My Epic Journey

I am at the Orange Conference in Atlanta this week.  I am here with our Children’s Pastor, Steve Ogle.  For both of us this is our second time attending.  We have been excited about the conference and after leaving at 6:00 this morning we were especially glad to get to the conference center and checked in.

I will admit though, that after check in, I am very disappointed so far.  There is one thing I always look forward to after check-in and that is the conference bag and notebook.  The bag this year is from Plywood People (www.plywoodpeople.com).  The idea is pretty cool and I like the concept.  Don’t know if I will carry around the bag this week though because it really looks more like a purse than anything.

But what I was disappointed about the most was the notebook.  In the past years the notebook has been a really well put together resource that is suitable to take notes in and to put one my bookshelf at the office.  This year, I feel they tried to cut corners financially (which is odd because the cost of the conference was still expensive) by putting together a “newspaper” look.  No room for taking notes and completely pointless to carry around because it is so big and awkward.

I so hope that the conference from here on out doesn’t have a cheap feel.  Praying that even if it does, God will still give me the fuel to take EPIC to the next great thing He has for us.

Debi Ogle sent this to me and thought it was worth posting on here.

Have you ever met any one, that no matter what they are ALWAYS negative?

Over the past week I have been dealing with these type of people.  They suck the very life out of you and in many ways you wish you didn’t have to minister or deal with them.  The easiest thing is just to ignore them and pray that God would bring peace and joy in their life.

That’s the easiest route, but Jesus never chose the easiest route and He doesn’t call us to the easy path as well.  We are called to minister–each and every one of His saint–to all those we come into contact with.

So how do we minister to negative people without having the life sucked out of us–or worse yet–turning negative ourselves?

1.  Pray for peace and joy

As alluded to before, we do need to pray that God would bring peace and joy into the life of the person who is negative.  But it doesn’t stop there.  Our prayer should be for ourselves as well, that God would give us peace and joy even during this trial (James 1.2)

2.  Pray for perseverance

It is easy for us to want to give up and never talk to those people again, but once again, that is not what God wants for us.  He allows negative people in our lives to 1) point out areas of work in our life, 2) allow us to breathe life and joy into their life.  Instead of running from the problem, we need to face it head on with a spirit of humility and kindness (James 1.3-4)

3.  Pray for wisdom

We must also pray for wisdom.  It is easy for us to respond quickly and negatively as well.  That is the very thing Satan is hoping for–a schism or crevice to be set in the church among God’s people.  Praying for wisdom helps us know how God would choose for us to answer and minister.  My biggest fear is that I will say something that is going to hurt more than help.  Like animals, sometimes when we hurt our first instinct is to hurt back.  This should not be true of us as Christians.  I must seek the wisdom of God (James 1.5)

4.  Be faithful

Finally, we must be faithful.  We must stick to the task of reaching souls for Christ.  To not get sidetracked on little issues–that in light of eternity–have little to no weight.  We must instead, believe God will take care of the situation and live to that end.

My hope, through all of this, it that God grants me peace, joy, perseverance and wisdom and that in the end I will be found faithful.  May the same be true of you!