It looks like it's been about a year since I last updated my blog so it feels like it's about time. And for the first time in my adult life I am jobless and not by choice. After 9+ years with the city and 5 days shy of re-accruing all my vacation I was given 5 minutes pack up my office and no explanation as to why my services were no longer needed. Everything raced through my mind from insurance to how this would affect my one in college and the other graduating this year and their little brother and sister to how was I going to tell them. There is no easy answer to any of those initial thoughts either. Despite all my experience, areas of expertise, training and certifications I was caught up in not just politics but office politics. There is a lot more to that story that I may share in the future but that's not the point or focus of today's post.
In the midst of all this my wife and I were about to pile in a van and drive 15 hours with 12 college and high school seniors to attend the Passion Conference as my wife is in charge of our church's college ministry and I accompanied a group a few years ago as well so I knew what I was getting into. And this is the direction I want to focus on. So then my mind turned to can I take the time to do this now? Can we afford to do this now? What if this and what if that? Then I realized all I had now was time and the majority of everything was already then care of and then families blessed us with gift cards so we didn't have to worry about a bunch of the meals during the trip.
Up to this point I had been focusing on prayers for the young men and women in our group as we would be joining tens of thousands of others at this conference. I had also been seeking guidance and wisdom for the discussions we would lead as we all would be trying to digest what each of the speakers had to say and how it applied to us as individuals. But then my circumstances changed and I began to think I needed answers and the guidance and wisdom for my impending job search and lost sight of what I should be focused on for this trip. In all of this I should have remained focused on God and the needs of those we were leading and with that everything else would have fallen into place.
To try and refocus I decided to fast from the first evening of the conference to the last session. I generally don't like discus when or why I am doing a fast until after it is done but it is one of those biblical principles that was practically a requirement when seeking God's will but has been lost on today's Christians. There are roughly fasting 77 references in the bible for roughly 10 different purposes but the most often one is prayer. And I was needing to do a lot of prayer in those few days so that is where I placed my focus.....in prayer.
For those first few days everything seemed to fall into place. Each of the speakers seemed to have something for me. The first night Levi Lusko talked about how we need to get rid of our bucket lists but what I remember the most was how he talked about pitting our present problems vs the promise prize. It seemed to hit me squarely between the eyes. He added more on how the less we need from this world the more you can enjoy it, the more you can do for it and the more you can withstand the pain within it. He also talked about how it should be our ambition to be less ambitious and that we really need a different scale to measure everything of this world. We need to be weighing God's glory against our difficulties but to always remember that salvation is not based on you but placed on you. For many of our students that was the 1st time they'd heard him speak and though our discussions later that night what he said spoke to each and everyone of us.
The next morning we began our day worshiping with David Crowder and it set the mood for the rest of the day. John Piper then spoke to us about loving God and delighting in that love and using the overflow to love others and realizing the greatest reality in all the universe is the glory of God. But the phrase that spoke o me the most is that God is more glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him. It just hit me where I was standing about how I hadn't that feeling of satisfaction or contentment in Him in a while and I began searching myself for the "why" I felt that way. But some of the biggest gut punches were delivered by Christine Cain and if you haven't heard her speak you need to, plain and simple as that. She started off her session about how we were created to know no shame but that's the first thing the serpent pursued making us question God's authority and that we will believe whatever everyone else says if we don't know what God said. It's also easy to disobey God when we question the character of God. When we look back to the garden God is asking the same question today as He did of Adam and Eve back then and that's "where are you"? We get distracted and pulled in so many directions these days that we get lost and forget where God is even though he is constantly reaching out to us. The biggest statement she had for us is that at some point we have to decide that what Jesus did for us on the cross is bigger than what someone else did to us. Again it felt as if each of the speakers were talking directly into my current situation. But it didn't stop there. That evening we had the privilege of having Louie Giglio speak to us in our arena and he talked about being used by God. How we are all flaming arrows in the hands of a merciful God and what would happen if we let Him send us where He needed us. We have to trust those hands that are holding the arrow. The same nail scarred hands that bought our freedom. We have to believe the purpose is greater than our plan and that the cost is worth it. There is still unfinished work of the church despite the finished work of Christ and we need to live our life on purpose for a purpose and what we make that purpose will determine if that work is ever finished. As this day finished and we gathered together to debrief and bribe our kids with candy to share their thoughts I could feel a sense of healing in our group. I felt that there was spiritual healing and closure but it wasn't me because even though I didn't know it then....he wasn't finished with me yet.
Our last day again started with worship before we had the chance to listen to Priscilla Shirer (The War Room). I didn't take as many notes for this final session as I was busy laughing along with her stories about her family and how she related them to all of us. But I did come away with come as you are but don't stay as you are and to honor God vs impressing people. I was also beginning to feel as if I hadn't gotten what I was seeking. That I didn't get clear direction or answers and that's when God decided to reveal all this to me. We closed with the song No Longer Slaves and in that song there is a verse "I am a child of God. I'm no longer a slave to fear" and the words wouldn't come and I couldn't sing. It was then that I realized I was not claiming that as a reality that I didn't feel that I was a child of God. It was with that revelation that I could sing again. That I could praise His name.
When we got back from the conference and our pastor prayed over me after communion he prayed those same words....that I was a child of God. It was then that I told him what I experienced that last day, that last song. We both realized then how much God had his hand in it all. It was then that I came to the conclusion that I had placed my identity in my job. That's who I had become. We don't realize it but that's what we do. When someone asks what we do we tell them what we do for a living. In reality I should be saying what I do for the kingdom of God. I should be saying I volunteer with our youth and corral a bunch of crazy 6th grade boys on Wednesday nights showing them the grace of God while trying to reveal the truths of the bible in ways that they can relate to. I help teach Sunday school, I'm part of a home group in our church where we lift each other up and share each others burdens along our spiritual journeys. I'm a part of our church choir (despite not being a tenor) helping lead worship when we lift up our voices. I help guide high schoolers on mission trips where expectations get flipped upside down and lives get changed. I am a member of Grimes United Methodist Church and I am a child of God. I still don't have a job but I still have my family and my church family and I can still be who I am meant to be in Christ.
