A thought-provoking weekend
I guess I have to do what everyone else is doing and blog about the Encounter Retreat. 
As always, I thought Mark Darling shared a lot of things worthy of pondering further. Unfortunately, between times I spent feeding Madeline and how generally difficult I find it to take notes on Mark Darling messages (since he doesn’t usually have a very obvious outline of where he is going)…I don’t think I remember as much as I wish I did. I’m looking forward to listening to all the messages again when we get the files up on the website.
One thing I have been thinking about…Mark discussed how we won’t be able to keep going for the long haul in the Christian life without our ministry being an outflow of a deep relationship with God. We can’t just produce, produce, produce and not have an ever-developing understanding of the Lord we are serving.
Okay, that makes sense. I’ve heard other people say it before, yadda, yadda, yadda. But I don’t think I do a good job living my life like that in practice. I love a good cause, and the cause of Christ is the best one out there. As I have now been walking with the Lord for over ten years and have plenty of other distractions like a baby, a husband and a house, it’s hard to maintain freshness and increasing depth in my relationship with Him.