Who is my mother, and who are my brothers...

New Vision Ministry Center. It's not just a church to me. It's not somewhere I go to hang out with friends. There are times, more frequent than not, that the people within our walls are more of my family than my real family. I've laughed with you, I've cried with you. I've seen God move in ways that I can't fathom even today. I've watched so many of us grow in and through God to new levels of our walks with Him and every time something new happens, for ill or for good, I look at is as something going on in my family. When our people are hurt, I hurt, when they rejoice, I rejoice with them. I've been in a few different churches before, while I never felt out of place, they weren't the same. I had friends at them and it was fun to go hang out and talk after church and stuff, but they were never as close as I am with the people of New Vision. I truly love every member. There is such an acceptance and love in the place that it blows my mind. I have watched God use me in ways that I would have never thought of, and truthfully, sometimes have a hard time believing that He would care enough about me to use me. Looking back at what I've been through in my past, it was very hard at first to believe that any church would let someone with my track record operate in any kind of leadership or ministry at all, and yet, everywhere I turn, people are encouraging me to go in higher, to seek Him stronger, to go out and fulfill His destiny for my life. Similar to what my dear friend Michelle says, New Vision was truly a new start for me. Everything that I ever was or wanted to be has been laid out on the table and I have had to give Him my secret hurts and pains, but He has taken those and used them to create a testament to His glory. I heard a preacher once say something that God told him, an it soooo resonated within me. God told him (not an 'exact' quote, but close enough) "I will not remove the scars from your life, but rather, I will rearrange them so that they have the appearance of carving on fine crystal". I really feel that God has been doing that with me since I first step foot in New Vision. I was mad at my previous church, and didn't really want to go back to a church, and only went cause my dad made me, but once I stepped in there and saw the lights and music and everything, I knew I was home... I just didn't realize how much of a 'home' it would become. I could not live my life if I had to go a week without seeing all of you. Every one of you mean so much to me. I know that God's not finished with me yet either... I know that he has bigger and better things for me. He's just starting to open up my ministries to me. There are two promises that He gave me that have pretty much defined my life, and I believe that both of them will come out of New Vision. All of that being said, today was more than life changing... I was excited before I ever got down to service after class. I haven't sang in the choir, but something (God) told me I needed to sing this morning. I knew something big was going to happen, I knew God had something in store for us, but I had absolutely no idea that it would be on the scale it was on. When the video played at the end of service, I jumped, I cried... no, I bawled like a little baby... I've only cried that hard since coming to NVMC 3 times; when I got set free, when my friend got saved, and during a vision God gave me while Eddie James was here. The whole time, all I could think of, outside of how incredibly amazing God is, was, "Now my family has a home... We have a place that is ours". It made me wonder if the Israelites felt the same way crossing into their Promised Land. Today has been very emotional for me, and I've had to choke back the tears every time I think of everything that we've been through, and where God has brought us; my sisters, my brothers, my fathers, and my mothers, as He led us through desolate seasons and shaky times, to bring us out into His glorious plan for us.

Caffeine & (Spiritual) Pregnancy

Hmmm... which to ponder first. I think we'll go with the caffeine. I can say it's not an addiction, but really is. I don't function in the mornings without a cup of coffee, energy drink, or at the very least, a Mountain Dew, so by textbook definition, it's an addiction. Anyway, that aside, I got ready to leave for work this morning and kept having this feeling that God was telling me to fast today. I have a hard time with fasting because I keep getting this idea that it's not a fast unless it's nothing but water for a week... God is teaching me that there are other types of fasts, and today happened to be one of those tests. I grabbed my lunch and a pepsi out of the fridge, and I kept hearing "fast". I told the Lord that if He was truly calling me to a fast, then I needed Him to show me how I was supposed to fast. I saw myself putting the pepsi back in the fridge, so I did. On the way to work I realized I was supposed to be fasting caffeine today. No bueno... didn't get to sleep until late. I decided that I was going to do it though. I made it through the first part of the day fine. Around 11am I started getting sluggish, by noon/noon-thirty I was out of it... At one point my head snapped back from dozing off so hard that it hurt my neck. I got a little energy after eating lunch at 1, but it faded quickly... There was no way I could keep going without something to keep me awake. I grabbed one of my emergency energy drinks and drank it down, feeling bad because I had broken yet another fast. As soon as I put the can down though, God spoke to me. He told me that just like I couldn't get through today without caffeine (not because it's impossible, cause I know He can break it off of me, but because I make poor choices and have to deal with the consequences), I need to rely on and be so desperately addicted to Him that I cannot make it one day without Him and His presence... that was a pretty startling revelation... We all know we can't go a day without Him, but for Him to put it into a perspective I could relate to like that was amazing.
Dreams... visions... things birthed in your spirit by His Spirit. What do you do with them? The Lord showed me in a dream a few nights back that there are pretty much three things that can happen when something is birthed in you. When He puts something in your spirit, the first thing you can do is reject it, thereby aborting it and everything that may have transpired through it. Secondly, you can entertain it for a while, pursue it for a bit, then grow tired of it once the newness has worn off or the costs start to be more than you anticipated. This is akin to neglecting the thing being birthed, since it is no longer worth your time, you forget about it. The third thing you can do, is ride it full term and actually bring into fruition the thing that was birthed. In the dream I had, I saw a boxing ring. In the ring was a very small version of myself, no bigger than a doll or a newborn baby, and in the other corner, a gargantuan monstrosity. I can't even begin to describe beyond it being overwhelmingly intimidating and truly monstrous. The fight started and the thing pummelled the mini-me badly. There was nothing it could do to stop the defeat, and began to turn blue like it was out of oxygen, but no matter how badly it was hurt, nor how little breath it had, it wouldn't quit fighting the thing, until it's whole body was blue and it looked dead. I woke up terrified and as I did, I heard the Lord ask me if I was going to abort the thing He had placed in me, or if I was going to fight and stand through whatever came against me while He did His work in me. He has placed in me something I don't fully understand, nor do I know if I ever will in this lifetime, all I know is, if He's placed it there, there's a reason for it. I will fight for it, I will stand by it, I will protect it, and I will, with His help, see it full term to it's delivery here on earth... I will not abort my dream.