“You Make Me Feel Like Dancing”

This weeks lecture topic was Repentance and Forgiveness.  Staff here warned us all that it would most likely be the hardest week emotionally.  The people at the café even joked that they would give DTS students a discount on drinks because we were going to need it.  So needless to say I was freaked out and scared. Monday morning during base wide worship, I had an image of myself dancing…a ballet type dancing.  I don’t know what the turn is called, but I knew I had seen it before in the movie Center Stage.  What was that?  Why would I have that image?  That is so weird.  God do you want me to start dancing? Are you trying to show me something about myself?  I spoke with my friend Felicia and she said that maybe God was trying to tell me that He thinks I am elegant or that my worship is like beautiful dancing to Him.  I still was confused as to why I would have this image.  I even tried to do the dance move, after looking it up, in someone’s house.  Let’s just say that it did not turn out well.  I looked up the clip of the turn online, from the movie, and it was a part where a teacher was telling one of the dancers how to do the turn.  She had to release her center and it will flow naturally.  Was God trying to tell me to give Him control?  I knew that He does not want me to hold onto control and my parents had been praying that I learn to give God all of the control.  I did not have total peace with just that thought so I kept thinking and praying for clarity and was still confused.  It was on Tuesday while I was at the café and my co-worker and I were talking about application Friday.  That is where we apply everything that we have learned from the week.  So for Repentance and Forgiveness that means that we are given an opportunity to bring our sins that we have not repented of into the light by confessing them aloud in class.  The purpose is not to ‘air out our dirty laundry’ or hear how others have sinned, but to give us an opportunity.  The idea is that  “confession to man brings humility and unity and makes a repentant person ready to receive God’s healing of mind, emotion, and body,” (quote from Is That Really You, God? By Loren Cunningham).  I hate to admit that I am wrong or that I have messed up, but I know that God wanted me to do this and that made me scared.  What would my classmates think of me?  What would God bring forward as to sins that I have hidden from others or even from myself.  Some of these fears were what I was sharing with my café co-worker.  He shared things with me how He felt after his application Friday during his DTS.  This is how the conversation went or as close to as I remember:

Him: “Afterwards you will feel so free; you will feel like dancing.” I started to get really excited.

Me: “Wait what did you say?”

Him: “You will feel so free?”

Me: “Why did you say dancing?”

Him: “I don’t know? I don’t dance so I don’t know why I would say that.”

I then explained the image that God gave me on Monday, and how I had been trying to figure it out.  God totally used my co-worker!  He used him to show me what the image of dancing was for and what I needed to give Him control over.  Friday was the area I needed to give Him control and trust in Him so that I can be free and ‘dance’.   On Friday, I gave God total control and repented of my sins and forgave past hurts I had been holding onto.  I cried a ton…there was a puddle on the floor…but it felt so good!  I feel so free in Christ and like dancing all of the time.  It also helped me with some areas of doubt and areas that I was holding onto tightly.  It helped me to trust in God’s plan so much more and I am so excited for what He has planned for me next. 

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