The Spirit is alive and the Spirit is moving. Satan has tried to keep me from writing this post in more ways than one, but if I know anything, it's that this post needs to be written.
Over the past 8 months, Jesus has shattered my heart, in a good way. About six months ago, my good friend, Kristan, started what she likes to call "the Bigger Movement." It's asking God to be so much bigger in your own life than you can even imagine and just trusting that it will happen. Asking God to be bigger in a way that changes everything. In a way that we would lay down everything in our lives so much faster than we would before just to run after Him.
I began to ask Jesus to be bigger in my life, not really thinking anything would happen. But as I began to ask and seek and draw nearer to Him, He did become bigger in my life. And so did the Holy Spirit. Lately, I think we as Christians have forgotten the importance of the Holy Spirit. We forget that the Spirit is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That the Spirit that healed people in Paul's day and age through Paul is still the Spirit that is alive and active today. So why don't we believe that? I've only recently retrained my brain to realize the significance of the Spirit and what He is doing in our own lives today. I know something big is coming and I see it happening already.
I've just recently gotten involved in the best small group I've ever been in. For years, I cried to Jesus, asking Him what I was doing wrong and why could I not find friends that just loved me for me and cared about who I was and didn't care about the crap in my past? Where were they? It was about 2 months ago that I came to my first house group and today I'm on the leadership team with 5 of the best people I could ever think of to do life with. They create a contagious community that I want to be in and that I feel safe in. I feel as if I could tell these people anything about my life and there would not be one single judgemental stare shown or word said. This group of young adults has shattered my view of what it looks like to love Jesus and built it back up in a completely new and even stronger and fiercer way. I've never loved Jesus as much as I've loved Him these past couple months. I believe the Spirit is the same today that it was when Paul was alive. And I believe that we still have the power to heal through the Holy Spirit and through us being heirs to the throne of our Father. I've learned to ask "What is Father doing?" when I feel confused and I've felt content to wait and seek an answer.
I told someone today that I am such a planner in everything that I do so for me to get to a place in my life where I can finally say "Okay, Jesus, whatever you have for me I'm game for" is purely incredible. I've never felt more confident that Jesus has such a bigger and better plan for me than I could ever have for myself. So why did I try for the longest time to convince myself that my way was better? He has in the past tried to quietly prod me and tell me that His way is better and easier and greater and bigger, but I never heard Him. Or at least I never listened. I was always convinced that I knew what I was doing and HE didn't. And some of that just came from the way I grew up: Way too independent for my own good.
Kristan always told me that when she reached this place in her life of understanding Jesus and the Holy Spirit and His plans on a deeper level, the first thing she said was "Why didn't anybody tell me it could be like this?" And I never really understood that. I always got goosebumps and wanted to reach that place in my life, but I never quite got it.
But now I can honestly say "Why didn't anybody tell me it could be like this?"
I can't even quite articulate to you quite how my life has changed. It's just something that comes with pursuing Jesus so much that it will wreck your whole life (in good ways and hard ways). I'm ready to drop everything, LITERALLY everything to love Jesus and to show people who Jesus is and how they can feel like this.
But I CAN say with such a soft heart at this point in time that if there's anything that I know now, it is that I don't have a single clue who I'm to be dating right now, who I will marry, what my job will look like in four years or even just next year, where I will be living after college, or anything about my life......and I'm completely okay with that. I'm at total peace with my place in life. TOTAL and complete peace.
I feel revival coming in the hearts of young people and I see the Holy Spirit gearing up to do some crazy, crazy stuff.
Holy Spirit come. Invade. Be bigger.
Use us.
And come back soon, Jesus.
We need you.
"And this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God."
Philippian 1:9-11
