to pour out and to use many of you in this area.  So, if you would ask the Lord if He is calling you to support me, either one time or monthly, I would greatly appreciate it.  I need a minimum of $600.00 a month to live here and I am very far away from having that settled.
Thank you to everybody, again, who have supported me in prayer and every other way.  You are all such a blessing.  I miss you guys like crazy, but love you so much more and am praying for the fullness of God in your lives!!!

Enjoy some pictures from the past 2 weeks!

[my sweet friend arrow, and an amazing sunset]

 [pool-days & my favorite things]

 [amazing men helping me move into my beautiful little room!]

 [starbucks everywhere i go]

 

[my coffee buddy, arrow]

 [hapuna beach with photogenx dts & holly]

[jonathan.  met in our dts and still one of my best friends after 2 years. so thankful for him]

 [the amazing holly, and my incredible roommates lindsay & lizz]

[some of the track, all eating breakfast together (every morning), and then middle of campus]

I love you all <3!!!

Whirlwind!

The only word to describe this past week would be whirlwind.  I couldn't explain to you all thats happened, but I will try!  At the beginning of the week, I was planning on moving to Wilmington NC with my best friend.  Well, I walk into work on Tuesday and receive an opportunity for a promotion, to be one of the Office Managers.  I am sure you can imagine my surprise at this, especially since I have only been employed there a little over 2 months.  I knew this was the Lords favor, so I decided to pray about it.  On Thursday night, I was praying and really just wanted the Lord to only make one thing go right, this way the decision was easy.  But I knew that He wasn't do that, and part of it was so that I would really seek His heart, receive His perspective, and go after His face in this time.  So this past weekend i went to Wilmington with my parents and younger brother.  It was such a fantastic time for all of us, and the Lord really began to speak a few things.  During my time Thursday night & the weekend on Wilmington, the Lord spoke a lot, but it wasn't on direction; it was about my heart.  He brought me back to many journals entries, over 6 months ago, about seeking His face and that He would give me clarity when I had to make decisions.  He spoke about how my heart is the most important thing, to guard it & to go after the things in it with all that I have.  Over the weekend my dad asked me a question, "Lizzie, if you could go anywhere and do anything, if peoples opinions didn't stop you and you really went where you were fully alive, where would you go?" Immediately my heart knew, "Hawaii".  The thought of this scared me a little bit, because I was nervous that I would use Hawaii as my crutch, but then the Lord revealed to me that that was part of the reason I stayed home.  He has used this six months to ground my faith, to stir up my hunger for His heart, and my roots have been brought deep into His soil.  All of the fear was erased and He brought hope to my heart again.

My heart for the nations cannot be described, and when I get around people who have that same heart beat, I come alive.  I was made for something more than the ordinary, I was truly made to thrive in the extraordinary & the supernatural.  I believe the Lord has put a desire in my heart, that for this season, will be quenched while being in Hawaii.   I will be on staff with Fire & Fragrance and will be joining some of my best friends on the Leadership Track they run on campus.  Some of this will include: prayer room staff, ministry into the town of Kona, serving the campus in needed areas, staffing DTS, staffing schools and leading outreaches, participating with another pioneer community, teaching in schools, and ministry trips.  The point of this track is to raise up a generation sold out for the Lord, living a lifestyle of honor and respect, worship and intimacy with the Lord.  It will be an intense season of seeking the Lord for the present and the future and investing in relationships as well as training and preparing for all He has for my life!!  I am extremely excited and expectant of what will happen and all the Father will be doing during this season & I cannot wait to see it all unfold.

At the moment, I will be leaving for Hawaii at the end of this month.  I am still in need of a plane ticket so that date isn't sure yet.  I will also need a minimum $600 a month in support.  This will include all of my living expenses; housing & food, gas for transportation, and other necessities.  If you feel the Lord putting it on your heart to support me either monthly or one time, please feel free to call me at 704 724 1175 or email me at oceansroar@gmail.com.

You can hear more about my journey with YWAM by clicking here ---> "Going Deeper"
And you can hear more about how you can be a part by clicking here --> How You Can Be A Part

Thank you so much for all of your support and prayers.  God bless you!

Simple Obedience...

I went to Lava Java this afternoon, a cute (but expensive) coffee shop/breakfast, lunch, & dinner restaurant.  It's flooded with people, in & out, all day long.  I came here today to get off of campus and just enjoy a couple of hours with just Jesus.  I grabbed my double large caramel Machiatto, opened up my journal with my Bible close beside and just began to write.  The wind was blowing, it was a bit cloudy, with the ocean in front of me and conversations surrounding me.  I began to think about the cross, all that Jesus did for us.  I saw all of these people, and my heart began to hurt.  I am surrounded by the hurting, the broken, the rich & the poor, the hopeful & the hopeless.  The ones that are full of life and then the ones that are dead inside.  There are ones who are on vacation, getting away from the life they live back home, and some of them, this is their home.  Others are in a transition period, and some even are stuck.  The broken, the needy, the hungry, the searching, the empty... All I want is Jesus to come.  I begin to feel a deep hunger inside of me for the hunger of these daughters & sons of God.  Do they know Him?  Do they even want to know Him?  I want to help.  I don't even want my fear to hold me back from a child being encouraged by Truth, or being awakened by love for the first time.  No matter what the request, Lord prepare my heart to say "YES!" with everything in me.

As I sat there, journaling all thats going on inside of me, I prayed that the Lord would use me, in any way He wanted to.  All of these thoughts kept running through my mind...
"Should I stand up and preach the gospel?"
"Should I just say 'God bless you'?"
"Should I smile really gentle at that woman?"
I didn't know what to do.  I wanted my mind to silent, and for my spirit to take over.  I've been practicing this living from the inside out, instead of the outside in (look at my previous blog).  I look over at this family, and I feel the "yes" of the Lord. "Now what?" I think.... "Write a letter."  "A letter Jesus?  What would I even say? I don't even know if they know you, and that would change the whole thing." "It doesn't matter... I will write the words. Write them a letter of encouragement and blessing."  I tear a piece of paper out of my journal, pull my Bible a little closer, look at the family, and my heart sinks into the pit of my stomach.  Something is happening inside of me, I begin trembling, and the Love of the Father over this family hits me.  I begin to feel the impact of the cross, just a bit of it, for this husband & wife and their 2 sons.  They are probably just on vacation and don't expect anything from anyone, they might even be hoping nobody talks to them... Welp, they are in for a treat, haha.  I begin to write.  The Lord gives me words.  Blessing & Encouragement, Blessing & Encouragement, Blessing & Encouragement.  I fold up the letter, I walk over, I explain a little bit that I felt I was suppose to bless & encourage them... their faces look up with surprise, but their eyes glaze over with a peace they didn't have before... and I left.

I don't know what happened with them after wards.  They may have been super encouraged and shared the letter with the whole table.  They may have been weirded out.  Whatever the case is, a seed was planted, and that's all I was called to do, now the Holy Spirit waters it.
It doesn't matter what the Lord asks us to do.  What matters is that we obey.  We have the opportunity to bless the mess out of the people in this world who are hungry for Truth & Love - because most of them haven't seen it for what it truly is.  As children who believe in Jesus & desire to desire what He desires, and who are followers of Him, immitators of Him... We are called to obey, no matter what it looks like.  If it's HUGE, we obey. If it's tiny tiny tiny, we obey.  It doesn't matter to the Father what the task is, when we obey Him He is moved & pleased and pours out even more.

"Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much." - Luke 16:10.

Fabulous Friday!!!

What a beautiful week it has been.  Can I just say that I love my school?  It has been so amazing learning from them and being able to pour into them.  We have such amazing students & great staff, but I know I've already told you that a lot.

This week we had Mark Anderson come to speak to us.  I really didn't know what to expect since I didn't know much about him or what he was about.  Let me preface by saying that over the past couple of months, I've been praying that there would just be a continual hunger in me and that I would be sold out... Like NO compromise in any situations, completely set apart.  And Abba has been doing gradual steps in my heart of revealing how good He is, drawing me in, deeper & deeper, from freedom to freedom, from glory to glory.  And having Mark speak this week was so perfect for what the Lord was doing, because he walked in with such authority, spoke in such love and confidence, and really walks in no fear of man. Each day he spoke on a new topic.  Topics like living from the inside --> out instead of from a humanistic mindset (outside --> in), valuing what is important, having an eternities perspective, and revealing to us that we have all that we need, Christ has given us everything, and in Him we have everything we just need to start walking it out.  It's like having a car, AND having the keys to start the car, but we just wait for the car to start and go... we have to put the keys in the ignition and walk in faith!  Another thing that he spoke on was Heaven & hell and a bit about revelation.  I loved this part because I feel like we make it so mystical and unreachable, which sometimes it can feel like that, but I believe that it doesn't have to seem so unknown... Jesus talks SO much about the Kingdom of Heaven in the Bible - we just have to read what he says!!  And one revelation that hit me really hard was how so much of our lives are based on what "feels" good.  And in reality, most of the time, it's not going to feel good.  Jesus died on the cross.  He was pierced. He was whipped. He was torn into pieces, literally.  It didn't feel good.  He even asked for the cup to be taken from Him if it was possible ... BUT he went on with "Not my will, but YOURS be done."  So many times I feel like I am not in the will of the Lord if things around me or inside of me don't feel good.  But it's not truth, that is me living from the outside in, instead... I desire with everything in me to start living from the inside out... From my spirit outside.  Not relying on my feelings to direct Gods voice inside of me... but rather for Gods voice inside of me to direct all of my outside emotions and feelings.  What a drastic change our lives would look like!
So after four wonderful days of Mark pouring revelation into us and really stirring us up for more of Jesus, we ended it all with a ministry night.  That is where I just returned from.  I felt a new freedom tonight, and a new peace, that I haven't felt in a long time.  It's so good.  It's something that I won't even try to explain because it's unexplainable... It's the presence of Jesus & it's a beautiful thing.  It was such a blessing to see people get touched by the Holy Spirit, to be filled with fire and to then go and pray for people right after to release over them what the Lord had given.  This is what it's all about.  Freedom. Love. Jesus. ALL of Jesus.  Not just a portion of what God has. But ALL that He has.  We can have it. We DO have it.

As this week ends I am so thankful.  I am thankful for community & for Jesus.  For worship & for songs.  I am thankful for spiritual mothers & fathers, for brothers & sisters.  I am thankful for the cross & the resurrection.  I am thankful that Jesus loves me so much and that He knew it was better for Him to leave & leave us the Holy Spirit than to stay.  I am thankful for His wisdom & revelation & understanding, and for hope & peace that cannot be understood.  I am thankful for my family back home, for River Life, I am thankful for the prayer room & for the cafe on base.  I am thankful that the Lord is healing my body and that one day we will all be fully restored and in perfection with the Trinity.  Oh... There is so much to be thankful for.  God is so good.  He is so faithful & loving.

I want to give you some verses to chew on.  They've been really sinking into my spirit lately, so I pray that the Lord will reveal even more to you!
1 Peter 1:3-4 -  His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
Proverbs 11:25 - A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.

So here I am... it's the weekend and boy am I glad!!  Staffing is exhausting, but one of the most amazing things I have done in my life.  It is such a beautiful season and I cannot believe sometimes that the Lord is bringing me through it.  It totally breaks every ounce of doubt & unbelief in my heart.  He is faithful & loving & just & true and ALL of His promises are Yes and Amen! Woohoo!

Thank you for your prayers.  Thanking you for reading.  Thanking you for supporting this journey :).
I declare life & love into each one of you! And that the presence of Jesus would invade your heart right now.  Be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, over taken by the reality of the Father.  Have a BLESSED weekend!

God is so good!

Here we are, a week in, and I am already blown away by the love of the Father for these students.  I don't like calling them students, because they are really becoming friends to me.  I love my staff. They have become family to me in every way.  They are contending for my healing in such an active way. They are picking me up when I am too weak to walk.  They are walking with me to figure out what my body needs & can't have.  They've shown me so much love and acceptance and have really walked me through becoming free from so many bondage's.  Here I am leading a school of children of God becoming free, and the Lord is doing that exact thing inside of me.  It makes it all so much more of a family atmosphere when we get to experience the goodness of God and His jealous love over our hearts with each other. [And it totally erases any pride too!]  Some may be experiencing at different levels, in different ways, but regardless - any revelation of the Love of the Father over His children is still a revelation, and will still change every part of your life if you allow it to.
I am overwhelmed.  I have never felt more at home, more at peace, more in love with Jesus than I do right now.  Kona has become a home for my heart like no other.  I still have my home in North Carolina, and I always will.  But I truly believe that this is an extremely pivotal season of my life.  I have to choose God, because if I don't I am choosing the enemy.  And everything in me is breaking free from that pattern.  I am choosing life, I am choosing to walk into freedom, I am choosing to break off the religious spirit, I am choosing to reject insecurity & self hatred, I am choosing to love no matter what it feels like, I am choosing Jesus' heart for people no matter my own thoughts over them, I am choosing forgiveness, I am choosing purity & a life of integrity.  I truly believe this season is setting a platform for what the Lord is going to be doing for the rest of my life, in me & through me.
I serve a loving, faithful, compassionate, jealous, strong, warrior of a God.  And He desires me! He blows me away.  Each and every day I just cannot believe how lucky I am to be so loved :)

I will update more later but this is all I've got for now :) Be blessed!

Straight from the Journal

Saturday afternoon. 3pm. Dried. Sandy. Just returned from Samples at Costco & the beach.  Surrounded by hungry daughters and sons - craving to be loved & accepted, wanting so badly to know Truth, and some of them don't even know it - and we are all in it together.  The waves crash... I look at a few of the girls through my aviators and we talk about life... I sit there, I look - my eyes begin to water behind the lens and my heart begins to feel broken & satisfied.  I know how they feel! I know the aches & pain & questions & insecurities & wonders & hopes & joys & losses ... And I know the freedom and restoration, healing & victories that are coming! "This is what I was made to do" I thought to myself sitting there.  Love God . Love people.  Jesus Knew, God has it figured out.  As all three of them were communing, living community out, fellow-shipping in the fullness, they knew our most fulfilled thing in life would be to Love God and to Love People.
In my opinion, one of the best things to do is to listen to hearts.  Because not only do you get to see the reality of a person, not only do you get to see another side of God... But in those moments, however long or short, that daughter, or that son, is trusting you & in that they are allowing themselves to become vulnerable, making room, believing in and hoping for Truth to come, Healing to become a reality and love to saturate there lives because they know it's possible and everything within them desires to keep hoping it'll come their way.

The beauty about this season for me is that I can watch it all, I can be the hands and feet of Jesus!  I can sit there, eyes and ears and heart open and be what they need and usher them to the feet of Jesus, and war for their freedom.
 My heart is so alive.  I am so happy.  The Lord is showing me so much as I just allow Him to use me without me having my own "opinions" getting in the way - because I realize they just get in the way, and I don't really care about my opinions at the end of the day - I just want the fullness of Jesus.  I could not have dreamed to be anywhere else.  He knows what He's doing and I am so glad that I can trust Him.  No matter what it looks like, He is trustworthy, He is true, He is truth.

Ready... Set... GO!!!

Whelp, Here we go.  I cannot believe it's here already, and I could not be more excited!  We have received a few students yesterday & today, but tomorrow is the big day where the majority of them come!  We have 2 families, 7 guys and 26 girls.  Then we have our own staff.  We have a wonderful group and I really am freaking out when I think about all the Lord wants to do.  Sometimes I wonder if its just my desires coming out, but when i think about it... God wants to bring freedom, restoration, life & love, and that is my heart for every single student... So whether it's "my" desires or "Gods" desires doesn't really matter, because I think He put those things inside of me to desire for people.  So lets go get 'em! :)

So I've been praying about sharing something with you guys, to ask you if you would join with me in prayer.  As many of you know, I have battled with being sick since as young as 5th grade.  As I have gotten older, it has gotten worse, but I have also been able to pinpoint some of the causes of it.  I have been to tons of doctors, specialists, had more tests done & been on more diets than I care to keep track of.  Nobody has been able to say "THIS IS IT!" but I am pretty sure I have gotten to the bottom of it, with the wonderful help of my family.  So... I have Celiac Disease, and I also think I have something called Tachycardia.  Celiac Disease is where you have an intolerance to Gluten and it wears down your liver.  It also has many other things connected, like joint pain, nausea, dizziness, weary eyesight after eating, sweating, pain for hours, etc.  Tachycardia has been recently found to be connected in many cases.  I have been experiencing this pretty intensely.  It is an increased heart rate (or heart palpitations), and it also makes it tough to breathe.
Over the past 3 days I have gone completely gluten-free.  It has been hard, but honestly SO worth it.  I have not felt sick once, I have not had any trouble breathing, and I have not had one heart palpitation.  Jesus is SO good.  I realize that I should have just stuck with this last time I tried it, but I really feel a new release in the spirit to walk through this with the Lords grace on it.  At the same time, I believe the Lord has FULL healing and restoration in store for me!  So I ask you to come beside me in this time and just to pray and declare the healing of the Lord over my body.  He is so faithful, He is the healer of all healers, and He so desires restoration for me - I believe it!  And I just want to contend to see it in the fullness of what He has for me.  Thank you so much to everybody who has walked with me through this.  I am so so thankful.  You guys are amazing.

So... We are ready, we have been set in the right place, and the Lord is calling us to go... to pour into the hearts of the young and the old, to live out Isaiah 61 in every thing we say and do, and to love Jesus with everything inside of us, to allow Him to love is through and through and through, and to allow people to be transformed by Jesus inside of us, to allow it to push them into intimacy with Jesus, and for the domino effect to continue, where the world is set on fire with the Love & reality of Jesus and His amazing sacrifice, His life.  I am so blessed & overwhelmed to be able to serve and be loved by such a King.  Woah.  So good.

I love you all. And I bless every single one of you.

Oh... and PS:  I dyed my hair :)

Doing out of Resting

Date: April 1st, 2011
Time: 1:08pm
Weather: 82 Degrees Fahrenheit
Mood: Happy/Expectant/Content/Relaxed/Smilie

Well... After about 15 hours of working on the Call2All Syllabus for this 2011 April DTS, I feel good.  I love putting my hard work into something and being happy with the result.  They still need to be printed and organized, but I really love hard work and knowing I am being productive.

For quite a while, I feel like my heart went into this "rest" mode, in a not good way.  Rest is good, do not get me wrong.  Rest is such a beautiful thing in Jesus, but I took it out of context just a little bit in that I had began to think, without even realizing it, "I don't need to do anything.  I am only called to Rest."  Yes, we are called to rest in Jesus... but out of that everything else flows.  I was selfishly resting in a weird place and not allowing the fullness of that to come through my every day life.  Since doing this syllabus, the Lord has really shown my heart a lot about resting in Him.  That it's a continual state.  It's not just laying down, it's not checking out, it's not isolating yourself.  It's being in a continual state of resting in His presence, of having clean hands and a pure heart so that I may ascend the hill of the Lord, it's positioning my heart to receive His love and allowing Him to pour out of me.  It's living intimately, in every situation, every circumstance, every hour & second of the day, with Jesus.
I never realized it, until this week, but I love to do things.  I love to be productively busy.  I love knowing what my task is, and doing it with all of my heart.  I think this is a new gift that Abba has given me.  He is pulling me into His fullness in such a beautiful way.
Andy Byrd, leader of Fire & Fragrance here on campus, said something that really rooted in my heart last week in our DTS Staff Training.  It basically went like this:  The reason we have such trouble "balancing" things in our life, is because it's not Biblical.  But what is Biblical is the Fullness of God.  It has been brewing in my spirit and really has begun to shift my mind.  I search & search for a balance in my life.  But the Lord doesn't want to give me a balance, He wants to pour out His fullness into my life.  And I feel like I've been learning that in very practical ways, in ways that have taught me to be grounded in the Word, to be set upon Truth, to dwell on the goodness of Jesus instead of focusing on the negatives that life can sometimes throw at me.

So what does it mean to Rest?  I'd love to hear your guys' opinion.  If you have one, or even just want to process what it means on here... Please feel free to do so.  Because I believe this is very key and foundational in our relationship with Jesus.  I believe there is something that He wants to pull out of His treasure box and give to us if we would just sit at His feet and allow Him to do whatever He wants to do in whatever way He wants to do it, in the exact time He has planned.


Other than that... I miss you guys, I miss home a lot but the beauty of the Lord in this season is ridiculous and pretty much unexplainable.  I hope you are all blessed and encouraged and filled with life.  Jesus delights in every single one of you, more than you could ever dream.  Allow Him to love you today.  And allow it to pour out.