A renewal

I'm baaaack!!!! Last Saturday my mom and I got back from going to the ATI conference in Indy. It was simply fabu (even though we did have to get up at 2:20 a.m. to leave for the airport). I got to meet lots of people (though with most of them I'm afraid I can't even remember their names) and go to lots of wonderful sessions. I was blessed by the concept of prayer being like we're entertaining God as Abraham entertained Jesus and how we need to stop and pray so that Jesus won't pass us by like He almost did when He was walking on the water.

Another thing we heard about was saluting people. It's amazing how important the first brief eye contact you have with somebody can be. In that moment you have the opportunity to "enfold them in the arms of your heart" or to stare at their strange appearance and judge them by it. If they see you looking at them the latter way they are more likely to feel like, "Huh, they don't like me so I won't like them!" And if you then try to salute them and witness to them, it won't do them any good. So now I must try to salute people, because it's so important that they feel Christ's love through me.

Also we heard from another speaker who talked about the verse in Psalm 119 that says, "Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee." He made a point that I had never thought about before--if we're meditating on God's word and hiding it in our hearts then it helps prevent us from sinning. This man even had a powerful testimony how meditating on Bible verses had helped him conquer lust. Wow, some mighty powerful stuff!

We even had a day of "delighting in the Lord." We came to sessions at nine o'clock in the morning and kept on going with no lunch until five o'clock! Of course it helped that it was Thursday, so my mom and I were old pros at this skipping lunch business.:) There were breaks, never fear, but they were set aside so that we could spend time working on Bible studies or confessing things as a family. It was an incredible sight to see people scattered all over the huge auditorium (there were about two thousand people at the conference), in the halls, and outside, gathered in closely-knit clumps as families or as individuals kneeling in prayer.

My mom and I had a good time together on the third level balcony. As we were praying and talking, I was thinking about the speaker's message that we had heard the night before about hiding God's word in our heart. I also felt like a verse came to me to lift me up as I was feeling kind of bogged down in my own degradation. It's one from Romans 6, that says, "How shall we who died to sin still live in it?" Yikes! To me it was as if Paul was saying, "Hello? Wake up people! Duh! Christ made it so you don't have to live in sin that way. It's taken care of!"

Duh, I guess He did. And I found great encouragement in it.