Saturday, September 12, 2009

Shine Bible Conference



Ah... good to get my flash working again. This is me at our church's annual Bible conference. The topic is SHINE! And really, the whole session is getting us to once again seek God's glory is a world where it is supposedly diminished, and that the church is nothing without God's glory. And how we are supposed to be reflectors of God's glory.

Wow!~ Short testimony, as I was writing, the computer froze. Now, this doesn't normally happen, and when it does, I am forced to force shutdown my computer. I was like, Argh, God, why did it freeze, when it came to me that this could be the devil's work. I then tried praying, really believing this time, that God can be the God of the internet and computers and he is in control. Argh, I don't want to type everything again, Lord, the devil's trying to stop me from saying good things about you, in Jesus' name, then I sat down and played 'Days of Elijah' on my guitar. And praise the Lord, the computer unfroze. Woohoo!

Ok, many fun things happened as well. I got to participate in a trivia quiz. I guessed my category right, under science. Wahoo! I wished they asked more sciencey questions. Oh, and btw, my group lost 10 to 100. I was pretty sure Antartica was the second largest continent in the world. Doi!

I guessed I was pretty enthusiastic about seeing God's glory, the way the Israelites did in the past. It was both refreshing and stimulating. I hope to retain most of what I've learned from the conference. here are some things I've learned (dumbed down):

1. Knowledge is good, especially God's knowledge. Must have more...
2. True obedience is not just from love, it's from faith. Not a religious, non-free will-y, spiritual understanding of God, but trusting God in a relationship. After all, God created a relationship such that it only works when both parties are faithful.
3. Righteousness cannot be acted out, but can only be achieved through Jesus and accepting the fact that he died for my sins and I am made righteous.
4. Must respect divine authority, 'cos they are the Lord's representatives
5. Church must be united, in fact, churches must be united! We've a lot of nasty stuff inside the church now and Jesus' parable of the wheat and weeds makes that so clear. (Matt13:24-30) When it says in v41, The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. Now, I normally study the bible myself, and from what I understand, i actually see this as the church. Ok, sidetracked...
6. I can be victorious, and this is especially important to me, because I'm usually very depressed and very anxious about life. But so long, as I know my hope is in God, that doesn't matter anymore. Sin is my biggest enemy, it kills, and it's not just murder and stealing. It can be what I think in my head about my sister. My sister! Argh! Get out. Makes me want to cry out as the tax collector, 'I am a sinner'.

And there's still many more things I learned. Gosh, thank you Lord for the experience today and yesterday. Oh, and thank you for the dinner with my life group members as well at Nyonya Hut. I'll do better in my event planning next time.

I think it's funny how the pastors encourage people (mature ones who are getting in their late twenties) to marry, unlike Paul who saw marriage as a trouble. hee hee

Ok, better stop in case something bad happens to me long message.

Nights.

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