Happy Birthday to Me!

This birthday is really very special, friends, so I write, praise, and celebrate with you!

-  Yes, I turned 40 today!
-  Yes, this marks the 5th week of healing and recovery since back surgery!
-  And yes, God even gave me a birthday verse today!

From a summer of pain and the inability to walk God intervened on my behalf, got me an earlier surgery date, and has healed me.  During my recovery, I stumbled upon this story and wept.  Have you read it before?

¹⁰ Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. ¹¹ And behold, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. ¹² When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” ¹³ And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God.

I don't know if she celebrated her next birthday with black balloons and a Non-fat, Decaf, Pumpkin Spice Latte, but we find her story in the 13th! chapter of Luke. This story has comforted by heart in recent weeks and provided an example of how one WALKS through their recovery...glorifying God...much like we are called to WALK through life.

Not to be outdone by a passage of scripture, God grabbed my attention while reading his Word this week.  John 3:6 has stolen my heart and will be a theme for my 40th year!

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."

At the last minute, 40 years ago today, my mom changed my name from "Jill Anne" to "April" saying, "It was a new, fresh, spring-part of her life arriving in motherhood" and wanted to call me April like the month of new beginnings.  Awwww....how sweet right?  But being born of my parents only allows me to be April, with similar DNA, blood type, and that charismatic Farley personality. I, myself, am limited.  However, being reborn of the Spirit did something huge in my life and planted the Holy Spirit in my very being.  Now, more than merely out of flesh, I am capable of doing things in the Spirit, by the power of Spirit, and for the Spirit.  As the Holy Spirit indwells a believer, we are warned not to quench or grieve it.  Follow it, yield to it, and obey it.  When we don't, we are limiting how we can live.

So, Happy Birthday to me!  To be born and celebrate 40 years of life, is an amazing blessing!  But being reborn and having the opportunity to tap into the divine power of God through His Holy Spirit by the grace of His Son is the only way to truly live.

The next 40 years is going to be great!  What will God want to do with little 'ol me given the resource of the Holy Spirit He has put at my disposal!  I'll be writing and let you know!

April