Abba Loves Me

Abba Loves Me

     Alright, this blog is going to be all over the place, it was written over the course of three days, so bear with me. Today I am going to speak on how God has been speaking to me through nature. On Friday morning I took a nature walk. I walked till I got to a point where my body just stopped. I just stood there, I didn’t know the purpose of why I stopped until God sent a deer to stand ten feet in front of me. Now it’s cool enough that this deer was standing this close, but what’s more incredible is that for the next ten minutes I was able to observe this lovely creature. As I watched it God showed me two things, no actually three. I learned,

1. I had to be perfectly still to not frighten the deer off. Through this I realized it directly correlates with the peace we MUST have with the Holy Spirit. We must be in complete rest with Him

2. The deer was cautious, it was aware of its surroundings at all times. This made me think of how as christians we should at all times be aware of the environment we are in or getting ourselves into. We should be smart with every step, and seek continual guidance from the Holy Spirit.

3. From time to time, the deer would stomp the ground like it was trying to scare off the intruder in its environment. The deer had no idea what it was trying to scare off! This made me realize that we MUST walk in full authority given by God, otherwise we are just an empty threat to satan and his horde of demons.

     On Saturday afternoon I spent three hours of solitude in the woods. I figured God has been teaching me so much through nature recently. I figured He had more to show me. First off this week has been full of healings, visions, and spiritual interceptions. My squadmate Grant broke his foot and it was healed within the hour he broke it simply because we prayed over it! We serve a MOVING God! Anyways back to my time spent in solitude, I started off diving into worship. Honestly I really hope no one heard my voice, because trust me, it’s only a voice the Lord could find beautiful! Anywho, I then dove into scripture. I was reading Matthew 9 and ended around Chapter 13 verse 23. So this portion of Matthew is speaking about some of the healings, the fear of God, and how Jesus is our rest. A verse that stuck out to me is Matthew 10:32 “Therefore whoever confesses me before men, him I will also confess before my Father who is in heaven.” I immediately wrote beside this verse ‘ABBA loves me, ABBA is proud of me’ After my scripture study session I was in the mood to take a walk, this is where the real lesson God had in store for me started. I headed down the trailand came across a butterfly. Now I would not be mentioning this if I didn’t mean every word, but as I admired this butterfly, I visibly watched a pair of dots added to each wing. Now I am 100% sure that butterflies have their designs laid out on their wings before they come out of their cocoon! So the moment I watched this happen I was shook. I think for many of us, we look at creation as concrete, once it’s created, it doesn’t change much. But this experience proved me otherwise. God literally was like, I am going to add a little bit more beauty to this delicate creature! And just because He wanted to! I gathered two thing from this,

     1.God constantly wants to add more beauty to us. A lot of our beauty comes from the trails we go through.So we must be faithful to God, because He was first faithful to us!

     2. Nothing is permanent, God can always change it if it’s in His will, we just have to realize that. In the moment i watched more dots appear on this butterfly, I realized God interceding, the same way God intercedes with us when He wants to use us as a vessel to do His will, whether that is healing, casting out, raising the dead, receiving visions, you name it, God WANTS us to have it. In fact God trusts us to have it. Let me repeat that, God TRUSTS us! I don’t even trust myself most times.

     So as I walked down the path, still amazed about this first encounter, I found a spider. It was mid-air recoiling some of the web it had spun. Honestly I have never seen a spider do this before. I just stood in awe, and remember saying, ‘that’s so cool’ I realized in that moment I was telling God how cool the spider He created was. In that moment, I let the Holy Spirit intercede my thoughts and this is where taking notes comes in handy! He said, ‘Not everything you produce adds value’. In the spiders case the web it was recoiling was an unneeded web that did not help strengthen the web. In my case not everything I speak is necessary. Seeing God use this spider as a demonstration was so cool because this past week, I had worked on holding my tongue. Even if I had something knowledgeable to say to someone in conversation, I held back, because I knew the Holy Spirit would provide more of an opportune time for me to speak. So going back to why seeing this spider was so incredible is this was God telling me how proud of me He is, that He is proud that I take the time to pursue what He speaks to me, and that the relationship I have with Him is a basis of father to son relationship. You may not see it over writing, but this is bringing me tears of joy, and you know joy is from the Lord too! That’s just another way Abba confirms He loves me!

     On Sunday evening, things got interesting! I was walking to squad church. As I was going down stairs that I have literally traveled down hundreds of times by this point, my ankle decided to pull a fast one on me. Suddenly, the next thing I realize, my ankle is hitting the next step down as the tip of my foot is still on the prior step. For those of you who are imagining what I’m writing, I will give you another mind illustration. My ankle was going about 90’ bending inward. I somehow caught my balance before I had the chance to take a death leap down these tragic stairs. As I caught my balance, I heard and felt a pop. I still could feel my foot, so I knew I didn’t break it. The feeling of the pop was a familiar pain to me, seeing as I’ve sprained this exact ankle five times already. I managed to hobble down to the building where church was being held. Went inside and sat against the wall. My team leaders, Jason and Samson, kicked into action and got some ice and ibuprofen. They spent all of worship praying over my ankle. I didn’t put any expectations on being healed, because I knew if the Lord decided not to heal me in that moment, that what God was going to teach me in the next couple days would be far greater than being healed. Monday afternoon I went to urgent care for a check up and x-ray. As the results of the x-ray came before the doctor, he had some cool, yet troubling news. He told me that I am within the ten percent of the population that has an extra bone in my ankle. He called it an accessory bone. So this means my tendon, instead of laying normal, is stretched over top of this bone. This makes it so any movement side to side makes it easier for me to injure my ankles. The doctor then explained that when you sprain your ankle, it’s like cotton balls, when you tear them apart, they don’t go back together the same way. It continually gets weaker every time you injure your ankle. The result of this injury is that I now have to wear a brace anytime I am in an activity that requires running or side to side movement. Alright going back to the lesson I figured God was about to teach me. Over the course of the past couple days,  the Lord has convicted me that I should lean on others and be more vulnerable with others. What a perfect opportunity when you have to be on crutches and have hills everywhere! This results in me having to be carried down a hill to have team time in the evening. This also results in others having to carry my food, my journal, Bible, water bottle, really anything necessary for sessions and meals. Over the past couple days I have learned to let others exercise their servant hearts. Of course at first it hurt my pride, but I realized that if I neglect to let others serve me, I would be neglecting what God is calling them to do for me. To any of my squadmates reading this, thank you so much! My squad even came and talked to me during free time instead of playing games!

     Today I’m talking about walking in authority. Acts 1:8 says, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Matthew 28:18 says, “And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” During Jesus’ ministry, He taught and demonstrated the power and authority of God. He modeled this so that we too would operate in power. Jesus did miracles, signs and wonders- He healed every single one who came to Him, He cast out demons, He raised the dead. He came as the Son of God who put aside His divinity and took on humanity and said He could do nothing without the Father. He was like us, completely dependent upon the Father so that He could model what it looked like to do only what He saw His Father doing, say only what His Father was saying. He did this so that we would know that we could do the same. John 14:10 says, ““Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.” He goes on to say “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” John 14:12-13. Jesus imparted all power and authority, first to his disciples as He commissioned them in Luke 10:18-20 and Matthew 28:18 and then to the church in Acts 2 when the Promise of the Holy Spirit was released. We have all the power and authority of God through the Holy Spirit. The Greek word for Holy Spirit is Parakletos, which means “one called to stand next to you as a helper”. He is our Counselor, Comforter, Advocate, Helper.