I am Second and H'auton Ekenosyn

God has given me an amazing new year. I decided to start blogging on December 31st, the day I turned 18. And here I am, three weeks later, finally starting. I wanted to wait until I had something to write about. And now I have a ton of material. In the few past weeks of 2009, God has given me several ups and downs, and perspective on it all. Sharing that perspective, putting it down in writing, might help others, I don't know. However, I hope that it will, since as our retreat speaker said, ministry is storytelling. Here's the story of 2009 so far:

I'm a chaplain at Maranatha High School. This job gave me a lot of concern about things I couldn't necessarily handle. The present chaplains came in at a time at MHS of a lot of spiritual apathy. The school needed to be revived, and for some reason, I saw it as my duty to make that happen. How foolish and arrogant is that? What revival can any of us cause? It took a lot of time and some understanding of revival just to see how wrong I was. This is where 2009's Spiritual Life Retreat comes in, and proves to be among the greater blessings God has given me.

This was the first Spiritual Life Retreat I'd been to. Our theme:Are You Ready for Revival? By the time I was on the way to the camp, I already had a picture in my mind of what was going to happen. The camp was going to be fun, many people would see their friends, but although I believed and hoped for revival at SLR, I can't honestly say I was expecting it. The retreat itself turned out to be so much different than I thought, and to describe how, another little story needs to be told.

As part of ASB this year, the advisors gave as a gift to us silver rings with the inscription He Auton Ekenosyn, Greek for "He emptied Himself" This was to serve as a reminder of the ultimate humility in service that Christ gave, and the service we were committed to. He gave us everything, and poured Himself out for us to do so. I thought it was just a really cool gift until I went to SLR.

Our speaker, Chris Simning, has had a muscular disease for over twenty years that has affected his movements and speech. He was one of the best speakers imaginable, and the perfect pick for a weekend of revival. He spoke of the pain and the other "giants" in our lives that make us stagnant. That become obstacles between ourselves and God. He spoke of the difficulties he's faced, and how becoming stagnant is so easy, so natural, when pain and troubles come our way. He also spoke of how God can use these obstacles for a greater good. Later in the weekend, I became surprised, at the goodness of God of all things, when the revival that I had prayed so hard for but doubted so much displayed itself in front of me. My own cabin had half of its members determine to make significant changes in following Christ. The last evening of the retreat, we broke bread together, and several people were weeping in each others' arms, showing how Christ had affected them. The following day, several came up and expressed the great changes thathad occured at this retreat. The power of God was clearly seen in reviving so many at this camp.

And that's when it hit me. He Auton Ekenosyn. He emptied Himself. God denies us nothing, despite what we choose to see. He pours Himself out to benefit us. There is pain, yes, but from that He brings purpose. Chris' message was so effective because he knew pain, he knew suffering. He also knew revival, in a way that most of us never could have. From Chris' suffering, God brought salvation to many through Chris' words. Likewise, He brought purpose and revival to so many at SLR who thought they were going through pains far too harsh to be healed, or obstacles too great to renew a relationship with God. This revival was one of the greatest things I've ever witnessed at MHS.

But what did this do to my expectation? It shattered it. My doubt of revival was gone. When the students were allowed open microphone time to share their experience of SLR, they always finished with the phrase "I am Second", second to God, the servant of God. And God brought that home for me in a very wonderful way. He simply shattered all my ideas of what revival would be. I thought, well-studied individual that I am, that I knew so much about how this weekend was going to go, and what to expect from God. As I learned for the hundredth time, my ideas are not His ideas, my plans are not His plans, my ways are not His ways. He destroyed any idea I had of how this weekend would go, and replaced it with something altogether better.

And so, to close my very first blog entry, I would say that whatever pain you have in your life, whatever sorrow, and whatever expectation that give you in the future, just remember two things. The first is that God has spared nothing to benefit us. Whatever we might interpret as pain may bring us greater joy in the future. Trust of God, in the joyous times and the painful, is crucial. The second is that we do not know what God has planned. My plans, our plans are nothing by comparison. We do not know what the future holds, so our duty as Christians is to act as He tells us, every moment, and to trust that He will use those actions to bring about something far greater than anything we can offer. He Auton Ekenosyn. Remember that. And now, to close appropriately for SLR, My name is Harrison Seidel, and I am Second.