I have not died, just disappeared

Below is an edited version of a passage from my journal. This last week we spent in Casa de Paz, which is my church here in the city. We learned a lot. The focus of one of the learning times was The Call of God on our Lives.

"We keep talking in HADIME about the call of God on our lives, and have discussed the five basic calls: apostle, pastor, prophet, evangelist, and teacher. I asked if we had to be one, and if so, if we were supposed to know which we were, because I didn't. Until this point, I had never figured out which I was, if any. So through some questions and some discussion my pastor told me he thought that I had the gift of prophecy. Which I think I would agree with, although it is not very developed in me I don't think. Prophecy isn't so much seeing the future, as it is affirm other people, call them out on stuff, and confess. To say the stuff that no one else wants to say, but that you know has to be said. And this resonates with me. It is interesting to me how this also keeps you more humble. We all think that being able to tell the future would be really cool, and if that were the main point of a prophet, it might be easy to get proud. But when it involves having to say the things that no one else wants to say, hard things, things that are often as not directed at yourself as well, it is a better reminder to be humble. It comes with a better understanding of what Jeremiah meant when he said “His word is like a fire in my bones, I am weary of holding it in, indeed, I cannot.” You have to say the things you already know someone is not going to want to hear, the things you don't even want to say.
That paragraph became more speculation. I don't actually know all that, it is more how I feel. Like I said, I am not very developed in any spiritual gift. But I am rather excited to find that not only do I have one, I know what it is. And for the first time, to have a real idea of what it means to develop it and use it, and how to do that."

Because I have been without a computer for the vast majority of the last month and a half, it is a bit daunting to update you all. So please forgive me the large gap. Many things happened in Oaxaca, in Mexico City, and this last week in Casa de Paz, my church here in Guadalajara. We have been all over the place and I don't even know what to tell anymore. I have learned a heck of a lot. One thing that stands out to me is that it is fairly easy to die for Christ. Dying is fast, more or less. It doesn't take more than a few days, or at most, years. But living for Christ is hard. When you live for him, you have to die to yourself every single day, and that takes more. But when you learn to die to yourself, to your own desires and dreams, that is when you truly start to live. And when you know what you are living for, dying is no longer scary.