3D CAMP!

The four of us went to Camp Charis over the weekend (june 28-30); a beautiful camp in Chilliwack jam packed with fun! It was really exciting as there were many activities, games and free time where we could get to know each other better and take a break from our daily routines. Furthermore, Joshua Cruz, a teacher at Trinity Western came to talk about the Holy Spirit and Spiritual Fillings. We all learned something from this, whether big or small and we are grateful for him coming to speak! 
I just want to share with you some things we learned this weekend on this topic~

First Session - The Battle for Your Soul
Starting off, Joshua drew a triangle on the board. He labelled the corners; thoughts,  feelings, and behaviour. All three are linked together and are influenced by each other.
He told us this story:
Imagine you are on a coach and there are 2 toddlers running up and down the aisle hitting the chairs as they pass and they accidently hit you too. The father is sitting in front of you and you are just wondering why he cannot keep control of his children.

Main messages were that we should not let our faith and thoughts be influenced by our feelings. Neither should we let our desires be driven by them, but by the holy spirit.
If our thoughts are grounded in the Word, then they will guide our actions too.
Like the saying goes: rubbish in, rubbish out. If we ingest the word and understand it, then we can learn to act and behave more as the spirit leads



Second Session - Consolation/Desolation and our Role in Being Filled
God is unchanging, he will always love us. If we are 'feeling' that God isn't there; look into the bible and we can see all the promises that God gives us that he will never leave us or forsake us.
He gave us a bell shaped graph. Consolation on the upwards curved side and desolation on the downwards slope. He wanted us to think about where we are at in God. Consolation is kinda like the honeymoon stage where we are on fire for God and the relationship is exciting. Desolation is the stage wheere we don't really feel it. However, he mentioned that the desolation stage is the stage where we can really grow in our faith. He compares this to a relationship where we don't really feel like loving them even though you care about them, but we can know so much more about them during this time by understanding just why you love them. From this desolation stage i believe he was saying that we can develop our understanding of God more without having that feeling.
He goes on to talking about moral temptations. This is when you have some bad things in your life. But instead of dealing with them, we try to make the rest of our life look good e.g. serving lots at church, looking really good etc.
There is the temptation to do things by our own strength instead of relying on God and his Holy Spirit to help us change.
Throughout all these talks, he drew a heart on the board, and slowly the Holy Spirit grows from a small circle, to gradually taking up residence and pushing all the 'self' out.
So yeah, God want's to help us with all these burdens we have, and all the things we want to change in our lives. We just need to cry out to him for help


Third Session - Spiritual Disciplines - A Means to be Filled 
He spoke about the different ways through which we can meet with God and listen to the Holy Spirit and him speaking to us
We can do this through fasting, praying, reading the Bible, tithing etc.
1 Timothy 4:15
Ephesians 3:16
Philippians 4:13
These are some verses which he referenced in his talk~
So after explaining through each of the different ways we can meet and respond to God, he asked us to write  our daily schedules down on a sheet of paper. I challenge you to do this if you are reading this. Once you have done that, really look through what you spend a lot of time on and see where you can make space to talk to God and meet him in this place.
One example he spoke about is central prayer. It may seem like meditation but it is really just to be still and try to listen to God's voice and using our discretion and discernment to see whether it is God or Satan putting useless thoughts in our head. It's actually harder than it looks as our thoughts constantly drift. There are so many things on our mind in this day and age and so many distractions. Joshua said that usually people try to be still for around 18-20 minutes because it's so hard to be still and not think about those distractions and focus on God instead! So true.