November 11

This week was awesome. Seriously becoming family with everyone on base. In lectures, we studied the heart of worship. Some main things I learned this week! -Even when I have nothing, I should choose to praise God -In the hardest circumstances, DONT GIVE UP -Even when the circumstances change, God stays the same -True worship is out of the response of your love for God -I WILL worship, because God is worth it -Worship should never be about what I feel or what I’m going to get out of it, it is SOLELY to bring him praise

Another really cool thing that I learned this week is this: I don’t even have to go through intense pain, yet I always let the little things bring me down and take me away/distract me from my relationship with God. Do these issues give me an excuse to be discontent with God and my life? Absolutely not. no mater what I’m feeling, I must CHOOSE to be content and carry on praising God. It can be SO DIFFICULT, but HE IS SO WORTHY.

Also, we are so lead by our emotions, and it never turns out well. So many things we do are based on the “feelings” we get. We become enslaved to our emotions. Romans 6:16 says, “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?”

This is interesting because whatever we let influence us, is what we are enslaved to. We should be enslaved to God. Not necessarily servants to him, because that is not what Christianity is- Christianity is a relationship WITH God. So if we let God influence every part of us, we will become more righteous, and more like Him.

ANOTHER cool thing, is that yes...God will take us through trials and hardships, and that is fine. Without a crisis, there can be no breakthrough. God brings a breakthrough and you will grow, get so much stronger. It can be painful, but once you heal, you become even better than before. So no matter how much God puts you through, if you just persevere, it will be totally worth it!

The last thing that I really loved figuring out this week is this: We live in SO MUCH bondage of our past and what we’ve done. We are not sinners striving for holiness, we are saints who sometimes struggle with sin. Thanks to the gift of the cross, God forgave you as soon as you repent. It’s us and our worry-some minds that are the problem- not forgiving ourselves.

SO YEAH. This week was so cool. We also had a 24-hour worship session, which was AWESOME. I’ve been making some new friends here as well as becoming a little TOO COMFORTABLE around the ones I’ve had this whole time...(S/O to Dan Moreira). I’ve really started feeling like I’m at home here, and I’m just realizing how absolutely blessed I am to have the ability to take a portion of my life aside, live in AUSTRALIA, and have weeks like this... where I get to learn about my creator and build some extraordinary, life-long relationships.

November 4th!

OKAY WOW. OH MY GOSH. so we are learning about our spiritual gifts, and I’M SO OVERWHELMED. i had no idea about the spiritual gifts at all. we’ve been going through them to an intense level, and even practicing them in class to figure out how to use them and what not. i’ve realized especially that i have the gift of discernment of spirits. i’ve always been able to read people to an extent that most people couldn’t. this means like, to be able to tell if someone is genuine or not...or if they are hurt or feeling a certain emotion, or even possessed.  i always wondered why no one was able to see things in people that i could, and now i know why!  it’s amazing to know that God cares enough about me to bless me with an actual GIFT. i’ve never been good at anything. no sport, no musical talent, not artsy either. i always felt discouraged when people would ask me what i “do for fun.” because usually it would just be hanging out with friends and watching movies and whatnot. 

as we were going through the gifts, we got to “words of knowledge” which can be used to show people God’s realness. what it basically is, is the Holy Spirit downloading information to you about someone’s past. this is so that you can prove God’s realness, as well as to discern why someone may act the way they do. so in class the guy teaching us, asked us if we could come up with any “words of knowledge” for him. i got a picture of an elephant...and him and his wife riding it. i had no idea why, and i definitely was not going to speak up about it because it seemed so absurd. finally, i spoke up and said what i saw, and as soon as i said “elephant” someone else in the class said “i got that too!” it was insane! and then i told him exactly what i saw and he said that him and his wife have been talking about going and riding an elephant together for quite a while now. HOW INSANE. WHAT THE HECK. OH MY GOODNESS. WHAT!? DID THIS SERIOUSLY JUST HAPPEN TO MEEE!!!?????? wow. i had no idea that God had placed these things on my life. 

Also, when i was telling my one-on-one leader about this, she asked me to do the same for her. i got so uncomfortable, because i figured the one earlier in the afternoon was just coincidence. she was like “i’ll wait for you.” so i just relaxed and asked God to speak something to me. immediately i got a red dress. i asked her if she had one, and she agreed, and asked the age she wore it. i said about 14-15. then described the fit and length of the dress, and she nodded that i was right. then i could see her wearing it at a party... it wasn’t a bad party. there was a purpose for this party. like the celebration of something. there were all ages of people there. astonished, she told me that she wore that same type of red dress, at age 15 or 16, to this party that was celebrating the end of the production of a play. i mean yeah, what i got for her was pretty vague, but STILL. GOD IS FREAKIN’ TALKING TO ME. HOW INSANE IS THIS!? HE IS GIVING ME REAL WORDS OF KNOWLEDGE. also, we are learning that if you want to strengthen a certain spiritual gift, you can easily do that by just making the decision that that is what you want to do! keep practicing, and ask God to help you see what you can do to develop it. And of course, the main key, is to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Oh yeah we also learned about the spiritual gift of healing. I watched my friends with bad backs, bad knees, bad necks, etc. be healed by the Holy Spirit through MY FRIENDS. US. THE STUDENTS, HEALING STUDENTS. HOW INSANE!? Just like that, miraculously healed. wow. God is definitely working in the lives of all the students here, and it’s amazing to see that God truly does have a supernatural side and is willing to share it with those who want to use it.