Best week ever

It's been over a month since I last wrote. Sorry about that. I've just been busy and when I wasn't busy, I had a crazy amount of stuff to think about because God has been messing up my mind with everything he is. But finally, here I am. I think I'm going to start with this week and work backwards.

This week was just incredible! Our speaker was Doug Easterday and he talked more about the father heart of God. This topic has been coming up A LOT in Kairos and even outside of Kairos and I know that for me it's because I needed (and maybe still need) to hear it. So Doug came and talked and God has been using a lot of things he said to just rock my world. Everything he said has been great but since I can't fit 5 days of teaching into a blog, I'll just share a few points that really stuck out to me. Some of them are pretty minor but they hit me hard so we'll just go with it.
First of all, God is blessed when I experience joy. Like a father, he likes to see his children happy and that's not only a blessing to me but to him as well. So I got to thinking about this and I realized, when I don't let myself be happy or experience joy, I'm not only making myself miserable, I'm withholding a blessing from God! That is NOT something I want to do!
Another thing I realized is that since God wants to bring me joy, it's ok for me to ask for things I want. I've never really thought I was "allowed" to pray for things that I just wanted but didn't need. I mean, God has so many more important things to do so even if I asked, he wouldn't answer anyways. That's a distorted image of God! I'm not saying that if I asked for a pony or something it would just suddenly appear or that God's going to spoil me. I'm just saying that it brings him pleasure to see me joyful so he wants to give me what I want and IT'S OK TO ASK! Whether he gives it to me or not, that's up to him, but it's certainly not going to hurt to ask.
One of the bigger realizations I had seems pretty basic but I think it's something we often overlook. We can't focus solely on Jesus. Ok, just hear me out. Jesus is absolutely crucial to us in our faith. I mean, without him there would be nothing. BUT that's not the whole picture. A lot of times, I think we focus just on Jesus or just on the Spirit or maybe both but, even though we acknowledge his existence, we kind of overlook the father. What I'm saying is, Jesus is just a portion. We also need to know the father in order to experience the fullness of God.
Anyways, if I keep explaining more points this is going to get really long so I'm going to move on. Later in the week, I had some more huge revelations about restoration and the weight of the burdens I'm carrying and where God was in the midst of my pain. It was just wonderful. On Friday, we ended the week with a session on forgiveness. We learned what it was and wasn't and then we spent over two hours in prayer doing it. We started going through a list forgiving all sorts of people and then forgiving God (not that he needed it, it was more removing the blame from him), and then forgiving ourselves. It was powerful and freeing in a lot of ways. The week was so great!
On Saturday, after some intense games of foam hockey, I went to IHOP(prayer) and I spent a few hours just resting with my Abba. It was so comforting and much needed after a great but exhausting week. Sunday was pretty uneventful. I spent it memorizing my testimony for speaking blitz (we leave Friday!!!). Today, we were supposed to present them to the class but it finally snowed in Kansas so we had a snow day!!! It turned out to be really great. I got to hang out with my fam-jam (my host family) which hasn't really happened since I got back from Christmas break. It was a lot of fun to just play in the snow with the girls and just relax.

Ok, so I said I'd start with this week and work backwards but I may have lied. . . This took longer to write than I expected and I'm tired now. But I'll try my best to write more later in the week and give those updates. So that's all for now. Bye!