It Boils Down to the Self or God

As I said in the last post, I was away this past weekend on a youth retreat. Every February, all the youth groups from my presbytery get together and go on a weekend retreat called Breakaway. I look forward to this retreat every year, and I haven't been able to go in two years. I was super psyched to go this year. Anyway, enough background.

The main senior high speaker was Derek Melleby. (pictured first). He was fantastic. The theme this year was "worldview".

I wanted to list a few little notes that really struck me. I'm sorry if they are all over the place.....

•Tim Keller quote: Sin is not just doing bad things, but taking good things and making them the ultimate things. And they take place of God.

•We have these images of what "beauty" is but no one can actually achieve it.

•The things we do effect what we believe.

•Some times in life we realize that we're just toys.

•You will be tempted to find your identity and self worth in:

- grades and accolades

-sports

-future career

-christian activity

•(Derek talked about how we put on masks, making our "identity" what we want it to be for different people.) We get very good at a very young age at wearing these masks.

•Paul envisions that the church is the one place where we take our masks off and show the real us, but that is usually not the case.

•"Life is lived forward, but understood backwards".

•If you are in Christ and Christ is in you:

-You are completely accepted

-You are totally secure

-You are deeply significant

•Because your life is noisy...

-remember your story

-be still before God

-listen to people who care about you

-...tell others they loved by God

•Tim Keller quote: "Everybody has to live for something. Whatever that something is becomes 'Lord of your Life',

whether you think of it that way or not. Jesus is the only Lord who, if you receive him, will fulfill you completely, and, if you fail him, will forgive you eternally." {sigh}

ok. I also went to a seminar by Stephen Nichols and I thought I would mention some notes. Dr. Nichols wrote a book with my dad and teaches at LBC. Here are some notes I have from his talk:

•Even good things can lead us to the wrong destination.

•It's easy to look at actions and choices, so we focus on that.

•We make Christianity a list of Do's and Don'ts. The problems with do's and don'ts is that they don't go deep enough.

•It's harder to look below the surface and see what we're really about.

•Worldview tells us to pay attention to what we think.

•We do what we worship and we worship what we desire and what we love. We worship ourselves like an idol and idols are very demanding.

•It boils down to the self or God.

...So thats it. I hope this all made sense. I'm sorry if it didn't. Writing it all down here has helped me process it a little more. This retreat was epicly wonderful. I cried so much. ha. I thought I'd share some links to some of the songs we sang that we sang and really hit home. I'm sorry that the majority of the videos are lame, but, oh well.

•Our God- Chris Tomlin

•You're Beautiful- Phil Wickham

•and the David Crowder Band song that I posted in the last post

Well, Thanks, as always, for reading. I hope it all made sense.

God Bless.