Renovarẻ
May 22nd, 2007 by pinkbeansOk, I have a chunk of time on my hands to write some about the Renovarẻ conference that took place in Long Beach two weekends ago. Basically, it was a conference about spiritual formation and transformation. It was a busy week leading up to the conference, and I was running on fumes as I drove about two hours out of L.A. traffic to get to Long Beach straight from my work. This past week was fairly busy leading up to another weekend of even longer driving to Arizona to meet up with my former youth pastor and his family (from Guam—Woot!). This week is also fairly busy, and this coming up weekend will be the least amount of driving as I get to watch some friends graduate out in Redlands where I interned. So it’s been a hectic few weeks for me. All this to say that one of the nuggets of wisdom I got out of the conference was a quote from Dallas Willard: “Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”
Psalm 16:8a says, “I keep my eyes always on the Lord.” Or another translation is “I will set the Lord always before me.” Jim, one of the speakers, mentioned the idea of “action of intention.” Choosing to be before God is an action. If we know our schedules are gonna get busy (or already are!), we should schedule time with God first and our activities around him. We need to create space for him. How often do we try to “fit” God into our schedules? It’s tough and inconsistent. But if we turn things away because we planned an afternoon to be with God, we are more likely to succeed. Similarly, Richard Foster, another speaker (author of Celebration of Disciplines), asks, “What is your intention? Are you intending to do wrong or are you intending not to do wrong?” You can’t just decide you’re “ok” when fighting temptation by not doing anything. I like the example of one of my accountability partners (Joel Hamaguchi). (I might be paraphrasing a bit). He said, “It’s like staring at a chocolate cake—not doing anything, just staring. You can’t expect to be successful if you’re on a diet from eating sweets!” You have to remove it from your view and get your mind on something else. More so, we need to intend not to do wrong and attack the problem directly by spending time with God.
. here’s a sample of the contents of the email i received:
and bonus ball number
which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category.You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of £