College Weekend 2012

The theme of College Weekend was What is the Gospel?. I was only there for a few hours, so I didn't get to hear all of the speakers, but I was very blessed by the ones I did hear. The first speaker was Bro. Darren Plattner from Champaign and he spoke on "For The Sake of My Name." I felt he explained what the gospel was more, but that was good that he did. He asked us to write what we thought of when we hear the word the "Gospel". I wrote down, "the gospel is the good news that Jesus saves, that he died so we can have eternal life with him." He stressed that there is only one gospel and it is not denominational, cultural, or traditional. He has talked about how we cannot comprehend the good news until we understand the bad news. It's very true that we always want to hear the bad news first so that the good news will be even better. He also told us that we are more like Adolf Hitler than Jesus. He had us draw a morality scale which consisted of a vertical line with God at the top and "bad guys" at the bottom. He then asked us to put an "x" on the scale of where we are. I obviously put mine right next the to bad guys, which was correct. The space in between is the gap of righteousness. Next he had us draw a horizontal line a third of the way down. It formed a cross and on it we wrote "the good news." One thing I really took from his talk was that he said God treated Jesus as if He was living my life, so that He can treat me as Jesus. That was really convicting, and even though we hear that a lot, he put it in a completely personal way. I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake. 1 John 2:12
The second speak was Bro. Matt Kaufmann from Bloomington and he spoke on "the cross". One of his main points was that at the cross there was an exchange. My sins for his righteousness. He also said that the only one who can forgive our sins is the one who we transgressed against. Very convicting. Also, he said that God turned his face away from Jesus on the cross, because of my sin. The whole time he was speaking, I felt so unworthy of what I have been given. When we walked up to Jesus, we walked up with sin and walked away with him and his righteousness. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. Isaiah 53:5
Bro. Mark Schmidgall from Oakville was the third speaker. He spoke on "the resurrection". He spoke of how in Jesus days, they were writing about the resurrection at historians and scholars. We have eyewitness evidence! Mark also said that it can't happen naturally, but super-naturally. He also spoke on the resurrection of the new man from the old man, and putting off the old things, and putting on the new. We should set our affections above and not on things of the earth. He also spoke on death and that is our last enemy. Not satan. When we victor over death and are not afraid to die, that is when we are ready to die. Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?  Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. II Peter 3:12-13 The last talk I was able to listen to was Karen Metz speaking on the Bride(to just the sisters). She talked about the bride of Christ, the church. She explained how we can prepare for marriage and it is simply being faithful to God, focusing on or relationship with Jesus, and being subject to Christ. We need to pursue him by spending time in his word, making it a priority. We need to pray, our time to praise him, bring our worries and cares to him, and faults to him. We need to practice contentment, letting his love satisfy us, and accepting how God mad us. She also spoke on purity and different areas on it and why we should practice it. It was a really good talk, especially for college-age girls, because for most of them, it really is probably the next step in their lives, and it's easy to make it an idol. We also had our discussion groups, where we went into separate rooms, with about 7-8 other girls and talked about what we learned that day and struggles we face in college. Overall, the weekend was a huge blessing to me and I can't wait until the next one! If you want to listen to some of the speakers the link is here ---------->http://www.acsermonstreamer.com/