Deeper Still 2010

I have a love/dislike relationship with the idea of the 'women's Bible conference'.

Let me get the dislike part out of the way first. I find myself in head shaking amazement at the sheer numbers of women who attend these things. (Full disclosure: I have only attended 3 or 4 of these conferences. My experience may not be true of the genre as a whole.) I wonder what the world would be like if these same women, myself included, could maintain the same kind of passion and intensity for Jesus outside of these few weekends sprinkled through the year. What kind of impact could we have just in our own families? Other than that, my main problem is that, as in all situations, people who claim to be Christians don't act like I want them to much of the time. For example, there is no biblical edict that says "Thou shalt pick up your trash before you leave the arena." But I just feel like people should do that. Even godless heathens ought to pick up after themselves. In their defense, I'm sure that lots of these gals pick up after people 24/7. Maybe they go for one of these weekends and just determine that they ain't gonna lift a finger to do anything. I understand and commiserate with that situation but it's still tacky. My other pet peeve is with Lifeway's general seating policy. If you sell 15 thousand tickets and yet guarantee no one a seat, mayhem will ensue. Trust me here. If the conference begins at 7PM and the arena doors open at 5:30, you can expect 12 thousand people to be pressed up to the doors by 4:45. These people act worse than Black Friday shoppers. And nobody believes 'the last shall be first' when it comes down to making sure that the Pineville Baptist Women's group gets 67 seats all together. It's just not a nice scene and I dread it every time.

Now for the stuff I love.

First, I am so blessed to have Savannah. She is such a spiritually mature kid. This is the 2nd conference we have attended together. I'm not sure many other 12 year old kids could sit through 2 full days of Bible teaching. She assured me that she loved it and is even bugging me to go to another one next summer.

Friday night the conference began with Kay Arthur. I love her more than peanut butter. She wrote the first Bible study I ever did and so she feels like my spiritual grandmother. Kay and I both became Christian at the age of 29 so I look to her as an example of what's possible for a gal who cam to Jesus a little later than others. Saturday speakers included Beth Moore and Priscilla Shirer. I'll have more to say later about their specific messages. (Ain't you excited?)

But I attend these things for one main reason - the music. One of the biggest adjustments in moving from a Baptist to a Methodist church is...well...basically the Methodists suck at music. They are good at lots of other stuff but praise and worship is just not their area of emphasis. When I am at a conference, I sing those hymns at the top of my terrible voice and it is, without a doubt, some of the most precious moments of my life. When you stand among that many people singing "Holy, Holy, Holy" I think you have just a litte taste of what heaven may be like. I'm assuming I will have a beautiful voice at that point but I can't support that with one speck of scripture.