One In Love

This is an entry about the OIL conference in review. I don't believe that I learned much in terms of pure knowledge or had any of my doctrines radically changed, but I do believe that I had my heart changed in many areas that were in need of reformation.

First of all, my views on praise were changed drastically. Being at KCM amd being bombarded by ideals of Christ-centeredness on a daily basis are definitely a blessing, yet in my sin and pride I was able to distort those ideas. When looking on every praise song we sang at the conference, my eyes were very critical, always questioning the credibility of the praise around me, asking for more "Jesus" in every line of each song we sang. I was greatly discouraged after the second morning worship but found solace in the fact that at least my peers felt the same way. As evening worship rolled around, I was looking for any familiar song to which I could praise the name of Jesus with and was also being let down in such a way that I felt like leaving for home right then and there. However, that's when I saw title Reign In Us by Starfield on the overhead projector. I rejoiced in my heart. Hallelujah, I get to praise God now! I sang the first verse and pre-chorus and chorus very contently. "Yes, Mighty One, you reign in us!" But then it occurred to me to start reading the lyrics a little more closely. To my astonishment, I found very little hints of the explicit Gospel except for the name "Lord Jesus" in the pre-chorus in a song that I really liked and would recommend to anyone. Then conviction hit me and made me aware of my pride and judgment this group of believers. The mere unfamiliarity of these songs had hindered me from worship of the true God who sent his only Son to die on the cross, taking the wrath that was meant for me, but then rising again to give me hope to join him in heaven. I looked on each song afterward with new eyes. After conferring with Henrik, he exclaimed, "Yeah the songs looked different for some reason!" I can only surmise that it was the Holy Spirit's intercession, opening our eyes to our pride but then pointing us to true worship of Jesus Christ, our savior.

Secondly, a peculiar thing happened before this enormous revelation I received on the second night. Though I did not particularly like any of the songs that we were singing during worship, I admitted that there was nothing fundamentally flawed with them that conflicted with my doctrine. You could in fact praise God with these songs if you were in the correct heart of worship, whatever that means. So when I decided that I would simply not sing a song because I deemed it "unworthy" of my praise to God, I would sit down in my chair and pray. I prayed to God that each person in the room would have the correct heart of worship to praise God with what I found out later were a plethora of Hillsong and Chris Tomlin songs. And then it hit me, once again, or rather, once before. I was actually praying for people. God was working in me, despite my pride of criticizing the song selection, to give me a heart for others, truly concerned about their worship towards God. It has been my biggest prayer since the end of the conference that I would not lose this incredible gift of prayer that God was gracious enough to bless me with. In fact, that same second night of worship ended in a time of prayer. I prayed for a certain amount of time with my eyes closed and when I opened them, I saw Willis walking around. He asked me if I wanted to pray together and then followed with, "What time is it? Eleven?" It was midnight. I don't know how long we had been praying for but it was incredible!

My last face-pwnage came during the last message giving by none other than Dr. Carson, preaching on the parable of the talents (Luke 19:11-7). Now, I was very excited for this message, having undergone two huge mind-crushes already (and praying to God that they would be genuine transformations), but this was actually a parable that I had questions about and wasn't able to interpret any satisfactory meaning on my own. I do not have the faculties to summarize Carson's message point by point and deliver every blow of truth that Carson preached from the Word of God that morning, but the biggest thing that broke my jaw in half was the emphasis on God's kingdom in the eternal sense. For the last year, I had been driving myself with 1 Cor 13 and its whole emphasis on love which 1 John 3 confirms. However, I had been wrapped up with love in the worldly sense. In a "Ghandi" sense if you will. Being a nice guy a good role model (point towards Christ), and in fact, I wanted to turn my evangelism towards something that agreed more with this. I felt that cold evangelism was ineffective and thought I might do something else that would catch people's eyes in a different way. Going off of Matt 5:14-16, I would do something like give umbrellas out when it was raining and have little Christian notes attached or something. But this is such a round-a-bout method. Instead of giving them an umbrella, why not give them Christ? Instead of working so hard to make myself into the image of Christ to point them to Christ (not that this is bad in itself), why not just give them Christ? I did not save them but Jesus Christ did. I now discovered why it was so hard to give up my life to God and that was because I was not living my life with the idea of furthering his assets, which is exactly the ideology of the last servant whom the master condemns in the parable.

So that's it. I will be attending next year. It was pretty awesome.