The Fuel conference this weekend was amazing. There were so many great messages and movings of the Holy Spirit that I could share, but I feel like God placed three core ideas on my heart as the theme of the weekend, at least for me.
Forgiveness
Letting go of the past is crucial to moving on, and I’m usually reasonably quick to move on from some sort of hurt, but I don’t always forgive before doing so. This isn’t really all that effective. Giving forgiveness so deep that it extends beyond yourself is transcendental; it comes from an entirely other place–from the great reservoir of God’s grace. Grace for you and for me. It almost never really has anything to do with the person my unforgiveness is directed at, and it almost always has everything to do with me and my heart and my issues and my wrongdoings, and God wants me to live a life that is not entangled with strings of emotions and hurt feelings that are still around simply because I am being too stubborn to cut them.
Compassion
There are a handful of people in life that really have the ability to get to me. Really get to me. And I sometimes let this knot of bitterness, selfishness, and hardness of heart form deep inside me. It makes me hard when I ought to be soft. Venomous instead of encouraging. Resentful and not thoughtful. I start to let that person embody all the things that I am angry or upset about, things are unfair because of this person. It’s not that they are doing more wrong than any other person in my life, or more than me for that matter, but this person is the problem. The Lord reminded me this weekend that I am the one with the knot in my stomach. My lack of compassion is rooted in my lack of trust that God alone is my provider, and he alone is my satisfaction. And I take my lack of faith out on others, blaming them for the way that I feel. Compassion is crucial to interacting with the human race. Without compassion, moving through life would be like a waterpark with no water. We’d all be hitting the bottom of the pool with a thud and screeching down hot plastic slides, burning our feet on the pavement and stuck on floats that aren’t moving.
Surrender
I am stubborn. If you know me at all, you know that I am stubborn. Sometimes relentlessly so. And God is calling my life to the sacrifice. That means I am constantly looking the other way, because honestly, I hate sacrifice. I love sleep and sugar. I love my own way and I hate cleaning. Sure, I also love a clean house and I always feel better when I eat right, work out, get up early, and have a regularly-scheduled quiet time. But I hate sacrifice. Time and time again this weekend, I felt like my heart was a rope and God was on one end and I was on the other. I’d start to give in to worship or His Word a little and feel my end of the rope slip. And so I pull back. Surrendering myself, my heart, my desires, my thoughts and feelings is not easy for me. I don’t know exactly why, but I think it has something to do with the two-year-old temper tantrum happening inside me that says, “No!!!! That’s MINE! I want to do things MY way, not yours! It’s my turn if I say so!” And this might be why I ate a couple packs of candy for breakfast this morning. My head said, “Start the day fresh-eat well today.” The two-year-old said, “I like candy! And I want it!” And so the Lord told me this weekend, We’re gonna deal with this. I’m gonna deal with your heart. Surrender it to me, because I love you.
So my prayer in leaving Camp St. Christopher behind is not letting my daily life get in the way of living for eternity.
