08.24.09
Posted in Move at 9:14 pm by SapphiraAdi
God has not forgotten His people; He hears their cries for freedom.
Jeff Walling – Exodus 6:1-12
In the morning during D-Groups we were given these silver paper wristbands (like the ones that have those little sticky things on one end and you always end up sticking yourself instead of the paper… :P) and on the underside of the paper we had to write down things in our life that we were in bondage to. Then put one on each wrist and wear them the rest of the day as a reminder of the things that bind us. During the session at night, our leaders shackled our two wristbands together with another wristband so we couldn’t move our hands very far apart at all, it was really annoying… They showed a video that illustrated the fact that we can’t unbind ourselves, when we try to get away by our own power we often fall right back into sin (slavery). I thought that at the end we were going to have to help each other out of the bands but the speaker just prayed and told us to pray about the things that bound us and then to break them. Oh well, I thought it would’ve illustrated the point better to have to break each others but whatever. It was still cool, and nice to have that little illustration Everything was very visual at Move, all the lessons had something for you to make or do to connect the theme for the day and help you think about it all day. Here are some notes I took…
How do you introduce God?
“I am the God who brought you out of slavery.”
It wasn’t about Moses or who he was, it was about God and what He could do through Moses and through the bondage of the Israelites.
When God wants to free someone He does.
God is offering you freedom.
You are only as free as your secrets.
Never forget where you came from.
Some comments on that last note, when I heard that I wrote down part of a bible verse that I remembered from a Ted Dekker book I read, “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt.” That verse is found a lot of times in Deuteronomy. 15:15, 16:12, 24:18, 24:22… And its a running theme in Ted’s book Kiss.
“Remember that you were a slave in Egypt.”
“That’s cryptic.”
“Not really. It’s Scripture. His people were oppressed by their enemies.”
“And he wants you to keep that at the front of your mind? He wants you to stay focused on the darkest seasons in your life? How could that possibly do any good?”
“He wants you to remember who delivered you from that time, Shauna. That’s the point of holding on to memory: delivery, not darkness.”
“Perspective, not pain.”
We’re to remember who it was that freed us from bondage. Because once you’re free its easy to think that you don’t need help or that you freed yourself, but like the bible verse said, “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there.” Not to remind us of our sins but to remind us of who it was that delivered us from those sins.
*edit*
Mark Moore’s Encounter message.
Jeff Wallings Evening message.
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08.11.09
Posted in Move at 10:05 pm by SapphiraAdi
God is calling you, not because of who you are, but because of who He is.
Jeff Walling – Exodus 3:1-12
Identity Drives Reality
You’ve been listening to who everyone else says you are.
You don’t have to live by the cards you were dealt.
They will never not be able to call on Me. They are my children. – God
Moses became the “guy with God.” “How would you like to be the guy with Me?”
We have forgotten to let God do it with us. We try to do it on our own, but we forget about the great I AM.
Those are my notes from Monday night’s message about Identity. What is your identity? Because your identity drives your reality. We don’t have to live by what we’ve been told we are or who we’re going to be. We’re children of God and He has something bigger planned for us then what everyone says we are going to do. When Moses asks God, “Who am I that should go to Pharaoh?” God reminds him that HE is the great I AM and that He is the one using us.
They showed a video of a long line of kids sitting in front of a school counselors office, waiting their turn to be told what they were going to be… All they did was go in, she looked them over, and then told them what they were going to do. Some of the kids even said things like “I wanna be a fireman!” and she’d say “Accountant” or something like that. The world is telling us what to do and who we’re going to become, but we don’t have to live by what they tell us to be.
(I was just flipping through my scratch paper notebook and found a whole journal entry from the first day of CIY… lol I was planning on writing every day but evidently it didn’t happen, and I totally forgot that I had. So this is my journal entry, kinda restates what I said ^ up there, but oh well, I already had that all written and its good hearing it different ways. :))
The first day of CIY was amazing! We left around 9 and got here around 11 or 12, ate lunch, got our room keys, wristbands, books and rules. After that we had a really long break before dinner so we coloured in a colouring book and decorated our dorm doors with beautiful artwork. ;)
6 o’clock the main session started which was pretty much the official start of CIY with worship by Matt Bayless and a message from Jeff Walling. Worship was definitely the best part of the day! I think its second to Cornerstone worship from this past year, but I’m excited for more this week. I felt very free during it, not really caring what people thought about how I worshiped. I laughed, I cried, I danced, it was wonderful. :D
Jeff talked about our identity and who we are in Christ. Very powerful. The world tries to tell us we have to dress, act, think, talk, be a certain way and God says “You are my children. Come to me.” He calls to us and when we ask, “Who am I that I should…” He says, “Don’t worry, I’m with you.” Our identity should be so wrapped around God that we’re know as “that guy/girl with God.” And no other label/name/description matter except that God loves you and want you as His son or daughter. We are children of the King and that fact is enough to make us never stop singing His praise.
*edit* CIY just put all their sermons from all the CIY’s all summer so if you click “Jeff Walling” at the beginning of the post, that is a link to the sermon.
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08.03.09
Posted in Randomness at 10:47 pm by SapphiraAdi
Wow, it seems like it’s been ages since I’ve actually written something! I have at least 5 drafts saved and more that are still in my head waiting to be written, so here is one I started right after Cornerstone and just never posted because I wanted to add more too it. But I’ll just write more stories another time, right now I want to start writing about what I learned at CIY…. Anyway, enjoy! :D
July 7th- *sigh* It feels strange to be home from Cornerstone. I wish I was back there now, I feel like I could live there! Even with the less then warm showers and the heat and the mud and the dirt. Cornerstone was wonderful, as always. :D Saturday there was a really bad storm that started not even an hour after getting there, so we ran to the Underground stage and hung out under there till it passed, but by then everything was soaked and too wet to put up tents. Oh, and all the power was out, so none of the lights around the festival worked and that also meant no power for lights at camp. So we got the canvas things up and cooked dinner somehow, then the boys slept on the floor of the shower houses and the girls were split up between the campers and cars. It was a good night though, I slept well. It’s funny how even when everything goes wrong you can still have a wonderful time! It really does depend on your attitude and how you look at your situations. If I had gone about the day complaining about the weather and the sleeping arrangements, I would’ve made myself miserable, but instead we laughed about it and made the most out of it, and turned it into a fun night. :D
Lucas, Alex and I went to see Bluetree Friday night at midnight, but we got there after they started and saw like the last half of their set, but it was so good! It was all worship songs, I think they wrote the songs they played, I only recognized God of this City. But it was really cool, in between songs the singer would sometimes pray, and one time while he was praying he prayed something along the lines of “And I know, God, that you have a greater plan for {insert names here}” and he started just saying names… Sarah… John… Matt… Karis… Now I’ve never met this guy before, hadn’t even heard of the band till a couple weeks ago, and was just sitting there in the tent and he says my name in his prayer. I leaned over to Lucas and asked him if he had really just said “Karis” and Lucas was like “Yeah, I heard it too.” I was so awestruck, and was reminded of how good God is and how He cares for each of us. And that He does have big plans for each of us, it wasn’t anything especially profound but it was a wonderful reminder that I needed to hear. :D
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