First I want to start off by saying the first class was amazing and I can't wait to see what else is taught in this class! My main takeaway from this class was that I can be a friend of God just like Moses. How Yahweh revels himself to Moses and even vents to Moses was so powerful to me. It really showed me that the Lord does have a deep desire to have a close and intimate relationship with his people. Another thing that shocked me was that the Lord was saying "Whatever I am, I will be". First of all thats highkey gangster haha but on a more serious note that statement alone made me have so much awe of his power and glory. In a way it made me fall in love with him even more. I feel as thought the more the Lord reveals himself to me, the more I fall in love with his character and who he is and it makes me want to live a life that is pleasing in his sight. The Lord has shared with me that he will reveal himself to me in a new way and I think this class is going to play a big part in that.

The altar that I beilieve the Lord is calling me to focus on is a deeper life of prayer. I have been getting nudges from the Holy Spirit to spend more time with him and of course with that comes praying. I remember Pastor Layla saying the hidden altar in a place of determination and that in the secret place you learn to flow with the Holy Spirit and become one with him. I really do desire this to be so intune and on touch with the Holy Spirit that when he gives me a small nudge to go left I go left. This would be developed by developing a deeper life of prayer and reconignizing the fathers voice.

Throughout this week I implemented Silence and Solitude. I do pray and spend time with the Lord but I found myself just needing to sit with him and just recevied his love. As a person that loves routines and rhythms haha its hard to say what that routine would look like. Sometimes I talk to the Lord and I can't stop praising him and he speaks back to me. Othertimes I just need to receive him and his love and he will speak to me then. No talking, no plan just being with him. But, for the sake of the assignment haha I would say practicing after serving on Sunday and pouring into the children in the childrens ministry just driving home no music just slience. Just me and the Lord.

A observation that stood out to me the most was the fact that Jesus plainly says in verse 10 that to his disciples the secretas of the kingdom haven been given to them but that he talks in parables so that “seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not hear” then he continues to go on and explain the parable which explains what he just said in the verse before. I think that’s pretty cool because I remember us talking in class (or maybe it was the video haha) about how Jesus Christ claimed with words about being blind and not seeing and then in the next passage he heals a blind man. It all links together just like this passage does! I’m sure if I go back and read the passage before and after this it would add even more context to this passage!

Pastor Becky Johnson's video was such a blessing and opened my eyes to a few things. After watching this video I feel like the Lord was calling me to spend time with him in the morning and when he wakes me up in specific parts of the night when I was sleeping. There have been mutiple occasions where the Lord has woken me up out of my sleep at 3 AM in the morning to spend time with me or maybe it was something he wanted to tell or impart to me but I chose to go back to sleep again. It really did bring me to tears to know that my Lord and savior wanted to spend time with me but I chose comfort over him. I want and will be making it a habit/practice to seek him every morning to get to know more about him and also to understand what he wants me to do for that day if that makes sense. I do spend time with him at night but I want to make it a practice to seek him and his will for my life in the morning as well.