Hinged women's retreat - Most impactful

Grace Pres is on the big side of small churches - about 70 people on a Sunday morning.  So to have 19 of our ladies attend a weekend women's conference is a big deal.  Off the top, half the church is male and half the church is kids, so this was a big portion of the eligible demographic!  (Kudos to the men who stayed home as involved parents... and remember, it's not babysitting if they're your own kids.)  The biggest collective takeaway, I think, is that we need more women's events for us to get together and know each other better.  Stay tuned.  I have an idea at the end.  And if you were among the ladies not able to join us this time, please know we missed you and want you to come with us to future events!

Friday we had 5 local speakers over dinner, and I took pages of notes before losing my workbook (I think it got cleared when dinner got cleared.)  But the closer said to look over our notes and write down one single thing that most impacted us, so I remember this:

We are all broken people, born broken into a broken world.  So be compassionate.

And if that's all I've got, that's pretty good.

Saturday we spent the day in Ephesians, which, having grown up at CPC under Allen Harris, I always consider time in Ephesians a wink from God that I need a refresher and a reminder and to just dive back in.

Most impactful:

from Melissa Kruger, on It Matters What You Know, Eph 1:3-23

(CPC's mission statement drew from Eph 1:16-23: To know Him, to know Our Hope, and to know His Power.)

It matters what we know to be true.

Prayers reveal our hearts.

What do you think about when you're not thinking?

And a super-cool Oprah-based illustration:  If Melissa handed out $100,000,000 inheritance checks to each of us but we couldn't cash them until next month, how would that change how we lived today?  Where would we eat?  What would we do?  What would we give to?  It changes our decision-making.  

But then if she started handing out pennies for today, and one got 50 and another 200, another 5, and another 5000, would you fight and complain over "you got the best portion"?  I like her car better.  I like her house better.  Her family has it all together and mine's a mess.  What we have on earth is just pennies!  Don't compare your house/job/situations!  (I'm satisfied with just a cottage below/A little silver and a little gold/But in that city where the ransomed will shine/I want a gold one that's silver lined!  I've got a mansion just over the hilltop/In that bright land where we'll never grow old/And someday yonder we will nevermore wander/But walk the streets that are purest gold.)

What am I trying to do? 

& what am I praying about being able to do?

What happens when we don't have hope?

What happens when we don't think we have riches?

What happens when we think we're powerless?

We have RESOURCES AVAILABLE to us!

WHAT DO WE BELIEVE?

Courtney Denton on It Matters Who You Are (Eph 2:1-10)

The importance of BUT GOD.

We were dead, and the dead cannot save themselves.  BUT GOD!  A one-way love, that relentlessly pursues us, with a love we do not earn but we desperately need.

Words do not cause faith, but faith is manifested in good works, just as thunder contributes nothing to lightning but is a result of it.  

God could not make Stradivarius violins withiut Antonio Stradivari.  ~Antonio Stradivari

We get to be part of the process!

Karen Hodge on It Matters How You Walk (Eph 3:14-4:16)

We BECOME what we BEHOLD (worship), and we are continually BECOMING what we will BE (walk).

God's love surpasses knowledge, but I want to know all I can.

Magnitude, in all directions:

1) Wide enough for all nations

2) Long from eternity past to eternity future

3) Raise us to the heavenly places 

4) Deep to reach from heaven and reach us

5) Filled up to overflowing

There is no neutral in life, we're always moving on a trajectory. 

1) What are you beholding?

2) How are you growing? 

3) How are you going to step into worship this week?

So...

Again, the biggest collective takeaway seems to be that we need more women's events for us to get together and know each other better.  So here's my idea:

Girls' Night Out

for intergenerational ladies: Depression-era, Boomers, Gen X-ers, Millenials, and that weird micro-generation that I personally self-identify with, the Oregon Trail generation.  From let's say middle school age up thru "not dead yet".

Save the date: Friday, March 13, 6-8:30pm.  We'll get a table, maybe two or three, at Sing Into Spring, which I admit is also a benefit dinner for Heart of the Triad Choral Society.  Tickets are $20 (less for kids), and we will also have a silent auction which you are welcome to but not obliged to bid on things.  My goal with this is to get together with some of you and just share our lives together!  

What most impacted you?  And who wants to come to dinner?