On Sunday night, Scott spoke about this passage in regards to God outpouring his Spirit upon the new church. This was a really powerful message that had many people asking some hard and good questions, including:
When do I know that I am experiencing the Holy Spirit and not just my own thoughts?
Do we have the Holy Spirit?
Is the Holy Spirit just a feeling?
Why did God choose to give his Spirit to the new church in the way that he did?
Have I experienced the Holy Spirit for myself?
In what ways does God speak to us?
Some of these questions were answered to the best of our abilities, while other questions were lifted up individually for God to answer to each of us.
During our time of prayer, we prayed for a powerful presence of the Spirit with us, to know Jesus more fully. We wanted God to come and love on us and answer the questions we might have.
God was faithful as he always is.
A cool story from the night:
As I was praying, I felt God telling me to put my arm around one of the girls, he wanted to do something in her heart. As I did this, my arm began to feel pretty strange, warm and tingling. Most people were going back and forth praising God through prayer in our group. Scott closed us out in prayer. The girl looked at me and said, "what just happened!?" She said she felt something powerful come over her. Then Scott had received a picture from the Lord about her. He said Jesus came over to her while we were praying and wrapped his arm around her and kissed her. He also said that Jesus really wanted to just begin to transform her heart and give her more of himself.
Not only this, but the Lord gave Scott another picture for another girl in our group, which ended up being very impacting on her and gave her some encouragement.
One of the girls in our group described the night as miraculous.
The Lord revealed himself to all of us on Sunday night just as we had asked him to! It is so wonderful to know that God really wants to answer our questions and give us more of himself, all we need to do is be willing to receive that gift.
It brought me back to one of Kenny's sermons about Thomas. He said he wouldn't believe in Jesus' resurrection until he felt the scars himself. Instead of being angry that Thomas questioned his power(or just needing to experience something for himself to believe), Jesus used the opportunity to strengthen the faith of Thomas by showing up and revealing himself. As my sister Amy once told me, sometimes our questions need to be our prayers.
Have a great night!
