The Power of the Holy Spirit.

Yay! I have some time this morning to write a quick little update on our "Killing the Giants" week so far. But first, I feel like such a fool. In my last blog post, I forgot to mention one of the most exciting things that happened last week! Sunday night (June 12) was "Adopt a Crusader" at the Ocean City Baptist Church. Members of the church volunteered to "adopt" us for the summer and provide us with some sort of family environment while we are away from home. I am proud to say that I am officially a P.K! For those of you who don't know that means, I'm a Pastor's Kid. My "dad" is the youth pastor at the church and actually just became a legitimate father to a baby boy a little over two weeks ago. I feel like the Lord specifically chose this family for me to be a part of this summer. About two weeks before leaving for Ocean City, my sister had her second son and being gone for the summer became so much harder. Now...I get to hang out with this bugger throughout the course of these next eight weeks. :) My "mom" and "dad" adopted three other Crusaders; another lovely lady from Chico State and then two gentlemen from UC Davis. What makes this even more awesome is...I'm the oldest in the family! Yaaa!

Okay, now onto sharing a little bit about about this week of facing fears and relying on the Holy Spirit. Going into "Killing the Giants", we were encouraged to set a goal of how many spiritual conversations we would like to have during the course of this theme week. We were also encouraged to reflect on our experience of evangelizing and come up some of the "giants" we typically face when sharing the gospel. It is important that we realize where we may struggle and surrender that to the Lord and allow him to resolve those insecurities and fears. After adding up everyone's numerical goal, the number of spiritual conversations we hope to have this week is a total of 5,131! Drum roll please...as of last night at 7:00 p.m., we had already had 1,318 spiritual conversations. We are tearing up that boardwalk with the gospel and it is such a blessing to see the results. For clarification, this does not mean that 1,318 people have accepted Christ, but it means that they were open to taking the survey and talking about spiritual things. Successful witnessing is going out and sharing the gospel and leaving the rest to God and the Holy Spirit.

"So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives growth." 

1 Corinthians 3:7

"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?"

2 Corinthians 2: 14-16

We may not see HUGE numbers in terms of those who accept Christ, but it is encouraging to know we are planting the seeds and God is still pursuing those individuals even after our conversations with them ends.

My personal experience with sharing this week has actually consisted of a lot of firsts. I have talked to individuals who wanted to know my belief on homosexuality, the church, if there would ever be an instance that would cause me to lose my faith, and about bad things happening to good people. I talked to two girls and guy who were are rooted so deep in their faith and on fire for the Lord. They are heading off to college in the fall and my partner and I had the opportunity to share our experience so far and give them words of encouragement and advice. Of all the conversations I've had this week though, the one I had last night sticks out the most. It was the most natural spiritual conversation I have had, it wasn't structured but involved many questions that resulted in very deep conversation. The three ladies my partner and I shared with were very intellectual and had explored many different options for where they would lay their beliefs. Two of them claimed to be Agnostic and were very passionate about being spiritual. I really respect these young girls for taking the time to do research and not just decide on what they were going to "label" themselves just so they could claim to be something. One of the ladies strongly disliked Christianity because she had a poor experience and after our conversation with her I could only pray to God that she would take the immense curiosity she has and look through the "Knowing God Personally" booklet. I feel as if she has based her dislike for Christianity solely on the her experience and hasn't taken the time to break away from that and just take a look at the Bible for what it is and what it has to say. Kristin and I really encouraged the girls to go through the booklet and contact us later so we could have a follow-up conversation about what they thought. Through that conversation, I did have an opportunity to share a part of my testimony and the way my partner describes it, we were able to show the girls the gospel instead of tell them it. We spent a good portion of the conversation just listening to what the girls had to say. They were very bitter towards Christianity and honestly needed the time to vent. I have never experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit more than in that conversation. There was such peace in the conversation and it flowed so naturally.

This morning I read a small section in Ephesians and this book is all about Paul encouraging the believers of Ephesus in their faith and explaining the purpose of the church. The young lady from last night that shared with us her unfortunate situation with the church she had been involved in had such a skewed outlook on what the purpose of church is because her's had lost their vision. In Ephesians 1:22-23 it says, "And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way." There it is. This passage explains how a church should be structured. Jesus is the head of the church and we, the people, are the body. Without the head, the body would not be alive. I feel as if her church lost the basic fundamentals of what Paul explains so clearly here. I am hoping that me reading this verse this morning is God preparing me for another conversation with this young lady. All she needs is the truth, the Bible, not people telling her their views and opinions. God has provides us the absolute truth and we can only grasp that through his word.

Killing the Giants