Back from the Retreat

I've been offline the past few days because I was with my family at Camp Dudley during the weekend. We were at Bethel's Alpha Retreat and my role was to speak at a Saturday session. "How to be Filled with the Holy Spirit" was my topic and I shared, among other things, the thoughts I offered in my last post.

I'm still processing the weekend, but I can tell you that one of my biggest joys in the whole time was the fact that I felt very little (if any at all) need to quantify how God "moved" on the weekend. Instead, I believe my role was to teach truth and trust that God is big enough to accomplish the things He wants -- regardless of whether I saw the "fruit" I expected/hoped/wanted to see. And really, if you look at the Kingdom parables that Jesus teaches, the Kingdom's evidence (fruit) is almost imperceptible in its movement.

And the reality is that over the past few months I've been realizing that the plan I expect to see unfold is rarely the one that God is weaving together. Instead, my call remains the same: be faithful in what is asked and trust Him with the results. Quantifying God's movement is a dangerous game because we reduce Him to our level of understanding and expectation. I pray He is pleased with my attempts at faithfulness and ask Him to continually fill me with His Spirit.