Update #2: Bruce & Shay in New Zealand

Greetings from New Zealand!

We are now nearly ¾ the way through our three-month FatherHeart Inheriting the Nations School…  and what an amazing journey we’ve had! It has been such a blessing to spend time in what has proven to be an atmosphere of incredible openness and authenticity. We have been forced to slow down and adjust to a different rhythm of living and we are finding that we are able to hear God speak in ways we so often miss in our hectic everyday lives.

We have been amazed at what can happen when you are given the opportunity to just be, free from the outside pressures of everyday life. In this unique environment, the Father is showing us day by day how to live into our true identity as the beloved daughters and sons that God created us to be. We’re finding that God’s love is flowing more freely in our hearts, Scripture is coming even more alive, and that we are being primed for adventure.

Although the students here come from vastly different backgrounds, in the Father’s love we have much in common. It is beautiful to sit around a dinner table and share how we have each experienced the love of the Father during that day or week. It may be through what has been expressed in daily classes or in the way a Scripture passage has suddenly taken on deeper meaning, or even through experiencing profound peace while sitting on a secluded beach and discovering that lifelong fears are fading away.

It will take quite a while to process all that God is doing here, but I am finding great joy in sharing this precious time with so many others who are longing to go deeper in the love of the Father and be transformed into the likeness of Jesus. I am now seeing that real transformation does not actually move from head to heart, but rather from heart to head. As the love of the Father is revealed to our hearts, and as our hearts are increasingly filled with His love, we begin to know and experience the true joy of knowing the Father. We also become more and more like His Son.

We have about a month left until we return to the States. We are eager to return, yet are still hungry to receive all that the Father still has for us here. If there is one thing we could leave with you now it is this: the height and depth and breadth of the Father’s love for you is truly and utterly astonishing. We pray that the Father will impart to you a deep, lasting and life-changing revelation of His love and that you will be able to live in the extraordinary freedom that is your inheritance in Christ Jesus.

~ Shay