Winter Retreat Thoughts

It's amazing to me how you can be in the middle of one of the hardest most tiring days and weeks you have ever had, yet still be blown away by the power of God. Tonight was the main service, the big daddy of services for Winter Retreat '09 and it was totally tubular. Why do I say totally tubular? Because it was 80's night.

Here's the skinny on what happened. Three words: God showed up! I am sitting here at the hotel after the service and it is almost 2am and I have only had like 16 hours of sleep in the last 5 days, but that really didn't matter tonight. God showed up!

I have not felt so free to really praise God like we did tonight in a long time. I haven't felt as free to pray for students in the way that I feel God wants me to in a long time, but tonight I had that opportunity. The prayer time one on one with students was probably the single highlight for me for this entire retreat.

I want students to go back to their cities and schools and church buildings and start being the church. I hope that students will go back and not just go back to normalcy because we had another retreat, but go back to a changed heart. I pray that these students left their heart on the altars and left with God's heart. That is the heart that they need, if they are going to change the world. The calling is not to just change their lives or have a program at a church, the goal is to go and make a difference in the world. In the next couple of days I will post more about how we as the church need to be making a difference in the world and our cities and schools. We have too many issues in our culture to just go back and be the same. We need to make a difference . . .

Be looking for my next post . . .