open the heavens.

I'm home from an exciting and incredible weekend plus two days in Atlanta at Passion 2011. It was an amazing experience that I am so..so..excited about. I'm going to start by encouraging all of you all that are college aged to try and make plans to attend next year. It's going to be at the Georgia Dome, so like 70,000 of us will be able to gather together to make His name known. It's time to be a generation that rises up to bring glory to the creator of the universe.

Obviously, I'm still processing it all, and I'm quite tired, so I'm going to go into more details a little at a time (as in, when I figure this all out). But, this weekend was so powerful and really made me think about what I'm doing in my life and where God might be leading me.

It's ridiculous how incredibly blessed we are. Here in America (at least in the Southern part of the country commonly referred to as the Bible Belt) it is so easy to say we're Christians. Yet, we fail -I fail- to bring glory to the name of Jesus on a frequent basis. We complain about things that don't really matter. We make a fuss about the style of worship our churches have and the speakers that we ask to preach. We get so caught up in this "consume, consume" culture that we forget about the whole "making disciples" thing. We get caught up in this spirit of entitlement. I mean, the world tells us we deserve all of this nice stuff. We deserve to have an easy life. We deserve to have fun. We deserve to not have to do anything too far out of our comfort zone. But, God calls us to life a life that is radically different. Here's the thing. We aren't entitled to any of this. Because we have sinned and fallen short of God's glory, all we are entitled to is eternal separation.  All we deserve is to be separated from God for all eternity. This spirit of entitlement pervades our generation. It encouraged us to want "more, more, more" when we really need "less, less, less". We need to be less so that God can be more. Only through Christ we can get rid of this spirit of entitlement. It's not going to be easy. And I so don't have all the answers. It's something I struggle with all the time. As one of the speakers at Passion (Ben Stuart) says, "You think about what you care about and what you care about you chase." If all we think about is all the stuff that we think we deserve, all we're going to do is chase those worldly desires. Those desires won't fulfill us and won't make us happy. We may think we're happy- but ultimately we're going to have that little feeling that we're missing something. It's only when we allow God to completely empty ourselves so that He can fill us up (rather than our "desires") that we find true fulfillment and happiness. It's only then that we are made complete and content.

So. That's just a snippet of what God's speaking to me through the messages I've heard these last four days. I've got more but..I'm still wading through the waters. It's some tough stuff. It's not easy. And, I know I can't do it alone. Only with God can I find this contentment and rid myself of this spirit of entitlement. But, I know that there's something better out there than what I've got...and, well, I'm ready. :)

Come Jesus.
Open the Heavens. Come Living Water. All my fountains are in YOU.

Title: Chris Tomlin. I'm not real sure of the title of the song because, well, we sang it at Passion. But, I'm pretty sure it'll be on the CD that comes out in March! And, well, there's always YouTube. Pictures from here. Mine are still on my phone. Haha. And they're nowhere near as pretty. That's what happens when only Passion Media Staff can have fancy-smancy cameras in the arena. :)