Thoughts from the weekend

Thoughts from the weekend:

Friday evening was wonderful.

Our life group retreat was a "success" in the sense that:

The lessons were meaningful.  Helpful.  What we can do to facilitate and grow our life groups, spiritually and relationally.

The food was excellent - thanks, everyone, for bringing food!

Many, many thanks to David Dewes, Rick Maldaner and Debbie Smith for your leadership and hard work!

I appreciated David's passion in sharing about life groups.

The theme of the evening?  If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat!

Saturday morning's teachings were very helpful as well.

Here's one of the many principles that were presented by our speaker:  Ben Deboef.

Take a piece of paper and put on one side "Fill" and on the other side "drain".

Write down what fills your tank.  Write down what drains your tank.

Make a conscious effort this week to "fill your tank" so that your tank is not so depleted you can give anything away.

To put it in my terminology:  You can't give what you don't have.

What fills your tank?

What depletes your tank?

If your tank is continually being depleted it could lead to anxiety and then to an emotional breakdown and then to a nervous breakdown and (God forbid) the possibility of suicide.

Realize that your time is limited.

Realize that every moment of your life is spend doing something.

Realize that somebody will determine how your time is spent.

Here's the key principle:  Relationship is what happens in the margin of your life.  Is there enough margin in  your life for relationship?

Thankful for Evangelist Jaroy Carpenter's presentation yesterday.  Powerful story of how his son was touched by God from birth and now is a healthy baby boy.

My favorite line from his sermon?  He was confused as a "termite on a yo-yo."

I love that. 

Describes my life most of the time.

I am excited about this fall!

Love you all!