Cause Conference: Friday

Hello again!

My last post covered Thursday night of the Cause Conference, so if you haven't read that one yet, you should. :)

Anyways, Friday morning started a really great day for me. We had the privilege of listening to a prolific writer, named Tri Robinson, speak. His talk really focused around Nehemiah, a book in the Bible that is a prophecy discussing the resurgence of God's wonderful kingdom on Earth. And Tri brought up a ton of amazing points about vision for God's kingdom. Here are some of the points that I wrote down:

• We can sit around and debate what we think God wants to do, or we can just kneel down and say "Yes, Lord" to whatever He has planned for us. And ultimately, we need to be Jesus' hands and feet on this Earth. The most important step for this is literally to sit down and pray to God, "Lord, show me my part".
• Another thing to consider when doing Jesus' work is that we shouldn't become "addicted to the problem". We shouldn't wallow in despair over the misfortune of a people to the point where that's all we focus on. Our focus should always be directed to God, because He is the solution to every problem. No matter what. Without our focus on Him, we aren't really going to accomplish anything for His kingdom.
• There are a couple ways to identify if a vision (in this talk, Tri's definition of vision was that of a dream that you have for something. Like a vision statement vision, not a vision of prophecy or something like that) you have is really from God. If the vision is overwhelmingly bigger than you, it most certainly is from the Father. He gives you visions that seem impossible to prove that He really can do anything! And that, my friend, is amazing. Also, in Tri's words, "dreams come and go, but visions from God never go away". And may they never go away!
• Lastly, Tri took a very important technical look at making God's vision for you a reality. He said that it is important not to pre-sell a vision before you have developed a plan. And that the most important way to develop this plan is to remember that this idea didn't come from you, it came from God.

This look at God's kingdom and the dreams that He has for each of us was kind of a newer idea to me, and so I think it was really important for me to hear!

On Friday afternoon, I went to Rick's (the speaker from Thursday night) breakout session, entitled "Everyone gets to play". I really enjoyed the encouragement that it provided, especially concerning the fact that we each have our own part in God's kingdom. One of the things that Rick said that really affected me (even though I'm not very sports-oriented) is that we are all on God's varsity team. If we choose to bow out, there is no JV team to step up in our place! God gives us each an equally important spot on His team, and if we choose not to play, we're letting the whole team down. Rick said this in the context of not putting yourself down, or thinking that you are less-something than someone else.

Looking back at this point in the weekend, I know that God was building me up for everything that he had in store for me for the rest of the weekend. And I'm so grateful that He had such a heart for His children, and has such a great plan for all of us.

Friday night, we had the extreme privilege of hearing from David Eubank, a man who lives in Thailand and spends 8 months out of every year in the jungles of Burma, trying to bring supplies to the people who are oppressed by the Burmese government (which is apparently almost the whole population). And in seeing his pictures and some videos that he brought along with him, my heart broke for the people of Burma. And that very night, I decided that I want to sponsor a child through Compassion International. This is an organization that allows you to sponsor a child in poverty-- and with a $38/month donation, you assure that they have food, water and education. Not only do you get to know that they are somewhat released from poverty, you get to be their pen pal, and write letters to the child. So, without further ado, I would like to introduce you all to Sofia, my compassion child!

Miss Sofia is 7 years old and lives in Colombia with her Mom and Dad

And folks, let me tell you, I'm so excited to get my information packet in the mail, so that I can start writing this beautiful little girl letters!! It is so strange, but I already love this girl, and I haven't even heard from her yet! Please pray that I continue to have the resources to support this wonderful little girl for a very long time! Also, if anybody is interested in sponsoring a child, but doesn't think that they can afford the full commitment of $38 per month, I'm almost positive that this organization would fully welcome a dual or split sponsorship. If anyone is interested, please, PLEASE email me, and I will try my hardest to find someone that will be a partner for you! God wants us to love his children in need, no matter whether we are paying the full amount of half the amount.

So that was Friday night. Oh, wait... it's not over!! On Friday night, we were given the opportunity to do a Pub Outreach in downtown Denver where we would be handing out water bottles to people who were bar-hopping in Lodo (Where most of the nightlife in Denver resides). So, we met at the church at 11:30pm and set off for Downtown in pairs or groups of three. Since the conference was for people from all over the country, us folks from Arvada were encouraged to pair up with people who weren't from the area so that we wouldn't get lost. (For me, this was a little pointless, because I don't spend a lot of time in Denver, and therefore am not all that knowledgeable about where things are in comparison to another. However, I would like to point out that my partner and I--although we thought we were lost-- made it out just fine!) Anyway, I got paired up with this awesome guy from Fort Collins named Christian. We immediately connected because he too is going to school for music (piano performance), so we had lots to talk about! Well, when we got to Denver, we just took a bunch of water and started walking around and handing it out. And it was so cool to see the look on different people's faces as we gave them the water. Some people looked at us like we're crazy, some people got really excited, and one guy was so intoxicated that he gave us both hugs. We ended up running out of water really quickly, so after about 30 minutes, the guy that was leading the outreach went and bought 3 more cases of water for us to hand out. I think the part that I enjoyed the most was giving water to two groups that I distinctly remember. Both had one person who had clearly had entirely too much to drink and was leaning heavily on another person. When we asked them if they would like some water, the friends of the extremely drunk person looked so happy and relieved and ecstatic. One of the guys even told us that we were exactly what they needed, and a blessing in disguise. It was just really cool to know that we affected someone's night in the name of Jesus Christ. Cool, right?

And so Friday ended, a thoroughly wonderful day, full of lots of learning and Christ's love! Stay tuned to hear about the Saturday that quite literally changed my life! May God bless each and every one of you!