Last week Howard and I had the opportunity to head back to Chattanooga for a long weekend, a little family visit, but the main reason was to attend the CCEF conference. (We also escaped the surprise October snow.)
We purchased our tickets way back in March hoping that our daughter Julie and her then fiance Ian would be able to line up their wedding during the same time period, but that didn't happen, so we made two trips to the states in the last three months.
As I was sitting on the plane on the way to the conference I began looking through the sessions that we would have an opportunity to attend during the week. It was only then that I realized that the whole conference was going to be about EMOTIONS. Great, I thought to myself, just what I needed, I am not an emotional person so now I would have to listen to people talk "touchy, feely" for three days. (Howard is the Counselor/listener in our family.)I looked through the catalog and chose some sessions that seemed less emotional.
I was pleasantly surprised during the opening session when the speaker identified himself as being just like me - he often doesn't get the emotions of others and wasn't overly emotional himself, and yet he was a counselor...how does he do that?
We were then reminded and taught that Jesus had emotions, God has emotions.
He gave us the challenges of
Engaging our Emotions in order to leave behind painful ones - repent and confess,
Speak and Connect - train yourself to use your pain to connect with God and others,
Listen to God's replies to us through Christ - "I am with you" - God Cares
I won't write down all of my notes, although I have read through them twice myself - good stuff - but I will leave you some nuggets I gleaned from two of the sessions I attended.
Joni Earickson Tada was one of the main guest speakers. If you don't know her story, check it out here - Joni's story. She was one of my childhood heroes - paralyzed from the age of 17 to present - a paraplegic. She shared her story of pain and happiness - the highs and lows.
Here is where she took us:
Splash-overs of Hell- pain, suffering, defeat, separation, temptation
vs.
Splash-overs of Heaven- finding Jesus in your Splash-overs of Hell
"How dare I cling to the sins that caused my Jesus such pain?" I need to incinerate my self-focus, own my weakness and become full by emptying myself through helping others - like Jesus did. I need to pray scripture to God as Jesus did.I wrote these down on a 3 x 5 card to keep above my desk to remind myself to look to Jesus and to serve others.
The other session was on Tasting and Seeing. Our speaker was a Pastor and Worship Leader at a church - he challenged us to take our head knowledge about Jesus our Savior on an 18 inch trip to our hearts.
We need to take and use all of our senses, our concrete experiences and acknowledge that God is moving in our lives through these experiences to help in our justification and sanctification.(3 minute Justification explanation)
(3 minute Sanctification explanation)
We need to practice using our senses to worship God now - by ourselves and in community with our fellow believers - because someday in heaven we will be using all of our senses to Praise our Savior all day long.
We will know if we have tasted and seen the Lord if we have gratitude in our hearts for the gifts God has given us.
I leave you with these words of wisdom that really stayed with me -
Every emotion that we experience here on earth in our earthly bodies
will someday resolve into JOY in Heaven -
our past emotions will all lead to our eternal JOY!
