The Gameplan
Wow. First time in weeks I've gone a couple days without a new post. I had a good reason! Promise!
Yesterday and today, my time was valuably spent at Palmetto Bible Camp with my awesome Furman friends on the BCM Leadership Team. It was great to see everyone together again; a few of them, I'd seen sparingly from summer BCM at Rodney's and Chris & EA's wedding. But anyway, we had a great time being together and just growing closer as a real team united to do God's will. We opened in a word of prayer and shared experiences in our summer missions work. I got to hear some incredible tales about God's work in their lives over the past few months. I heard for the first time about Dawn's work in D.C., Jon at Camp McCall, Jessie in Mexico... amazing how many opportunities God laid down at our feet this summer to go out and serve, sharing His Good News in love, testimony, and fellowship. So many places that are starved for that love. It feels so overwhelming at times.
After we shared, we spent a good bit of time in prayer. If you had just walked into that cabin and overheard us, I believe you would have felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. I felt it moving about us and within us as we cried out to the Lord for guidance and wisdom in the planning and decisions that needed to be made over the 24 hours to follow. So many requests we lifted up to God, it'd be impossible for me to hit them all. The incoming freshmen at Furman. Our new responsibilities as L-Team members. Personal struggles going on in our lives. Prayers for our friends like Paul who is going to Francis Marion, and Dawn who will be in Versailles, France for most of the fall. Oh wow. Thinking about it, I felt God's presence even more strongly, if that's possible, when we weren't talking, but just being silent. I feel like that's one thing we don't do enough of when we pray. I'm not against crying out to God and sharing openly our blessings and requests; I bring those before Him every day. But it's just as important to be silent, to just close our mouths and listen, really listen, to what the Holy Spirit has to say. Prayer is far from a one-way communication on our part. We have to be alert to what God is trying to tell us, and what better time to hear from Him than when we're on our knees in prayer, all distractions aside? I don't want to pray just to hear myself speak. My words mean nothing if I don't expect to encounter God and believe that He hears my prayers. More often than not, I find myself wanting to quit talking when I pray and be quiet so I can give the Holy Spirit a chance to come down and invade my heart. There's no telling what God might choose to tell me. Or maybe He won't. All the same, I feel we should make the effort to truly seek God in prayer, so that we might feel the kind of supernatural presence the believers of the church of Acts felt when their dwelling place was shaken as if by a mighty earthquake. They made contact with heaven. Who says the Holy Spirit can't do something like that now?
Psalm 46:10 - "Be still, and know that I am God..."
Ecclesiastes 3:1,7b - "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven ... a time to be silent and a time to speak."
From then on, most of our time was spent planning and mapping out our agenda for the year, scheduling special events and such. I'll be moving in along with most of the team on Sunday, September 4th, so we'll be working on projects that whole week for the incoming freshmen. We've got a luncheon planned for Thursday in the Gauntlet, a survival night for the following Monday night (before classes the next day), and of course, the first TNT of the year on Tuesday night. I feel like we accomplished a lot of things in the past couple of days, laying on the table our views and vision for our positions, how we can work together to glorify God in what we're going to do, and keeping all egos out of it. After all, this is God's will we seek; we're just the vessels He's going to work through.
I'm officially pumped up for junior year. :)
Song of the Day: Darrell Evans - "Let the River Flow"
Verse of the Day: "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else." - Acts 17:24-25
Yesterday and today, my time was valuably spent at Palmetto Bible Camp with my awesome Furman friends on the BCM Leadership Team. It was great to see everyone together again; a few of them, I'd seen sparingly from summer BCM at Rodney's and Chris & EA's wedding. But anyway, we had a great time being together and just growing closer as a real team united to do God's will. We opened in a word of prayer and shared experiences in our summer missions work. I got to hear some incredible tales about God's work in their lives over the past few months. I heard for the first time about Dawn's work in D.C., Jon at Camp McCall, Jessie in Mexico... amazing how many opportunities God laid down at our feet this summer to go out and serve, sharing His Good News in love, testimony, and fellowship. So many places that are starved for that love. It feels so overwhelming at times.
After we shared, we spent a good bit of time in prayer. If you had just walked into that cabin and overheard us, I believe you would have felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. I felt it moving about us and within us as we cried out to the Lord for guidance and wisdom in the planning and decisions that needed to be made over the 24 hours to follow. So many requests we lifted up to God, it'd be impossible for me to hit them all. The incoming freshmen at Furman. Our new responsibilities as L-Team members. Personal struggles going on in our lives. Prayers for our friends like Paul who is going to Francis Marion, and Dawn who will be in Versailles, France for most of the fall. Oh wow. Thinking about it, I felt God's presence even more strongly, if that's possible, when we weren't talking, but just being silent. I feel like that's one thing we don't do enough of when we pray. I'm not against crying out to God and sharing openly our blessings and requests; I bring those before Him every day. But it's just as important to be silent, to just close our mouths and listen, really listen, to what the Holy Spirit has to say. Prayer is far from a one-way communication on our part. We have to be alert to what God is trying to tell us, and what better time to hear from Him than when we're on our knees in prayer, all distractions aside? I don't want to pray just to hear myself speak. My words mean nothing if I don't expect to encounter God and believe that He hears my prayers. More often than not, I find myself wanting to quit talking when I pray and be quiet so I can give the Holy Spirit a chance to come down and invade my heart. There's no telling what God might choose to tell me. Or maybe He won't. All the same, I feel we should make the effort to truly seek God in prayer, so that we might feel the kind of supernatural presence the believers of the church of Acts felt when their dwelling place was shaken as if by a mighty earthquake. They made contact with heaven. Who says the Holy Spirit can't do something like that now?
Psalm 46:10 - "Be still, and know that I am God..."
Ecclesiastes 3:1,7b - "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven ... a time to be silent and a time to speak."
From then on, most of our time was spent planning and mapping out our agenda for the year, scheduling special events and such. I'll be moving in along with most of the team on Sunday, September 4th, so we'll be working on projects that whole week for the incoming freshmen. We've got a luncheon planned for Thursday in the Gauntlet, a survival night for the following Monday night (before classes the next day), and of course, the first TNT of the year on Tuesday night. I feel like we accomplished a lot of things in the past couple of days, laying on the table our views and vision for our positions, how we can work together to glorify God in what we're going to do, and keeping all egos out of it. After all, this is God's will we seek; we're just the vessels He's going to work through.
I'm officially pumped up for junior year. :)
Song of the Day: Darrell Evans - "Let the River Flow"
Verse of the Day: "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else." - Acts 17:24-25
posted by david @ 10:18 PM
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