The Holy Spirit

Well, the first full week of the new year is almost over (kind of crazy) and I figured that it might be a good idea to blog.  You know, keep some sort of schedule in order to create some kind of accountability for stuff...  So yeah.  I'm thinking every Monday (or maybe Sunday, I haven't decided yet) that I'm going to blog specifically about what God did the preceding week in my life, probably with varying levels of vagueness and specificity, as seems appropriate to me.

So yeah!  The past week has been hard in the sense that I was home and didn't have much to do and so it was hard not to read books or watch movies, but I did it (mostly by playing lots and lots of Animal Crossing on the gamecube).  I listened to some sermon podcasts, which were good, and started working through some emotional healing stuff, which was also good.  I've been feeling a little bit freer, which is always fantastic, but I would love to be even more free.  I rung in the New Year with some pretty fantastic people, and had a really good conversation till 3am about God and personal stuff and all that with some of my friends whom I love and respect and it was so, so good.

And yesterday was really great.  At church I had some really good conversations with some of my friends, and worship and the sermon were good.  And then I went to Dwell last night, which was... So super and phenomenal and great.  I was just blown away.  The thing is that I used to be so much better at giving up control to the Holy Spirit.  I used to be so much more free about entering God's Presence and just worshipping him.  In recent years, I've lost some of that, but last night I made a real effort to just press past the fear and self-consciousness and just worship, just give myself to God and praise him. And oh my word, it was good.  I mean, some of that is just that the Iglesia is so full of His Presence, but man, it was good.  And then the word was about the Holy Spirit, and how He was going to be the focus of Dwell for 2013, and it was meaty, you know?  I feel like I got so much out of last night, and though it is hard to go back to school and leave such a hotspot of His Presence, I know that I carry Him around inside of me.  He is with me, and I can cultivate His Presence at school as well as at home.  I am a Holy Temple.

One thing that they mentioned last night, and came up in worship was that God gives us gifts and words, that are kind of like jewels and precious stones, like we can walk around covered in these sparkly gems and give them away to other people.  And the idea of God's glory came up, and we have His glory, we shine like stars.  I was thinking about that, like the idea of having God's light inside of us. (Fan into flame the gifts of God...).  Like I have a flame inside of me, and the more I am filled with His Spirit, the more sparkly gems I am studded with.  And if you ever take a light into a grotto filled with precious stones, you know what I'm getting at.  One small light creates a brilliance that is unbelievable. And we're like that!  We walk around like that in the Spiritual realms!  It's awesome!

So that's what the first week of my year has been. :)