Purity Battle Plan

"How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word."

-Psalm 119:9

I've been thinking a lot recently about how it's possible for us as men to stay completely pure in our actions AND thoughts... We can all say that we know it's POSSIBLE, but I know that for me, I need a reminder so very often that it's more than just POSSIBLE.

Why?

Because we are "More than conquerors" in Christ Jesus.

It's funny because the more that I set my eyes or mind on how big the problem of impurity is in the world, the more discouraged I become with the hope that we will be able to stand against it in strength. Not just holding our ground, but taking ground BACK for the standards we have stooped down to, and once again setting the purity-standard higher for ourselves.

BUT.

The more that I stop looking at how "big" the problem is, and instead look to what scripture says about how to WIN... I start getting really excited.

Why do I get excited? Because God is so much smarter than Satan, and a much better war general.

It's really time to start forming a battle plan against this thing, instead of running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Really.

So what's the first step?

It's summed up with these two verses:

Romans 8:5-6

"For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace."

Galatians 5:16-17

"I say then, walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish."

It's simply to focus on the Spirit. On Jesus.

As we choose to look to Jesus despite when we fall down, we will find ourselves slowly drawn further and further away from all things that aren't in Jesus.

Let me use one more Bible passage to illustrate what I mean...

This story is about king Jehoshaphat in 2Chronicles 20.

Basically what happens is that the king gets informed that this HUGE army is coming up against him that he really has no chance of winning against. He found out and called his city to fast and then went to God with a prayer, which he finished with this phrase:

^"O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you." -2Chronicles 20:12

And what does God do? He responds in this way just a little bit further on in the passage:

"Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s... You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the LORD on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem." -2Chronicles 20:15-17

God says "Fix your eyes on ME, not your problem, and I will fight for you."

That's our first step- get our eyes off of the problem and onto God, and He will be the one who works for our salvation.

He told me once "Jeshua... how much more could you be getting to know me-how much deeper could we be going if you didn't spend so much time focusing cleaning yourself from all your sin and problems? That's my job."

There is so much freedom in that... thank you, Jesus.

Guys... (And Girls).

Our step into purity is to focus on God. Even when we fall.

It's simple, and almost frustratingly so.

We just keep re-directing our gaze on him, and HE will be the one to pull us away from all the junk that tries to close in on us.

That's why it is more than just POSSIBLE to win. That's why it's probable.

Because it doesn't depend on our strength.

He fights Satan, our part in the fight is to choose Him to fight for us.

There is MORE than just a hope, we have a living hope that will never fail because those who hope in the LORD will NEVER be put to shame.

Weird story from our last day in Veracruz

February 1^st, our last night in Veracruz, the team went out to a fancy restaurant to eat out as a group. As we were waiting to eat, one of the girls named Jessie saw a man slip and fall and hit his head on the rocks by the water. I ran outside to make sure he was okay, and another student named Nathan Mcmahon followed close behind me to help out. We hopped the railing down onto the large rocks and reached the man to see if he was okay. He was standing but could not keep his balance on the rocks at all; he was having immense trouble standing. Me and Nathan ran down to him and grabbed him by the arms and helped him to walk up the rocks. I was worried that he suffered from brain damage so I started asking him questions like “what’s your name?”, “where do you live?”, and “do you have family?”. He still could not stand well but he started answering me in English and said that his name was Jose-Manuel-Hernan-(I don’t remember the last name). At first I did not notice that he was speaking in English but then I realized and was actually very impressed at his fluency! We sat him down and kept talking with him, asking him what he had been doing (drinking) and why he was walking down by the rocks. We found out that his father had died in the water (he did not answer us how or how long ago it was), and he was really torn up about this death. From what he was saying, we think that he was actually on the verge of wanting to kill himself.

We started talking to him about another Father that he had, and what HE thought about him, and God started revealing to me good character traits that this man has like his generosity and love for people. We sat there for a long time just talking with him as he cycled between crying, yelling, and laughing. At one point he said that GOD was the one who commanded the death of his dad, but we got to reveal that lie in the light and tell him that God is the one who wants to give him life again and hope. He was responding really well to this and we could see the stuff we were saying slowly hitting home with him. But at this point it got kind of strange.

A number of times while we were talking with him, he kept saying “I do not speak English, I do not speak English”, but he WAS speaking English very well so we kept on telling him that he was really good! But another thing that he kept saying was “I cannot understand you up here (pointing to his head), but I understand you in here (pointing to his heart.)” It didn’t really compute what was going on until this point.

We asked him if we could pray for him and immediately he started doing some sort of a chant, shut his eyes and did some multi-tonal humming thing like monks would do. We both knew that some spiritual warfare was happening so we started praying for him right there. While we were praying, I was standing in front of him and he opened his eyes and looked right at me, so I kept praying for him looking right at him until he slowly started to come back under control and seemed to have a new peace about him. He was sobered up, and was now able to stand on his own without losing his balance.

The strange thing though was that although he was now sober and his equilibrium was restored, his ability to speak English was slowly going away. His fluency changed to him not being able to understand simple phrases like “did you walk here?” Normally I would be worried about brain damage, but then we remembered how earlier he had kept saying, “I don’t speak English, I don’t speak English.” And then we realized that we think God gave him supernatural comprehension of English while he was drunk that went away as he was being restored.

We kept on talking with him with our broken Spanish and asked him how he felt. He could not remember falling on the rocks, but he had no pain in his head and he remembered key points in our conversation with him in English about God and the love that He has for His children. He said that he loved us and kept saying “Dios te bendiga, Dios te bendiga (God bless you).” Nathan had some money on him and we used that to buy Jose a taxi home.

A crazy and majorly confusing story, but I know that God worked in it!

It's currently friday morning, and I head back to Colorado tomorrow to spend a week back at the base and then I'll be home the 12th! I can't wait to see you guys again.

Second Mexico Video Update!

Our second video update is here!

If you're looking for me, I should be in the next and final video update. I was going to be in this one but we had a footage mix-up. In this video, however, I am the guy who controls the green puppet everywhere except for in the classroom (I was on a different team that day), and I am also the guy at the end in the red shirt in one of our drama scenes!

This past week in Veracruz

Hello guys! I'm trying to keep you updated more so here's the official email update for our team =]

Our time in Veracruz has been awesome! It seems like this outreach is flying by and crawling at the same time right now haha. This week, we've ministered in parks, in a slum, in a prison, in a hospital and in a few schools! We saw many people come to Christ and we prayed for many others for different things in their lives. We were not able to speak directly about God in the public schools, but we did a number of our dramas and taught them about values and in a good handful of occasions got to teach them in-depth principles of God's heart, which rocked!

When we went to the hospital we found out that only one visitor was allowed inside at a time, so relatives would stay and sleep outside the hospital for MONTHS at a time waiting for their turns to go in and visit. So we went and entertained them and talked/ prayed with them.

At the prison, we did a bunch of our dramas and gave a gospel message, and then prayed for people to accept Jesus, for physical healing, and for any other problems or whatever that they needed prayer for in their lives. After that we were invited to face the inmates in 3 games of volleyball (muahaha =]) So we divided up into 3 teams and my team won the first game (just a fun side fact haha. So much fun.)

On another note, our contacts here have been amazing. They have really stolen our hearts with their love and kindness. We had told the local Church that we were looking for housing and they hooked us up with a big house for free!
On Saturday we baptized three of the students in our school for the first time which is super exciting! They have all been growing a ton and wanted to publicly declare their trust in God.

That's the main update for you guys, but here's a cool testimony that I think you'll really enjoy!

On Sunday, we did some ministry in a park nearby the very first Church in the Americas. After we did our dramas and shared the gospel, an 18 year old boy named Moses came up to us. He said he didn't know why he was there, but something told him to come. He was really nervous and was trembling as we talked with him. He told us he was in the religion of Santa Muerte (Holy Death). He had an idol around his neck and also a big one in his backpack. We talked with him and asked him if he wanted prayer. He refused at first, saying he was afraid. He said the idol gave him power and told him what to do. After a while, he accepted prayer and we prayed and took authority over the evil spirits controlling him. He then said he felt more at peace. When we prayed with him to receive Jesus in his heart, he said he couldn't repeat the words "Lord Jesus". We told him to take off the idol on his neck and the backpack he was wearing, and suddenly he was able to pray the "sinners prayer" with us. It was really cool to see the transformation. He still has lots of hard decisions to make about his lifestyle, but he said he was no longer afraid.

--Praise our God, who breaks every chain by His love and kindness!

-Jeshua

wowowowowow this is not how I expected.

Wowww sooo much has happened here!

I first want to apologize, I have not (as you have been able to see) been able to keep up this blog in a long time, especially during the outreach.

Life here has been so crazy busy.

We are currently 4 weeks into outreach, and we just switched locations to Veracruz to help a church out here. For the last 4 weeks we have been in a town called Xochimilco with an organization called MegaCities. We have been working to partner with the local churches in outreaches, teaching them our dramas and equipping them to continue going out and doing evangelism in their city as we leave. We made a LOT of great friends there who were really hard to say goodbye to. We saw around 200 people come to know Jesus during the 4 weeks we were in Xochimilco, PRAISE GOD! But 3 of the dearest to our hearts have come from these three teen guys: Omar, Chris, and Deter. They hung out across the street from where we were staying all the time and we invested in becoming good friends with them. We never pushed anything on them like the former groups who have been there before, but we invested in being friends and inviting them to things like bonfires or hearing our testimonies. We were praying for them intensely and the second to last night we were there, both Omar and Chris gave their lives to God. Omar had never even accepted prayer from us before, but suddenly he was asking for prayer for him and everything in his life and he WANTED to accept Jesus in his life. The very last night, Deter joined them and chose to accept Jesus in his heart. We're praying that God takes care of those seeds and tends to them to help them grow.

We have one video update so far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBFwgNSi0-o, and we should have one more coming that I can post on here. Other than that, I'll record myself on my camera talking about some more detailed bits of our trip so far. Two testimonies that have been really shaping for me this outreach:

1) One Sunday morning, I got to speak at “Cristo te Ama” church about manifesting God’s love wherever you go, and how that applies to their heart for their city. I did my best to call out their loving, servant-hearted character and challenge them to use that to reach their community. When I got done speaking, I asked people to come forward for prayer who wanted to be commissioned to going out and demonstrating God's love in Xochimilco city. About 25-30 people all came forward to receive Holy Spirit to fill them and to be commissioned to go into their city purposefully demonstrating God's love to people around them.

2) One day our team was eating at a popular taco stand, and I was talking with our team's translator/ local pastor's son named Elio. As we were talking I looked over and saw a homeless man sitting down and I felt like we should go over and talk with him. Elio was hesitant at first but agreed and we walked over to start talking with the man. We found out his name was José, and he had been drinking. He has an addiction to alcohol and was being very hard on himself, saying that he doesn’t know why he screws up his life like this. I got to start speaking worth and purpose into José’s life, and encourage him along with Elio. I started doing most of the talking, but then it switched more and more as Elio gained so much compassion for this man, that he took over the entire conversation and started ministering God's love to Him. We got to pray with José and bless him with buying him some food (that he didn't feel like he deserved) from the taco stand). The best part was talking with Elio afterwards and hearing how God melted his heart for not only José, but everyone else in his similar position. Now Elio has more compassion than ever before for the everyday people of his community.

__________

again, I apologize so much for not being able to update this much more often, but I will do the best I can to fill you in on all that has happened!

Thank you all so much for your thoughts and prayers!

God's love,

~Jeshua