Three days of intense praise & worship, 1500 teens allowing the Father’s love to pour into their hearts and submit themselves to the vulnerability of revealing their insecurities, their brokenness and their wounds. It is an intense weekend to work a Steubenville Conference but it is most edifying to be a witness to the magnitude of His GLORY.
If there was a computer available to me I would have obviously done better by breaking down the event and how God ‘showed up’ day by day. I do recall Friday being a physical challenge because I had to be up and at the airport ready to go by 5:30am. By the time I made it to Rochester, MN we were ready to begin our team prayer at 3:30. The beautiful gift in Friday was the authenticity of the team as we each put forth before one another and Christ our personal struggles and brokenness. We realize we are simply vessels to do God’s will but we need to be ‘right’ before the Lord and one another in order to protect us from the attack of the enemy. Simply, we needed to get out of God’s way. 🙂 When a team comes together and every member is willing to drop their pride and be ‘real’ then it bonds the team and it’s almost like the key to unlocking the floodgate of heaven.
Saturday was an ongoing smack down of God’s love and all the talks hit their mark and when we were before the Lord in adoration it was only CHRIST that mattered. I wish I could share with you some of the stories and situations brought before me by some teens but I don’t want any of them to read this blog and feel I’ve betrayed confidence. What I can say is if you are a parent of a teenager, or have kids of any age, don’t become so naive that you think kids these days don’t have ‘real’ issues. To name the biggest culprit – ALCOHOLIC PARENTS that verbally and mentally abuse their kids while under the influence…saying thing that cements to their spirit. And then of course we have cutting, bulimic, anorexia, sexual prowess to fill the whole of loneliness and worth, addiction to masterbation, pornography, same sex attraction (again to fill whole of loneliness), but the one that we heard a lot of this weekend is not one that we put in the ‘shock factor’ category but I think we all need to be aware of this as a real issue that parents should be aware of – fear of letting down parents expectations.
Need less to say, Saturday was a long, but fulfilling, day. By Sunday morning when I was to give the womens talk on ‘Identity’ I was pumped and ready to get them to FIGHT. God gave me a gift that morning which validated my path on what I felt called to talk about. I was writing in my journal having some ‘quiet time’ with Him and I wrote, “I’m ready to help them fight for what You have given them and to realize You are fighting for them too…” I finished with my prayer at the end of the page and then read what the Bible verse was for the day (I read this AFTER I wrote the journal entry). Exodus 14:14 “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Isn’t that amazing? I share this with my group later during the talk because it was a direct message to them from their heavenly Father.
Another amazing gift for Sunday morning came from a situation that could’ve left me feeling perplexed. Our woman singer had fallen ill and couldn’t play any opening music. It wasn’t that it was detrimental to have music but when it is 8:30am on a Sunday morning it is hard to simply go into an intense talk without waking them up. 😉 So I decided to ask if anyone from the audience could come up and show us their God given talents. What happened within ten minutes time was amazing. These two sisters got up, using the bands guitars, keyboard and the mics, (and another bass player that had come up to help but didn’t know the sisters) and they performed a song that they had written after their mom had a miscarriage recently. Their were four women on the stage, never practiced, only the sisters knew the music to the song and yet it came out like it was MEANT to be the music for that morning. The song is called “He Loves Me” by Mary Clare and Catherine Stroh.
You can listen to it here:
Another link many of you might be interested in is the video I showed (acted out by some of my Young Professionals) it’s called The Pretender by the Foo Fighters but it is my rendition of what I feel we are facing this need to FIGHT THE ENEMY and tell him WE WILL NOT SURRENDER to his empty lies! GET YOUR FIGHT ON 😉
Like I said, it was an amazing day…and then…just before we were going to leave for the airport I recognized someone that had been with us all weekend as a volunteer…who had been CHRIST LIGHT TO US…was upset. So I naturally asked what was wrong. Well, again, in order to keep her confidence I won’t share specifics but I will share that she has gone through something horrific and it has left her very ANGRY with God. I mean ANGRY. I have never seen such anger towards God. I was devastated for her, and devastated for MY GOD whom I love and it hurt so much to hear her anger and the ways in which He is doing this to her. I tried…oh I prayed to the Holy Spirit to give me the words to speak…but the grip on her was so strong. And then I had to go…go to an airport and wait and wait, and fly and then wait and wait again…all the while haunted by this woman’s despair. I got home at 1:30am (after all the delay’s etc) and I went to bed praying for her, I woke up praying for her and I can’t stop praying for her.
I sit before ‘you’ extremely mentally and emotionally exhausted. I need prayer for endurance, energy and fortitude to be able to bring home the message God wants revealed tonight for the Young Professional at Cafe Catholica. So please pray! 🙂 Pray for me, pray this woman, and pray for our next generation.
Blessings
Shannon