I don't even know where to begin with this post. There is so much that I want to say, but I'm not even sure how I want to say it. One thing I do know is that this past weekend at Youth Convention is one weekend that God really changed my life and showed Himself to me, and I will never forget it.
The first night, the speaker Robert Madu (who is an AMAZING speaker!) talked about "The Frustrations of our Generation." He talked a lot about how when we have a powerful or life-changing moment with God, like on a retreat or at youth convention, we need to use that experience that we had to show others what God is doing through us back at home. A lot of times, we'll go on a retreat with our church, and God will do something powerful in our lives and we get so fired up for God, but when we come home, we usually slip back into our old ways and act like God did nothing on that trip or He really didn't impact us that much. I know this because I've done that. I've been on retreats and God will do something life-changing and I'll have such a powerful experience with God, but when I go back home, you're back to reality where life is not easy and sometimes it's not always easy to rely on God and follow Him. But like Robert Madu said, we have to take our experience that we had with God, and show other people that experience! Don't just hold onto it in the back of your mind and not tell anyone. When something good happens to you, you want to share it with others, right? Just like that, when you have an amazing experience with God, share it with others! Whenever you feel like you can't go on and that experience with God was just a one time thing, that's the devil trying to get to you. He's trying to get in your head and tell you that even though you had a great experience with God, you can't keep that feeling when you're at home. Let me tell you something. THAT IS A COMPLETE LIE! The devil is so good at lying to us, and he twists everything good in our lives and tries to make them either not lasting or just not good. Don't listen to the devil, listen to God and keep relying and trusting in Him, even when the devil is trying to bring you down. God is stronger and more powerful than the devil.
Another thing Robert Madu talked about that really stuck out to me was when he was talking about bondage to sin. We all have bondage to some kind of sin in our lives. We are created to walk in the freedom that God has for us. God wants us to live in freedom with Him. I love when Robert Madu said, "When sin becomes our normal, we will always go back to it. We need to let the Lord do a transformation in us and give us real freedom, not fake freedom through dysfunction." This really hit me. Real freedom. Do you know what real freedom is? Real freedom, is God's forgiveness. We need God's forgiveness to set us free from the sin that holds us back from living free and at peace with God. What is fake freedom? Fake freedom, is basically living for the worldly things that may seem satisfying at first, but they are only temporary and won't last. Living in fake freedom, is basically living as though sin is normal, and like Robert Madu said, when sin becomes our normal, we always go back to it. I think what he was saying is that when we have fake freedom, we have asked God to forgive us from our sins at some point in our lives, but we have walked away from God and have been living in sin that it's part of our daily routine and we think nothing of it, like brushing our teeth. God doesn't want us to have this mindset. He wants us to live in real freedom with Him, where we ask Him to be the Lord of our lives and to completely forgive us of all of our sin that we have and to take all of our burdens off of us.
Lately, I've been having a lot of baggage. I've been holding onto a lot of my past mistakes and I just haven't been able to let them go. Even though I've asked God to forgive me of my sins and my mistakes and to take all of my burdens, I've still been holding onto them. But God wants me to live in real freedom with Him and completely surrender everything to Him. I cried my eyes out that night, and I ran down to the alter and just bawled my eyes out. I didn't want to keep holding onto this baggage, I wanted to surrender it over to God and live in real freedom with God. After I surrendered everything to God and asked for His real freedom, I felt the most amazing peace that I had ever felt in my entire life. After completely surrendering to God, I felt like that I was finally feeling that real freedom that God wants me to live in.
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