MISSIONS INSIDER BLOG

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4 min read

I Just Needed To Show Up

By Tyler Tom on 21 May 2018

My life needed redirection

As a burnt out special education teacher, I was desperate for anything different. At this point, I was wondering if maybe I was too desperate.

Topics: YWAM Tyler Crossroads DTS Purpose YWAM DTS Missionary Making Him Known YWAM Redirection Crossroads discipleship introvert dicovery
4 min read

Straight Outta School With No Clue What to Do

By Allison Bice on 7 Mar 2018

“What do you want to do after you graduate?”

I laughed nervously. I had been asked this several times during my senior year of high school, and I had no clue what I wanted to do. And graduation was just a few months away!

Topics: YWAM Tyler Purpose Direction Gap Year YWAM DTS Encounter God Discipleship Opportunities
6 min read

YWAM was one tool God used to change my life

By Jordon Lippiatt on 24 Nov 2017

Every day, I am reminded of the power of God. Experiencing God's love and grace in my life began when I was born. When I came into the world, my lungs collapsed. I was rushed down to the ICU and given oxygen through tubes in my chest. While my mother was in a hospital room, my father was in the waiting area, hoping everything would be okay. After some time the doctor came out, gave my father a hug, and told him that I didn’t make it. My lungs had stopped working, and there was no sign of life. My father then told the doctor that day, "No matter what happens, God is still good."

Topics: Purpose YWAM DTS Story Identity Destiny Missionary Life Spiritual Growth Get to Know God Redeem Deeper with God Transformation Unearthed
2 min read

Discovering Your Call and Destiny

By Tyler Tom on 3 Nov 2017

Growing up, I loved worship and music. In the ninth grade, I bought a guitar so that I could create my own sound, my own worship for God, and not just sing along with someone’s CD. Although I tried (unsuccessfully) to lead worship a couple times my senior year, I didn’t really have any aspirations to be the next Chris Tomlin or Hillsong United. However during my DTS, God spoke clearly to me through my school leader that He was calling me to be a worship leader, which set me on a journey that would change my life.

Topics: School of Worship Purpose Worship Calling
2 min read

Connection Requires Eye Contact

By Ben Venable on 18 Oct 2017

Every day we are bombarded with a seemingly endless onslaught of self-help mantras, get rich quick schemes, and “7 steps to becoming a better you” trivialities, all of which seem to be numbing our collective ability to actually interact as humans. If you take a minute to look up from your cellular device and simply observe how everyone else around you is totally absorbed by their cellular device, it’s actually kind of harrowing.

Topics: Purpose Connection Communication
2 min read

God Challenged Me to be Vulnerable

By Alyssa Rosser on 12 Jul 2017

In 2012 I reluctantly attended the School of Evangelism (SOE) at YWAM Tyler, which traveled to Greece, Germany, and France for outreach. You see this school was part of the launching in becoming a missionary; however, I had no desire or plan to do that at all. I was back and forth with God about what He wanted me to do in the future, but because I love Jesus and because I wanted to honor Him, I obeyed and did this school.

Topics: Purpose Direction Obedience
2 min read

What Do We Do Now?

By Candace Leatherman on 16 Jun 2017

In July of 2015, David retired from working forty-five years in the IT world. Our grandchildren were moving away, and we were still healthy with plenty of active years ahead of us. With a wide-open schedule, one question loomed in our minds: what do we do now? We had lived typical American lives focused on our family. When missionaries came through our area, we had always been supportive but never thought about missions for ourselves. Upon retiring, we knew it was important to spend this next season of our lives serving the Lord but were still very unsure of what that would look like.

Topics: Missions Purpose Retired
2 min read

I Decided to Give God One More Chance

By Ben Venable on 19 May 2017

Repeatedly punching my steering wheel and reminding God of how expertly He had crafted my middle finger had kind of become my thing. My west-Texan-pastors-kid bubble had officially popped. My former modicum of faith had been crushed under the weight of my cynicism, self pity, and reclusiveness, and I seriously wanted to die. Needless to say, my first (and as it turned out, my only) semester of college had not gone as planned.

With the majority of my time being spent sulking in my dorm room, illegally watching indie movies, and silently screaming for attention, I felt like any purpose I may have ever felt in life had entirely wilted away. I moved back home, donned a pastel visor, and scooped about a million pounds of ice cream for eight months, saving money in the hopes of one day finding an escape from my intellectual and spiritual despair.

Out of the divinely inspired blue, an old youth pastor called me up, excitedly informing me of his need for a worship leader for his current youth group's upcoming missions trip to New Orleans. I semi-begrudgingly accepted his proposal. Any excuse to not scoop ice cream was good enough for me, even if it meant faking Christianity for a week or so.

Somewhere in the sultry swampiness of a June evening in the French Quarter, God started tugging on my heart in a way I could relate to. I saw people who needed just what I needed. Relief. Peace. Hope. Humanity longs for a way to escape the confines of their mind and to trust in something bigger than themselves and bigger than the American dream.

I came home and told my parents that I realized I could live a better life, and I decided to give God one more chance. Youth With a Mission (YWAM) New Orleans was hosting a missionary training school called the Urban Discipleship Training School (UDTS), which I had heard about while on my mission trip in New Orleans. After a few weeks of hesitating, I sent in my application and held my breath.

During the UDTS, I came to realize that Christianity wasn’t about fitting a mold. I didn’t have to look, sound, act, or talk like whatever I thought the perfect Christian looked, sounded, acted, and talked like. I learned that what God desires above all else is honest relationship with His most valued creation. Us. Me. You. Living in community, serving the broken, pushing myself to prefer others in all of my actions, and learning how to be myself in the midst of loving God...these are all things I never considered before doing the UDTS.

I never turned back. Seven years later, I’m still seeking God wholeheartedly as a missionary and staff member with the UDTS. Some days are better than others, of course, but every day I am reminded of who I was, and who I am now. The difference isn’t found in any book or song or movie or good idea; it’s found in believing that God hears me.

If He hears me, He hears you too.

Topics: Purpose Urban Missions Relationship with God
2 min read

Courageous Women

What does it take to become a courageous individual? William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, observed that...

3 min read

Building Foundations

How do you increase your faith? Former student Sarah Horan shares her heart on how God revealed His truth to her during...

2 min read

Missions Changed Me

From as far back as my junior high school, I remember struggling to find happiness. I felt like I didn’t fit in and...

2 min read

Unexpected Friendships

When we follow God, sometimes we have our own expectations of what God will do through us. This can sometimes cause us...
2 min read

Miracles in the Classroom

What does a young person chasing after God's heart look like? Christian Heritage School desires to fan the flame of the...

4 min read

Cross-Cultural Christmastime

Have you ever wondered how Christmas is celebrated around the world? We asked four of our YWAM Tyler missionaries to...

3 min read

My Stepmom Thinks YWAM Rocks

Have you ever been curious about going to a Discipleship Training School but don't know what to expect? In a recent...

2 min read

Marked by God

Can you imagine God sending someone from another country to see you? While in Thailand, Jess Reminger encounters a man...

2 min read

The Day I Thanked God For Losing My Job

One morning I sat in the classroom during my training school with YWAM, and I was crying, thanking God for the loss of...

2 min read

Sharing The Gospel Isn't Complicated

God has been doing amazing things with our DTS team on outreach in Thailand. As the team has made themselves available,...

2 min read

How DTS Changed My Child

Before I left for my Discipleship Training School, my family really had no idea what YWAM was. If your family...
2 min read

Laying Down My Rights

I was sitting in my DTS classroom, my head wrapped in thoughts of a family circumstance that was happening. We had...