Sleep VS: Rest

I've had to learn very quickly the difference between rest and sleep. If you can image using your brain everyday for hours to think and ponder on many, many things that are being taught to you and then you are asked to come along side the vision of a church and serve the community at the same time. Wouldn't that be tiring? Well, it's down right exhausting! That's where you need to know the difference between rest and sleep. Let me explain what I have learned from this whole experience.

First, sleep is when you've been up all day, working all day, and need sleep to keep awake and when you finally hit your pillow, you feel that relaxation and you fall asleep instantly. The true test is when you wake up and feel like you got a lot of sleep or if you got none, but instead you wake up every hour or so. That's when you have just experienced "sleep." See, we as natural human beings think we need sleep to make up for lost time. We think that sleep will fix everything, but that's not the case. We need our "rest" and that rest comes from the Holy Spirit.
It says in Isaiah 40:31 that "But those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." In this scripture, it says if we relay on the Lord, He will renew our strength. If we rest underneath the shadow of His wings, we can gain rest. This includes when we sleep at night.

So next time before you hit the pillows and go to sleep, remember that if you only have like 5 hours of sleep before you need to wake up again, that God can give you the rest you need. Next time allow Holy Spirit to invade your heart and just let Christ overload your spirit with rest. If you do this then you will be sleeping in Jesus' presence all the time!

New Faces

I've been blessed since the beginning of June. I met an awesome group that would impact my life for the better. Heather, Auna, Caleb, Christine, Cam, David, Camilla and Corey will forever be awesome in my book. Apostolic Team Ministries is a team of fully devoted Christians with a passion to be raised up as fighting warriors for the name and gospel of Jesus Christ. We're in Albany, New York and we're in our second week of intense training. Our first week was about the Father's spiritual gifts. This week is about Matters of the heart. Our last and final week is about incorporating those spiritual gifts through the working of renewing our hearts. It's been a crying moment for me these past few days. I'm excited to learn how to keep my heart renewed and updated in the Father's love. Tomorrow is our last day on the Matters of the heart and the topic is rejection. That will probably be the most intense one and more revelating one I will have to ponder about. But Jesus.... that's all I can say :)

Blessings to you from a loyal friend.

New wine

My service team and I have been coming together for Christ. We've been meshing very well together. I'm getting very blessed. It's been a week now and we start street preaching tomorrow night in Albany, New York. It's going to be great. Please keep us in your prayers. My team is made up of amazing young people. We're here in Albany, New York to kick some butt and dig ground for Jesus Christ. We're apart of the vision of Victory Church in Albany, New York. Please take the time to pray for my team. My team's names are: Camilla, Heather, David, Caleb, Cameron, Me, Auna, and Cory. We're excited and blessed. We've seen healings, we've prophesied and have seen people being freed from bondage. It's a time to rise up and say, "Thank you Lord," and keep moving on in a mind set of Jesus' blood. We're set free because of His new wine and revelation. We are set free because of Jesus' blood. Thank you Lord.

Amen!