In between some beautiful Tennessee mountains I discovered an endless, perfect treasure. This treasure flows freely into anyone who sincerely desires and seeks it. If you found a treasure like the one that I found you would surely want to tell everyone that you care about. That is what I want to do now. I want you, my friends, to know what I have been so blessed to discover this week. In fact, it is so incredible and important that I have a renewed desire to go and tell people around the world; broken, facaded, terrified or joyful. 

I want to tell you about the Holy Spirit. To be honest, I am apprehensive because I don't want you to think that I'm just out in the wilderness doing something hokey, or that the I am just being a good Christian by telling you what I think that I should have felt because the Bible says I should. This is some real, real stuff and I promise you that I will not account to anything that has not been absolutely clear and evident to me.

Let me just tell you what's been going on in my heart. A week ago I was discouraged. I was anxious and mellow, unsure of what was real. I felt like I might just be floating around in the atmosphere, no God, or at least not necessarily one that has me on His mind. It had been a long time since I had felt that way, but alternatives seemed far off. Saturday and Sunday, during the most incredible worship sessions I have ever been apart of, I didn't sing the songs often, instead I prayed. I prayed that God would show Himself to me and make Himself undoubtably clear and that He would bring His Spirit, whatever that was, upon me. Just when I had almost given up, almost come to peace with God fitting into the theological box I kept Him in, a lady came up to me and told me that she had a picture from God for me. I was a box and there was a ribbon around the box. "God is about to take the ribbon off," she said. I nodded and thought, "ohh, okaay, mmhmm, thanks, ya, I'm a box." Thirty seconds later I was crying uncontrollably. I was shouting, moving up and down, my hands grabbed at my face, my heart. I got this feeling that was sooo unlike anything I've ever experienced where something came into my chest and everything else just fell out. The Spirit entered me in a new way and lives in me. The Holy Spirit, our actual God, who I have no real understanding of, heard my cries and entered my body to fill me and bring me the most amazing peace and certainty for a long while. I cried with the relief that everything that I have invested my life in is true, that God actually had power to do what we want Him to, what He desires, and that that exact power can actually be in and a part of me! We aren't floating around aimlessly, friends. We are purposeful, beautiful creations that are sought after by the overwhelming, all-powerful presence of God on our earth so that we can be His beloved sons and daughters! I can say that with new conviction.

Let me just leave you knowing that that happened on Sunday and that God doesn't limit Himself to investing in us one day a week. I have been empowered to beat the anxieties that I have struggled with for my entire life. I have encountered intense spiritual warfare, not in a far off land, but in my own heart. I have learned to speak truth over myself and am learning to do so over others. I've started to make this incredible journey from following my mind to following my heart. My heart is changed, my insecurities vanishing, my passion reignited. God gave me the opportunity to start over in the way that I see Him and let me tell you that I'm starting on a long road to learn how to live again because my God just got a lot bigger. 

On another note, training camp has been fantastic in other ways. I have an amazing team, we have all been called together and will be a powerful force for God. We have been broken together in our spirits, built up and changed, we have cuddled under a tarp in the woods in the middle of a thunderstorm at three in the morning and then some. We are learning to carry each other, physically and emotionally. I already feel like I have another family. God is so good.