Week 1

To all those who are loved by God and called to be saints: I left in a spirit of anticipation of what God had in store, and I am not disapointed. Since arriving here in England I have been surrounded by love and the spirit of God. I've never seen so many people so in love with God. My arrival on wednesday night was met with an imeasurable sence of relief, and with relief came the fantastic task of learning a seemingly infinite amount of names. Person after person introducing themselves, and yet, it's not akin joining a group of people in which you pretend to know one another. Almost everyone here has given me their testimony, and I have responded in turn. I really feel like each of these people are a unique member of my family! Adelphoi is the greek word for brothers and/or sisters in inheritance, and I have found many adelphoi here. Brothers and sisters in christ, saved to do good works. :) Through the last two days of the week, the leader of our DTS has been teaching on all of the things given us through the cross. Forgiveness in place of condemnation, healing in place of brokeness, rightchousness in place of Sin, life in place of death, blessing in place of curse, abundance in place of bareness, glory in place of shame, acceptance in place of rejection,and a new man to replace the old. These lessons led up to a session in which we were given the opportunity to confess any part of our lives we considered shamefull or bringing down in any way, because as Ben put it, so many christians walk with a victorious limp, or to phrase it a bit more expanded, we live in such a way that we only accept the salvation of Christ's sacrifice and ingnore the things we know Christ can free us from. One of my adelphoi here said that we need to not only ask God to remove evil and problems from our lives, but to also replace those issues with the equivalant good. This has been quite the week of growth.     17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:17-24 ESV