Retreat!

What an amazing weekend! I headed up to Forest Home Ojai Valley with 88 Eighth graders and 12 other leaders on Friday for Confirmation retreat. The weekend was incredible to say the least. Why was it incredible? Because God showed up. The Holy Spirit was palpable throughout the retreat and I was amazed as I watched lives be transformed and restored by his power and love. I feel like there were points in the weekend where I got that rare glimpse of what Christian fellowship was intended to look like. We were one body, relying on each other, loving on each other and being real with each other. It was so beautiful.

Jesus is it. He's everything we need. We are blessed not because of people or things, but because One person gave us His everything. At one point in the weekend we all nailed our sins to the cross and as each person came up I just saw Jesus looking so lovingly at them saying "I'll take that one. And that one too. Whatever it takes to be with you." We deserve nothing good in this world. Nothing. But Jesus, the one perfect person who ever deserved good took on all of our filth and went through the worst of this world to give us everything.

My 40 days of the gospel are still rocking my world. I read Luke 4 this morning and was humbled by the way Jesus was able to combat every temptation with the Word of God. I was also appalled almost to the point of laughter by what a blatant liar Satan is. Early in the chapter he tries to tell Jesus that he has the authority to give everything to Jesus if Jesus will only worship him, and then a few verses later his minions, the evil spirits, are proclaiming that Jesus is the Holy One of God and fall down to the ground.

More pictures of retreat to come soon. Not too many though. Nicolle Miller only took about 700 :) Blessings!