Reflecting Deeper Still Part 3

After Kay finished preaching we broke for lunch. At 1:00, Beth, Kay and Priscilla returned for a question/answer session that included everything from "the critical hair moment" to marital advice and child-rearing. Priscilla's a total cut-up. She's so funny. They all are, really.

Then it was Beth's turn to preach. But before she got started, she felt very impressed to have an altar call in light of Kay's message. This wasn't just any altar call, however; she was really speaking to those who have been struggling with something for so long and who wanted to finally have a definitive moment in their lives to remember that this was the day they once and for all laid it at the foot of the Cross for good and received forgiveness and redemption. The altar filled up with women, many of whom were just weeping. You couldn't help but be moved and affected by it.

During this time, some glass partitions that had been placed in various areas around the arena were brought up on the stage while Travis and the worship team sang. Throughout Friday night and Saturday morning, people had filled these partitions up with prayer requests, praise reports and just things that were on their hearts using a white paint pen. During the altar call, a gentleman came up with paint cans and started to paint over the heartfelt words that had been written. The camaras were zoomed in close enough to read the words as he did this. Again, I was so moved to read prayers from people praying for a touch from the Lord, the salvation of loved ones, travel safety, healing, for loved ones in Iraq, praise for God's hand in various situations. These were people's hearts poured out all over these partitions. This picture was the end result and some of the scriptures being displayed on the tv screens included Isaiah 60:3 and Colossians 1:17. Click on the picture to enlarge it to see it better.

Then Beth got up to preach. Her primary verse was John 1:14 - The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Her goal was to help 19,000 of us remember it. She did this by teaching us, section by section, various hand motions to go along with the words of the verse and, of course, expounding on each section of the verse.

Ok, confession time: I was so tired by this point in the conference after such a full day (and after staying up late the night before talking with my sister) that I know I left a lot out. Hopefully, my sister will help me fill in the blanks. heh, heh :D Check back again, ok? Here's what I've got in my notes...

1) The Word - Logos - Divine reasoning/expression. She said that we need to pray about our desires and ask God to heal and change our "want to's. Determination alone won't cut it. I've heard Beth speak about this before and from experience I can say that God has always honored that prayer. When I've been honest with Him that in myself I don't want to change so and so but if He wants me to, then I want to want to, He has changed my heart over the matter. Praise His Name.

2) Became Flesh 1 John 4:1-3

3) Made His dwelling among us - skenoo - Means to tabernacle 2 Cor 5:1; Rev 21:22. Christ was the "tent" on earth. In eternity, He will be the temple.

4) We have seen His glory (John 1:18; 1 John 1:1) Shekinah. The name dwelt between the cherubim - the divine manefested.

5) The glory of the One and Only.

6) Who came from the Father (vs 18; John 13:22-23)

7) Full of grace and truth (vs 16; John 2 - wedding at Cana) Fill the jars. Our jars are one of three things: Either empty, filled with water or filled with wine. In the spiritual sense, the "new Wine". "I don't want to be fine, I want to be full."

At the end, the praise team came back and absolutely jammed. I got the video below from Lifeway's All Access blog (there's a link for this on the right) You may be familiar with Kay Arthur but I bet you've never quite seen her like this before! To see even better pictures and additional recaps, I suggest going over to the All Access blog. The Lifeway photographer did a beautiful job. Hope my recaps have blessed you even a little bit. No matter whether you were there or not, God's Word never returns void.

Be blessed.
Melanie


Deeper Still from on Vimeo

Reflecting Deeper Still Part 2

It's been a week since I got home from the Deeper Still conference in Atlanta and the truths presented there are still sinking in. I keep praying that God would not allow everything that so impacted me in that place to fade as time goes by.

As I left off in my last post, Travis Cottrell, left us Friday night with an invitation to arrive back at the arena a bit early Saturday for a special pre-worship treat. He said we wouldn't want to miss it. I'm so glad I didn't.

The worship team began Saturday morning with some great music and led us in Joyful, Joyful, which has been one of my favorites for many years. Midway through the song, out came Beth Moore and Priscilla Shirer wearing dark sunglasses and treated us to a rap. Yes, you read right - a rap. It was hilarious and they were pretty good! I can only hope Lifeway releases an an audio or even better a video of the entire conference. It was a riot.

After worship ended Beth, Priscilla and Kay came up to the stage and welcomed everyone after which Beth and Priscilla prayed over Kay and the message she was going to bring. As Kay came forward she made it clear that she had a difficult word for all of us. She stated that she had literally been sick over having to bring it. You could see it in her entire countenance. She choked up off and on and even mid-way needed to stop and asked us all to pray before continuing.

She asked us this question: Do you know, love and sow Truth? She read from Jeremiah 36; 6:27-28 and 9:1-9 then stated that God does not want to bring clamity or judgement to His people but said His character demands Him to bring such things when we don't obey. Ezekiel 14:13-19

She spoke of and with great concern for our nation and said she believes the United States is getting set up for a famine and quoted Ezekiel 14:12-23 as a comparison. She asked us from where are we getting our truth and how are we forming our views, quoting Isaiah 59:14-15. Are we forming our views based on the media that often lies and/or twists the truth or in the Word of God?

Kay said God wants us to be a Jeremiah (Jer 1:1-19; Eph 1) and speak the Word of God but in order to do that we must know the Word of God. She gave a great word picture of our needing to be so filled up with the Word of God that if someone were to bump into us it would spill out. She read from 2 Kings 22 where the Word of God had gotten lost in the house of God and said the same thing has happened in America. Essentially, we are staying within the church walls instead of bringing Christ to the world. The fact is, "we are not saved for ourselves alone but for the world and the kingdom at large." Jesus said to deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Him.

Kay said it grieves her because so many churches tend to spend more time in the New Testament but we meet God in the Old Testament. Churches seem to be more concerned about comfort than holiness and wind up in captivity as a result due to their lack of understanding (Isa 5:13; Hosea 4:1-6).

Kay then compared the culture in which we live to what was happening with the Israelites in Ezekiel 22:1-4 and Jeremiah 6:10-14 People are turning from the Truth in order to stay in their comfort and trust in deceptive words that do absolutely nothing for them.

She then said in light of all of this, there are 7 things we can do.

1) Jer 4:3 - Break up the fallow ground - the hardness of our soul - return to God. Get on your face before God and ask Him to break my heart with what breaks His

2) It is a time to Mourn and Weep: When was the last time you wept over the pain of this nation? Jer 9:17-18; Ezek 9. Destruction came to those who didn't mourn the sins of Israel yet He spared those who did.

3) Pray!!! Jer 36:7; 1 Tim 2 Pray for all those in authority.

4) Love God's Word (Jer 20:7-9) Make time for in-depth study. Know the whole consult of God.

5) Love Others as Jesus Loves Them - Jer 31:3; John 13:34-35. This love is active and unconditional.

6) Introduce People to Jesus Christ. Ask God what to say and do. (Jer 31:31; jer 33:1-9, 15, 17)

7) Rest (2 Tim 4:1-4) If you do all these things, you rest in that. Rest in Faith. He's the One who does the work.

It was indeed a heavy message and left all of us with much to contemplate. I believe it was during her closing prayer that she asked us all to pick up our Bibles and kiss them and hold them close praying that we would truly love God's Word more than anything in life. My recap probably doesn't do her message the justice it deserves. I had the feeling that when Kay left the platform, she probably went to her room and just wept.

Be blessed. I will post on the rest of the conference in a day or so.

Melanie

Reflecting Deeper Still Part 1

Ok, finally. A chance to sit down and collect my thoughts on the Deeper Still Conference with Beth Moore, Priscilla Shirer and Kay Arthur. I had hoped I'd be able to get everything down in one post but there's just too much to cover. So let me apologize in advance for the very long post but the conference was so fabulous. I have honestly never experienced anything quite like it in my life. (Oh, and in case you didn't know this, if you click on any picture, it will enlarge).

Anyway, I could not wait for the day to come so when it finally did, I was more than a little excited. My family and I headed out from our vacation in SC about 8:30am that morning and arrived in Atlanta at about 2:30. My sister arrived from TN just minutes before we did. Mind you, I haven't see her in about 2 years and, as she said, we probably haven't had an uninterruped conversation with each other in far longer than that (that's often how it is once you have kids). For us, this wasn't just about the conference it was also about reconnecting as sisters.

On Friday night, the doors to the conference at the Philips Arena were to open at 5pm and we knew there would be literally thousands of women attending, many of whom would likely have begun to get in line hours before that. Little did we know there would turn out to be 19,000 women. By the time we got checked in to the hotel, freshened up and drove over, it was 4:45 when we arrived at the arena. I think about 17,000 women were already there. Didn't matter, though. Nothing could dampen my excitement. I was stoked.

Then we actually got in the doors to find seats and realized we had a challenge on our hands. It looked like at least 18,000 women had already found their seats and even though you weren't supposed to save seats, seats were saved all over the place. Everywhere we turned to ask "Is this seat taken?" came the reply, "Yes". Over and over. We weren't in the nose-bleed seats yet but maybe a section or two below. Karen and I just kind of wandered aimlessly thinking it shouldn't be this hard to find two seats together in an arena this size.

All of a sudden she got this air of authority come over her and she starts making her way through rows, over people, down aisles and down stairs toward the main floor. I thought she was crazy. If we couldn't find seats up here, she was dreamin' if she thought we'd find 'em on anywhere near the stage. Until she led us to the remaining two seats on the end of the first row directly behind the production team! I thought surely they were saved - but they weren't! And not only that, but we were sitting next to the aisle that Beth, Kay, Priscilla and the whole worship team would come out through. I could have shook their hands if I'd had the nerve (I didn't but the lady directly behind me did and she got a hug from Beth - too funny). I did, however, hug my sister and thank Jesus. God knew how thrilled and blessed I felt just to be at this conference and it was like He thought "You know what? Melanie's so excited about this whole thing - why don't We just give her a little tickle to top it off." And let me tell ya, I was tickled over these seats. By the way, the red sticker on the chair in the picture says "Red's Throne". I don't know what exactly Red does but I'm guessing it's pretty important.

Travis Cottrell and his praise team (which happened to include his lovely wife) came out followed by our three ladies. I'm telling you, the worship was phenomenal. The power in their voices especially when they'd hit those high notes and sustain them just made you feel like you were experiencing the tiniest piece of heaven. Oh my word. The entire arena would just explode in praise, cheers and applause. I was back and forth between tears and laughter. Then Mandisa came out and she too was just awesome. I don't really watch American Idol so I wasn't terribly familiar with her but after Friday night I'll never forget her and her annointed singing. I was so blessed.

Priscilla preached that night and she looked beautiful and if you haven't heard by now, she is six months pregnant. She was so hilarious. I took her Discerning the Voice of God study and knew she was a good teacher so I already expected she would have a good message and I wasn't disappointed. She spoke on finding God in the wilderness and read from Exodus 19:9-11. She said that God will oftentimes lead us into wilderness seasons in order to invite us to a personal encounter with Him just as He did with the Israelites. She brought up a map showing the route God led them which happened to be the furthest away from the land of promise. She said that it's often the place that's furthest away externally that turns out to be the greatest internal blessing.

A story she told that really convicted me was when she was outside one day, there was a cloud that looked like it was about to burst forth rain any minute. She had been going through some difficulty and began to pray "Lord, just like this cloud is going to open up any minute, please rain down on me." Well shortly after that it began to pour out so she took off for the house as fast as she could so she wouldn't get soaked through. As she did, the Lord said to her that's so much like My people. We ask Him to rain down but as soon as it becomes a little uncomfortable, we want to take off back to where we came from. Ouch.

Three years ago, I had begun to pray to break out of my mode of mediocrity with Him. I wanted to...well, I guess you could say, go deeper still. I didn't use those words but that's essentially what I was saying. Then God started opening doors for me to sing. When that started getting uncomfortable - and trust me, it's been uncomfortable - I began to say no. If you're unfamiliar with my anxiety issues, just peruse some of my past posts to understand what I mean.

She then said that if we choose not to fight God in our wilderness season, there are three things we can do to prepare to see Him in the midst of it (Ex 19:3-4):

1. We have a call to remember what He's done. We will be thankful and our faith lifted.

2. We are to remember our spiritual identity. God is the only one with the right to label us. (1 Pet 2:9) I really appreciate that especially in light of what I'm learning in my NOG study regarding my apparent need for people's approval and my fear of not having it.

3. We are called to new levels of surrender. If there's something you're holding back from Him, surrender it. It will bring you far greater blessing.

Well that's it for now. The conference ended Friday night with Travis inviting everyone to come a bit early in the morning for a special pre-worship treat. He said we wouldn't want to miss it. And he was so right...

Be blessed.
Melanie