So Much Information

I thought I would sit down and try to write out some thoughts I have on what I heard at the seminar. You are given way too much information to digest all at once. It is an intense overview. Then you can read the textbook at home and see where God wants you to start. So, I will try and give an overview of what touched me.

First of all, going through the Bible, there are 49 commands of Christ. Most of the teaching, if not all of it, involves these commands. There are 7 Non-optional principles for life. The first of these is Design... why God made what He made, why He made you how you are. The goal here is self acceptance. There is a list of 10 Unchangeable things we need to accept. Things like who our parents are, what race we are, who our siblings are, birth order, etc. The next non-optional is Responsibility and the goal here is a good conscience. Then there is Authority and we are to have proper submission. We are to appeal from beneath, and the power is above. Then suffering with the goal of full forgiveness. Ownership to reach the goal of yielding our rights. What we own soon owns us, so give it all to God. Freedom that will lead us to moral purity and Success that will come when we learn to meditate.

I already told you in another post about what stood out to me the first 2 nights. The third night they talked about financial freedom. It hit every area you could possible imagine about your finances. One thing stood out the most to me. They asked you to think in your heart and name your "Isaac". What is it that is most precious to you? What do you hold on to tighter than you should? It could be a person, a job or even a dream you have and hope to attain one day. After you named your "Isaac" in your heart then you are to present it to God. To give up all rights to it. Gen. 22:15-19 talks about what God tells Abraham when he was willing to sacrifice Isaac. He was to be blessed abundantly. Then we are to prepare for testing. Job said yet though He slay me, I will still trust Him. Can we say that if we lost our "Isaac"? Then if we have the faith to do that, expect the supernatural. Heb 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. It was easy to name a couple of "Isaacs" right off. They also talked that night on choosing to have a good name whatever the cost.

Thursday they talked about how the Christians have become so much like the world. They also gave some suggestions for questions to ask yourself when you want to know God's will for daily decisions. They also went over music and its influence on us. It also talked about recognizing "the lie" in every area of our life. If we don't recognize the lie we are told, then we compromise. I guess this night, I was chewing on the whole music thing more than anything else.

Friday they talked about how there are consequences for a sensual father. How their wife and daughters will see what makes them light up and look at other woman. Many young girls dress more sensual, because they see that is what their Dad looks at and seems to enjoy. It also talked about courtship vs. dating. Our family is even more on the conservative side of courtship/betrothal than was presented. We also learned what you should do if you are criticized.

On Saturday, we met all day, so there was a whole lot presented. There was a wonderful message on teaching our children how to stand alone. It was given by a man named Gary Fraley. I am not sure of the spelling of his name. If we ever have more children, it is something that I would teach them. He did go a bit farther in freedom than we would ever do, but I do think that we should have taught Joshua how to stand alone and given him a bit more freedom when he was younger. One of the main things that IBLP teaches is authority. That if we stay under our God given authorities, that there is an umbrella of protection that we are under. If we step out of that we open ourselves up to attacks from satan. They also talked a lot about marriage. A lot of that was directed to the man. It was all very good and some of it was presented in a way we had never heard. It talked about how woman look at things and how men look at things. If we try to understand where the other one is coming from, it really can help you to see why they are the way they are. It talked about children and how people view them. How too many people today limit them for selfish reasons. They want a life of pleasure for themselves instead of responsibility. They actually gave a list that they called selfish reasons to not have children. They they talked about being slothful. I liked a lot of this teaching. There was a lot to think about. They talked about if you always give your children their wants and they do not have to earn them, that they tend to not understand the value of the item. If they want something and then see it would take 2 hours of work to pay for it, then they are better able to determine if that is something they will buy or not. I get tickled at my neighbor's daughter. She washes eggs for me. She went through a stage of seeing something to buy and figuring how many dozen eggs she would have to wash to pay for it. Some things got put back on the shelf as too expensive. =)

On Sunday, they talked about doing wisdom searches with your family. I really liked this idea. The whole premise of what they teach is to start with God's word and build your life around that, instead of building your life and finding a few verses to put on the fringes of your life. The idea of a wisdom search is to create excitement of searching things out in God's Word as a family. If you want to know what God says about any subject (wisdom, dress, dating,etc.), character (obedience, gratefulnes, etc), principles (design, authority, etc), people (wise, slothful, scorner), or needs (decisions your family needs to make, questions, counsel, etc.) then dig into God's Word together and write down what you find out. Or pick a story and tell it in such a way that you leave out some details. Then make them guess who in the Bible you are talking about. The idea was to make it fun and include the whole family. They also talked about educating your child. There were a lot more things they taught on, but I am sure I have already lost some of you.

I would highly recommend the Basic and Advanced Seminars to anyone who is a teen and on up. We are going to do some talking about what we heard and make a game plan for our family. Michael and I would love to get away for a weekend to be undisturbed in doing this. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. =)