Confused and Overwhelmed

Two words that accurately define me right now are confused and overwhelmed. I find myself at a place in my life where things seem to be turning in many different directions. For the past few months, I've struggled with who I really am in God, what my purpose and calling are, what God wants me to do. In addition to the ministry side of me, much of my secular job situations are changing as well. I've been offered two different positions in the company over the past three months, both of which would change the course of my family financially. One position would be a drop in pay for a year and then a major pay increase would occur and the other would be an instant pay increase (fairly sizable at that). What to do? I'm ready to move forward and do what it is that God has planned. Right now its just a waiting on God time in our lives. Whatever the outcome, I'm waiting on God. So for the moment, being confused and overwhelmed is where I am at. But even still, God is leading me into something deeper, something more than I've ever known before. It's a heavy feeling, an uncomfortable position, but beautiful. The title of a song comes to mind, Broken and Beautiful. I understand it more and more as the time goes on. I don't know what will happen, but I'm trusting God to do what it is He wants with me. I'm empty God, come fill me.

Shift Conference 2008

First off, I know its been a long, long time since I last posted. Sorry to all of my adoring fans waiting for some new word of wisdom. I hate to disappoint you if you are truly waiting for wise words because you probably have stumbled onto the wrong blog. Anyway, I wanted to post today about my experience so far at the Shift Conference at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL (thanks Hayley for encouraging me to come because it is worth it already). First off can you say enormous! This church is ridiculously huge. I'm so glad that I didn't have to go very far on campus today or else I may have been lost for quite a while. The first session started off with Brian McClaren talking about world-wide crises that we as the church need to engage. It was a good way to kick off the conference. I forgot to mention that Charlie Hall led worship at each of the three sessions today. That was awesome! Can we say massive goatee? He almost looked Jewish, a la David Crowder. The second session was led by Mark Yaconelli. I really, really enjoyed this. He talked about getting away from all of the processes, the forms, and the schedules that we get so tied down to and allowing God to empty us so He can use us. He used the passage of Scripture from Luke 5 where a crowd pressed Jesus and He went into an empty fishing boat and taught the crowd. Then he told the fishermen who worked and toiled all night to go back out and let down there nets again and they caught so many fish that both boats began to sink. Then Peter uttered these words, "Oh, Lord, please leave me—I’m too much of a sinner to be around You." He was essentially saying, "Jesus I can't do this. I'm not good enough or gifted enough. I'm empty, just like my boat was." Mike said that it is this type of person God wants to use right now to speak into the lives of students and lead them into a genuine relationship with God, a relationship that leads them to do more than just exist but rather to live out their faith. Amazing stuff! The last session was led by Shane Claiborne, a native of Tennessee (so at least I was able to hear another southern accent than my own). He talked about moving from a condemning, condescending Christianity where we exclude people to being led by grace and love, seeing with new eyes. Everything seemed to go hand-in-hand today. I pray the rest of the week is as good as today, if not better. I'll be back with more info later.