The Thief [Brooke Fraser]

Your eyes are full
Full of the future of us
The air changes as you look across
At me in that wondering way

It is as if
I knew you before we spoke
Do our hearts know something we don't?
Conspiring, converging without giving us any say

You, sing me to sleep
Talk down my walls
Look through my windows as I wait
You could be the thief
I give the key to

You're ruining me
With secrets and gestures and looks
With sonnets from second-hand books
Playing the chords in me nobody knew how to play

It fits in your hand like water in rain
It unlocks our two different selves
And shows we are the same
Rather than wait `til I put me out for the taking
You're breaking
You're breaking
You're breaking into my heart
And I'm letting you


*This post/song is dedicated to the one who began breaking into my heart since January 23, 2012*


^_^

I Know Who I Am

Today I felt like crap...twice (over the same thing).

I've fallen into that lie that Satan loves to sell me--the lie that I'm fat and that my physical body is ugly. It's a popular product that many girls & women so easily accept. It's a sad truth and an unfortunate reality.

How many people have called themselves "fat" after stuffing themselves from a buffet restaurant? But how many still call themselves "fat" after skipping a few days from eating? Ok yea, I haven't gone to the extreme of not eating for a day but I do have those feelings of being "fat" even though my weight is considered appropriate for my height. And no matter how many times my friends or family tell me I "look" fine, I could not come to terms with it in my head. When I notice that my clothes are not fitting right, I become disappointed in myself.

We're constantly being bombarded with how the world defines as beautiful. I read somewhere that what's considered beautiful is usually because it's symmetrical. I compare myself to a lot of people and there's nothing very symmetrical about my body. Seriously, one issue would be that because of my rheumatoid arthritis, it has affected my joints thereby affecting how I walk or how I accomplish my day-to-day activities. One part of my body may be stronger than the other, so I grow to be dependent on the strong side. The thing is that if I don't use my muscles on the weaker side, it begins to atrophy. I look abnormal. People will tell me that they don't notice these things, but I do.

It breaks my heart when I hear other girls and women hate on the way they look. Can't they see how extremely gorgeous they are? Yet, I seem to see myself as the only exception. There's always something not right with how I look no matter how hard I try to change it. I bawled my eyes today because I did not like myself. But the most amazingly awesome thing happened. God's Spirit spoke to my heart in the most gentle and quiet way. He had me imagine Jesus standing right in front of me, looking at me with his tender eyes and loving me completely, imperfections and all. Then he brought to mind 1 Samuel 16:7b where it says, "The Lord doesn't see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." I took a deep breath and smiled at the very thought of this absolute truth. The world cannot define who I am because my identity is firmly secured in Christ.

I know who I am, even when I feel like I don't.

Blue Like Jazz [Quotes] Pt. 2

CONFESSION

"Stop ten people on the street and ask them what they think of when they hear the word Christianity, and they will give you ten different answers. How can I defend a term that means ten different things to ten different people? I told the radio show host that I would rather talk about Jesus and how I cam to believe that Jesus exists and that he likes me." [pg. 115]

"For me, the beginning of sharing my faith with people began by throwing out Christianity and embracing Christian spirituality, a nonpolitical mysterious system that can be experienced but not explained. Christianity, unlike Christian spirituality, was not a term that excited me. And I could not in good conscious tell a friend about a faith that didn't excite me. I couldn't share something I wasn't experiencing. And I wasn't experiencing Christianity." [pg. 115]

"I could no longer share anything about Christianity, but I loved talking about Jesus and the spirituality that goes along with a relationship with Him." [pg. 116]

"We decided that the correct place to share our faith was from a place of humility and love, not from a desire for power." [pg. 116]

"I felt very strongly that Jesus was relevant in this place. I felt very strongly that if He was not relevant here then He was not relevant anywhere." [pg. 126]

CHURCH 

 "I read through the book of Ephesians four times one night in Eugene Peterson's The Message, and it seemed to me that Paul did not want Christians to fight with one another. He seemed to care a great deal about this, so, in my mind, I had to tell my heart to love the people at the churches I used to go to, the people who were different from me. This was entirely freeing because when I told me heart to do this, my heart did it, and now I think very fondly of those wacko Republican fundamentalists, and I know that they love me, too, and I know that we will eat together, we will break bread together in heaven, and we will love each other so purely it will hurt because we are a family in Christ." [pg. 137-138]

ROMANCE 

"I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this alter of dying and dying again. God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us." [pg. 150] <--most romantic thing I've ever read!

ALONE 

"Jesus wants us interacting, eating together, laughing together, praying together. Loneliness is something that came with the fall. If loving other people is a bit of heaven then certainly isolation is a bit of hell, and to that degree, here on earth, we decide in which state we would like to live." [pg. 173]

COMMUNITY

 "No rut in the mind is so deep as the one that says I am the world, the world belongs to me, all people are characters in my play. There is no addiction so powerful as self-addiction." [pg. 182]

"If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus." [pg. 185]

MONEY 

"We don't need as much money as we have. Hardly any of us need as much money as we have. It's true what they say about the best things in life being free." [pg. 198]

"It is possible not to let possessions own me, to rest happily in the security that God, not money, can give." [pg. 199]

WORSHIP 

"The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on His majesty and otherness forever." [pg. 202]

"I think we have two choices in the face of such big beauty: terror or awe. And this is precisely why we attempt to chart God, because we want to be able to predict Him, to dissect Him, to carry Him around in our dog and pony show. We are too proud to feel awe and too fearful to feel terror. We reduce Him to math so we don't have to fear Him, and yet the Bible tells us fear is the appropriate response, that is the beginning of wisdom." [pg. 204]

"When I think about the complexity of the Trinity, the three-in-one God, my mind cannot understand, but my heart feels wonder in abundant satisfaction. It is as though my heart, in the midst of its euphoria, is saying to my mind, There are things you cannot understand, and you must learn to live with this. Not only must you learn to live with this, you must learn to enjoy this." [pg. 205] 

"At the end of the day, when I am lying in my bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay. And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don't think there is any better worship than wonder." [pg. 206]

LOVE: How to Really Love Other People

 "I began to understand that my pastors and leaders were wrong, that the liberals were not evil, they were liberal for the same reason Christians were Christians, because they believed their philosophies were right, good, and beneficial for the world." [pg. 215]

"Hatred seemed, to me, the product of ignorance." [pg. 216]

"The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money." [pg. 218]

"I replaced economic metaphor, in my mind, with something different, a free gift metaphor or a magnet metaphor. That is, instead of withholding love to change somebody, I poured it on lavishly. I hoped that love would work like a magnet, pulling people from the mire and toward healing. I knew that was the way God loved me. God had never withheld love to teach me a lesson." [pg. 220]

"If a person sense that you do not like them, that you do not approve of their existence, then your religion and your political ideas will all seem wrong to them. If they sense that you like them, then they are open to what you have to say." [pg. 220] 

"I loved the fact that it wasn't my responsibility to change somebody, that it was God's, that my part was just to communicate love and approval." [pg. 221]

"The Bible says that if you talk to somebody with your mouth, and your heart does not love them, that you are like a person standing there smashing two cymbals together. You are only annoying everybody around you. I think that is very beautiful and true. [...] When I go to meet somebody, I pray that God will help me feel His love for them. I ask God to make it so both conversations, the one from the mouth and the one from the heart, are true." [pg. 221]

LOVE: How to Really Love Yourself

"And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it. I think apart from the idea that I am a sinner and God forgives me, this is the greatest lesson I have ever learned. When you get it, it changes you. [...] God's love will never change us if we don't accept it." [pg. 232]

JESUS 

"Alan asked a few questions. I don't know what they were, but as a final question asked Dr. Bright what Jesus meant to him. Alan said Dr. Bright could not answer the question. He said Dr. Bright just started to cry. He sat there in his big chair behind his big desk and wept. When Alan told that story I wondered what it was like to love Jesus that way. I wondered, quite honestly, if that Bill Bright guy was just nuts or if he really knew Jesus in a personal way, so well that he would cry at the very mention of His name. I knew then that I would like to know Jesus like that, with all my heart, not just my head. I felt like that would be the key to something." [pg. 233]

"I think the most important thing that happens within Christian spirituality is when a person falls in love with Jesus." [pg. 237]

"I know our culture will sometimes understand a love for Jesus as weakness. There is this lie floating around that says I am supposed to be able to do life alone, without any help, without stopping to worship something bigger than myself. But I actually believe there is something bigger than me, and I need for there to be something bigger than me. I need someone to put awe inside me; I need to come second to someone who has everything figured out." [pg. 237] 

"I was watching BET one night, and they were interviewing a man about jazz music. He said jazz music was invented by the first generation out of slavery. I thought that was beautiful because, while it is music, it is very hard to put on paper; it is so much more a language of the soul. It is as if the soul is saying something, something about freedom. I think Christian spirituality is like jazz music. I think loving Jesus is something you feel. I think it is something very difficult to get on paper. But it is no less real, no less meaningful, no less beautiful. The first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a music birthed out of freedom. And that is the closest thing I know to Christian spirituality. A music birthed out of freedom. Everybody sings their song the way they feel it, everybody closes their eyes and lifts up their hands." [pg. 239]

Blue Like Jazz [Quotes]

A fews days ago I had just finished reading Donald Miller's, Blue Like Jazz, where he talks about his "nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality." I've heard mixed reviews of the book, particularly within the Christian community. Then I saw the trailer of the Blue Like Jazz movie and was sold. I wanted to read the book.

It's funny, I had this book on my bookshelf for years, ever since my freshman year of college. Cru (formally known as Campus Crusade for Christ) was tabling one day and had loads of free books that they were willing to give away. Miller's book was lying there and I'm so glad I chose this book amongst others. :]

So...as I was reading through each chapter, I was underlining phrases, sentences, and paragraphs because there was so much truth that Miller was pointing out. I found that I could identify with a lot of how he came to grow in his faith. The process in knowing God personally can be dirty and uncomfortable, but it is all worth it and satisfyingly beautiful!

Well, here are the things that stood out to me in each chapter (excluding the 1st chapter, lol):

PROBLEMS

"If you don't love somebody, it gets annoying when they tell you what to do of what to feel. When you love them you get pleasure from their pleasure, and it makes it easy to serve. I didn't love God because I didn't know God." [pg. 14]

"From a very early age our souls are taught there is a comfort and a discomfort in the world, a good and a bad if you will, a lovely and a frightening." [pg. 14]

"I do buy the idea we are flawed, that there is something in us that is broken. I think it is easier to do bad things than good things. And there is something in that basic fact, some little clue to the meaning of the universe." [pg. 17]

"It is hard for us to admit we have a sin nature because we live in this system of checks and balances. If we get caught, we will be punished. But that doesn't make us good people; it only makes us subdued. Just think about the Congress and Senate and even the president. The genius of the American system is not freedom; the genius of the American system is checks and balances. Nobody gets all the power. Everybody is watching everybody else. It is as if the founding fathers knew, intrinsically, that the soul of man, unwatched, is perverse." [pg. 18]

"I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts the face himself. [...] The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest." [pg. 20]

"I talk about love, forgiveness, social justice; I rage against American materialism in the name of altruism, but have I even controlled my own heart? The overwhelming majority of time I spend thinking about myself, pleasing myself, reassuring myself, and when I am done there is nothing to spare for the needy. Six billion people live in this world, and I can only must thoughts for one. Me." [pg. 22]

"I think every well-adjusted human being has dealt squarely with his or her own depravity. [...] I think Jesus feels strongly about communicating the idea of our brokenness, and I think it is worth reflection. Nothing is going to change int he Congo until you and I figure out what is wrong with the person in the mirror." [pg. 23]

MAGIC

"I liked the idea of Jesus becoming man, so that we would be able to trust Him, and I like that He healed people and loved them and cared deeply about how people were feeling." [pg. 34]

"Christian spirituality was not a children's story. It wasn't cute or neat. It was mystical and odd and clean, and it was reaching into dirty. There was wonder in it and enchantment." [pg. 35]

SHIFTS

 "The thing I loved about Nadine was that I never felt like she was selling anything. She would talk about God as if she knew Him, as if she had talked to Him on the phone that day. She was never ashamed." [pg. 46]

"I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn't. It is a chocolate thing." [pg. 47] <--definitely one of my favorite quotes! 

"There were people [Jesus] loved and people He got really mad at, and I kept identifying with the people He loved, which was really good, because they were all the broken people, you know, the kind of people who are tired of life and want to be done with it, or they are desperate people, people who are outcasts or pagans. There were others, regular people, but He didn't play favorites at all, which is miraculous in itself. That fact alone may have been the most supernatural thing He did. He didn't show partiality, which every human does." [pg. 47]

FAITH

"What do you mean?" she asked, dropping her hands in her lap and sighing once again.
"I mean the idea that you want to confess. I think that God is wanting a relationship with you and that starts by confessing directly to Him. He is offering forgiveness."
"You are not making this easy, Don. I don't exactly believe I need God to forgive me of anything."
"I know. But that is what I believe is happening. Perhaps you can see it as an act of social justice. The entire world is falling apart because nobody will admit they are wrong. But by asking God to forgive you, you are willing to own your own crap."
[pg. 53]

"I had no explanation for Laura. I don't think there is an explanation. My belief in Jesus did not seem rational or scientific, and yet there was nothing I could do to separate myself from this belief. I think Laura was looking for something rational, because she believed that all things that were true were rational. But that isn't the case. Love, for example, is a true emotion, but it is not rational. What I mean is, people actually feel it. I have been in love, plenty of people have been in love, yet love cannot be proved scientifically. Neither can beauty. Light cannot be proved scientifically, and yet we all believe in light and by light see all things. There are plenty of things that are true that don't make any sense. I think one of the problems Laura was having was that she wanted God to make sense. He doesn't. He will make no more sense to me than I will make sense to an ant." [pg. 54]

"In his book Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton says chess players go crazy, not poets. I think he is right. You'd go crazy trying to explain penguins. It's best just to watch them and be entertained. I don't think you can explain how Christian faith works either. It is a mystery. And I love this about Christian spirituality. It cannot be explained, and yet it is beautiful and true. It is something you feel, and it comes from the soul." [pg. 57]

REDEMPTION

 "Ultimately, we do what we love to do. I like to think that I do things for the right reasons, but I don't, I do things because I do or don't love doing them. Because of sin, because I am self-addicted, living in the wreckage of the fall, my body, my heart, and my affections are prone to love things that kill me. Tony says Jesus gives us the ability to one the things we should love, the things of Heaven. Tony says that when people who follow Jesus love the right things, they help create God's kingdom on earth, and that is something beautiful." [pg. 77]

"I figured I could just make myself do good things, think good thoughts about other people, but that was no easier than walking up to a complete stranger and falling in love with them. I could go through the motions for a while, but sooner or later my heart would testify to its true love: darkness. Then I would get up and try again. The cycle was dehumanizing." [pg. 77]

GRACE

"Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God's love will. The ability to accept God's unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return." [pg. 86]

"God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love." [pg. 86]

"In exchange for our humanity and willingness to accept the charity of God, we are given a kingdom. And a beggar's kingdom is better than a proud man's delusions." [pg. 86]

gODS

"Your problem is not that God is not fulfilling, your problem is that you are spoiled." [pg. 92]

"I had the image of a spiritual person, but I was bowing down to the golden cows of religiosity and philosophy." [pg. 94]

CHANGE

"What I wanted was God. I wanted a tangible interaction. But even more than that, to be honest, I wanted to know who I was. I felt like a robot or an insect or a mysterious blob floating around in the universe. I believed if I could contact God, He would be able to explain who and why I was." [pg. 98]

"There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.)" [pg. 100]

"The knowledge of God seeped out of my brain and into my heart. I imagined Him looking down on this earth, half angry because His beloved mankind had cheated on Him, had committed adultery, and yet hopelessly in love with her, drunk with love for her." [pg. 100]

"I could see Satan lashing out on the earth like a madman, setting tribes against each other in Rwanda, whispering in men's ears in the Congo so that they rape rather than defend their women. Satan is at work in the cults of the Third World, the economic chaos in Argentina, and the corporate-driven greed of American corporate executives." [pg. 101] <--1 Peter 5:8

BELIEF

"Love is both something that happens to you and something you decide upon." [pg. 104] 

"But the trouble with deep belief is that it costs something. And there is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn't like the truth at all because it carries responsibility, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them." [pg. 107]

"Even our beliefs have become trend statements. We don't even believe things because we believe them anymore. We only believe things because they are cool things to believe. The problem with Christian belief--I mean real Christian belief, the belief that there is a God and a devil and a heaven and a hell--is that it is not a fashionable thing to believe." [pg. 107]

"If you believe something, passionately, people will follow you. People hardly care what you believe, as long as you believe something. If you are passionate about something, people will follow you because they think you know something they don't, some clue to the meaning of the universe. Passion is tricky, though, because it can point to nothing as easily as it points to something." [pg. 109]

"What I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do." [pg. 110]

"I am learning not to be passionate about empty things, but to cultivate passion for justice, grace, truth, and communicate the idea that Jesus likes people and even loves them." [pg. 112]

[other half continued tomorrow] 

First Love, Divided Love

Jesus, who so often says "Whoever loves Me..." and asks "Do you love Me?" is concerned about LOVE! He is concerned about a special kind of love. It is the love which is shadowed in the relationship between a bride and her bridegroom; that is, it is an exclusive love, a love which places the beloved, the bridegroom, above all other loves, in the first place. As a Bridegroom, Jesus has a claim to "first love". He who has loved us so much wants to possess us completely, with everything we are and have. Jesus gave Himself wholly and completely for us. Now His love is yearning for us to surrender ourselves and everything that we are to Him, so that He can really be our "first love." So long as our love for Him is a divided love, so long as our heart is bound to family, possessions, or the like, He will not count our love to be genuine. Divided love is of so little value to Him that He will not enter into a bond of love with such a soul, for this bond presupposes a full mutual love. Because our love is so precious to Jesus, because He yearns for our love, He waits for our uncompromising commitment.

[Basilea Schlink "Bridal Love"] 

Faith, faithity, faithy...faith

What is faith?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a few things that stuck out to me on faith were: "firm belief in something for which there is no proof," "something that is believed especially with strong conviction," and "complete trust." As I was reading through the definition, I wasn't thoroughly convinced...so I asked a few random friends on Facebook. These friends, btw, are not necessarily Christian but here is what they shared:

Mike: "Putting your future or the future of someone into the theoretical hands of an imaginary being, due to the fact you cannot cope with the results that will occur."

Cassie: "Faith is believing in something that you cannot see, but know it's there."

Yuki: "Trust."

Cliff: "I'd define the word faith as believing in someone (or something) to the extent that they can achieve whatever they want. Believing in their abilities to take them far in life."

Oscar: "Faith, what I believe, is a flawless willpower that we have when there is nothing left; it triggers our heart and mind to believe in something with sure confidence. We can trigger it at any time or trigger it at desperate times. Optimistic people trigger it all the time and that is why they succeed all the time because they 'know for sure' rather than 'I think'."

Do you know how the Bible defines faith?

"The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see." - Hebrews 11:1 [MSG]

 I like the Amplified version where it explains Hebrews 11:1 in this way:

"NOW FAITH is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being proof of the things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses]."

Generally what I got from this verse is that faith is having hope in what we cannot see, but being sure about it even though it cannot be understood through the physical senses. When we have faith we really don't know what the outcome will be, but only by trusting in God (the One who is Sovereign over all things) can we really trust His purposes for our lives because we know it will never be used to harm us or go void [Jer. 29:11].

A few days ago, I had read 2 devotionals and both happened to be talking about faith. The first one was from Oswald Chamber's My Utmost for His Highest and the other from Bedside Blessings by C.R. Swindoll. Here is what stuck out to me from Chambers (which made reference to Abraham from the Bible as a life lived on faith):

     Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led. But it does mean loving and knowing the One who is leading. It is literally a life of faith, not of understanding and reason [...] A life of faith is not a life of one glorious mountaintop experience after another, like soaring on eagles' wings, but is a life of day-in and day-out consistency; a life of walking without fainting (see Isaiah 40:31). It is not even a question of the holiness of sanctification, but of something which comes farther down the road. It is a faith that has been tried and proved and has withstood the test. Abraham is not a type or an example of the holiness of sanctification, but a type of the life of faith--a faith, tested and true, built on the true God.

 Swindoll writes:

     Too often the fog of the flesh blocks out our ability to see God's plan. Our selfishness pushes away His hand because we want our way. Our location and our situation become irksome assignments, and life becomes barren and cold.
     The only way to find happiness in the grind of life is to do so by faith. A faith-filled life means all the difference in how we view everything around us. It affects our attitudes toward people, toward location, toward situations, toward circumstances, toward ourselves. Only then do our feet become swift to do what is right.

At the end of the little devo, Swindoll concludes with this verse: "Being always of good courage [...] we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:6-7). Hmm, walking by faith...

It's really interesting because about more than a month ago, my church did this "spiritual gifts" assessment in all small groups...and you know what I found out? Apparently, my top 3 spiritual gifts are: service, discernment, and faith! I was kinda surprised by the other results, but faith? Not so much. I can write out a list of events where I have been tested in the area of faith and God has proved His Sovereignty over the situation or circumstance time and time again. Don't get me wrong, this doesn't make me perfect in the area of faith. There have been times where I haven't placed my faith in God and I can honestly tell you that those times don't end well (or any better than I would have expected). For me, I've just been tired of placing faith on myself because I have the tendency to let myself down. So, I turn to God because He is the Only One I can absolutely trust completely.

Living a life of faith (or a faith-filled life) comes with its share of challenges and struggles. But for some reason, I find it exhilarating, exciting, thrilling, inspiring, motivating, encouraging, and stimulating. It gets my heart pumping and my blood flowing because I find I'm living with hopeful anticipation! Does that make sense? lol. So faith, for me, means really really not knowing the details completely but trusting solely in the power of God, which gives me hope and absolute confidence in Him that everything will work out for His glory.

"Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good." -Romans 8:26-28 [Message]

Big Break '12 [VISIBLE]

At Sharky's (one of PCB's hot spot)

From March 10-17, I attended a Cru conference--Big Break! It's a weeklong conference that takes place over spring break in Panama City Beach, FL. Throughout the week we attend general seminars that train and equip us with practical tools to share our faith and are challenged each day to approach all kinds of people all over the city. Then during the evening session, anybody can come on stage and share their experience, whether or not a person has prayed to receive Christ. It has been so inspiring to hear so many people share their awesome God-moments and +1 experiences, (for example) where those who call themselves atheist turn agnostic or those who were agnostic take the next step to turn their lives over to God!

This year's theme is VISIBLE. Motivated by 1 John 1:1-4, we who claim to have a personal relationship with God must go out into the "world" and let our light shine as bright as day! The speakers, Roger Hershey & Matt Mikalatos, have warned us that we will see things we may not want to see during the week. There will be people dressed indecently, people drunk out of their minds, people engaged in sexual activity, and simply put...there will be those who will mock us, reject us, and make all kinds of crude remarks. Knowing this might scare us, but it shouldn't. The purpose of a lamp is to light up the darkness and we are the light of the world [Matt 5:14]. Also, when Jesus came into this world, he was the image of our invisible God and since he lives in us we make Him visible through our words & actions. Our love for one another will prove to the world that we truly follow Jesus [John 13:35].

Soularium

For our tools used to engage in spiritual conversations, we were trained in using a questionnaire, Soularium, and Persrspective cards. The questionnaire was a simple tool in which we ask noninvasive questions to start up a conversation. We were told that the whole point of sharing is to really listen to the people--listening to their opinions and perspective on life & spiritual things. Then however the conversation is led, we may share our story and even the KGP (the "Knowing God Personally" booklet, formally known as the "4 Spiritual Laws").

    

Perspective

Soularium is a really fun tool which involves a dialogue through artsy fartsy pictures, lol. This tool is great to use among right-brained people because it's so intuitive and allows each picture to be interpreted in so many different ways. Perspective is a great tool for left-brained individuals because it's broken up into 5 categories (Nature of God, Purpose of Life, Human Nature, Person of Jesus, and the Source of Spiritual Truth) so that the person can analyze each perspective objectively and rationally.

I, personally, love using Soularium because I've used it so many times before. Last week was the first time I've used the Persepctive cards with my partner. Since I'm not familiar with this tool, I felt bad for reading directly from the cards. But we were assured that it's ok to do it that way because ultimately it is the Holy Spirit who can convict the heart of the person. All we gotta do is step out in faith and allow Him to work!

Engaging in spiritual conversations!

The conversations we've engaged with all week have been...wow! I have met people who consider themselves Jewish, Catholic, Christian, agnostic, atheist or having "no opinion" in anything. It's been interesting to see where they were coming from and to understand their worldview. I really like how Big Break has taught me to hear other people's story, to get to know them as a person, rather than "force" the gospel down their throats. At the end of every conversation, we would leave the people with a sense of who God is and what it means to experience the kind of love that is unconditional and non-condemning. By the end of the week, we have engaged in 5,850 spiritual conversations; 2,345 of those conversations led to the gospel presentation and 180 have prayed to receive Christ!! Additionally, 413 have gone through the Satisfied booklet (for those who claim to already have a personal relationship with God) and have stepped out in faith to recommit their lives to Christ!

Although I have attended this conference before, this Big Break experience has all been so new to me. And I absolutely loved & enjoyed every moment! Every day has been an opportunity to trust God...to rely on and depend on for every encounter to share His love.
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P.S. I praise and thank God for the people who have supported me financially & spiritually (though prayer)! Without their help, I wouldn't have been able to experience God's wonderful plan through this life-changing event! :]