This past week has been crazy. Every single day I am absolutely blown away by the greatness of God and how He has been revealing himself to our school. Strongholds in our hearts have been demolished, hearts are being transformed, and new life has been emerging all over the place!

It is amazing to me how personal God is. He loves me on such a close, intimate level that he does what he needs to do to show it! Craziness. This past week has been full of ways that he has reached out and pulled off hardness on my heart. So great!

The topic in our classes for the week is the Holy Spirit. I never realized how much I diminished this! I've always just brushed it off to the side as something that's there but not all that impactful. God's hit me with crazy revelation about it! Do you realize that the power that strait up brought Jesus back to life is inside of us? The power that Jesus used to perform all of the miracles he did is inside of us and wants to have an active, communicative relationship with us?! Crazy! These are some of the passages that have jumped out at me lately:

"...and i will ask the Father and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells in you and will be in you." (John 14:16-17)

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses..." (Acts 1:8)

"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the father. Whatever you ask in my name, this i will do, that the fatehr may be glorified in the on. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it." (John 14:12-14)

These things have totally changed the way I look at my relationship with God. It's not a distance thing. It's not a thing that I strive for and hope to possibly have something that's acceptable to God come out. It's a relationship where we walk side by side with God because he has sent his power and spirit into us. The holy spirit isn't just about signs and wonders either, it's a strait communication line with God! This is the part that I had never really taken seriously. The personal level that God wants to interact with us is so awesome! I even have some stories about how he has done this to me personally!

Yesterday was absolutely crazy. Someone from the community sat in on our class. I had met him a couple of times before when we were out on the town so during the break I went back and started talking to him. He was talking about how he wants people to correct him if there's areas of his life that are lacking or off. We decided that we wanted to talk more so after class we would grab lunch and dig in. I went back to my seat and I felt like God told me to talk about John 15 with him. That passage is about Jesus being the vine and God being the vinedresser. It talks about how if there's areas of our lives that are dead he will cut them off. Not in a threatening sort of way, but in a way that will produce growth. It also talks about how our strengths will be pruned back so they can be even more effective. I was stoked to be able to talk about this with him!

This is where it got crazy and God really tested my faith.

After I closed my bible from skimming John 15, I felt like the Holy Spirit told me "Hebrews 11." I thought to myself "hmm...that's strange. I don't know what passage that is I'll look it up real quick." I opened my bible and immediately the Holy Spirit told me "Close your bible. Do NOT look it up. When the time is right I will tell you and you will open it up and just start reading. It will be exactly what is appropriate for the situation." I admit, i panicked. I was like whoaaaa what the heck is going on here. What if it's wrong?! and then I just got this assurance that it'd be right, so I just let it be. I was still freaking out on the inside because that's such a scary step to take out in faith. What if it wasn't God telling me that? What if it was just me trying to imagine a glory story to tell later? I was definitely freaking out.

Class got out at 12 and we went down to grab lunch. We started talking just about the bible and Jesus and everything. It was then that I felt it laid on my heart to bring up the passage from john 15...so I did. We talked about that a little bit and it was pretty cool. I expected the Hebrews passage to come back up right away but it didn't, so I was a bit nervous. We got talking about faith. He made a reference to this passage in the bible and said "I don't know where that is though." Instantly I felt this voice inside me say "Okay, GO!" so I opened my bible to Hebrews 11. I closed my eyes for a second, took a deep breath, and just started reading. Boom. It was the passage that he was talking about. The exact words. CRAZY! At that point I felt like my faith had risen. We kept talking about stuff ranging from several different topics. The word from the Lord about Hebrews 11 was definitely an encouraging lifting of my faith, because as the conversation went on it started to get into some views that were definitely off of what the bible was saying. Every time that something like that would come up I would pray a little prayer in my head that simply said "Ok, God, go for it. You know I need ya right now." Boom: a scripture reference would come into my head. Sure enough, it was exactly what needed to be said there. This happened like 6 times! So crazy!

Crazy story number two:

The other night I was sitting outside talking with a friend about some stuff that they had going on. I was mainly listening and asking questions, trying to let them work through it. At one point I felt like God gave me a word for them. I closed my eyes for a second, looking like I was intently praying. What was really going on inside me was absolute panic haha. I was praying "is this you God?! is this you God?! Please tell me if it's you! please tell me if it's just me!" (picture that but speaking like 1000 words a second). I had this overwhelming feeling in my chest so I figured I would just go for it. When I told them what I felt like the Lord wanted me to say I instantly knew it was not just my words but his. We prayed about it and then the Holy Spirit totally moved in and it was an overwhelming feeling of it! There was major breakthrough on the situation at hand and God totally gave them a clear word on what they were supposed to do! So crazy!

This is one of the strongholds that God has been breaking down in me! I wrote about prophecy a few posts ago and how I said I am definitely NOT prophetic. There has been major breakthrough in this! It's not like I'm getting visions and stuff from God, but he's really breaking down the fact that he speaks through me personally!

One of the passages that I have really been digging into lately is 1 Corinthians 12. This is the one about Spiritual Gifts. I always looked at this as one of those things where if you had it, you had it. If you didn't, then you didn't and that's just how it was. Totally not the case!

(I'm going to share some of the revelations I've experienced through this passage, but i definitely encourage you to open it for yourself too and see what the Lord says to you!)

"Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the spirit of utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills." (1 Corinthians 12:4-11)

I always looked at it like some people have one of these, some have none, and that's just the way that it is. Not so much! It talks about one spirit that gives all of these. That spirit is the Holy Spirit, which lives inside of us as Christians. It also says that the Holy Spirit apportions to each one individually as he wills. It also says each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. God totally smacked me in the face with the revelation that the Holy Spirit gives all of us all of these! To some, there may be strengths in certain areas and some people may tend to receive one more than the others, but it's not like a one and done sort of thing. The Holy Spirit will throw one of these out there for the situation at hand! If some prophecy is needed, then it will be given! If tongues are needed then they will be given! If a dash of healing is needed, then it will occur! If a pinch of discernment fits the situation, then he will give it! I had never looked at it like this, and it's crazy that God brought this into the light to me!

The biggest thing that hit me was that I had a stronghold against these gifts. Too many times I have seen people fake them and not be honest about all of them. God totally broke this stronghold down in me! That is a story for a later day though ;)

If you keep reading in this passage it says "But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And i will show you a still more excellent way." (v. 31). You never know what Gift God wants to shower upon you! We can't just sit back and expect that we don't have a certain gift because it isn't placed at our feet in our idleness! Earnestly seek after him for gifts for his glory and you never know what will happen!

That's just a couple stories of the crazyness that has gone down since my last update. So good! I'm really excited to continue on this journey and grow with Him through it! Woo!

I have some crazy exciting news in regards to outreach! Well, the journey to our outreach location haha. Our planes got booked, so praise Jesus for that! We will be heading out for Africa on the 23rd of December. From there we will fly to LA, then from LA we will be flying to London. (This is the exciting part.) We get in to London very early Christmas morning and then have a 23ish hour (i believe) layover in London! We will be spending Christmas in London! So crazy! haha! From London we will fly into Africa. We are so excited!

With that exciting news we also have a couple of prayer requests! First off, we don't have a place to stay in London yet. We are praying for a connection to be able to leave the airport and be able to store our things and spend the night at. Please keep this in your prayers!

We also need quite a bit of funds to come in for our team to be ready to go. I don't have the exact number on how much we need, but I know that I still need about $1000. Our target price for outreach is the cealing of $6000 each. We didn't expect this, but through contact with the team over there we found out that they went in and had set their budget way too low. It costs a lot more to be over there than we had anticipated. If you could please pray for some radical provision from the Lord that would be fantastic!

If you would like to help that would be so awesome! Shoot me an email at joshmmorrison@yahoo.com for the information if you would like to support financially!

We also have another area that we are asking for prayer in and asking for support in! There are several supplies that we are needing before heading over there. We are praying for provision on those so if you could keep them in your prayers that would be appreciated! We are needing:

Supplies:
-Mosquito Nets
-Water Filters
-Hiking Backpacks (for some of the team members)
-First Aide Kits

Childrens supplies:
-Coloring Books
-Frisbees
-Balls
-Jump Ropes
-Spiral Notebooks

If you would like to support us by hooking us up with some of these items please let me know! We have radical faith that God is going to provide with radical provision!

God is so good! Thank you all for all of your support through this whole journey! It has truly been life changing, mind blowing, and I know I will never be the same.

I love you all so much, Jesus loves you all so much, and you mean the absolute world to him!

Stay Classy San Diego