Many thoughts...

So we've had Dean Sherman here in YWAM Kyiv this week. For those non-YWAMers among you, Dean Sherman is one of the top ten YWAM speakers. He's been in YWAM for around 40 years, so he was there at the beginning and has a lot of experience in life in missions. It's been so interesting to just pick his brain.

He's been teaching on Dynamics of Relationship during the mornings of this week. We initially invited him to speak on the DTS, but since we cancelled it, he has been speaking to the whole staff, which I think has turned out to be a wonderful thing. He has been a real encouragement to us as a staff. Life in missions can be so discouraging when it seems like nothing is happening and no one is responding and you're just alone. He has been reminding us that we are being faithful, we are serving this city and this nation, and God is with us no matter what. His teaching has been challenging us to go deeper in our relationships with each other and to remember the simplicity of what the Christian life really is - Love. Love God and love your neighbor. The rich young man asked Jesus what the first and greatest commandment is, and Jesus gave him two answers - Love God and love your neighbor. Dean has taught us a lot about what love is - laying down your life, dying to selfishness, being truthful and real, serving. It's really been powerful.

Even though I can feel so alone out here in Ukraine, I know that God is at work in and through me. I often doubt that, but I know in the depths of my heart that He is here with us. Today, through part of Dean's teaching, God really lifted a weight off my shoulders that I've been carrying for years, since I felt God calling me into the area of discipleship.

I love discipleship. I love DTS. I love seeing the way God just reaches out and touches hearts in amazing ways. I love seeing and being a part of a "light bulb moment". Some of those moments are among the best in my life - just being used by God to speak into someone's life and see the light bulb of new understanding and revelation come on in them. But over the past few years of leading DTSes, I have constantly felt a burden of "I should be doing more evangelism, I should be helping orphans more, this isn't real ministry because these people are already Christians."
But today, we were reading Isaiah 58 and 61 as he taught about serving people and it was like I had a light bulb moment. God wants us to bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim freedom for the captives, release from darkness for prisoners, set the oppressed free, break every yoke...that's what we do in DTS!! We get students who have been wounded by life experiences, who are stuck in darkness because of lifestyle choices, who are depressed and doubtful that God would love them and want relationship with them. We get students who are slaves to a works gospel and never stop to think that God wants intimate relationship with them. And we do our best to serve them and to train them to go back home or onto the mission field and reach the lost, minister to the poor and needy, and to change the world with kingdom principles.
This was a powerful revelation for me. Of course I realize that the rest of those chapters are calling us to serve the poor, the needy, and the lost. Of course there is tremendous value in that. But just to realize for the first time that I am not failing God by leading DTSes - rather, I am fulfilling the calling He has placed on my heart.