Sunday, January 1, 2012

The energizer bunny? No, but close enough!

So you know what is kind of ridiculous? Me. Because I am sure that there are other stories that I can share because I was planning on having this be the last one before I go on my outreach, but thats okay! I shall share this one and if I think of any others then I shall post them! So here we go.

It was our last week of teaching and our teacher for that week was Bram. He was a really awesome teacher that was really there to get us all pumped (super pumped!) for our outreach. He came with many stories about really crazy stuff that God was doing. I was very excited throughout the entire week to go on my outreach after this week! Especially after I finished reading Matthew chapters 1-9 highlighting all the healing and cool stuff Jesus did. The crazy thing about all of His healing's is that they're all different! It basically does the same thing, but they are all done in different ways. This just goes to show how different God really is and how unprecedented He is in the way that He moves His hand. So basically Bram was teaching on the Holy Spirit and His gifts that He has for us. They are all super cool! I shall list them here: Wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, performing of miracles, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits, different kinds of languages and interpretation of languages. All of that is found in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10. Now at first when I was reading this I want, "Huh?" Because some of them just don't really make much sense, like the one about faith. What?! How can 'faith' be a gifting? Well Bram gave us this story about Paul (Saul of Tarsus) when he goes to evangelize on the island of Malta (Acts 28:1-6) and how he goes out to gather some fire wood and a snake comes out and bites him on the hand and all he does is shake it off. What?! He doesn't start jumping around screaming like a madman to get the snake off? Because, I mean, that would be my first reaction! Another story for the gifting of faith is from my mentor Natio. His pastor was telling a story about how him and his friends were walking home and they saw a truck fall over and fall on top of a guy. They were all panicking and wondering what to do, when a little old lady comes back from church and sees this and just drops all of her stuff and goes over and lifts up the truck without a second thought or even a doubt and says, "Quick! Grab him!" They were awe struck and couldn't move! When they finally did, they moved the man and then she let the truck down. Crazy! Thats what the gift of faith is, having no fear to do anything, that the Holy Spirit just fills you with so much faith in God, that you just do it. Awesome!

Another gift that confused me was the performing of miracles. Wouldn't a gift of healing be a miracle? Well, Bram described a miracle as anything that goes against the laws we have on this earth. For example, if I were to throw a bottle of water up in the air, it would fall back down because of gravity. But if it were to keep floating up in the air, then that would be a miracle, for it would be defying an established law we have on earth. He gave us a story of this one evangelist that went to Mexico and went up into the hills. He was warned to make it back before the rain started, otherwise the river would fill up and overtake the road. He ended up staying back later than he should've and the river had overfilled and overtaken the road. Well, he hadn't gone to Mexico to not be able to go back to his family, that wasn't part of God's plans. So he tells the rest of the people that they can either get out and stay there or stay in the Jeep and tag along for a crazy ride because he was going to drive through the river. What?! A river?! You'd get swept away! Yeah, that's what I thought too. So he starts to go into the river and goes along the bottom and then comes back up on the other side. Everything is alright. Crazy! Now, that is also an example of how the gifts can work together, because that was a miracle, going against the law that the Jeep would go with the flow of the river and be swept away, but it was also the gift of faith because its not everyday that someone says to their self, "Looks like I'm just going to drive through this river that will most definitely kill me! Or at least do a very good job of trying to kill me!" Again, awesome!!

Now, I was going to share my own personal experience, but I am going to save that for the next blog post because this one is already getting pretty long and I don't want to have your guys eyeballs catch on fire from all of these letters and words and grammar and vocabulary and punctuation and rabbits! So tomorrow there shall be another blog post about my own personal experience and some other stuff about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Drink ice tea and I shall see you next time! (Not lemonade though, kay?)