pondering what I heard at The Global Leadership Summit

The Global Leadership Summit was amazing. I am humbled, truly humbled, at the hesitancy I felt at attending. I am quite foolish at times.

I assumed it would mostly be about how to have a bigger church - something I have zero interest in. Hear this now: I. WAS. WRONG. Very wrong. This summit was FANTASTIC. I can't imagine having not gone. I'm so thankful my church allowed me to go, paid for me to go - I'm humbly grateful. It will be a while before I've processed all I gleaned from the various speakers, but for now I want to focus on one aspect: having ears to hear.

As this summit began I offered up an open heart and open hands, and I asked for ears to hear. Now, God knows me. He knows my history. He knows I fight cynicism about certain things. He knows my language, and He knows how to break my barriers down. And over the past two days He continued to bless me with little gifts, treasures that were specific to me and kept my ears open.

I've already shared about the Mumford and Sons song yesterday. That, frankly, would have been enough. But this morning's opening scripture was my favorite passage from Colossians 1. I was trying to stifle a huge grin while my friend knowingly poked me from behind.

Later in the day, I found myself broken and spent after listening to Mama Maggie Gobran talk about the tough calling. With my head in my hands I gasped when I heard the team begin to sing yet another song I'm intimately familiar with, a song that's been set to "repeat one" often the past six months:

All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found?
Could a garden come up from this ground at all?
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

Hearing songs and passages that have been uniquely instrumental in my life lately ... it felt like whoever put this summit together had their finger on the same Pulse that I've had mine on. And that was an electrifying feeling! I don't know if I'm expressing it well, but it's incredibly affirming to realize "I'm not the only one" and "maybe I'm onto something after all". Such revelations blow fresh wind over the burning embers of your heart.

Finally (and I hope to expand on this more later), the last speaker made it clear - as if he'd pulled out a prescription pad, scribbled out words straight from God, and handed to me - that my role in making the world better, in literally creating the future, is to write.

It's that simple.

I asked God for ears to hear and I asked Him to speak.

He did.

"Write the damn book already!"

"Yes-sir!"

So with a shout out to the boy in the WAY too tight pants, I hereby declare myself a ditch digger. My shovel is a pen. Or actually (though less poetic), a keyboard.

*post-script ... to top off the past couple days of God-gifts, there's a fullish moon shining brilliantly above our backyard tonight. which you'd appreciate if I told you my moon story. but I've gotta save something for the book :)