My brain is melting....

....from all the amazing things I've been learning today!!!

BTW, where is the cool fonts, and other things that used to be available when posting? I hope that blogger hasn't down graded us who aren't paying for their site.

But back to what my brain is melting about.

Monday night we were in our Heart for Ministry class, going through the book of Acts, when a question came up about the Holy Spirit. I can't remember the question exactly, but the discussion basically revolved around whether or not receiving the Holy Spirit, (as in the baptism of the H.S.), happens at conversion, or at a later time.
So I sat my self down at the comp., opened up Josh's bible software program, and my Bible, and began to read through the book of Acts.

In my notebook I posed three questions:
1) When a person is saved, do the receive the H.S. at that same time?
2) If that is the case, what does the Bible mean when the H.S. 'falls upon' or 'fills' a person?
3) What is/are the result(s) of the H.S. doing these things? (ie.: 'falling upon', 'filling', a person 'receiving', 'pouring out upon', etc.)

I than spent the rest of the day, up until about an hour ago, searching just through Acts to see if these questions could be answered.

After several pages of notes, I have come to the conclusion that indeed the gifting of the Holy Spirit is a separate event from a person being saved. Now I must tell you, this completely rocks my mind, and for one solid reason: not only do we receive Jesus and are baptized in His name, but we are also given another gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit to empower our lives to share the good news of the gospel. I mean seriously, do we need any other gifts other than salvation? Already we don't deserve that! But than for God to be so gracious as to give us His Holy Spirit to enable us to go and do the things He has created us to do....ah its just too much!

I also learned that the words used for describing how the gift is delivered, really doesn't make a difference. Before searching all this out, I wondered if a person received the H.S. first, (when they were saved), and than later, (at God's appointed time), the H.S. would come upon them in a different way, empowering them to do His good works. Well it turns out that I don't know how the H.S. works in the life of a new believer who has yet to be baptized in the H.S., but I do know that whenever they use the words 'receive' or 'filled', or phrases like 'fell upon', or 'poured out', in the book of Acts, its all pointing to the same event: The Holy Spirit has come to empower a believer to do things that beforehand were not possible for them to do.

In answer to the 3rd question, I found out that SO many things happen when the H.S. is poured out on the believer. Sometimes people would speak in tongues afterwards, others would prophesy, some saw visions and dreamed dreams, many were given boldness to preach the gospel and stand up to the religious leaders even though they faced certain persecution, and some were enabled to perform signs and wonders of healing and raising the dead back to life. Basically all pretty incredible stuff, stuff that I believe God still wants to be doing in us today.

And with that last statement, my mind begins to wonder if the reason we often don't see these things happening is because we believers are not being baptized in the Holy Spirit? I mean if it is by this baptism that all these things happen, and none before in the individual, shouldn't we eagerly desire to also be baptized in the H.S.?

Thinking that also brought another thought to my mind. If that is the case, have I been baptized in the Holy Spirit? Is the reason I lack the boldness to share Christ with other because I have yet to receive this gift? Is the reason that I am afraid of persecution because I have yet to have the Holy Spirit poured out on me? I must tell you, I do not know. I feel I may know the answer, but I also think I must spend more time in prayer before I know for certain. Whatever the answer turns out being this much I know is true....I do NOT want to be an ineffective christian. A person who goes to church on Sunday, and during the week locks myself up in my apartment where I am comfortable and safe.

I wish so much that I could share in more detail what God has shown me, but in all honesty, Its still sinking in for me at this time.

If you have any questions about this, please ask me! Like I said I have lots of notes, and if anyone is interested, I will share them with you.

God bless you and I pray He intrigues your heart so that you seek out the things of God that are still a mystery to you.

Counting down the days...

I'm just counting down the days, now, until our little man gets here.

I am a little bit surprised at how quickly time is going by, now that I'm not working. I thought for sure that it was going to drag. I think its because I've been keeping busy with so many things that well, it just hasn't had time to slow down much yet! My 'to do' list is still rather long... but I'm ok with that. Of course other things have come up as being more important than things on that darn list. For example: the gathering of things necessary for home birth, like; cotton sheets, umbilical cord clamps, a knit baby hat, flexible straws, a 9 volt battery... I mean just the really obviously basic needs for a home birth, (haha yeah right!). Anyways the shopping around has been fun. I'm just getting so stinkin' excited that December is right around the corner! Though I keep assuming this baby will be a New years baby, I would not be disappointed in the least bit if he came before Christmas. In fact, if I keep looking at all his cute stuff, I will probably find it really difficult to wait if he goes past his due date. O well though! How can I not sit in his room and just look around at all this stuff just waiting for him when he comes out? I mean come on! But I digress...

In other O'Donnell news, Josh is scheduled for a knee surgery on the 2nd. He pretty much re-injured an old injury, but this time he injured it bad enough to completely tear his ACL. (So then again, maybe I don't want Jr. to come early, since his daddy will most certainly need all the time he can get for healing.) If you think of him, please pray for Josh's surgery. And please also pray that God would heal him with out needing the surgery. I'm hopeful that God will do this, so if others are praying the same, I would love it!

The baby had his shower last Friday, and with quite the turn out! Its so exciting to see that there are so many incredible & loving women around him! It just makes me so excited when I think about raising him at this church, (the majority of women there were ones from our fellowship), because I know these women will so genuinely love him :) Here are a couple pictures from the night:

I know they aren't great quality, and no one is paying attention to the camera person, but I figure that is ok and I can still show them :)

Josh and I recently had our two year anniversary, *woohoo*, and since we had no plans made for the day, it worked out perfectly when our good friend Krista asked us if she could take my pregnancy pics.

Its unfortunate how fuzzy they look on here, but you at least get the idea of how nice they turned out :) There are lots and lots more, but these ones are probably my favorites...at least for now they are.

Hope you all are having a blessed day! Don't forget Psalm 46:10, "Be still and know that I AM God", as you go about your business.

:)

I'm a terrible blogger...

But in all honesty, does that even need to be said anymore?

Anyways....

I just wanted to, again, update on some happenings. These ones are from this morning :)

God is still doing amazing things around here, (as if He ever stops!)

This morning, as I reluctantly crawled out of bed, I again found myself thinking that I wanted to quit being a jr. high leader. I often struggle with these thoughts, but have suspiciously discovered that I think them only on Sunday mornings, before the jr. high service begins. So of course it only makes sense that these nasty thoughts would be most invasive during morning prayer with all the other leaders. Up until prayer time, I was also thinking on the prior evening, and how sorely irritated I had felt, (of course my irritation was not caused by anything from my immediate surroundings. I simply had not prepared myself before the battle). Josh doesn't know this, but I was up for quite awhile after he had gone to sleep because I stubbornly would not let go of my pride and humbly ask God to take away my irritation.

But going back to this morning, and prayer time...

As we were all sitting in our little group, Josh went and did something totally unspeakable; he asked us to pray that God would cleanse our hearts of anything that shouldn't be in there, before going and ministering to the kids.

Of course I am than thinking, "Um so does that mean that you want me to stop selfishly thinking about myself and consider what God might actually want for me?" I mean I knew what the right answer was, but at first, I so did not want to do it.

Needless to say, I knew I would be utterly useless if I did not confess my sins and ask God to purge my being of anything nasty inside. So in prayer, before my brothers and sisters in Christ, I confessed my sins, and while doing so another little prayer slipped out of my mouth,

"LORD please help us to love on these kids"

You ever find yourself shocked when God answers one of your prayers, especially if it was one that when you said it, you really didn't put much thought into before it came out of your mouth? That was what this prayer was.

(now I'm going to side track a moment, but stay with me, I'll come back to this in a moment)

I felt God's compassion as He erased my sins of last night, but still found my mind struggling with the thought of leaving jr. high. I was rationalizing all the 'right' reasons for me to leave. I mean I am expecting, I'll have to think of my child soon and not have time for being in this ministry. I was looking at the fruits of my ministry and began to wonder, 'Am I doing this without God's blessing? Does He want me in this place anymore? Do the girls even get anything out of our small group? Am I hindering His work in their lives?' The thoughts were invading my brain, and really distracting me from our time of worship. So I said to myself, (and to God), 'I will not worry about this anymore. If God is calling me away, than when He does so, He will tell me.' I also believe that if you are unsure of whether or not God is calling you away from a ministry, the best thing to do is to STAY in that ministry until you hear from Him on where to go next. It is all too easy to feel strong emotions that make us believe that God is telling us to do something, when really He is not. I don't know if that is right, but as of now, I feel that is good counsel.

Josh gave his message, and than the dreaded moment came, small group discussion time.

This really isn't the most horrible thing in the world, but when you've been having thoughts like I had been having, being in this group with all those young faces looking up at you is a little bit intimidating.

The discussions were going well, (at least I felt they were), girls were sharing, we were talking, I was hoping they were understanding the real life applications of the message, and then my dear Emily shared with us how her Saturday went.

Emily, and her dad, do not have a very happy relationship as of late. In fact, during the past year plus that I've know Emily, her relationship with her dad has been a hard one. I know I can only take what she says with a grain of salt, seeing how I do not know the other side of the story, but from all that she says, her dad is a big meany.

On Saturday, (as of right now, yesterday), they had another one of their verbal confrontations, and as Emily told us about it the skin around her eyes began to turn red, and than within moments tears were flooding her vision.

This is when God unexpectedly answered my prayer, "LORD help us to love on these kids"

The instant I saw the torment in her face, my heart was stricken with unsurpassed grief.

You see, Emily asks for prayer a lot for her dad, and their relationship. So to see that things weren't, so far, getting any better, just completely broke my heart.

After the group was over, I turned to Emily and began to talk to her about her relationship with her dad, and than asked her about her relationship with God.

(My heart is still breaking for her now.)

I asked her, in regards to her relationship with God, if she was feeling any disappointment in Him because she didn't feel like He was answering her prayers. Unfortunately she said yes, and than went on to say, 'it is sometimes hard to believe God is merciful when this keeps happening'.

What do you say to a young girl when she says this??? I mean I KNOW God is hearing her prayers, but how to I tell her that how God answers them is a mystery? But that is exactly what I did tell her. I also tried to remind her that He DOES hear her prayers, and will answer them.

Maybe God is preparing her for something in her future, I don't know.

But it is so hard to watch a beautiful young lady, tormented by her emotions about her and her dad's relationship, and have no magic prayer that instantly makes it all better.

I didn't say it was going to be a happy post,

but I will say that even though God answered my prayer from this morning

in ways that I wasn't expecting, I still am so thankful that He did.

Can you imagine what my time with Emily would have been like if I had not confessed my sins and humbled my heart to doing His will for my life? Or if I had not prayed for Him to fill our hearts with love for the kids? I have had conversations with her that took place while my heart was in that other place. They always go about with me having nothing to say, but worse yet, with me having no love in my heart for her hurting one.

It was, by far, the hardest morning I have ever had being in jr. high, both before prayer time and after. Yet it turned out to be one of the most rewarding.

I told Emily I will be praying for her and her dad this week. If the LORD puts them on your heart, after reading this, I will be thankful that others are praying too.

It had been such a long time since I've felt love like that for another person, who wasn't a family member, or very close friend. In that experience, though, I learned more about the amazing heart of God. He really does love deeper than we can fathom. I also learned that when you ask Him to do something, be it His will, He will let your heart break to answer that prayer.

I can honestly say that I love Emily, and my heart is broken for her in her situation.

I don't know if I will wonder next Sunday whether or not I should be involved with jr. high, but I feel that as long as Emily keeps coming, I want to be there. I know God has a victory in store for her, and I want to be with her to celebrate when it comes!

I know this is probably way longer than you were expecting to read, but I wanted to get this whole experience written down somewhere so that I could look back on it in the future and remember God's faithfulness to hear my prayers, and remember how He answered them.

The LORD bless you and keep you and make His face shine upon you, and your family :)