Here is my first attempt at summarizing and processing the most dramatic week of my spiritual life. Ever.
This week was super emotional. Now that seems normal, life is pretty emotional, I am definitely an emo kiddo, and everyone experiences emotion. All the time. BUT YOU HAVE NO IDEA. Let me try to explain some of the things going on as I cannot possibly relay a true and accurate description of the feeler end of things.
--Ok, I'm nice and updated on the home-front and had a cool chat about the Jeep community as church and the institution of religion and how it misses the whole point of Jesus' radical love...so awesome broskies. Glad you chime in on my meeting of the minds--Ok, back to my new crazy reality.
Lets sum things up:
The Holy Spirit is the THIRD PERSON of the Holy Trinity, and He is soooooo real. You can feel His presence, recognize his personhood (though not a fleshy frame like Jesus had), be overcome with physical sensations and actually burst out laughing, like bust-a-gut-or-two laughter. Uncontrollable and sweat-provoking, work-out-esque laughter!
Monday we learned of Amy Sollar's reader's-digest-version of her life story and how she came to bear her identity as a prophetess (female prophet, get it?). No joking matter here, she is divinely gifted. Want to know why? Because of her love for Jesus, because of her relationship with God, and because this is how God Himself operates. Its a new normal for me and I'm sure this is making you wonder what kind of adventure I'm on here at YWAM.
I was baptized in the Holy Spirit which is a fancy way of saying the Holy Spirit made Himself oh so clearly present in my being. Sounds crazy, I know. Most of this is going to get you OUTTA YO MIND. When Amy is around, things get heated; literally, some people feel a warming sensation over parts or the entire body. Crazy. But God reveals His Spirit in us to give us a window into His glory. Romans 8:16 says something like this: the Holy Spirit together with ours declares to God that we are His children, and if children we are heirs, co-heirs with Christ. DO YOU HEAR THIS? The Holy Spirit is with us from birth, in every person believing or not. But its in times like these that God has His perfect timing to reveal to us His power and release just a little bit bigger piece of Heavenly truth in our walks with Him.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE FOR ME: the Baptism in the Spirit part
In complete and utter eagerness and will I was so stoked for this to happen. I wanted to become paralyzed and invaded by the Holy Spirit. I mean, go big or go home, yah? By faith and truth I just wanted the biggest and BEST God had for me. I began to cry. This happens a lot here. I cannot tell you I remember the prayers but I know what happened. I began to feel light and had slightly become drawn into a bendy/crouchy position, just slightly. As a staffer, Holly, held her hand lightly on my forehead I began to tip backwards and other staff helped me land softly. This is normal. We call it 'hitting the deck' or 'getting laid out' by the Holy Spirit, 'losing it'...lots of fun wordage we have here. I began to laugh--though my will was involved I didn't really know why, nothing funny actually happened--and I just noticed my abs were contracting from the laughing and I was laying on the floor. I was on the floor laughing and I was seriously tripping out because GOD LAUGHS. AND HE LAUGHS LIKE THAT! Makes me wonder if He laughs at me that hard. Sure He does. It began to subside and the presence was gone. Not gone from my life, from my heart, from my baptism, but just not invading my physicality.
Oftentimes being baptized in the Holy Spirit also reveals or brings out your own individual prayer language, i.e. tongues. But if we say prayer language y'all might not pull up this idear of tongues being something bizarre and possessed, perhaps that foreign imagery you've heard as lunacy or an ancient thing, or something you're completely dismayed or doubtful of. But it happens. Now, staying on the go-big-or-go-home level, I asked God early this week if my tongues could sound like scat, like scatting. If you don't know what that is, look up a jazzy song where the singer begins to make beats with his voice: bad-dum bee, bee, beet beep, oh whoa whoa wow oh yeaaayuuhhh...hopefully you just already know what that means. Hey, if God created this earth and everything in it, He is the ultimate designer and provider, He can surely give me that. AND HE DID. So cool!
But this took some more prayer, and some help. Yes, I said help. It was humbling to recognize that I needed the strength and confidence from another to HELP me; I was grateful. Two staffers, Jillian and Andrew, came to pray for the release of my prayer language. I of course was crying--I'm telling you, new standards of normalcy here. I held my hands, palms up, to Andrew so he could place his fingers in their depressions. I suppose this is just a comfortable way for him to connect. Girls are usually more touchy (appropriately so), but I mean theres no magical alteration to the receipt of the GLORY of God by that gesture is all I mean. Jillian had prayed for me and Andrew continued to pray for me and I was overcome once again by the Spirit's laughter. Now I later learned that it isn't always joy that is being experienced in the Spirit's laughter but that sometimes it is the expression of deliverance. Im thinking that this one was deliverance. While I was laughing my abs were soooo sore and tired by now and I was starting to want to collapse forwards/downwards like you would fall to the ground laughing with your best friend over Cherry Pepsi and then continue to pee your pants. Not that that ever happened. Or that people pee their pants when the Holy Spirit comes. It could happen, but I'm not saying that either have. So, no, I did no pee my pants. That was a joke. Anyway.
The help came like this: I was trying not to break the connection from Andrew, just wanting to make sure I was still in an attitude of receiving his help. He asked if I had it and honestly, I was crying, laughing, collapsing from sore tummy muscles and giving a voice to my voice box seemed challenging at best. He said to me, 'I know you have it, let me hear it. Let me hear it, I see it.' This man of God was literally doing the Father's will. It was overwhelming to need that help and to have it in the same moment. So I used his confidence and began to speak. It was strange indeed but it was coming out and....it sounded like scatting!! Praise God from whom all blessings come!
Since then, I have been practicing and learning so much. You see the whole point of a prayer language is that it is A) the perfect prayer, a prayer that I can not use for my own good and for my own desires but because I do not understand what I'm saying, its just God's words through me going right back to His ears. 2) it can't be intercepted by anything spiritually not of God's holiness. hence its a perfect prayer. It beams like Scotty straight to Him. D) it strengthens my spirit inside. I receive and am blessed by this intimacy with God and though its invisible and I have no understanding of it all, thats what it does.
OK, QUESTION TIME!!! I'M SURE there are tons of things in this entry that you're unfamiliar with or just have no idea how to digest it or don't believe or can't fathom....I want to share! and answer! and help! Or at least reduce the alarm inside. BUT also, if you totally know whats going on, I still love to chat with ya so we can get all excited and jazzed about it. That would rad. Hopefully I repeat this throughout my entires and my correspondence with y'all. If i don't, just take it as a given.
Love! lots of it!
Britt
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