Oil to Fire night 1 recap :)

 Last tuesday was amazing! I was kinda nervous at first, I mean you never really know how something like this is gonna go. Corey and I know that we are called to prophetic worship and the way we feel led to lead in this way is to pray and get God's heart for the evening and then just see what happens! As far as the "Oil" hour goes, we sat down about 10 minutes before we were gonna start and asked God, "what do we do?" We don't really plan out our songs. We wait for God to lead us. So, I really shouldn't ever be surprised but I'm just always so impressed with God. Corey got the song "Wrap me in your arms" and I got the song "Embrace"! I just love it. At first I was kinda bummed because I was thinking "aww man, it's not the same song". Then I thought about what the songs were and just started laughing. I'm so impressed with God and how He does things. So we had our direction and just went for it. And it was so great! I love just being able to sing whatever God puts on my heart in that moment! It's so cool! There's really no other place I'd rather be. It was perfect.

The "Fire" part of the night was just fantastic! I couldn't be happier with the band and how they have just taken the vision that Corey and I have and just made it their own! They did amazing! It was such a great time of prayer for families in America! I know God is moving through them. Prayer makes such a difference! I think we really underestimate it sometimes! But it moves God's heart when we take time out of our busy schedules to come to something like this to cry out for the important things in the world! How much do we want to see change! How much sacrifice are we willing to make! I don't think that 2 hours of prayer is too much sacrifice. Jesus gave His life. That's what I want to give.

I look at what God has called me to, and I'm just in awe. Really He knows me so much better than any person ever will, and even myself! He has guided me to exactly what He knows I'll be good at and what I'll love. He's never gotten it wrong! Yeah, sometimes I think He's absolutely out of His mind, but He's way to good to not follow. He always makes it work. ALWAYS!
Well I hope to see you at Oil to Fire next week! Were gonna be praying for EDUCATION!!!! I can't wait!

No Idea What to Even Title This

I get sick of my bedroom quite frequently. It's funny, for a person who likes structure, I cannot stand when my room has looked the same for forever. I have to rearrange my furniture or do something to switch it up a bit. Well, I'm in that process and I decided to cover one of my walls entirely with pictures. So here I sit looking at a wall half filled with pictures and what can you do but reflect. So I've decided that I'm just going to reflect out loud. Well, kinda.

It's crazy to look back on life. Sometimes I simply cannot believe some of the things that have happened, some of the people I've met and things that I've personally done. My life has been full of excitement, tragedy, searching, finding, good friends, bad friends, you name it, it's been there! I've been able to do so many things. I have lived quite the life in my short 22 years and I wouldn't ever trade it with anyone. But the most interesting thing to me is the people. There are so many different people on this wall and the sad thing is, most of these people are no longer a part of my life. Where as once they were such a huge part of my life, I don't even know what they are up to anymore. I have no idea where they are and what they are doing. It's sad to me. It's been something about life that I've always struggled with. I hate the constant coming and going of people and especially allowing someone to get really close just for them to somehow have to drop out of it. So without ever admitting to it, I created a thin wall. I'll let you come so far, but once you hit this point, you can't come any further. I believe boundaries are healthy, but slowly I allowed the wall to get bigger and bigger. My excuse being that if God is all I need, why do I need people? I developed a very selfish viewpoint on life. I believe that God has big plans for me so I've been running with them. It's been all about how can I further myself, and how can I get ahead. But that's the complete opposite way that Jesus would do things. He knew exactly who He was and what He was made for, BUT he never had a selfish or arrogant attitude toward life. He was all about serving PEOPLE! You gotta go lower, if you wanna go higher. We as Americans are taught the complete opposite! The American dream is all about working your way to the top, but life isn't supposed to be about self-promotion and trying to further yourself. It's about serving others. Being able to be there for others. And in order to do that, you have to let people into your life. Jesus's life scares me. Sometimes I'm not so sure if I wanna live like Him. It's not easy and it opens yourself up for people to hurt you. That's what happened to Him. But it's worth it. I don't completely understand why, but I know that it's truth. It's one of those things where I simply have to say, "I don't understand your ways, but I'll give you my song, I'll give you all of my praise". I've learned how to trust on God to be my everything, and now He's teaching me to trust others as well. Not an easy task for me (i'm even contemplating wether this should be posted). Well, here we go....

College No More

Oh boy, here we go. I never like writing these blogs. I love to appear like I have it together and know what I'm doing but SURPRISE! Even Sarah Aubel can make some not so accurate decisions.
For some time now I haven't really had peace about going to school. I know what God told me and I have no doubt in my mind that I know what I'm supposed to do, but my execution was just a bit off. There were so many factors about going to college that just didn't set well with me. The deal breaker came in the mail this week. I got my award letter for financial aid and I qualified for quite a bit. But even with all my scholarships and grants and loans, I still needed a lot of money for each year of school. Now you can argue that if God calls He's gonna provide and I know this. I believe this with all my heart! I've seen Him do it time and again, but I cannot justify going into that much debt for what? A degree? A piece of paper that "qualifies" me to do what I do. God and I had a talk about this, He flat out told me "Sarah, this is not about the degree. You don't get your qualification from a piece of paper. I've qualified you and that's all you need". He's right, I don't need to have a 4 year college education, but I do need to be skillful. So after much prayer and consideration, I've decided to not go to USF this fall. I will not forget what God put on my heart to do though. I will pursue becoming a skillful musician and will get better and better! I will pursue excellence but I will do so in a way that will not hurt me financially in the future. I plan to stay home and get lessons from local people. I already have a WONDERFUL vocal coach and I know God will lead me to the right instructors who will be able to help me get better at the gift God has given me. It's not easy for me to change my mind. It somewhat scares me that I don't have an exact plan anymore. But I know that God is faithful and He will guide each and every move I make. He has already opened so many doors already for me to pour into my community and it excites me! I love York, PA and I want so badly to see a move of God here. I can only do this if I stay here and help to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to this part of the earth.
Thank you all for bearing with my decisions. I know it can be hard to keep up with me but you all do such a wonderful job! ;)

How to react to the death of Osama bin laden

I woke up this morning to a text from my sister saying that Osama Bin laden was dead. I got on facebook for the morning and saw all the status' about it and you got christians who have their opinion, others are again in favor of Obama and then you have people saying we should celebrate the man's death! My feelings were mixed so I asked God. He reminded me of what He's been teaching me lately.

Something that God has been teaching me a ton lately has been about love. How to love people that I hate, people that have hurt me and people that I don't even know. I'll be at work and God will start raving about a person to me about how great that person is, how much He adores them, ect. And I'm like, "God, I dont even know this person!" But He LOVES them! Genuinely LOVES them. They may not even be christians. They could even possibly be atheist that want nothing to do with Him but He still LOVES them! I think too often we forget that God's love is unconditional. That means, it doesn't matter what we do, what we say, if we kill a bazillion people, if we bomb places, if we plan terrorist attacks. IT DOESNT MATTER! To Him it's not about the things we do. It's about who we are. He sees us like nobody else does. We americans have no right to judge Osama. We have no idea what He's been through and what had caused him to do the things he did. We are a nation under God, and our God calls us to love like He loves. That's unconditionally. I don't forget what this man did to our country. Many died and I understand that. But he is still a man that God loved. If we walk in forgiveness and pray for our enemies, thats when the doors are open for God to change hearts and lives.

When it comes right down to it, in the end God isn't gonna ask us how many terrorist we killed...He's gonna ask us, "Did you learn to love?"

Mission Statement for Oil to Fire

Hey everyone! As you may remember, Corey and I are again recording. This time it will look quite a bit different. In short we will be holding 6 nights of prayer and worship for America and recording all the events. After that, we will mix it all together to create a worship album. We are so excited about this! I know this doesn't really explain it much but if you would like to know more, we have created a kickstarter page (there is a link for it on the left hand column) and there is a video that explains the project in more detail. We are also trying to raise $1,000 to help produce the album. Kickstarter is a way you can get involved with this project and help us accomplish what God has placed on our hearts to do. I mostly wanted to post our mission statement here though. I think it's worth the read. Enjoy!

Oil & Fire Mission Statement

Saturating in the presence of God to ignite our community. 

2 Chronicles 7:14 says "and if my people which are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land." This is the motivation for Oil & Fire. We want to humble ourselves to the realization that our country, our state, our city NEEDS the intervention of God. In response to this, we will pour out our hearts to God and seek His face and His desire for our nation. We want to see restoration come to America. We want to return to our original design and purpose. We want to see the Kingdom of God come to this earth and be a part of ushering in the new things that God is doing. 

"He is doing a new thing, so were singing a new song"

God has given us 4 areas to focus on. Like the Isrealites crossing the jordan into the promised land, He has given us the strategy to cross over into new territory.

The first area is our personal encounters with God. We realize that we cannot be a people of change until we allow God to change us. It is our vision to take time to spend soaking in the presence of God before we cry out to Him. We need to allow Him to transform us so that He can enable us to transform cities. Transformed people, transform people! We need to lead by example. We need to be a people addicted to His presence.

The second area is worshiping God together. Declaring who His is. His greatness, His goodness, His faithfulness, and His love! We want to lift Him up, because He is worthy of all the worship we have to give.

The third area is prayer and warfare. We want to stack the throne with our prayers. We want to cry out to God for change in our nation. Prayer changes things! We will go boldly before the throne and get God's heart for this nation, this city, and this community. We will get God's heart and His strategy's to reach our city.

The fourth area is Praise. We don't just want to cry out to God as a hopeless people who don't really believe that He will do what He says. We need to praise Him for the changes that are going to happen because He promised to hear us and to heal our land because of our humble cries. We want to shoot arrows of praise into the spiritual atmosphere to release our city from oppression. 

We are in a season of preparation, but if we do not begin to prepare ourselves we will be as the foolish virgins who did not bring oil for their lamps, so when the bridegroom arrived, they were unprepared to welcome him. We will not be caught unprepared! We will soak in the oil of His presence so that when we cry out for the fire of His Holy Spirit we will be ignited and able to carry His flame into a dark world!

"Arise! Shine! for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; but the Lord will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you. Nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising." Isaiah 60:1-3

Thanks for reading!! Don't forget to visit our kickstarter page!!