This morning:
Small family group with just three of us, but the best one yet. Because there was time set aside to do eight people’s worth of sharing, we were able to actually have some good discussion with everyone involved and then an extended time of praying for each other and praying for the day.
John Piper was back up this morning. I liked what he had to say better, but I still don’t understand why people find his talks so challenging. Every single talk I’ve ever heard Lon give has been more challenging than Dr. Piper’s talks for me. That said, Dr. Piper is amazingly humble. People will scream out things like “you’re my hero” during his talks and he doesn’t even respond. I’ve never seen a minister who’s near as publically visible and even half as humble as him.
Matt Redman led worship for the morning session. He’s my favorite worship leader of the Passion-affiliated artists, and it was cool to have the chance to worship with him. There were some new songs, and some of his really old stuff. The song choices were great, and were an excellent lead up and conclusion to John Piper’s talk (which is always based on the glory of God).
This morning, I learned a lot about brokenness and suffering. Candi (Pearson) Shelton shared about her 23 year old brother’s recent death. He was supposed to be one of the community group worship leaders. Candi and her husband are the worship leaders for my community group. I’m still not sure how I feel about having community groups that feature nationally known people running them, but I guess it’s cool that a lot of big names want to be involved with what God is doing through passion.
Evening update:
I went to a sectional on hearing God through hard times this afternoon. I intended to sleep in a corner. I heard the start of the talk as I was dozing off, and decided to stay awake. Ask me about Jimmy the cricket–his very memorable example.
Back to the hotel for break, but the hall was being cleaned and so it was too loud for sleeping. I caught up with the outside world and looked through some old vtONE files. Sno and I had dinner with Zack, a good friend and the former leader of vtONE. I updated him about all the awesome things that happened this semester that related to seeds that he was planting years ago for vtONE. It was also good to get updated on how things are going for him and to find out that he’s going back to seminary next semesterish.
I missed most of the worship for the evening session because we took a while for dinner. Louie gave a good talk, but I had actually heard the exact same talk given by Cory Mansfield two years ago, who used to be one of the [nlcf] worship leaders. I think he may have stolen it from Louie, but it wasn’t quite the same.
I need to get some sleep so I’m safe to drive tomorrow, but the two real highlights of the day were the prayer journey and the late night session. I will fill in this part when I’m back.