Refreshing My Memory

I think I've eaten an entire box of donuts today...and I love it.

But, that really has nothing to do with my day! Actually, let me tell you about it!

We had an early start today because we are having an audit and had to get everything insanely clean! Our base is the youngest YWAM base in all of New South Whales, BUT we were the ones chosen to be audited in order to receive an accreditation as a school in order for future students to be able to apply for a student visa! So, our entire staff is taking it realllly seriously, which means all of us students were up bright and early cleaning every visible surface, and every hidden surface too!

I wiped down every single square inch of the dining room, re-organized the fridge, cleaned the base director's office, and pulled about 8 pounds of weeds! Oh, just as a tangent - I was thinking, do you think they had weeds in the garden of eden? I mean, I'm sure they did...but what was their purpose? They're not pretty. They don't smell good. They really don't serve any purpose other than to kill nice plants and be annoying to YWAM students during a work duty...so why did God even create them before the fall? Let me know if you have an answer!

Anyways, after becoming thoroughly sweaty (it's finally summer here, and it has come full force making up for all lost time...) I took a FABULOUS shower...am I getting too detailed?

Oh, and I forgot I took a bunch of pictures of my room (it's the cleanest it's ever been) and I'll post them on facebook later so that you can all get more of a feel of my every day life! One day I'll remember to take my phone with me everywhere so I can give you kind of like "a day in the life..."

Ok, back to my day: After lunch we headed up to our first lecture over "The Holy Spirit"! We have a guest speaker who is AMAZING!!!!!!! I don't even know WHERE to start!

Basically - by the end of this week I KNOW that I will have an amazing supernatural event take place in my life that will absolutely blow my mind, then I'll share it with you and it'll blow yours too!! I'm learning that God is a God of evidence. Yes, he is definitely a God of faith, as can be seen with grace by faith alone. However, the Holy Spirit (equally a part of God) is an evidence-shower (I made that term up). He desires to give us convincing evidence and proof of His supernatural power and knowledge of our life. Whether that's in a word of knowledge from someone else, a supernatural healing, a prophecy, a sweet word from someone else that was much needed and given at the right time, or even maybe he'll put a new person in your life just at the right time - however he decides to show you that he knows you, the Holy Spirit wants to!!

And, I guess I had kind of a revelation today. The Holy Spirit is a relational being! I know that sounds so 1st grade, considering I already knew that God was a relational being and that Jesus was as well, and that they are all a part of the trinity - so why didn't I connect the dots that the Holy Spirit is relational too? Well, for whatever reason, I hadn't. And now I get it!! The Holy Spirit isn't just like this magic wand that uses power whenever I "call on him" - He wants to be in relationship with me just as much as Jesus does! And from that relationship spouts his "magic power" :)

We kind of got onto a tangent of talking about healing during our lecture today and a few students were really struggling with reconciling God healing some people and maybe "not healing" others. And, I really felt led to tell my story - and it made me soooooo nervous I literally started to shake. But, after I heard a girl tell a story about a guy she knew who had back problems, got prayed over for healing, but still ended up needing the surgery I was convinced that I truly did need to tell my story.

So, I shakily raised my hand and told her about how when I was born I had a large hole in my heart between the two main valves. My parents, being strong believers, decided they would wait for healing - so, over the next 6 years of my life they prayed, had other people pray over me, everything they could do asking God to heal me. But, it came to a time when the doctors (and God) said that I really needed to get the surgery before I got any older. Slightly distraught they made the appointment for my open heart surgery - but, no sooner did they "pencil it in" then they found out that there had been a recent discovery in the scientific world that revolutionized the WAY they did heart surgeries. In just that year they had discovered a way to go UNDER the rib cage and take the heart out of the body which made it a minimally invasive surgery instead of the previous surgery which would have included them breaking my rib cage and me having a long and excruciating recovery. So, guess what?!?! God DID heal me!!! He just used the doctors to do it, and He did it in HIS timing.

My (well, God's) story really helped the girl reconcile God's confusing ways, and it felt SO good to be able to help someone else by just talking...which I love to do. :) And, it has been SO long since I've told anyone that story I had actually forgotten what a miracle it was myself, so it was a nice little refresher!

Shortly after that the guy answered a few other questions and then released us for dinner. Well, of course I couldn't possibly go to dinner without blogging about everything I've learned!!! So, now I have to go and eat (it's Joe's birthday so I get to be at the special "birthday table" where they serve coke and cake!!!)

BUT, we have another 2 hour lecture tonight after dinner, so I'll try and find some time to update another short blog (well, maybe long if I learn a lot) after that!

G'Later