Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Exploding with Joy! (Part 1)

 Our weekend at Worship@8500 was more than I can describe in words. So many of my prayers were answered and the Lord blessed me even much farther beyond my puny little dreams!

Oh goodness, where to begin…

Well, let me start with telling you that this weekend (and these people) was not about the music. Although their music is fantastically outstanding and hugely beneficial to anyone’s walk with Jesus (if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you MUST check out Enter the Worship Circle), the hearts and ministry go so so so much deeper.

From here I’ll tell you about it one day at a time:

FRIDAY

The first morning’s session started out very intense. Ben Pasley invited Rebecca Dunning to step up to the mic and give her story first. She had a broken, beautiful, dirty story about being invited by the Father to become a daughter and stop being a slave. We laughed; we cried. Ben got up when she was done (or perhaps it was a little later on in the session… can’t remember exactly) and asked us if we felt like we’d been French kissed on a first date. Haha! Love that guy… He reminds me so much of my quirky husband… Anyway, after Rebecca spoke about her beautiful story of being an orphan, not knowing her earthly father, finally setting out to look for him only to find that he had passed away, discovering he had a family who he loved and who he told all about Rebecca and asked to find her and love her, we had the privilege of hearing from Chris Austin.

Chris stood up and told us about his poor pinky nail that had fallen off that morning after having been slammed between a hammer and something metal he was working on a few days before. He related that to how sometimes the Lord just wants to deal with us outright without anything to cushion the blow. That spurred an amazing “repentance party.” I have never seen an open mic like this before! I wish all open mics could be that raw and vulnerable and effective… Wow! So many people got up and confessed their sins, from not living as a son of the Father to not accepting love from others and so on. Then each repented for the sin they confessed and declared Truth and how they would stop and be different. Hope that makes sense…

I stood up. And spoke. And confessed. And repented. I confessed that I didn’t like people and I didn’t like relationships because they are messy and hard and it would just be easier to go about on my own and not need anyone. I repented of not loving God’s people and not allowing them to love me. I declared that I wanted to see others with the eyes of the Lord and to love others with His love.

Freedom.

No other way to express it.

And that was just the beginning…

A lot of Friday’s session was about recognizing that we are sons of the Most High God and we need to stop doing and trying and just BE sons. It’s just that simple! Because, you see, our Daddy in heaven is all about His Kingdom, which He established for His Son, Jesus, to reign over. And the Kingdom is all about family. So, Daddy sent Jesus to make all of us His sons, too, and expand His family. Because He wants to! And that is all that He wants.

Beautiful.

After the crazy morning session’s intensity that was so rich and pure and lovely, we got to enjoy some time to process and eat lunch and hang out with all of the amazing, beautiful people we were blessed to be spending the weekend with. Oh, and I forgot to mention how absolutely stunning the scenery up there at 8500 feet above sea level in the Rocky Mountains was. Our tent was right on a lake so when we woke up Friday morning we could hear the fish jumping and saw a dear strolling along the lakeside.

Breathtaking.

Every afternoon they had breakout sessions you could go to and choose from. It was hard to choose because they were all so very very interesting and intriguing and I wanted to be at all of them! So Tom and I split them up. On Friday I went to “Kingdom” and he went to “Dreams and Prophecy.” At “Kingdom” we listened to the wonderful wisdom of Jack Taylor, who declared that he could just sit and talk about the Kingdom forever, which he pretty much did and it was great to soak it all in. He expounded on many of the points that had been danced around during the morning session and had so much wisdom to impart. You will have to ask Tom about his time at the breakout he went to…

We had the afternoon to enjoy the company of one another, grab some dinner (the five of us went to Divide and ate at McGuinty’s, which is the most amazing food I think I have ever had!), and chew on and process what had happened so far.

The evening session was all worship. **insert big goofy smile** It was so passionate and joyful and raw and dirty and wonderful! Karla Adolphe (who is absolutely beautiful and amazing, by the way, and not just her music, but her whole being) took the lead for much of the evening. Her bluesy style was catchy and did wonders for my soul. We danced, we laughed, we cried, we worshiped the Only One who is worthy of all of our praise. Mmmm….

It was good.

It was a wonderful first day and set the stage for much expectation for the rest of the weekend, which was more than fulfilled…

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