Okay guys, this update is gonna be sups long. I apologize for the length, but please read the whole thing! filled with a ton of stuff!

God's been doing absolutely crazy transformation in me since i've been here. He's been breaking down the walls i've had set up in my life even towards Him. It's crazy! I had no idea how dead my faith has been back home. Jesus didn't die for us so we could go to him when we needed something. He didn't die for us so we could spend 15 minutes a day doing a quiet time and say we got our jesus fix in for the day. He didn't die for us so that we could go to church on sunday and then youthgroup in the middle of the week and call ourselves christians. It's been absolutely crazy how mediocre my faith has been and how much he's been revealing that to me! It's awesome at the same time because it hasn't been in a condemning sort of way. There's nothing condemning about that realization because there's strait up redemption in the blood of Jesus! It's been so flippin awesome learning what it's like to walk with Jesus on a daily basis. I always looked at people who were "in tune with the spirit" and "walking with jesus" and thought they were freaks. I stereotyped them as the typical charismatic Christians who were strait up crazy. I know that sounds harsh but that's honestly where my mind went every time I heard someone say they heard the voice of God or started saying that God gave them a word for someone. Oh how flippin wrong I was! He's been breaking down every stronghold I've had in my life in that area. Prophecy? I thought it was bull. Boom, he broke that off by putting someone in my life that strait up spoke prophetic words into me that were so true but he never knew. Crazy. haha. God's been doing so much work to reveal himself to me. It's so amazing walking with Jesus daily! I'm learning and working towards getting to a place where it's just dialogue with the holy spirit. It's not like a "ok, i need to go pray and see what's going on." it's like walking through the day just having conversation with him and it's awesome! Sounds crazy, I know, but its strait up real yo! It's been confirmed through so many things too...like I'll be like "ok, holy spirit, what do we do today?" and he'll say "tell this person this." and i will and come to find out it's EXACTLY hitting their heart with something going on. And specific stuff too...so it's not like just general broad stuff that could hit anyone. It's so freaking crazy!

Longest paragraph of life. sorry. haha

He's also been putting crazy passions on my heart for the future too. Like...I really want to finish school but who knows when that'll happen. I feel like God is telling me that there's so much more to life (for me) than school right now. This not to say that every christian needs to drop school and do missions because that's definitely not the case. God has some people in the situations they're in because he's going to use them in absolutely radical ways where they're at. I've just definitely felt it put on my heart that schools not for me right now. Gonna start living life on one way tickets and see where that takes me and what God does to change the world through that.

Life's just so much more fun and interesting when you're rolling with Jesus! It's so much crazier when you have no idea what's next to come haha. I'm loving it. So good!

This past week our speaker was talking about the bible. So simple, yet so much revelation through it! He focused on 4 of the miracles jesus performed:
1. Water into Wine
2. Jesus feeding 5000
3. Healing the blind man
4. Raising Lazarus.

The point of us looking into these miracles (that past week in class) was not to focus on what Jesus did, but who the bible is trying to tell us he is through them. It was to take a look into the character of Jesus. It was to break down some of the stereotypes that some people may have of Jesus. Homeboy wasn't some strict dude that brought rules or regulations for us to live by. It is so crazy to realize all of the opinions that I had about Jesus that I didn't even realize I held. I've totally grown up learning about Jesus' love and grace and everything, but I never realized how fun he is. I kind of kept him in the box that the world makes for him and didn't even consider him to be as great as he is.

Another thing that was completely blown up by this was the realization and confirmation that Jesus is more than not wanting people to go to hell. Jesus is so much more than a get out of jail free card. Jesus is so much more than that. He doesn't want me to know him so I won't go to hell, he wants to know me because he loves me so much that he wants to have a personal relationship with me. He wants me so that i can experience the fullness of the great and unimaginable things that he has for me. It's so flipping awesome when I think about that! It's so flippin glorious that it's not a fear based thingou. He's not abt fear. He's not at all about being there to avoid condemnation, he's about being there because he loves and cares about me on such a personal, intimate level that he wants to walk, laugh, dream, and do work with me! So good! It totally gives the faith a different perspective when it's about love and not fear. So good!


Okay, let's do this now. haha I got goin and coulda gone for a lot longer on that because it's completely changed how I look at my faith. Now let's dig into these miracles!

I encourage everyone to go onto biblegateway.com and read along with it, because I'm going to sum up what hit me, but there's so much more great stuff in there! The passages can be found in John 2, John 5, John 6, and John 11.

Okay, first: Water into Wine.
Boom. Who says jesus isn't fun. Think about this. Jesus rolls into homeboys wedding. Homeboy is almost out of drink for his guests. In that time he could be sued for everything he has if he runs out of wine. All of the guests could literally sue him for whatever he has if he runs out of wine. Jesus tells them to fill 6 of the bottles that are full of water used to wash people's feet with. Srsly?! iknorite! Then, he turns them into wine. Not just wine, but the best wine that the master had tasted. Do you realize how much wine jesus made there?! I'll tell you. 120 gallons. Picture 120 things of milk full of wine. That's what jesus did. Who says he isn't fun? Jesus knows how to party. Also...think about this. He made wine...what do we drink for communion? boom. wine. Next miracle.
(P.s. He also called his mom "woman." I think i need to follow by his example...ok maybe not.)

Feeding 5000:
Boom. tons of peeps following Jesus. They're hungry, Jesus wants to feed them. Phillip comes and tells him it'd be a buttload of cash to cover the costs. Pretty much tells jesus "we could never fundraise for this." (remember this miracle next time you want to go on a missions trip but it's gonna cost a lot.) Jesus tells them to collect what they have and he'll do work. He feeds 5000 men. That's excluding women and children. Lets be honest here; that's like 10000, pushing 12000 people. Jesus feeds 12000 people with 5 loaves and two fish. wtflip?! If we believe in jesus, and claim to follow the bible, why doesn't this make us freaking excited?! Why aren't we jumping for joy at the thought that jesus took absolutely nothing and created something huge? . Again, think communion. He first made wine, now he made a ton of bread. Correlation? you tell me!

Next, this part rocked me big time, after they ate they tried to make jesus king and he fled. He then tells his disciples to get into a boat. A storm came. A freaking crazy storm. They were like 4 miles out at sea when this sucka hit. Boom. It was a sketchy situation. That's what happens when you listen to jesus. It's not all pretty rainbows and glory when you follow him. Sometimes he's going to lead you into a situation where you have no idea what is going to happen and what the outcome is going to be. He doesn't call us to sit in our little comfort bubbles and live a pretty little life. He calls us to listen to him no matter what he calls us to do. No matter what the storm that hits is he calls us to be faithful to him. Crazy. That rocked me big time.

Third miracle: Blind man.
So...jesus is full of rules eh? (not to you, just to the world in general). Yeah, I call BS. this miracle is a huge slap in the face of the pharasees. Do you know what the pharasees were? they were self-righteous religious people. We've always heard them to be like rulers of the jewish faith but they were more than that. They were any jew that claimed they knew all of the answers and that they were better than others. okay, here's what happened. Jesus purposely did this on the sabbath. The pharasees had so twisted the sabbath into such a religious thing that they made specific rules regarding how much your coat could weigh that you wore on it because anything over their limit was "work." Crazy. Jesus coulda waited to do this till sunday (their sabbath was on saturday) but instead he chose to do this, and let them know he did this, on the sabbath. Boom. He totally smacked the self-righteous religious people in the face with that. It really made me think...how often have I been that self righteous religious person? How often have I talked about someone and had one of those "we need to pray for them" kinda talks but it's really just me sitting in my self-righteousness. Crazy. Boom. mind-blown. That's not what Jesus is about, so why do we make him like that?

Fourth miracle: Raising Lazarus from the dead.
Man, this one rocked me hard. This miracle shows so flipping much about Jesus it's ridiculous. It also smacks me in the face with something that I am so guilty of doing way too frequently. To give the back story, One of Jesus' good friends is named Lazarus. We can see that they are close friends by the verse John 11:3 where it says "So the sisters sent to him, saying, "Lord, he whom toy love is ill." So it's a good friend of his. Jesus responds by saying "This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." Lazarus did end up dying, but that's not the end of the story. Jesus raised him from the dead. What a sign of the greatness of Jesus. Dang.

There are a few things that really hit me about this miracle. First off, when Lazarus initially died, two people came to Jesus and said "if you had been here, my brother would not have died. (John 11:21 and 11:32). How many times have I done that? How many times have I just looked at the situation at hand and blamed God? How many times have I honed in on only one aspect of the situation and then acted like it was all God's fault? I'll tell ya, way too many times.

The next thing that hits me about this miracle is that it shows how Jesus felt the full range of human emotions. Shows that he was fully human. On multiple occasions it says "He was deeply moved." In one place he wept. boom. Jesus knew what it felt like to lose somebody. He felt the whole range of emotions so he knows what it feels like to mourn. That completely blows my mind. It blows my mind that he knows how it feels. It blows my mind that he knows exactly what I'm going through when I feel like life sucks. He knows exactly what it feels like. Man, how personal Jesus is! It's so ridiculously awesome.

Isn't it ironic that his first miracle was at a wedding, and his last was at a funeral? haha, kind of cool to look at.

There's a pretty long update for ya'll. There's so much more stuff I wish I had time right this very second to write about. I shall attempt to provide another update on what's been rocking my world soon.

And by the way, Thank you all SO MUCH for all of your support! Craziness happened, and  I ended up being fully funded! So much came in from the randomest places and I am fully funded for outreach. Wooo! Thank you guys! Praise Jesus!

Much love to you all!