Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


1.05.2004  

WOW! (post-New Attitude)

Wow. No, wait. That's not right. WOW! That's better.

New Attitude (the conference that ran from Thursday through Sunday) is over, and I almost wish it wasn't. It all started out on Wednesday, when a few of us Boyce junkies hung out with the band from the first five N.A. conferences. Blind Brandon, Jared, and I met Eric, Augie, and Ted in the main office at Carver. Little did we know that we were in for treat. Those guys...WOW. (I'm going to use that word a lot in this post - get used to it.) As Eric later put it, we all seemed to be "kindred spirits" from the beginning...even more so when we were "caught" throwing the football around the lawn in Carver Ciricle by Boyce College's Dean, Dr. Jerry Johnson. At one point during the conference, being the facetious little angel I am, I told them that we weren't their groupies, but they were our groupies :) I think it's safe to say the groupiness (be quiet, Andy...it is too a word!) is mutual.

If the groupiness we now have with those guys was all I walked away from the conference with, it would have been enough. But no. God didn't want to stop there. Time and time again, I was BLESSED through people. Oh my....what a list...Pat, Edgar, Daniel, Tiffany, Blind Brandon, Oscar, my Family Group (Kari, Jenn, Kristen, Chris, Franz, Matt, Shirley, Meena, and Lauren...I think), the TWU crew (Rob, Bart, Lindsey, Melissa, and Jess), and more that sleep deprivation has driven from memory. Looking into their eyes and seeing God's joy reflected there...WOW. I found myself wanting to keep these formerly complete strangers to myself, if only to soak in the goodness that God has done in their lives. God's blessings are indeed good!

If God had stopped with people, it would have been enough. Yet, in His goodness, God didn't stop there. His word became sweeter and more piercing as Josh Harris, Mark Dever, Wayne Grudem, Dr. Mohler (our very own Southern Seminary President), and CJ Mahaney shared with us. I told Dave one caffeine-deprived morning that what I loved most about the preaching was how principles were not simply shared as something that should be done, but were shown to be important because of how they intertwined with God Himself. Such preaching pleaded with us to realize that God is not to be mocked, and when we toss aside His design for our fleshly preferences, we are tossing aside the wonderous ways in which He displays His glory. Further still, we toss aside God Himself. Such stubborn adherences to subtle lies kills the joy we have in Him as we see Him more clearly and deeply. I did learn a lot, yet I don't think I necessarily learned a lot of "new" things. If anything, the things most astounding to me were the things that God had already taught me, but made agonizingly fresh and sweet once more.

His grace...how sweet it is to look over the wretched chasm of sin and death and realize that Christ's cross already spans the distance!

Service...Romans 12:1 & 2 has never been so satisfyingly real! It was truly a deep and eternal blessing to meet the needs of so many.

Fellowship...a meal tastes better when Christians truly are the Salt.

The Cross...as Eric put it, let us "sit in the shadow of the cross," never to leave...let us stay, let us linger, let us say, "that's where you'll find me."

Sin...I am a horrible, proud, selfish, wretched person, who has been washed clean in the blood of Christ. The depths of my sin is beyond me. It's not beyond God, however, nor beyond His grace.

Faith...I told Tiffany that it'd been a tough month. My wretchedness was apparent more than grace, and I'd become weary of the battle. One line of a song that Bob Kauflin wrote after the first day of the conference (a prophetic song) said, "don't give up." I told her that in those words, I could almost hear God talking to me. He wasn't giving me the encouraging pat on the shoulder like people often will when they say, "hang in there...you'll be ok...God is faithful." It was like God was grinning as big a grin as He possibly can (that's a huge grin!), laughing and crying all at once, pleading with me as He said, "don't give up! Don't you EVER give up! I'm not leaving you, and oh my...you don't see what's on the other side, but I have SO MUCH in store!" It was almost like I saw God rejoicing over me as the proud father of his first newborn would be rejoicing.

Last, but not least, Andrew arrived last Thursday. It was strange, driving on the I-65 in the van, with him riding shotgun and Steph in the back (she got in earlier that day, too); it was like were going to the beach or something, but the setting was all wrong. Very, very surreal. Seeing him here has been awesome beyond words...being at the conference with him...WOW. He was giving away pineapples that he'd brought up with him, and doing so immediately identified him as being from Hawai'i. If that weren't enough, the vintage Aloha Shirts we wore were more than ample supporting evidence. Hehe...as I type this, he's sitting next to me, typing out emails to some people. How strange...how cool :)

Perhaps I'll put in another entry quite soon; I've definitely only generalized what God's done over the past several days, and I know there's so much more that is flowing from inside of me right now. WOW!

posted by Bolo | 6:18 PM
0 speakage
Free Hit
Counters
Dell Coupons
Daily
Read
Listen
Visualize
Blogging Buddies
Old School
Me
Bug Me
Yore
Factuality
Quotatious