Empowered By The Holy Spirit

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Hey y'all the past couple of weeks have been a struggle, but God is awesome.

A while back, my youth pastor's wife preached a sermon called, "Take Heart."

In Mark 6:45-52, she talked about how the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water and didn't even recognize him.

The disciples first were on a boat at night in a storm and were afraid, but Jesus saw them. Just like the disciples, Jesus sees us in our situation. When the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water, they didn't even recognize him. They were paralyzed by fear. I feel like we also get paralyzed by fear sometimes and then we can't see the miracles God is doing in our life. This really hit me close to home, how often I try to worry and control my fears, when I have to just give it to God. Jesus chooses us and loves us, but it's our choice to choose and love him back. We must take heart, and not be overtaken by fear. We must give our fears to God and trust him. If we are overtaken by fear, then we can't hear Jesus calling out to us and God's truth.

Here are some encouraging verses for when you're paralyzed by fear, Isaiah 40:29, Isaiah 41:10, and Psalm 28:7. I applied all these to my life recently and it really works.

I also wanted to talk about DNOW that happened about a month ago. DNOW is a youth retreat thing at my church. We had sessions at the church that included worship and sermons. We had small group sessions at the host homes we stayed at, which were near the church. We also went out and served in the community. The sermons were about being "Empowered by the Holy Spirit." There was so many awesome worship songs, but my favorite was "King Of My Heart."

The last message touched me the most, it was about friendship. What is friendship? Friendship is deeply biblical and theological.

Proverbs 17:17 perfectly describes a godly friend.

A friend is one who loves. Your closet friends love you all the time, but its when hard times come that you find out who your brothers and sisters in christ are. True friends love each other in good times and bad. The deepest level of friendship is the friends that your heart is genuinely connected with. You are blessed to have friends like that, I only have one or two friends like that. Find someone to go alongside you in life.

Two qualities that are so important in friendship are patience and understanding.

I feel like its important to sit there and listen to your friends, even if you don't understand, its still good to be supportive. It is also good to ask questions so you can understand things better. The truth is friendships have to build over time. You have to put yourself in your friend's shoes sometimes. I have really come to that realization lately. Also you should pray for your friends and the trials God is putting them through right now. Text your friends encouraging verses from the Bible, not just memes on Instagram.

Next, we went through many verses in Proverbs, and talked about benefits of a godly friend. A godly friend is one who gives good advice, is truthful, and is there for you in hard times. I am so blessed to have close friends that care about me.

Communication is so important, even if its just sitting down talking about things for an hour at a coffee shop with your best friend. True friends make time for each other. About a month ago, amongst the busyness, for just ten to fifteen minutes, I rode with my close friend to McDonalds and we got hot fudge sundaes and we talked. It's the little things in life that matter.