I've noticed that in life solitude is very important. My favorite band, as some of you know, is Relient k. I have always appreciated Matt Thiessen's honest, clever, and thought provoking lyrics. In one song, called "Therapy", Matt penned this lyric, "Loneliness and solitude are two things not to get confused.". What a true statement that I think many people need to hear! I know this past week, what solitude I have gotten, has been very helpful for I have needed to think about a lot of things. Along with the thoughts of solitude I've noticed my need of wisdom. While wisdom is needed every day of every week of every month of every year, this week it especially stood out. It's amazing how often I forget to ask for it. How could I forget to ask for wisdom when it is so often pointed out in King Solomon's life, the books of Poetry and Wisdom (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon), and just throughout the rest of the Bible. It's filled with wisdom! So how do I so easily forget to simply ask for it? Well anyway, this little intro doesn't have a huge amount of relevance with what the speakers talked about this week, but I've noticed that I seem to be learning more from the situations and people around me than the actual speakers (although the speakers are fantastic). So yeah...I'll actually talk about the speakers this week.
Tuesday and Wednesday was definitely a treat. We got the privilege of hearing from DA Horton, executive director of ReachLife Ministries which is an extension of Reach Records. On Tuesday he talked about Heart Transformation using Romans 12:1-2 and Psalms 51:1-12. The fact he talked about Psalms 51 was really cool because the song, "White As Snow" by Jon Foreman had been in my mind for a few days. On Wednesday he talked about Maximizing Moments. I've heard this talked about a lot since I've been at Link Year but something clicked this time. I don't know if it was so much DA, (even though he did a great job of communicating the point behind maximizing moments), but just the scenarios around me that helped drive home the point he was making. Not just maximizing moments here at Link Year, but also back home. Thursday we got to hear from Darrel Shemwell. We have had him once before and I really enjoyed him, which proved to be the case this time as well. He spoke about the sovereignty of God. Quite a hard topic to explain in one day but I thought he did a good job with it, through videos and his own talking.
Five things!
1) What I said at the beginning of this post, the whole thing about loneliness and solitude. That was really just emphasized and reaffirmed throughout the whole week. I was really able to see the advantage of just getting away from the everyday bustle of Link Year and getting some time in solitude to pray and read. But more than that, just listen.
2) This ties into point one, but the whole thing about listening. So many times we get caught up with just talking to God but we never take the time to listen. It's so important to just be quiet sometimes. With this being a culture of always doing something getting time to be quiet and not say, pray, or move is just really helpful.
3) The advantage of using time management in and outside of Link Year. Whenever I heard about the time management I just confined it to only Link Year but I need to take those lessons back home.
4) I was really challenged by a fellow friend and student with the correlation of free will and God's sovereign will. As a full five point Calvinist I should really be able to answer the question better than I did, but it is something I'll be working on for sure.
5) If God resurrects us in our dead trespasses than what in the world is the purpose of evangelism? It seems simple to me, God uses people to accomplish His will. Does He needs us to accomplish His will? Heck nah, but God in His mercy and grace uses us. Also Jesus commanded us to evangelize so that's sorta a thing.
Well that's about it, thanks for reading, yada yada yada, adios.
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