History Maker: Fearless

Today I was back at school after a long weekend in Langley. I enjoyed myself a lot, it was a new experience, and an amazing one. For anyone who doesn't know, History Maker is a youth conference that goes on every year, this year in Langley, I think I was told it have been in other places in the past. But it is basically an amazing weekend with worship, awesome bands, great speaking, and some crazy dancing. I started off the weekend feeling kind of down, a lot of stuff has happened lately, mostly my two best(and only) friends moving across the country. I know it sounds like I should just move on, but to a teenager, friends are pretty much life, if you don't have any friends, school sucks, you have nothing to do after school, and basically the only thing left is homework, and sports if you're into sports. So lately my life has been school, homework, 4-H, work, and church. I'm not saying it is all bad, but it is weird not having my friends around.

Anyway, I started off the weekend a little on the sad side, but first thing when we got there there was worship, and it was crazy fun. After some crazy jumping around and prayer, Bob Lenz was speaking, and he was making sense and I slowly started to feel better, something was stirring inside me, I didn't know what yet. That night was fun, hanging out with friends, more worship, and finally a little sleep.

Saturday morning was really amazing, after more worship, I was really into to atmosphere by now. Bob Lenz spoke again, this time he spoke about sin, and forgiveness. Something he said must've touched my heart, because I couldn't stop listening, he was telling us that not forgiving was only hurting us, it wasn't hurting the people we didn't forgive, it just hurt us. I realized there's a lot of people I hadn't forgiven, mostly I hadn't forgiven myself, I was so mad at myself, everything was my fault, everything. He asked us to come to the front if we wanted to forgive, let go of sin, and really surrender all to God. It took me a minute to get up the guts, but eventually I got up. I was one of the, I'm guessing to be 400-500 people who made our way to the front. there was prayer, and worship, and I felt forgiven, and I just gave everything to God, just surrendered all. I spent most of Saturday in a haze, going from one thing to another, I felt good though, better then I'd felt in a long time. Saturday evening was also good, but I didn't get what the speaker was saying so much. He was a little confusing.

Sunday morning, we had communion. Now, I've done communion in my church at home, and it is nothing like at HM, seriously, there was these cool little instant communion cups, and we broke into our groups that we came in to do it. While Andrew was praying, and explaining communion, it kind of amazed me(for about the 100th time that weekend) how amazing God, and Jesus are. Jesus gave up everything he had, he allowed himself to be beaten, nailed through his hands, and feet, and have a spear in his side for our sin. I don't know anyone who would ever do that. It is amazing how much he loves us, so much that it wouldn't even make sense in our head. Jesus died for us, so we could be made clean and have a relationship with God. That in it's self is amazing, but he also loves us, more then we can fathom, it's incredible.

The whole weekend just filled me with love, for the first time in a long time I felt worth something, I felt like I mattered to someone, and I love God more then anything. It was just amazing to know that the creator of the earth, loves me. It isn't like I didn't know that, I've been told that in the past, but I'm still new at the relationship with God, just learning, like a little baby bird. I've only been going to church for about a year and a half, and I've only been actually somewhat understanding what people are saying to me for the past year. I still have a lot to learn, and being the usual rebellious teenager I have many moments when I feel alone, I feel like God doesn't love me, and I don't understand what he wants from me. But i'm working on it. I am doing my best, trying to figure out what he wants from me, and not get sidetracked by what I want to do, and allow myself to sink back to where I was.

After this amazing weekend I still feel loved, I'm not as hyper as when I got home. It seems weird to me, I went from somewhere everyone was worshiping God, and so full of hope and love, and then I came home. My brother took it upon himself to tell me a couple of times that God isn't real, and my parents didn't really want to hear anything I had to say. It's hard sometimes to remember my faith when the people around me have none. But I'm not giving up. Ever.