Life-Changing Experiences

Recently, I have been attending a seminar at my church. At first, I abhorred the idea of attending. The first couple were as boring as watching the effects of gravity on well-crafted statue of cheese. I dozed off a couple of times. Secondly, it was a seminar. Just the word makes me hate it. Too much information poorly presented. And that is exactly what it has been. However, God works regardless.

I have a crew of people that also find the seminar strange as it leaves us with a feeling of unease. Though there is a lot of material to go through, well under half is from scripture itself. And even though I believe God inspires hundreds and thousands of people, I want to see the direct connection to the scriptures (this can't be done when whipping through page after page of material). The joy of the posse that I share this common feeling with is that we release our hot wind filled bags after each session. We ask questions about what was said and how we don't feel comfortable with it. We freely share what bugs us about what we heard. We seek to discover what stirs our guts and makes us feel like we could spiritually hurl.

I am out of school for this week thanks to the first quarter break. I was able to take a Bible and sit down for two hours strait, searching for answer to some of the questions we had. I'm still looking. But I had a fantastic conversation with God. He showed me things today that cleared up a lot of questions unrelated to seminar, and I felt closer to Him than I have in months. I was also confronted, not for the first time, with the time-consuming practices that keep me from the most abundant life: video games. World of Warcraft has been the most prominent over the last year, but it is not the sole pillar of distraction. Therefore, I'm going for a covenant to avoid video games outside of social situations. This means that unless I am in a room with another person playing a game, I am allowed to join them in that game. Otherwise, I want to be free of such a time-waster.

Already, it's bizarre. I came home and didn't know what to do. I wonder what I used to do, and I can think of very few activities. Pray for me, please, that I stand strong on this.