me buen jesus

Jesus Christ is my Lord, my Savior, my Redeemer. I don't understand His exact relationship with God the Father and Holy Spirit; I don't know exactly to what extent the Will of what we refer to as the Trinity necessarily forces itself upon us and to what extent we have Freedom of the Will; you know, I don't even know precisely how Sanctification relates to Justification;* but I don't need to. El Shaddai sent my Messiah to personally and completely atone for my sins, and now the Advocate pleads on my behalf with groanings deeper than words. The conclusion I've reached with all of these loaded, confusing words? God is good. Life is good. I am blessed, baby!
Fall Conference was almost a week ago now, and for readability/brevity I'll just focus on the highlights, but know that it was awesome! The thing I am most thankful for is that it was much more than emotional high, which come on, in a pinch I could have induced chemically. My personal relationship with God, my walk with Jesus, the anointing of the Holy Spirit - however you want to word our dialogue with the Big Guy - was very specifically blessed and directed last weekend. In addition to a rockin' Small Group, I'm talking very specific callings, which I will now enumerate:
1) God challenged me to really look at my kindred (particularly all those ones that annoy me, anger me, confuse me, etc. - oh yeah, and that sort of includes me as well) as Children of God. As image-bearers, I can trust that God made us all for a purpose, and all with an equal portion of His likeness. Hmm. That one made me stop and think. I imagine I'll be stoppin' and thinkin' on that all my life...
2) Check this picture out. Yeah, I'm talkin' RACIAL RECONCILIATION. What I mean is, I have felt called before to seek racial reconciliation, maybe even to pastor a multi-racial church, but tangible ways to implement that calling weren't communicated well. Reverend Harvy Drake did a fine job at that. In summary: CELEBRATE. That's right. Just ponder that picture man.
3) Rev. Drake spoke quite a bit on scriptural authority. As in: it is absolute. No matter how uncomfortable it makes us, or how much it requires us to set ourselves apart, or how demanding or unfounded it it may seem. The more you explore the depths of its rich wisdom and love, the more you can trust that maybe God does know what He's talking about. This isn't a new thing for me really, but I dig it, so it was worth mentioning. He also forced us to think specifically about tough controversial stuff - no one that went left unchallenged.
4) Psalm 47. What does it say? Look it up - I had to! This passage just came to me, and I didn't have a clue what it said, I just knew it was from God. I'd never had an unheard of verse come to me like that. It was tight! Praise Him :)
5) On that note, God gave me a complete breakthrough where worship is concerned. No more worrying about whether or not Whitties will see me - even here I'm able to just praise Him without getting caught up in reputation or vanity. Arms up, on my knees, singing, dancing - wherever I feel it needs to go.
6) That's it for AT the conference, but since I've been back there have been two huge blessings (not to say that there won't be fruit borne from this conference forever...) worthy of note:
a) God is giving me peace and confidence in Him as I approach the most challenging weeks of my academic life EVER. Man I feel like I'll just snap and go clinically and truly insane - but He's there, my Fortress, as it were.
b) Zoey! Our relationship is going in a wonderful direction, and it has made significant strides since Fall Conference. It's not finite or anything, and it's not really directly related to Fall Conference, so it will no doubt continue to undulate and be better and worse and yaddah yaddah; but we're seeking God and it is materializing very obviously in front of our very eyes, and it's wonderful! Man I like that girl...

That is all.

*in fact, I believe anyone who thinks they know, beyond all shadow of doubt, the nature of any of these questions is supremely arrogant, if not blasphemous - only God can know such transcendental relationships, which by definition are beyond our comprehension =) Next time you pray, try praying to God as He knows Himself to be, and not as you conceive of Him (see how limited He becomes when He only exists as you think He exists?)!