New Year, New Students January '09 DTS

Wow, what a start to the January School! The students arrived on January 17th. We have four students, three ladies and one guy, from the USA and the Netherlands. These are great students and we are so excited about what God has already done in just four short weeks.

Our first teacher taught on “Hearing the Voice of the Lord”. We really dug deep into prayer and intercession. Martin Luther said, “More work is done by prayer than by work itself”. A lot of the time, we forget to pray or we use prayer as a last resort. And since it is a two way communication, we not only get to cast all our cares and those of others on to Jesus, 1 Peter 5:7, but we also get to listen. The God of the Universe wants to speak to us too. That amazes me. We can hear what he wants to tell us too, unless we have allowed hindrances in our lives. Fear is a big one that many people, myself included, have looming around our lives and that is a huge barrier between us and God. God is speaking and we want to hear, but the message can’t get through so we must stand on the Word of God, 2 Timothy 1:7. Some other hindrances are insecurities; how can we think we can hear from God when we don’t think we CAN! We often times don’t think God wants to use us, or we think we “can’t” do whatever He may tell us. We don’t see our worth as sons and daughters of the King! Also, selfishness is a barrier. We want what we want when we want it and who wants to wait on God when I can make it happen right now for me! That’s our attitudes sometimes. As Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:31, we must die to our flesh and our fleshly desires, DAILY! That is what DTS is all about. It is a Discipleship Training School but it is also teaching us, the staff included, what it means to Die To Self. With ourselves out of the way, we can be filled with the Holy Spirit and be of more use to God and the Kingdom. Distractions and confusion are two more hindrances in hearing the voice of the Lord. God is teaching us to hear him INSPITE of the noises around us. And confusion, well, the devil would just love to confuse us all but we have to stand on the Word of God and in 1 Corinthians 14:33 it says, “ for God is not a God of confusion but of peace…”. We either say we believe the Word of God and believe this scripture too or none at all. There are so many more examples but these are just some. As with most things, it sure is a process :-) Blessings to all!
Mitch

This is just a taste of our first class and God has used it to grow each of us as he has with each week. God is so amazing. He uses different ways to teach us and we are hungry!