I think my head may explode...

Seriously...
I'm not kidding.
I feel like Rob Bell writing like this
(however, it certainly seems to get the emotion behind the point across)
haha
Ok, for real.
The last three days of class have been taught by Dean Sherman who has spent 35 years discussing and preaching on spiritual warfare. He has an incredibly dry, witty sense of humor and challenges your mindset on just about everything. Basically, he's a cool dude and I really appreciated listening to him. In giving him any justice I am going to go through my notes and hit the big stuff. Please excuse the bullet points but I have seriously been assaulted mentally and trying to form sentences and paragraphs that make sense of what I learned over the course of nearly 20 classroom hours makes me want to cry a little. (As evidenced by that huge run on sentence I just made you read)

~This is the perfect time to start talking to people about the "ways of the world" and how we can be different. Everyone, including Obama yesterday said our current environmental state is secondary to selfishness. Haven't Christians been trying to say for years that selfishness is a bad thing?! This mentality paves the way for people to hear the gospel.

~People right now are not buying into "belief systems". They will however look at someone with a different lifestyle and wonder what is different about them. What if people see us serve eachother like the firemen did on 9/11?? They went into those buildings risking and subsequently lost their lives for people. What greater love is there than to lay down ones life for a friend?

~Did you know that if you are a Christian you were delivered out of darkness by a foot washer? Our savior was the picture of humility. We need to toss aside our pride, now.

~My salvation is secure. This is one of the biggest ones for me. I seriously think this statement slapped me across the face on its way out of Dean's mouth. Nothing short of renouncing God and Jesus is changing this. None of my efforts will ever make me more righteous. Righteousness is unattainable except as given by God. Let me list what went through my mind in the 30 seconds after hearing this:
-Ok, I'm definitely going to Heaven
-My motivation has changed, I'm not trying to "earn" it anymore
-Why do good things?
-A true servant does good things to better the relationship
-A true servant does these things out of love
-Thank you God, for showing me how to be a true servant to you, I can't wait.

I am truly skipping hours and hours of notes but I figure I should probably hit a little bit of what the actual topic was on, that being spiritual warfare.

~Do you think people in 3rd world countries want to be poor? Do you think they are poor because they are stupid or don't care? Do you think that maybe it could be because of a spiritual stronghold on them? Because I never thought of it that way...

~The enemy want those people to be poor. He will lie to them and tell them to be fatalistic, i.e. just accept what is and that it will always be. We need to bring the heat on through prayer, in a big way. Benin is the birthplace of voodoo for all of the world. I'm thinking it is going to be more important to be coming in with the weapon of prayer than with our medicine.

~Love is like a terrorist (I know, I raised my eyebrows at that comment too.) A terrorist is someone willing to die for what they believe in. Are you willing to die in order to serve and love God and people? We must be motivated by this kind of love. Rev. 12:11
And by the way. If you say this you can be assured there are hundreds of scriptures that promise Gods protection as a result of our willingness to die for those we serve.

Ephesians 6:10-20 Sums up what this is all about. Putting on the armor of God is being part of "An eternal state and daily sequence".

I'm off to go sit with this and about sixty five thousand other thoughts right now. This subject is not easy to swallow and to be honest scares me a little bit. However, God has NOT given me a spirit of fear, and now I am just more well-equipped. If one thing stood out to me these last three days is that I worship and serve a powerful God. One who loves me and whose character is flawless. That's an amazing side to be on if you ask me!