"Let hope rise and darkness tremble in Your holy light."

This past week has been incredible for me. I've been learning so much from God, and I have been growing so much closer to Him through SPAM than I ever could have imagined, even though it didn't seem like I was growing at first. I've had so many conversations throughout SPAM that have encouraged me and taught me more than I could have hoped to learn through my own individual Bible studies. I don't even know where to start.

I guess I'll start with the title: "Let hope rise and darkness tremble in Your holy light." At Wesley last week, I officially met a girl named Hillary for the first time. I had seen her at house church and at Freshley before, and I knew she was on one of the Jamaica trips, but I had never met her. Anyway, during worship, she sat down to pray, and I felt like God was telling me to pray for her—and looking back, I know it was His voice telling me to do it because I wouldn't have learned what I did if I hadn't prayed for her. As I prayed, Psalm 23:5b came to mind: "You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows." I prayed that God would fill her with the Spirit, and that verse made me realize that He had already given her so much of Himself that she was overflowing with the Spirit, pouring Him out to share with others around her. That thought sent a chill down my spine. Then we started singing With Everything, by Hillsong United, and this line came up: "Let hope rise and darkness tremble in Your holy light." And then it clicked in my mind. When I get chills down my spine during worship or when I hear some awesome piece of godly wisdom, the darkness inside me—my flesh, my sinful nature—is trembling in God's presence, the light that exposes every hidden area of my life. My body knows when Jesus is near even when my mind doesn't. When I realized that, all I could do was laugh, amazed at how awesome God is.

Before Wesley, I had dinner with George, a friend that I met at Wesley at the beginning of the semester. Most of our conversation consisted of him asking me questions, me answering, and then him putting my answers in a new light. The majority of our conversation dealt with SPAM. I explained what SPAM is and why I'm doing it, and then I told him what I've been learning about it and through it. When I came home from Jamaica, I talked with my mom about it, and, like George, she put SPAM into a new light for me. Going into SPAM, I had expected it to be like last year: getting into the Word more frequently, reading various Christian books, and learning a lot about God through the Scriptures. But that's not what God had planned for me this year. Last year was the first time I had actually been on fire for God, so that's what I needed then so that I could understand what I was getting myself into and so I could know that, no matter what trials I went through, it would always be worth it. ("For I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." ~ Romans 8:18) But this year I needed something different; although a scriptural foundation is necessary for solid faith, it wasn't what I needed to focus on. What I needed was a community of Christian brothers and sisters that I could stay in contact with so that we could keep each other strong in our faith. That's what my mom helped me understand. But then I got more in-depth with George about what was going on with me during SPAM: rather than getting into the Word more during SPAM (which I thought I needed because I hadn't been in the Word very much before SPAM), I actually started reading less. By fasting from unnecessary use of technology—specifically, Facebook—I had expected to gain a lot of free time, but I still had just as little as I did before SPAM. I didn't understand it. But my mom also helped me understand this: When I'm on Facebook, I don't communicate with people very much; I mostly surf between profile pages and my news feed. I really don't get to know people very well that way, and people don't get to know me at all. But by giving up Facebook, after returning from Jamaica, I found myself hanging out with my Jamaica team all the time: in the Russell prayer room for our prayer and worship nights, in Bolton before Wesley and Freshley, at Snelling after Wesley and Freshley, at "the spot" (our Friday afternoon hangout spot by the O-House parking lot). I spent more time with them getting to know them that I would have if I had kept myself locked up in my room on the computer all day. So while I wasn't getting into the Word to know God more, I was getting to know my brothers and sisters in Christ more, and I was growing closer to God by growing in my relationships with His children. (This past weekend was an awesome time of growth with my brothers and sisters, but that's a story for another time.) Anyway, what George helped me understand was that getting in the Word less frequently was actually what I needed. It feels wrong, and it goes against all logic, but God doesn't always work according to human logic. Before the Jamaica trip, I mentioned in my Freshley small group that I felt like I had been idolizing the Bible. It sounds weird, but my friend Joseph pointed out that that's what the Pharisees did: "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me to have life" (John 5:39-40). They studied the Scriptures without acknowledging God and coming into relationship with Him through Jesus, and that's what I had been doing (but, I think, to a lesser extent than the Pharisees). So by "taking a break" from the Scriptures, God was able to teach me where I had gone wrong, and He brought me into the real heart of worship, praising Him first and studying the Word in order to become more familiar with God rather than to learn how many different ways each individual verse can be interpreted. And now that I realize this, I'm actually getting into the Word because I want to, not because of my legalistic need to read a certain amount every day. So I have to thank George—and, of course, God—for clearing that up for me.

George also made an interesting point that fasting is just a physical representation, a reminder, of what we have been called to do with our lives: to deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Jesus—to fast from ourselves in order spend time with Christ. That was a cool way of looking at it.

I have more to share, but most of it has to do with this past weekend, so I'm going to leave that for my next post. Hopefully, I'll have that up later today.

So until next time, God bless! And remember: "Let hope rise and darkness tremble in Your holy light, that every eye would see Jesus, our God, great and mighty to be praised."