God is awesome.....so very mindblowingly awesome.
Friday night, the speaker began talking about perspective. As soon as He did, I knew it was going to be a great weekend. In my last post, I mentioned perspective and some thoughts I'd had on the topic. As I sat there listening to Stuart Hall, I was acutely aware that God was fitting pieces together to make this a very interesting weekend. These were Mr. Hall's comments on perspective:
Perspective is the cruelest form of reality. If you don't have the right perspective, it will be impossible for you to do what God wants you to do. Skewed perspective=false sense of reality.
Since this was
Reality Weekend, I think it was an appropriate way to start things off. He went on to discuss holiness, which was the theme of the weekend, and how we often have a skewed perspective of what it is. Then he began the second session on Saturday morning by talking about blessings. Once again, I was aware that God had been preparing me for this weekend. My last post on here started out talking about how I not only felt extremely blessed, but that I knew without a doubt that I
was extremely blessed. He broke down Matthew 5:6 in order to help the students understand the concept of righteousness. ["Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."] He started out by explaining that "blessed" means complete. When I thought back to writing that I not only felt blessed, but knew that I was, I realized what a true statement that was. I am blessed, or complete, because I have Christ in me. The feeling of completeness or fulfillment that warmed my heart Thursday night was just evidence of my completeness in Christ. I may not always feel blessed, but I know that I am. Since I am God's, I have His fullness within me. There's nothing like the fullness of God to really fill a person to the brim.
A question he raised was: what is the point of being hungry or thirsty if you're not going to be filled? He also made a good point about how reliance on feelings is a very dangerous thing. There's a difference between feeling holy and actually being holy, and there's a difference between feeling righteous and being righteous. (that also applies to lots of other areas) Another major point that he hit on was how we are dead to sin, but alive in Christ. Because of this we are not only freed from the penalty of sin, but from the power of sin as well. Sin no longer has control over our actions...but for some reason we tend to live as if it still does. However, I won't get into all of this now.
As the college student, it was my privilege to lead the junior high and high school girls during their discussion times after each session. It was definitely the highlight of the entire weekend. I was blessed to have the help of another college student, a sweet girl that just recently graduated from Tech. I believe the biggest concern for any small group or discussion leader is simply that the students won't talk. No talking means no discussion...which can result in a rather awkward silence. Thankfully, these girls were really interested in what the speaker had to say. They asked a lot of questions and sincerely wanted to understand the concepts and how they applied to their lives. After the second session, they expressed a desire to take notes during the last session so they could write down things that interested them, anything that they didn't understand, or any questions that they might have. I remembered that I had some notepads tucked away that I had bought for Super Summer but never used. I ran by the house to collect them and gave them to the girls on the way to the evening session. All of them returned with their notepads filled with questions and comments. More than once throughout all three discussion times, they commented on how things were finally "clicking." It was so awesome to watch them grasp a piece of truth and claim it as their own as they realized just how applicable it was to their lives.
I realize that I kind of threw in some random thoughts from the weekend and didn't really explain them. But don't worry, they're still bouncing around in my head. I'm just waiting for the right time to connect the pieces and organize them so they actually make sense to someone besides myself.
As a last thought: there's nothing like being smack dab in the middle of God's will. Now, by no means do I claim to be a success at residing perfectly in God's will. However, I know I was where God wanted to be this weekend and He used me to accomplish a small piece of His marvelous plan. There's nothing better than that.
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