Mary's Blogs

WOW! God is soooo amazing. He caused for sooo many amazing transformations to happen this weekend. He allowed us to see more of his glory and mercy upon our lives and how we are to serve him.

This weekend was the InterVarsity fall retreat called Trilogy. We had four different tracks which revealed the different spiritual walks of following Christ. (I’m really bad at explaining things correctly). Anyways, I went to the track ROC which stands for Revealed On Campus. There, we started the night by reviewing the story of the paralytic and seeing if where ever we are in our walk with Christ, do we go out of our way to reach for him. The next morning, one of our Intern-staff members Crystal gave an amazing talk on the spiritual disciplines and talked about giving our time to God through meditation and solitude. I was struck first by what she had said: how can we be afraid of things that are “too spiritual” when our Father God reaches us THROUGH the spiritual realm. (It wasn’t that exact quote but that was the main point.) She talked about a man in the bible who went away in the wilderness for 20 years being in solitude with God and fighting spiritual battles. Afterwards everyone recognized his change in character and his spiritual change and his passion for God. This part of her message was so compelling. It definitely made me want to devote my mornings to the Lord to purposefully allow Him my best energy in the day. I want to be transformed for and from the Lord. I want to be like that man. From there, we concentrated on what the spiritual disciplines were and what it really meant to be in meditation with God. Meditation isn’t only for buddist monks or for those who are truly and spiritually in tuned. It’s for us ordinary believers to connect to God. This I thought was kind of different. I didn’t think too much about it until God hit me in the face with it and totally met me where I didn’t expect. He showed me what he wanted from me. He showed me how I am to serve him and he revealed to me an image of how much MORE I need to allow the blessings he gives me to be poured to those around me; not just friends or family but anyone I might run into. I want God’s light, blessings, and love to be poured out in an obvious sense.

One of the staff members from IVCF Chico state gave a talk that night about truly believing in God. He emphasized on serving and telling others just why you served them. Truthfully he talked so much that I’m getting his talks all mixed up. But my favorite part about his talk is when he stated just how much of a miracle it really is for someone to truly believe in Jesus Christ. It was soooo legit. oh I remember now. Hehe. Saturday night he told the story of a friend who suffered from depression. This guy didn’t ever smile. But somehow after God had revealed to him through someone else that he should get prayer for his depression, the staff member told him to tell God about all the lies he believes about himself. When he finally did, he started to laugh crazily and realize that none of it was true. Not long after, God had met him where he was in life and he became a believer. This story was so beautiful it made me cry or at least kind of tear up. It made me reminded me just how beautiful it truly is for ANYONE to finally meet God in their lives. T_T

The final talk was based on revealing God in whatever we do. If we do a deed, then to make sure that person KNOWS that it was through God’s blessing that the service was possible. He talked about bringing others to Christ and how obvious it can and should be for us to want to bring others to Christ just like it was so natural in any situation to think about bringing others to Christ for a friend he knew named Mario. He talked about Peter and John who went to the Temple in Jerusalem and used the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth to heal the man. They took no credit but instead proclaimed Jesus’ name. He talked about them bringing 3000 people to Christ. After hearing all this, God put the craving of service on my heart. I want to serve. I want to be the one God uses to bring others to him. I want to show others of God’s blessings.

In everything that God revealed this past weekend, I thank God for the peace that he put on my heart in my relationship with him. I thank Him that he allows me the privilege to hunger to perform services in His name. And finally, I’m thankful that God allowed me to want to serve him on campus, revealing this with my talk with Licia. Haha. He uses her a lot to reveal things to me. So cool.

My Lord is my faithful Provider, Protector, Merciful Redeemer, my healer and my Best Friend. (This is not a parallel sentence. I know. Sorry English majors!) I thank him for allowing me the miracle of knowing just who he is in my life.

Post a comment

Name: (required)

Email Address: (will not be published) (required)

URL:

Comments: