Going Back to Spring

I know it has been way too long since i've posted. I am about to post about 5 things to catch up :)

First, I will start with a great opportunity our staff team had in April. All 25 of us travelled together to Louisville, KY to participate in a conference called Together for the Gospel (T4G).

7,000 people were there (mostly pastors). It was huge. I had never been to a conference other than ones hosted by Campus Outreach, so it was fun to get to see the differences. Obviously size was a huge difference, but it was also really nice to get to sit back and enjoy everything and not be thinking about details.

Here are a few highlights:

- Getting to hear from speakers like John Piper, CJ Mahaney, Matt Chandler, Al Mohler, Mark Dever and John MacArthur. So much great teaching from very gifted and faithful men (all the talks are online at www.t4g.org)

- Walking away with 20 free books! I'll probably never get through them all but I'm going to try

- An 8 hour road trip with some of my favorite people. Here is a picture of us when we reached the Kentucky state line:

- A week with our staff team - just getting to be around them and have fun and learn together and meet others who also work in ministry

- Being in the minority as a girl, and for once in my life, watching guys have a line out the door for the bathroom and getting to get in and out of the girls bathroom really quickly

- 3 other Campus Outreach regions were also at the conference, and our last morning there we had the privilege of hearing from Matt Chandler over breakfast. Matt Chandler is the pastor of the Village Church in Dallas, TX and this past November was diagnosed with brain cancer. He shared with us what the Lord had been teaching him through it, and it was really encouraging to hear. The biggest thing that hit me was how he explained his suffering through a passage in Matthew 7:

²⁴"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. ²⁶And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. ²⁷And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it."

Matt talked about how the point is that yes, we build our houses on the rock - we place the fullness of our hope in Jesus, in the fact that life here and now is temporary and fleeting so we live as exiles waiting for the life that is to come. But even though we do that, the flood still comes! Life with Christ doesn't mean things go perfectly. Hard things happen. Christians suffer. But we have the power to withstand the storm because of Jesus. It was so powerful to hear that from someone who is in the midst of so much uncertainty about his future.

If I lost the things dearest to me tomorrow, would I stand firm with that kind of hope?