Some of you know that this past weekend I had the privilege of attending the IF:Gathering conference in Austin, Texas. To start off let me just say this post will be split into two posts- one for the IF: Gathering conference and what I feel the Lord did there, and the other for the awesomeness of Austin and my Tiny Home experience (more on that tomorrow ☺).

Okay, deep breath. IF: Gathering. This is a women’s conference developed by some very wise and strong women in the Lord. The idea behind IF: Gathering is (as the website explains) to exist to gather, equip and unleash the next generation of women to live out their purpose. Um, yeah, that’s huge! If you really want to learn more about it, click here.

So, the goal behind the conference is huge. To gather women together, talk about all the ideas, struggles, realities of God, and essentially equip through scripture and prayer to find their callings and to walk in faith. Can I just get an amen?! This conference was deep people! Let me talk a little about how it went down for me.

To begin, my sister convinced me to go to this. She’d attended the conference through a satellite last year and she was dead set that she’d go to the Austin gathering this year. The good thing about the conference is that you can actually tune in for free via web stream pretty much from anywhere. There were woman from Germany and Sweden watching! So anyway, I agreed I’d go and so we managed to get tickets. I don’t know if I was truly prepared for what I encountered. I knew that the Lord would show up, I just didn’t know how he’d show up for me personally. But he did. I wish I could actually talk about each particular speaker and how their words dug deep for me, but then this post would go on for days. However, when my sister and I were back on the road to Dallas and speaking about the biggest takeaways for us, it came down to two main things for me: the past and the future.

The past

The past is a funny thing. Lots of us love to relive it, think about it, dwell on it, and not let it go. But the funny thing is that it’s the past. Nothing we can do right now in the future will make a difference in the past. We cannot hop into any kind of time machine, go into the past and change it. It can’t be done. And while we are like duh, we know this; we still live as if this is a possibility! A question Christine Caine (an amazing speaker) posed made a big impact on me, and really thousands of women listening in. She said:

What season in your life are you still trying to hang on to? When God is saying, that season is dead, done, over. Why are you trying to revive it?

And truly as I sat there and thought about it, I realized how tight gripped I was to the past. The concept is so simple: the past is dead, time to move on. But we, as Lot’s wife did, cannot stop looking back. It’s dead, going up in flames, and we still stop from moving forward to turn and look back. Can we learn from it? Yes. Did we need to go through it? Yes. Do we have to relive it? NOPE! Continue to beat ourselves up for it? NOPE! The Lord says no. Even if it was a good past, we cannot continue to dwell on the “good ole’ days”. There are good days coming as well! SO- exhale- this is the first thing I really took with me, the past is dead and gone. Let’s move on.

The Future

Let’s move on to the future! Sounds so fun, exciting and invigorating, until we realize we have no idea what we are doing and where we are going and we freeze. Fear paralyzes us. We say, okay Lord I’ve let go of the past- but now I have no idea what to do. That’s where we should activate faith; the trust part. The uncomfortable part, really. Agh, that’s hard! We have a hard time moving into our future and the calling the Lord has for us because we cannot see past the logistics- the, how will this work? How can I do this? What’s the end result? And those questions freeze us! They do not allow us to move into our futures with the Lord. Jen Hatmaker, stated,

True faith does NOT demand that God always explain himself.

When she said this, my little pea-brain blew a fuse. I was like, oh yeah! Who am I to demand that the Lord explain His main plan, the big idea before I decide to sign up. We aren’t dealing with a greasy car salesman that needs to show us the Carfax before we purchase the vehicle! We’re dealing with the almighty who has a plan for our good! It’s hard to understand this, but when you do, when you sign up and get fully vested without asking more questions, you activate a deep faith in the Lord.

I could go on forever with what I feel the Lord said to my heart. These are just two truth nuggets, but they are gold! What is the Lord saying to you about your past? Maybe you’ve already let go of the past, but you’re too fearful to step into the future? Meditate on those questions this week and stay tuned for tomorrows Part Two: Tiny Home and Austin living- it’s just not fair. Happy hump-day!