Thursday, January 7, 2010I'm not sure there's a right way to go about talking about everything that God spoke into my life during Passion 2010.
I feel like the Awakening, the theme of this conference, began for me as early as the first session, when God spoke to us through Louie Giglio that we should awaken to the idea that in handing over our lives completely to the Lord, we're trading in something tiny and insignificant in order to gain something huge, amazing, and eternal.
I feel like this past semester at Penn, my first semester at college and in Wharton, has really challenged me to find my place in this world. I feel that there's such tremendous pressure at Wharton to get it right. Do the right extracurriculars, get plugged into the right groups, show up for the right recruiting events, take the right courses, and get the right grades. It's a world that I'm not particularly comfortable in, a world in which success seems to hinge upon all the most unconventional things.
Passion, first and foremost, made me realize that I really need to figure out who I am in the Lord, and naturally, what I should be doing with my life will fall into place.
Andy Stanley told us that in our lives, the biggest mistake is trying to figure out what to do before figuring out who we want to be. My prayer is that the Lord, in this New Year, will help me to develop a better idea of the person I want to be in Him, and help me to mold my identity in Christ through the trials of life.
Every single speaker spoke so much truth into my life. Francis Chan made the analogy between the Holy Spirit and the lady's voice in his GPS. God has a plan for us, and nothing is outside of his expectation or control. Along the way, we will take wrong turns, and we will mess up, but God does not freak out. God does not get unnerved or exasperated. God just says, very gently, "Recalculating."
God will lead us to the place He wants us to be. It may take longer now that we've taken a wrong turn or missed a turn, but Paul says we can be confident that He who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Praise God for that!
Beth Moore told us that God equips us to do His work and bring Him glory by preparing us, adjusting us, repairing us, and filling us.
God uses all of our past experiences to prepare us. Everything that has ever happened to us has been permitted to prepare us fully to bring Him glory.
God also puts us in situations that will challenge us in order to readjust us. Something Beth Moore said that hit me particularly close was that God puts us with people who bring out the worst in us in order to ultimately bring out the best in us.
God mends our hurts and our weaknesses and repairs us. As the Bible said, Jesus is the Great Physician, who came for the sick. In our sickness, Jesus can cure us, and mend us like broken fish nets.
And lastly, God equips us by filling us. We can do nothing without the Lord, and so He pours into us in order for us to really glorify Him.
I think the most amazing thing I experienced during Passion was the love that these speakers had for the Lord and for His word. Beth Moore, when asked how to have quiet time diligently, said that for her, quiet time is not compromised, because there's no game without it. She mentioned a pastor she had once heard who did not eat until he has eaten of the Spiritual food. Beth Moore just seems to have such an amazing faith in the Lord and such a heart for the Lord, it is a tremendously powerful testimony.
John Piper, also, was a very convicting speaker. He shared that our glorifying Christ and our enjoying Him are not two separate things. Instead, God loves us the most by allowing us to see His glory, because in glorifying Him, we reach the apex of our joy. Wow, our God is good.
One other notable experience that broke me for the Lord was a video interview of sorts with a girl named Sam from Guangzhou, China. At the beginning of the video, we were informed that there are 120 million college-aged students in China, most of whom do not know the Lord.
I was just broken by this fact.
I know God has given me a heart for China, but at this point, I have no idea what I will do with it. At times I have considered, after graduating college, just putting everything aside and going back to China to serve in an underground church and reach college students for Christ. I have considered dedicating the rest of my life to serving in underground orphanages across China. I have considered doing international law in order to come to the defense of the orphanages on the China and North Korean border, which are constantly facing the threat of being closed.
God has put all of these ideas in my heart, and most of the time I have no idea where to go from there, but the beauty of it now is that I know that in trusting in the Lord and walking with Him step by step, I will not stray from His will, and I will be given the tremendous peace of knowing that if our God is with us, what could possibly stand against?
Praise the Lord. :)
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