Fearless

“The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1) 

After coming back to Mazatlan from Mexico City, we immediately plunged into helping prepare for our Carnaval outreach.  Marking the onset of Lent, a major religious event, Carnaval is Mazatlan's annual celebration of Mardi Gras. Said to be the third largest in the world, Carnaval is Mazatlan's most attended citywide event. Each year over 400,000 people bombard the city ready to party with the masses. With a mandate to 'transform Mazatlan one party at a time', we at YWAM Mazatlan, together with teams from around the world, Mexico, and the local church, plunged head first into the 6 day festival.

Our outreach included such things as a free coffee shop, hair salon, kids ministry, skateboarding competitions, evangelism and intercession.  I was on the prayer team and it was super intense.  We had 24/7 prayer going on throughout the whole things so my schedule would look something like this:

Pray 6-8am

Breakfast at 10am

Sleep from 11am to 2pm

Meet in our prayer team or as an entire outreach 2-4pm

Dinner at 4pm

Pray for the evening worship service at 6pm

Worship from 7-9pm

Carnaval outreach from 9pm to 2am

Sleep 2am to 6am

Repeat.

God did a lot of things in Carnaval.  The most obvious was that we saw over 2200 salvations during the week of Carnaval.  WOW!  It just amazed me the amount of people that were open to accepting Christ and were reaching out for Him.  He also did a lot of things in us as a base and us as an outreach team.  We had people and teams from all over.  During the Carnaval outreach we had 14 different nations represented.  I think God really showed all of us the importance of intimacy as the priority in reaching other people.  We had worship every night for a couple hours and sometimes in the day and with the constant 24/7 prayer God kept our focus on intimacy which is exactly where it needs to be.  Sometimes ministries get so caught up in doing stuff for God they forget about the actual relationship part of knowing God and spending time with Him.  If you don’t do this part not only is it not much of a relationship but you’re also going to burn out in the ministry part.  It’s just like the story of Mary and Martha:

Luke 10:38-42  Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.  (39)  And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching.  (40)  But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me."  (41)  But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,  (42)  but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her."

Martha wasn’t doing anything wrong, she was serving the LORD.  But what Mary chose was better.

Also when we walk in the oil of intimacy God opens up opportunities for us instead of us striving for them.

John 12:32  And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."

This means that when we worship and focus on Jesus, he’ll draw people to himself instead of us trying to sell him to others.  This happened many times throughout Carnaval and after but I will save those stories for my next blog post.

Another thing God showed all of us was how to live without fear.  The city of Mazatlan during Carnaval was gripped with fear.  The level of violence and murder in the city was at an all time high and there was actually a smaller turnout at Carnaval because of it.  However God was calling us to go out and to be a witness to people amidst the danger and the violence and the drinking and lead people to Him.

This is something I think we can all hold on to throughout the day.  That we don’t have to live in fear of anything except fear of the LORD.  We don’t have to be afraid of what other people can do to us or what they think about us, we don’t have to be afraid of a recession or lack of finances, and we don’t have to be afraid of death.

Romans 8:31  What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

Psalm 27:1  The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

1 John 4:18  There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

Let’s live without fear people, that others might see that we are in a perfect love without fear and that they may see Jesus through our confidence in Him.