Love Ablaze

This past weekend was the LoveAblaze Jubilee students/20s camp. It was in Simonstown, about 45 minutes away from Cape Town. About 150 of so young adults were there, and the main speaker was Sibs Sibanda, one of the leaders with PJ Smyth at Godfirst Church in JoBurg. It was a beautiful campsite right on the Indian, nestled on the base of the mountain..but then again ,everywhere is beautiful here, so that kind of goes without saying!

The whole theme "LoveAblaze", was really well done. Friday night at the first session, Sibs came up to talk and basically said he was going to scratch his message because God had given him a phrophetic word during the worship. One of the songs we had sung was to "know how high, how deep, how wide is love love love", and he felt like he needed to unpack what love was. Love is actually de-throning oneself, and throning God..God was speaking saying He was up for it, but were we really aware of what we were asking in that. He read out of Luke where Jesus sweats blood, and said: that is love. He then challenged us about being willing to ask God to show us what His love is, even if that lead us to the Gethesmane in our life. That last part really struck out to me.

The Saturday night meeting was incredible. All the sessions were really flexible and open for the Holy Spirit to move as He wanted to, which meant some things (like group time) were scratched because it became clear God wanted to heal people, and we all prayed as a collective group and saw healings. The worship was longer than planned, I'm sure, because God's presence just fell. There were lots of phrophetic words and songs given, and lots of celebration. Going into the meeting I had just started feeling a little homesick and down, but I couldn't stay in that state as it went on, because He was so unbelievably there!

Sunday morning Sibs talked about motivation, and how motivation cannot be correlated to feelings. Life is more than feelings, and we will never get anywhere in the Kingdom of God if we are motivated only when we are feeling happy. He again pointed to Jesus before He was arrested and He was NOT happy, but He was fully motivated. Our motivation must be rooted in the Cross, in what Christ did and who God is, regardless of it we are feeling pain or sadness. That was really challenging and encouraging to me, as I've noticed when I'm feeling really happy to be here, I am motivated and ok with the thought that I still have 2 1/2 months before I see my friends and family again, but when I'm feeling stressed out with school or trying to get rides to places, I can get really unmovitated about seeking God in this season He has me in.

There was also a room that was open 24/7 for prayer, worship, and ministry time, which was really incredible. In the afternoon, people could go into Simonstown for "treasure hunting" and praying for people..the seminar I went to ran late, so I couldn't do that. There was plenty of time for swimming, hiking, exploring Simonstown, or just vegging out, but it was a full day with us getting up and out at 7 am to pray together before breakfast. All in all, God showed up tremendously in terms of worship, phrophetic words, tongues and interpretations, healings, and people being set free from lots of things.

I think something I enjoyed the most was the non-rigidity of the schedule. As the Spirit moved, so did the schedule. I feel like when I was a kid, things were more like that in our Church, but in recent years, it's been more rigid in terms of how long worship is, or what the schedule should be like, etc. I'd love to see more openness again to just going with how He is leading, regardless of schedule. All in all it was a really great weekend of young adults coming to understand more of God's incredible love!