Sunday, January 28, 2007

Passion '07 Reflection


The Arena


So I went to this conference over New Years called Passion '07. It was in Atlanta.....24,000 college students......worshipping and praising God for 4 days straight....enough said. I haven't really written much about it, and I don't intend too, but there were so many amazing things that God did over those four days that I'd like to write down a couple of moments when He really 'got to me'.....

One of my favorite worship artists is Chris Tomlin. I'm not such a big fan of his image, but his music is very inspiring and uplifting. In the months leading up to this conference, I had been going through a spiritual dead zone. To make a long story short.....I overloaded myself. I was doing ministry, teaching, studying and working all at once...and it was too much. So the thought of going to a huge conference with some amazing worship leaders was almost getting me excited.
I was comforted by a story during this time of a man that was asked by God to carry one rock up a hill, which upon his way picks up other people's rocks in order to help them and minister to them. Half way up the hill he is too tired and gives up and blames God for giving Him a load that he couldn't carry. God gently reminds him that all He asked him to do was carry that one rock.

I was carrying an overseas backpack full of rocks to Passion. I couldn't wait for that 'moment' in the conference where God would show up, and my load would be lightened. I had struggled 4 months of just being totally emotionless and void of passion. For ministry, for my relationship with God, and for life in general I had simply lost interest. You been there before? If you have, you know how much it sucks.


This was a bilboard that everyone had signed the year previous.

On the second night, Tomlin was leading worship. Our group had managed to get seats two rows from the front of the stage. The stadium was packed. We'd just heard a "killer" sermon from Beth-Moore on humility, and the crowd it seemed was in a state of total repentant worship. Everyone was on their feet, hands lifted high, and it was as if you could see God's spirit moving through the masses.

I was sitting down. My arm's crossed. Totally emotionless.....

I love that line in the Goo Goo Dolls song that says "And you can't fight the tears that aint coming". That was me......I was fighting for a tear....any sign of feeling.....but I got nothing.



This was supposed to be my moment. My favorite worship artist.....great speaker.....20.000 people to help me along.....but nothing. Had God just forgot about me? It sure had felt like it the last couple of months. It was almost like I'd lost the Holy Spirit.

You been there before? If you have, you know how much it SUCKS!

So after walking away from that night event and off to our community group, I was feeling my usual "God I'm angry with you, but I'm not, because my heart doesn't respond to my head any more, and I've lost every blood pumping vessel in my body!" self.


Then He REALLY got to me.

My head finally found a route to my heart. It had finally deciphered the labyrinth and reconnected the blood vessels. I had reasoned that if I was EVER going my moment with God and I was to set up the perfect conditions for it to happen, I probably would have put my self in front of Chris Tomlin with a whole bunch of people to worship with.........so why didn't it work?

Because I needed to see that my relationship with God has nothing to do with how I feel about Him.

God is so much bigger than a huge worship service.

He would keep me emotionless if it only meant my heart would turn further toward Him.....even if it is numb.

After 4 months of being emotionless......He wanted to show me He still loved me.......

.....even while I was emotionless.

My response? Total emotionlessness.......but knowing that was OK.
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This week at the Ranch has been pretty exciting. We got to meet Joey Seeber, the Mayor of Tyler, TX on Wednesday and spend half a day with him. We were guests of honor at Tyler's City Council meeting and got to grill Joey for about 2 hours. It was just an awesome oppurtunity to talk to a guy that had made it and has a love for the Lord. We got to learn so much just from him telling his stories and just gained a lot of life experience from him telling his mistakes. (great English there)

I also got to meet with the college group i travelled with to the Passion conference, this weekend. It was amazing to share that experience with them, but even cooler to get to hang out with them and talk with them on a regular basis. On our way back, we all got convicted to start memorizing chapters of the bible on a regular basis. This weekend we just got done with Colossians 3, and now we're moving to James 1. It's been amazing to dedicate ourselves to memorize a whole chapter and just incredible to see how much God uses that in our lives.

This was the group that I travelled with to Passion

This week I will be travelling to Oklahoma City to go to the Gear Up Conference. They are the company under which we went to West Virginia with and did the iLead conference. It should be interesting to see what it's all about since we know nothing of what we'll be doing this week. But I'm excited......

......so happy to have some emotion back!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm soo happy that you are finally finding emotions...ok that sounded wierd but i know you understand.
HUGS!
kat