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December Update LetterTo All of Whom I Know, Well here is another update, it's been a while in coming, but it's been pretty busy, it's always busy here, but it's good, keeps me out of trouble...Well, I shouldn't say out, maybe keeps me out of LESS trouble, that's probably more accurate. The school has been awesome for me, I've been learning so many new things and God's been giving me so many new revelations through my teachers and the Bible, I can't recall all that I've learned at the moment, but I'll share some of my favourite revelations. 1. We have been doing an in depth study of Romans with Nolan Clark and God has been giving me incredible revelation and understanding of us being saved by grace, I always understood that we are saved and don't deserve it, but I've never really looked into it, and when I see that we are justified(made right in God's sight) through our faith alone before we do ANY work, it increases my faith and makes me stand in awe of a God that would look at us as pure and holy before we do anything on our own. Just like Abraham we are saved by faith alone not any good work. We are saved by faith BEFORE doing any good work so that totally blows out of the water anyone's ideas that they can do something to make themselves more secure in their salvation by doing "good" things. Like I said, I knew this, but now I know it. 2. We pray to something that has the power to to help. If God said he would do something and you don't have faith that he will, you are basically calling him a liar and weak because you don't believe he can do it. If you truly believed He was all powerful you wouldn't have a problem believing what he said. (Not that we don't all struggle with it at times) This greatly increased my faith because I never thought about it that way, and I certainly believe my God is powerful so shouldn't I believe the promises he has in the Bible? 3. Don't be too quick to bandage what God has torn open. 4. The parable of the 10 virgins. The foolish virgins wanted the other virgins oil (oil almost always represents annointing in the Bible). They sought after the annointing but not character. The wise virgins got their oil from the lamp man(or whoever it was that sold oil), it takes time walking with the Lord to build character, but the foolish virgins slacked off for too long and they wanted all the annointing right away, without taking time to build character. Character holds annointing, you have to have character if you ever intend to have annointing(besides that which is imparted for the moment). Annointing can be imarted but character cannot. We are not to seek after the annointing, that's foolish, we are of no use if we don't have character, we won't be able to hold on to the annointing for it to do any good through us. Would you keep pouring milk into a kid's cereal bowl until it overflowed and then just kept pouring? No, you only give what they can hold, and character is the bowl that hold the annointing(and it may be some cheerio's too), we are only going to get as much as we can hold, how long will that oil burning in your bowl last? 5. God doesn't bless us any more or less on a good or bad day, he is the same yesterday, today and forever. We change but God doesn't, when it feels like he's departed, who's departed? Is it God? Or you? If he's the same yesterday, today and forever, then I dare say, when we feel his blessings aren't there, it's probably not because they aren't, but because we aren't walking in them. Just like we are clothed in God's righteousness, we are made right/holy/pure in God's sight because of His undeserving gift, however we can choose to walk in that, or we can choose to let the sin and junk of the world mar up our Robe-O-Righteousness. When we finally look down and find out we are all muddy, can we blame God that we aren't reflecting his righteousness? 6. God's been revealing to me personally lately about who I am. So far it's been continual learning of who I am, who God created me as, and who he's shaping me to be. God's been showing me how he's been orchestrating even my desires from years past to line up with what he has for me and according to even what my gifts are. Reading past journals has confirmed this by indentifying what I was asking God to make me then, when I compare that to what has been the desires of my heart and what I have been asking for lately, it really blew me away when I saw they were exactly the same. It's just such a testament to God's faithfulness, even when I haven't known what I was doing, what I was to be doing or where I should be headed, God was steering me exactly where he wanted. My life has always been in the best of hands. Those are a few things that I have been learning among many others(the ones I can remember at the moment anyways). I'll be down in Abbotsford for Christmas on the 17th for a two week holiday. I'm looking forward to that, going to do some sleeping in as I'm usually up by 6:15 every day(hey, it's early for me ok?) One of my roommates, James (Seattle), will be staying with me during the break and two other girls(ireland and england) will be staying a night and going for a day trip to Vancouver. I'll also be doing a little working while I'm down, but it'll be ok for James while I'm gone, as long as there is any type of resource he can listen to/watch/read he'll be happy, he's looking forward to finding out what my mom has and to listen to Jack Frost. He's a soaker extroardinaire! The girls in the school have moved to a new house, they were renting a house for all 15 girls(including two leaders/house mom's) but they had many problems with house(roof leaks, gas leaks, etc...) and the landlords left much to be desired so they moved to a house that instead of 15 minutes away from the school was 2 minutes away. Only problem is that only 13 girls could fit in it, so now two of them have moved upstairs in our house in one of the spare bedrooms. It's working out good though, none of the guys mind, it just means that there are two more people to help make dinner and do chores, I certainly don't mind only doing dinner clean-up once a week. I have my car up here but I'm going to be uninsuring it after Christmas, I'm going to miss it but it's probably for the best, it's a diesel so when it get's cold it's hard to start and as it stands now, it's cold enough that I generally have to get a jump start to even start it, so it's kind of a pain for the moment. But I'll miss being able to hop in and go somewhere or drive a few extra people when we go somewhere, maybe, horror of all horrors, I'll have to start walking places! Personally, I'm doing good, I've been keeping on top of my personal hygiene so that's a bonus(I'm just kidding ok, it's pretty much a habit by now, I only slip up once and a while), I've really been enjoying myself here, living at the guys house and going to school and thank you all so much for your financial support and your prayers they help so much. You can pray for me to be more sponge-like so I can soak up everything that's being taught. For continual patience and for me to be able to recognize the things that go wrong as opportunities for some character building. Thanks again for all your support and hopefully I'll see most of you on my Christmas break! --Dustin Zupancic -Back- |