After spending yesterday looking back over my notes from IV's national staff conference, here are the things that are still resonating in my soul this morning:
Our theme for the conference was "I am not ashamed of the gospel." We had several different speakers walk us through the first 12 chapters of Romans.
-The speaker the first morning had this to say about shame: "When shame covers us we think that the gospel is weak and so we must somehow make up for it with our great skills and strategies."
-Humility is our silent friend in leadership. Apart from humility we cannot lead in power...when we're humble we hear God's saving voice and not our own voice. In so doing we can be bold with God's boldness and say 'Behold, the power of God!' Humility is the laboratory of God's power.
-What if we challenged our students to use Facebook as an instrument for God's kingdom rather than a tool for self-advancement?
-Romans 8 is perhaps the single most significant chapter of Scripture in Paul's writings, perhaps of all the Bible. And it is all about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is referenced 22 times in 39 verses. It is the Holy Spirit at work in us that makes this gospel thing take root and work in us.
-Our slavery for many of us in ministry is a slavery to fear of failure. And so we live in our own power and become enslaved to our own ideas and plans and strategies. We straddle life in Adam and life in Christ and so we become imprisoned by our own stuff when we've been invited to new life and freedom.
-The call in Romans 12 to present our bodies as a living sacrifice of worship is profound. Bodies matter.
-The call in Romans 12 to worship after all that Paul has talked about in the first eleven chapters of Romans is simply reasonable. It is no great thing to worship a God who has done so much for us. It is our reasonable service. It is what we do because we live here. I do laundry and help clean around the house because it is a reasonable service as a member of this family, this house. In light of the life we've been offered and the place where we live, we worship.
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