News & Views
Cat Rees - what did DNA mean to you?
written by Cat Rees
published on 12th November 2004
DNA has given me a year to focus on God, to learn more of Him, to learn who He is and who I am in Him. From not really knowing where I was going, what I was doing on DNA and having to struggle and strive to hear God, He has changed me so completely. He has done more than I could have asked or imagined.
Words don’t do justice all that God has done and all that has happened. I wouldn’t know where to start or how to articulate it. At the beginning of the year I was struggling with the idea of brokenness, of complete abandonment to God’s will. I didn’t understand what being 100% sold out for God meant. I can’t say now that I do but I know more than before that I’m a sinner saved by grace. I am driven now by a passion for God and a passion for the lost. I no longer strive to be good, work for God or be who I think He wants me to be. I know now that He loves me and will use me as I am – broken and imperfect. In fact, He can use me more like that because it pushes me onto Him, to rely on Him and His glorious riches and strength. Apart from Him I am nothing and I wouldn’t want to be any other way.
My passion for the lost comes from a conviction that I believe the Truth. I know a God who loves the world so much and who can change lives. I know in my heart, in my head and in my life that He is an all-powerful God with the will and the ability to set people free, to remove all the crap and to bring people into a place of living life to the full. And what’s more important is that He wants to. And because I know what it is to be passionately loved by God and to passionately love Him and be changed by Him I want that for people too. He is the best thing, and the only thing, they need.
I have had the privilege of hearing top quality speakers talk about what they know about, talk about what they are passionate about and what they live. It’s only now I’m beginning to grasp the depth and breadth of teaching I have received and it will be years before I have processed it all. I now know how little I really know but I have the tools to discover it.
I understand more of what church is and how God intended it. I have been set on fire for community, for relationships. I have been taught how diverse and varied God’s kingdom is and how big God’s world is. I understand a little bit more of what Paul meant when he said that he becomes all things to all people that he might save some. I am beginning to understand the cost of discipleship, of what it means to die to myself and live for Jesus, of what it is to be a radical follower of Him and willing to lay down my life.
I have spent a year with people passionate about God and living for Him. People who want His kingdom to come and are living to see that. I pray that none of us lose that passion, that none of us stops living sold out for God. I pray for the rest of my DNA, for the DNA team and for everyone else involved in my DNA year, that they never lose the passion for God, that they never forget what God has done in them, through them and for them. And I pray for myself that if nothing else, I keep my passion for Jesus and my passion for the lost and live for Him.
