Posted on March 4, 2023.
If you sat down with me and asked me to share anything and everything that was memorable from my Discipleship Training School (DTS), I wouldn’t be able to tell you even a fraction of all that happened. DTS isn’t just a happy clappy moment in your life; it’s overwhelmingly restorative in its nature. That is if you are willing to let God have full reign in your journey. And honestly, if you sat down with most people and asked about their DTS experience, you would hear a very similar story to mine.
The major shift that happened for me was the revelation I received of the Holy Spirit. I’m a little shocked that although I grew up in a dedicated, Christian family, the truth that He is divinely omnipotent and omnipresent was so elusive to me. I didn’t know it at the time, but I needed the Holy Spirit to reveal Himself directly to me. I couldn’t feed off of other peoples revelations and claim them as my own. When I stepped into the fiery, Spirit filled community of YWAM I was earnestly hungry for the Spirit of Truth that Jesus promised to His disciples days before He left to be crucified.
While doing my lecture phase I realized that I knew a lot of half truths; half truths about God, myself, society, and the church. Much of my DTS was God bringing to light each of these subjects and revealing the whole truth about them. For example, one half truth I believed was that Jesus healed the sick. Jesus did heal the sick but He also sent his disciples out to do the same because of His power and the power of the Holy Spirit in us as new creations. For some of you that may be old news, but for me, that was revolutionary to my understanding. It made me step out in more faith than was ever required of me before.
During my time in DTS God was working with me, addressing things as a loving father does, showing me the way. Our intimacy grew, and so did my confidence, because I had begun to listen to His voice instead of the ones in this world. If you don’t take anything else away from this blog post, hear this: God’s voice is loving and He desires to give you confidence and courage.
He is also a convicting God, correcting you in a dignified way when you are wrong. He is our Divine Father. He is also a practical God. Over the course of my DTS lecture phase, the revelations I got preceded the ways He was going to challenge me in my new found authority while on outreach. I learned how to use my God given courage to stand against the enemy.
Now you absolutely do not need to do a DTS in order to hear God’s voice and to walk in faith and courage. But, DTS is like a greenhouse that allows for exponentially rapid growth. You are planted and placed as a little seedling in your faith in a safe and nutritional place to grow your roots sturdy. The goal is to grow sturdy enough to be put back out into the world and thrive without withering. I personally have been planted back in the world after finishing DTS, and the growth I have gained since I left has not withered. I have only grown more sturdy.