Friday night, Steve H spoke about what God wants. He looked up all the verses that God says he wants something. It was really cool.
1. God wants my heart. ps 51:16-17. God doesn't want spiritual acts... he wants your heart. It's like the kids who just yell at each other "I'm SORRY..." "I for GIVE you!". And they're still mad. That's doing the spiritual act without the right attitude. How you view God will determine whether you give God your heart or just lip service. Jesus wants to be with you (John 17:24). Not you to do stuff for him, but to be with him.
Dream about giving your heart to him. Dream about what life would look like.
2. God wants you to be holy in conduct. Amos 5:21-24. God is holy. He wants us to admire that and imitate that. Jeremiah 7:22-24; I Thess 4:3; John 13:34-35.
Dream about living a life of character... of holiness... of love.
3. God wants justice. Isaiah 1:11-17. about 16,000 kids die a day due to hunger related causes. There are more slaves today than ever in history. more than 50% of them are kids.
Dream of ridding the world of extreme poverty.
Dream of creating a culture where children are no longer abuse, emotionally, physically or sexually.
Dream of abolishing sexual slavery.
Dream about comforting the oppressed, the hurting, and the suffering.
4. God wants everyone to be saved. It's the most audacious dream ever. Ezekiel 33:10-11; 1 Tim 2:3-6; Luke 13:34. There is so much potential to reach the world! We have 6 billion, almost 7 billion people on this planet. it took from Adam and Eve to 1804 to get to one billion people. 1927 is two billion. now we're at 6 billion, almost 7. We could double the population of heaven much more easily! 2 Peter 3:3-4, 8-12. "usher in" -- you can make the end come faster!
Dream about reaching the world with the gospel.
Dream about ushering the return of Christ.
Dream about being the last generation
Dream about being one last great generation.
Yeah, this one was my favorite. The last two really got to me a lot.
Saturday:
Breakfast (singing to Michelle for her birthday), worship, Mike K, 7 min break, worship, Neil K, lunch, free time (Jesus time, hanging out watching people play basketball/horse), worship, John F, an hour of worship, dinner, drive, home, unpack, bed. Yup.
Mike K talked about Greatness through Character. I won't go such in depth with him, because I'm running out of time... haha. If you want me to, tell me and I'll copy my notes sometime. :-)
Basically, he focused on four aspects of character development: Provision of character development that comes only from God, Promises of character development -- doesn't just make you Christ-like, you get to know Jesus! the Goal of character development, which is to get to know Jesus, and the beauty and simplicity of the gospel, that it's a relationship with God as a father-child, not master-servant, because of Jesus.
Neil was FUNNY! I am an AWESOME fisherman. I am so AWESOME! -- he had to help a kid who kept saying that and tangling up his line... Neil hated serving right then... but man was it funny! So yeah, Neil was talking about being a servant when you are not gifted in that area -- to have the heart of the servant -- who's doing the work of God? and talking about how discouraging? Not always fun? Service is.
lunch was chicken fingers for me... yay! Free time was fun too. I'll put up pictures so you can see how the dorm/ thing was laid out. Basically it was a gym on the first floor and then the second floor was basically a ring of balcony above the gym, and so you could walk out your door and look over the railing and see people playing basketball. But that also meant that people were playing basketball till 3 in the morning and you could hear it from your room easily. Not so much fun...
John F was really funny too! he talked about spiritual disciplines when you are not disciplined... like you don't like the idea of waking up early to read your bible, and you fail at prayer journals and highlighting your bible different colors to represent different aspects of God and stuff... and you feel guilty about it. he called it "The Slacker's Guide to Knowing God." Basically he more talked about WHY you want to know God, rather than HOW. When he got to the how at the end, the only things he said was:
1. Read your bible as God's message to you, the primary wisdom to base your entire life upon.
2. Pray to God with your real, raw thoughts and emotions and let him humble and mold you.
3. Connect your life with many godly Christians so that they can help you see god's goodness and power.
So yup. Good speakers. :-)
And good band, seriously! Michigan is awesome in that respect :-P We took communion and worshiped for an hour... it was a great experience. I felt like at one point I forgot to think about how I looked, or what the band was doing, and I was able to focus on the words, and the truth behind them. There were a lot of unfamiliar songs, but sooo many GOOD ones!
And then we walk outside and it's still light outside! Usually those things happen at 11 at night, not 4 in the afternoon...
The rest of the time was uneventful... talked about the retreat and what we learned and stuff at dinner and on the way home... and rocked it out to Bohemian Rhapsody too... haha!
Oh, Katie and Dad: I saw the megabus on the way there... it said it was going to Toledo. This was at like 6 or 7, so yeah, it wasn't same time or anything, but it was fun to look at! it really DOES look like the Knight bus! :-)
Erm. I think that's it from me for tonight. Back to school tomorrow!
... I think
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