Pulling out dying roots and replacing them with something eternal

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In the last 2 and a half weeks, I have had a two root canals, the first ever for me and God has taught me through the experience. The first root canal was right before I helped out teaching inner healing for a week in the DTS (Discipleship Training School) and then the second one the Monday after the week finished.  

As I was sitting in the dentist chair for my first root canal, I cried out to God and asked what was happening to my teeth.  As I was praying, I feel in my heart His answer, what is happening in the physical to you right now is what I am going to do in the lives of the students next week and what I want to do more in your life.  

A root canal is done because the nerve of the tooth is infected and is dying, and causes a lot of pain in the persons mouth when doing normal things like eating.   First the dentist needs to drill through the filling and then file down into my tooth to the nerve, pull out the nerve and then clean the area.  The dentist then places the empty space with a plastic filling, where the nerve used to live.  Then they cover up the tooth with a crown that protects my tooth. 

God opened my eyes to the parallel of what He desires to do in me.  There are lies deeply planted in my heart, that I have chosen to believe at one point in my lie instead of believing God's truth.  When I chose to believe a lie instead of God's truth, it leads to pain and suffering (consequences of sin in Gen 2).  As I feel pain, I need to identify what is causing the pain and a dentist (God) is needed to help discern what is happening.  Then I allow God (dentist) to drill in deep through barriers of pride and earthly wisdom or reasoning to reveal the lie (nerve) that needs to be pulled out and replaced.  After the lie is identified, I need God to clean out my heart so that the ground can be clean.  God replaces the emptiness with His truth (plastic filling) that lasts forever and will never again cause me pain.  And then God continues to provide His word to cover and protect the truth deep in my heart. 

I was able to use this analogy to better explain what God does and desires for inner healing.  It was a great example for the students to understand the concept of pulling out lies they are believing and replacing the emptiness with God's truth.  Through all the pain and work that was done, God revealed in a deeper way His process of inner healing.  

Above: The root canal specialist that did my infected back bottom molar and his assistant. 

Below: The amazing staff at Costa Rica Dental Clinic Lab! 

Left to Right: Dr. Roberto (did my first root canal), his assistant, Me and Fran (did my two crowns). 

Dan and I in the dentist office, with BIG SMILES after all the work was done on my mouth! 

Lives Transformed

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God, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit transforms lives! Dan and I have testified to this truth over and over again.  It is a joy to share two of the transformed lives within that last two months!

 

This is my friend Christina! One day we were playing soccer with a bunch of kids and I saw her sitting and watching and my heart started to beat very fast and I was drawn to her.  I started to walk over and sit next to her and started talking.  She spoke English and shared she saw difference in me as well as some of her friends and she wanted the same.  We prayed for knowledge of God to grow into an intimate relationship with her Dad and lover.  I invited her to come to a kids program again with her nephew and she came the following Monday.  We started talking again about God and our conversation led to forgiving people in her life and asking God for forgiveness for holding on to bitterness and not forgiving.  As we finished praying she said that she felt "lighter" and more free! I love how personal our God is that He wanted to touch Christina heart and He asked me to come along with Him to do it! What a joy it is to work with our Heavenly Father! 

This is Keath and he is 16ish years old is from the ingenious parts of Costa Rica.  He and his cousin Maxi help out with NIKO, the one week adventure camp learning about God.  Keath and me were parnters for NIKO and got to know each other.  During NIKO he shared that him and his family were having struggles with his cousins family.  We prayed for him but God had bigger plans.  God actually called us as a team to spend a week in Talamanca where he lives serving with his church. 

We had a youth ministry one day and the only people that came where Keath's and Maxi's sisters.  We did not know it at the time but it was between the sisters where the family problems started.  The students did a program on forgiveness and gave the girls the opportunity to write down something they wanted to forgive or heal and burn it in the fire.  After this activity, all four of the girls, two sets of sisters, started to argue.  

And three girls (the same three girls in Keath's NIKO group) took the girls to a private place to discuss. They shared that their families started to take turns going to church on Sundays so they did not have to see each other and there was a huge division in the church because of these two families disagreement and unforgiveness.  One father is the worship leader and the other father was the youth group leader and since the arguement  the youth group stopped and many church members took sides.  The pastor had been praying for the families to forgive each other for 6 months.

After 3 hours, the girls decided to forgive each other and ask for forgiveness!  They were hugging and laughing! They went home and shared with their parents what happened and one girl felt called to challenge her parents to forgive as well.  Her mom felt convicted and at 3 in the morning with her husband and daughters walked over to her sisters house to ask for forgiveness.  And the sisters (moms) forgave each other! At 430ish Keath ran to the pastors house and shared the testimony with him!  He was so joyful the whole day and that day three of the sisters showed up together to work with us on our service project!  

Our God is a God who forgives and heals us through forgiveness! God had a plan for these two families and their church and he used our group to unite them! 

This is Jorgelis the pastor of the church with big smiles! And below is a picture of the sisters and cousins serving together! It was the same morning the moms forgave each other, the day after the cousins forgave each other.