Stirring things up…

I know that there are some people that followed us through this blog while we went to Oregon.  Followed our spiritual journey, and prayed for us.  I am so grateful for that!  I have been blogging more candidly on my business page (Homespun Branding Studio) and because of that, I haven’t had time or felt like I could unload enough onto here.  However, lately things have changed in me and so I thought I’d ramble about it a little bit and share with those that don’t follow my business blog, but do want to know.

I went to North Dakota last week to serve on a Dakota reservation.  What I saw and experienced was heart-breaking, and it was good for me to see.  Good to be used and to be ministering everyday, to be on the front lines and exercising my faith much more than I normally do.  I found it to be pretty sad that it’s not like that everyday for me.

Something else happened as well.  The Holy Spirit was really at work on me.  I’ve experienced some awesome things in the last few months.  I experienced the beginning of what this was over a year ago.  Alone in a loft in a beach house with no connections to the outside world, I had a conversation with God that, boiled down, went like this: God, if you want me to do this, you’re going to have to give me the ability because otherwise I can’t do it.  I won’t be a distraction from You.  So I need you to give me more, to give me more natural ability, and more of You.

In the two weeks after that, He poured out His grace on me and did what I asked.  In the year and handful of months since, He has continued to do so.  This last week though, He continued it in another way.  I can’t really explain it because I really don’t understand it, but God put something more in me.  It was all Him, His timing and His Holy Spirit in me that just went to town doing His thing.  I don’t have to understand it, at least, not yet.  All I know is that He gave me something I didn’t have before, and something has changed in me.  And I sit here, grateful, and yet wanting more.  Every taste leaves me wanting more.

My epiphany from all of this is that there is an inheritance for those that love the Lord, that follow Christ unabashedly and wholeheartedly.  It is greater than we can imagine, and through the Holy Spirit, we can taste it now.  Christ’s sacrifice wasn’t just to save us from going to hell, it was the beginning of something.  We are perfected in the resurrection, and we are constantly being transformed and completed.  The more we love Him, the more we pursue Him, the more power, love, and presence we get.  Because the more affection we have for Him, the greater our capacity to hold Him and be filled with the Holy Spirit.  Eph. 1:10-24 talks about the inheritance we gain in Christ through the Holy Spirit.  Of course, there are tons of passages like this in the New Testament that show us these kinds of promises.  For most of my life, I’ve read over them and not gotten it.  Now I read and I see and I’m floored at what God has in store for us as Christians if we just take ahold of it. Instead of being satisfied with the way things are (and honestly, how many of us are afraid of getting more of Him?), our souls and hearts should be crying out for more and more and more.  When we do, He gives it to us.  Why?  Because He desires intimacy with us.  He gives us the mind of Christ so we can know Him, and do His work.  Intimacy is a path…it isn’t “Thank you Jesus for dying on the cross and rising from the dead, I believe I am saved through Your sacrifice.”  That is just the very beginning!

So that’s where I’m at.  Our church in Mead is really revolutionizing my walk with Christ, really showing me how alive God actually is, and I am so grateful for so many of the people in my life and how their obedience has allowed me to walk this path.  Now that my eyes have been opened and I’ve experienced His loving presence so tangibly, I could never go back to the way things were in me, the way I used to live.  There is so much peace to be had, so much love and so much real life!