This year’s Fall conference’s theme was Unstuck.  It was about how to get unstuck, when we are stuck spiritually.  It was one of the most helpful conferences for me. At the conference I had one of the guys I disciple there, so we spent a lot of time together talking through life and what we were learning at the conference.  Here are some of the things that stood out to me:

We looked at Peter leading up to his denial of Christ and found three things in common with him when we are stuck.  Often we deny that we are stuck, we reach for self confidence, or we try to fight it. We talked about four things we need to do to get out of being stuck.  The first thing is to hear.  We must listen to the Holy Spirit, but that can often be hard with the enemy and our flesh constantly talking at the same time.  It is important to know how to discern the Holy Spirit’s voice in your life.  Second we must see that we are stuck and admit it.

The third area was Acting. We learned that there are three types of action.  Powerless action is when you constantly talk about what is wrong and expect someone else to fix it.  Responsible action is putting it all on yourself and trying to bear it all. The final action is God dependent action.  Dave Patty, the President of JV, was speaking about these actions and he shared a story which I thought was very good.  He told the story of how is son when he was little wanted to help carry the couch up the stairs.  He got in the middle and pushed as hard as he could. When they got to the top of the stairs he fell to the ground and said, “that was so heavy!” not realizing the couch was still in the air.  His father and a friend were actually carrying the weight.  You see the harder you push on something the heavier it becomes for you, whether you are actually holding weight or not.  Christ’s yoke is light, it only matters how much we want to push in life.  We must remember Christ is really the one who carries the “couch.”

The final thought I really liked was on the last day.  The theme was reach and we studied the story of Jesus asking Peter if he loved him.  Finally Jesus asks him, “Do you love me more than these?”  This is a question I want to be asking myself everyday, do I love Christ more than anything else in my life? There is a song that says, “take the world but give me Jesus.”  So often I try to have Jesus along with other things in the world.  Am I really able to love Jesus more than everything else?  I have a lot to think about from this conference for sure!