Bible Conference: A Time to Change

Have you ever noticed how many mistakes other people make? It had become so apparent lately that I was unsure if it was everyone being unusually mistaken or just me, having an unusually heightened awareness of their mistakes. It first hit me last Thursday when I went to the store and bought what looked like a package of plastic spoons to stir my coffee. When I opened them back in the dorm, they were sporks. Well great. Everyone knows you can’t stir your coffee with a spork; the sugar goes through the little spokes and stays at the bottom of your mug. The employees should have known that nobody (me) would look closely (or at all) at the package.

Now, this may easily have been passed off just as a moment of weakness in the store’s judgment, but the very next day it happened again. I was sitting in class and flipped my midterm around on my desk. In frustration, I found that my teacher had written questions on the test that didn’t have the answers that I had studied. That weekend, as I was out driving, the car in front of me slowed down instead of speeding up for the orange light and made me late for Starbucks. Then, when I finally got to Starbucks, the lady at the cash register couldn’t hear my order no matter how many times I muttered it, and then she finally started saying something to confirm my order but wouldn’t talk either loudly or clearly enough for my flawless ears to pick  up, so I didn’t bother asking “what” and ended up with a water.  As if people around me couldn’t have made any more mistakes, it rained later that day on my way to class and the people in front of me forgot to share their umbrella with me. On a side note, they were chewing gum and they forgot to offer me any of that too. What a burden to live so flawlessly in such a mistaken world! Or so I thought.

Okay, all of this is ridiculous. I was the problem the whole time, wasn’t I? MY heart and MY focus were mistaken. I say it all to make a point.

We are going into one of the most exciting weeks of the semester: Bible Conference! It began with the annual picnic, themed after the Wild West this year, and will be followed by several days of special services and messages brought to the student body from some of our most beloved special speakers: Clyde Box, Jonny Pope, and Marc Monte. The whole week serves as a refreshing change of pace and an opportunity to focus on moving forward in our relationship with the Lord.

But sometimes we don’t move forward. Why is that? I would venture to say that this week could mark a significant change in our lives! Yet if it doesn’t, it is not because God has not given us the “tools” or the “resources” to learn and grow this week. We will be surrounded by a solid spiritual emphasis, phenomenal speakers, and other believers seeking to grow as well. The one thing stopping us from seeing the Lord more clearly and growing in His grace during a week like this is US—it would be our “mistake”.

In other words, we are “a will away” from being changed. We often talk about revival and growth— especially in the body of Christ. Basically, we could talk ourselves straight to the grave. Here’s an opportunity to first change ourselves! I would encourage each one of you to be receptive! Attend each service with a softened heart, open and moldable to the ways that the Lord wants to stretch you and teach you through these special speakers and meetings through this week!

Anna Grace

Major: Performance Studies

Home town: “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through...” Also, my dad is in the Air Force.

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