Take Note: Paige Benton Brown

This past weekend The Gospel Coalition held a conference for women in Orlando!

Source.

My discipler got to go, so for a lot more and accurate notes and more reflective wisdom, check out her upcoming posts :)

The conference's main sessions were streamed LIVE--words cannot express how happy I was/am about this.  The way I worship, fear, and view God has been shifted.  This brings Him more glory, and for that, I am so so grateful.

I only got to watch about four (I say about because I was only half-listening to one) talks, but my favorite one that I got to hear was Paige Benton Brown's, In the Temple: The Glorious and Forgiving God.

Source.

She taught from 1 Kings 8:1-30, 52-63.  And she spoke for over an hour.  And none of it was boring.  Impressive.

A few great points/quotes:

- All other religions present a relationship between god and his people that is causative--If you do ____, god will give you ____. 

- Christianity presents a relationship between God and His people that is contradictory -- He says that we have done nothing to merit His love, favor, mercy, etc...yet He freely gives it as a gift despite our failure. 

- She referenced verses 27-28: "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You; how much less this house I have built? Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O Lord my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before You this day." 

- That "Yet" is huge -- it indicates that Solomon knows he does not deserve answered prayer, or anything good, from God, yet he asks for it, knowing that God keeps His promises: "'Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who with His hand has fulfilled what He has promised with His mouth to David...'" (v. 15). 

- God keeps His promises; therefore we can trust Him. 

- The purpose of God's will is relationship, not forgiveness.  Forgiveness is required for relationship. 

- He gives up His rightful throne to take on my rightful Cross. 

- As the temples was the dwelling place of God, now because of Jesus, WE are the temples in which God dwells. 

- Does my hatred, jealousy, doubt square with the fact that I house the glory of God? 

- Work, reason, wrestle FROM the "templeness" that Jesus has given to us, not TO it--you can't.

- He tells us to "...be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18) -- therefore, if we are filled, "there ain't no room for anything else." 

- Being a temples of the living God changes the amount of time I spend investing in the way that I look, how I spend money, etc. 

- There is no room for the attitude that "the way I spend my money, time, and efforts is up to me, because He fills ALL of it.  

I have never before considered, to this degree, that I am a temple of God.  Not as some princess-like jewel that God doesn't want anyone to scratch, but I literally house the presence of God.  Therefore, fickle discipline and doubt of God's sovereignty is laughable; my prideful desire for control and fear at the thought of relinquishing control seems not just erroneous, but ugly.

I am always more wretched that I think I am; He is always more good, more holy, and more glorious than I think He is.