a day full of thanks.

i am oh, soo thankful for my life. i truly live a good life. today was a day spent with family. i was so filled with god's joy all day, and it reminded me how much grace he has given me throughout the years.

i am thankful for::

-friends. i am thankful for the friends who encourage me and challenge me. friends who are there for me, and speak wisdom and experience into my life. i am thankful for the friends who aren't really my friends, but come to me for advice. i am thankful for the friends that have forgiven me, and the ones i have forgiven. im even thankful for the people who used to be my friends but hurt me in the end. im thankful for friends that love.

-family. i am thankful for my family, even though it's not the perfect, god seeking family i sometimes wished it was, but my family is loving. they support me and love me no matter what color my hair is, or what piercing is on my nose :)

-school. i am thankful for this big influence circle god has dropped right in front of me. im thankful for the teachers, and the students- even though i dont know all of them. i have a huge heart for my classmates, and i am thankful they are alive, and thankful that god is using me to influence, encourage, love and speak life into.

-USA. i am thankful for our country's freedom. i am thankful that our country has the freedom of religion- the freedom to praise the most high king. i am thankful for the rights and for our circumstances. we truly have it "best". i am thankful that i have a home, and that my parents are employed. i am thankful for my future in this country. and last, i am sure thankful for our past and present presidents. even though neither one of them could fix our corrupt world, i will continue to pray blessing and wisdom over their lives.

-God. I am so thankful for my father, my best friend and my lover. i am thankful that he gave his only begotten son to die the most painful, horrible death so i could live! he is truly an amazing father and has freely given me such beautiful grace over every situation in my life. i am thankful that he uses the foolish things to be part of my testimony. i am thankful for my testimony and for the things i know i have gotten through because jesus was and is with me. he is so ever present, so crazy and so ridiculously loving! i am thankful for the life he has given me!! he is glorious. he is thanksgiving. hallelujah, praise the lord.

happy thanksgiving, everyone!

x

Many died so you could vote, but ONE died so you could live. #Jesus2012 

Follow your heart but follow His heart.

"tonight is the start of a new beginning."

I've been really pressing in and asking the Lord to hear His voice clear and to be sensitive to his spirit, and 2 nights ago at Burning Hearts, the worship leaders were doing a spontaneous worship song to open and I heard Papa say loud and clear: "tonight is the start of a new beginning." and immediately I started laughing, I was like thank you Lord, I know that was you. But God, being the great and marvelous that he is, decided to make it even clearer to me that that was him speaking, (even though I already knew it.) Immediately after I had heard this in the spirit, out loud, the worship leader started singing, "it's a new beginning, it's a new beginning!" AHH!  so cool.

catch the song bethel sunday morning july 08 2012

his voice will be heard! heaven's song invades the earth! we move with the pulse of the holy spirit! dry bones will dance when they hear it! open up your mouth!!! catch the sun above your head! jesus is singing over us! hear the melodies of heaven! it's time to sing with jesus!!!!

North Dakota Youth Convention:

I don't know if any of you follow me on Instagram, twitter or are a friend of mine on facebook, but if you are, you have heard a little bit about this "youth convention." Anyways, I'm going to tell you!
North Dakota Youth Convention was helded in fargo at First Assembly (home church), and it was a 3 day convention with slightly over 1,000 kids attending. The previous year, we only had 600, so I don't know, God is super ready to use these little North Dakotan kids to start a revival on this earth.       

ANYWAYS, Pastor Sean Smith was our guest speaker, (someone give me an 'amen!') If you don't know him, i'll just tell you he is amazing, has a SICK testimony and travels to different conferences preaching. He does a lot with Jesus Culture! Go follow him on twitter @RevSeanSmith.

Anyway, Sean spoke both thursday night and friday night, and I want to tell you a bit about how cool and amazing friday night was- don't get me wrong, thursday was sweet as well, but friday was a true Holy Ghost party!

Friday night Sean was preaching, and I'll just share a couple notes I took while he was preaching.

1. We must break free from the hypnotic trends of modern culture.
-because great masses of our generation feel unimportance.
2. Break through the intoxication cloud of our age.
3. Break INTO the power dimension of God.

DANG! am I right? Now, you're probably like Okay, Paola, where are you going with this? I thought this night was crazy and a awesome Holy Ghost party!-- Don't worry, I'm getting there!

Here comes the exciting part!! Sean normally doesn't do this, but he said, and I quote: "I normally don't do this, but I really feel the Holy Spirit moving and the start of a revival!"
He then continued to open up the altar for healings. They (Sean and his assistant Todd) started getting specific words of knowledge and pointing out sections of rows of our church saying There is a person here, a female, who needs healing for this specific thing, and followed by praying for them. They would point people out from the crowd and tell them something that no one else knew about them! This went on for quite a while and the cool thing was the person who had just recieved prayer and gotten healed, was laying hands on another person immediately after! praise jesus!! 

This isn't over! After a while of that, Sean said, God's not done in this place, I feel that that was just the first wave, and there's going to be a second wave that the Holy Spirit will do even more! SO then, we opened up the altar for baptisms in the Holy Spirit! If that doesn't make sense to you, let me just sum it up. There is baptism of water, and baptism of the Holy Spirit, where the Spirit comes upon you and fills you, and gives you a native tongue. It's often called praying in tongues, and it's the Holy Spirit coming upon you which gives you power! It is the tongue of angels. It speaks mysteries to God and not to men. It's in Acts 2 if you want to read a little more about it!!

Anyway, we opened up the altar for that, and over 100 kids who had never experienced the Holy Spirit in such a way, were baptised and FILLED with the Spirit! COME. ON!!!! So good! It was just amazing and the presence was so heavy and so loving! Our God is such a good God!! Over 100 kids felt the love of Jesus, our Father! It was incredible!
If that doesn't give you what I call, Holy Spirit goosebumps, I don't know what will!

That was a "short" version of my testimony of my weekend! Of how good our Father is!!! Ahhh! so good! 
xo

yesterday

I'm going to share a little testimony about my day!

Last night was the first prayer meeting of the year. It's called the Trench and it's ran by my brother-in-law. So, of course I was freaking HYPED! I was so excited to see God move and change hearts! In preparation for the night, I was praying a lot about it, hoping that everything would go well. During my quiet time with Jesus, I decided to do some of my devotional, Journey Of A World Changer by Banning Liebscher (a jesus culture devotional). That was kind of strange, since the last time I had done this devotional was the week before school started, just because it was very time consuming (in a good way) and my free time hours were slowly turning into what I call "rest hour", the time in-between another activity. 

Anyways, I started reading where I left off, Day 21:Loving Father, Not Employer. The devotional continued to talk about how many Christians view God as "a boss" who is yelling orders and looking their performance, and that unfortunately this reduces peoples connection with Him to that of an employee. I mean, how much more further could that get from the truth? God is a Father! He yearns to know us before we do anything for Him! Basically what this devotional did for me was took me out of that mindset and shouted to me, that God is my Father I "never had". The best dad out there! And then towards the end of my time with Jesus, he told me specifically that he would reveal to me the broken hearts of this nation to preach to! I had breakthrough at this time in the day with the Lord! God was preparing my heart for the night, which I am so thankful for!

Flash forward a couple hours, now! The Trench is starting up, I brought with me 3 of my high school friends that have had little experience in the presence. So, we start off with communion and then ease into a good hour of worship! Jesus revealed so much in me and to me during that hour, I just soaked in His love and mercy, and He gave me a couple prophetic words. Earlier my brother in law, Tom, had asked me to maybe share a testimony of breakthrough. I was down, though I had NO idea what I would say. In worship, the Father helped me and told me what I needed to speak about! It was amazing, God told me to talk about God being a FATHER to the FATHERLESS! Only after sharing my testimony, I remembered my devotional from earlier on in the day! Praise, God! He is so good to me! 

So yeah, I'm not sure who this is for, but if anyone is struggling with not having a father figure in their life, or maybe they don't the relationship they want with their dad, I just want to let you know, there is freedom in Jesus' name! God is a good father, who longs for a fatherly relationship with us! He is the only true provider for our hearts and our lives! He is the Father to the fatherless and He LOVES you soooo so so much!