They are upon us! Retreat!

Whoo! It's been an extremely busy week. This morning I slept in until about 7:15 because I think just about every day this week has been from 6:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night. I just needed a few extra z's to recuperate :)

Monday
I seemed to have a million and one things (as Arwen said) to do that morning, from homework assignments to submission of papers, applications, and a meeting with Bruce, my pastor, etc. I was running all over that morning like a chicken with my head cut off. I heard that the P family is doing a competition for "steps" to see who walks the most in a day (as a fitness activity). I'm guessing that most of the days this week I averaged a lot of 'em!

Tuesday
Also busy as I was preparing both for upcoming assignments and the retreat that weekend. I enjoyed taking a break for a little while and talking with Alan, Jeff, and Bruce at Hideaway for nearly an hour.

Wednesday
Hectic. I had lots to do on campus and was struggling to get it all done. We had our lab that evening which seemed like it was going to take a while but we ended up getting finished early. I went to the College Group Bible study, though neither of the students I'd invited were able to make it that week. Perhaps this next they will. Afterwards, Dan asked Jonathan and myself if we could help him take a couch from the Kreider's to his place, they were giving him their large sofa! So we went over there and packed it up and took it, then he gave us a ride back to the Spitler ranch and we went home. It was already about 10:20 by that time but I was able to work on a little bit more homework before bed time. I had an exam coming up on Friday as well so I wanted to be prepared for that.

Thursday
I worked on lab reports and prepared for my exam. Also, Garrett had some trouble with a class I had taken previously, so I spent an hour working with him. It's funny how when one starts to plan their schedule and say "today or tomorrow I will work on this or that assignment and get it all done" that things like this and the couch intervene and you find yourself humbly dependent upon God to get you through the rest of the week :)
I met with Alan and we had a good discussion time, though we didn't get as far in the book that we were supposed to be discussing. I was talking too much!

Friday
was my Linear Algebra exam. I think I did just fine on it (I had worked through about 12 old exams) but I'm almost positive that I forgot to change back from standard basis to the polynomial basis, so I might get some points taken off for that. By that afternoon, I had nearly finished everything I needed to for that week and the next, so I could finally breathe again. In fact, I went over to Jonathan's place and we went out to Taco Bell and then came back and watched an episode of Stargate. It was a compromise: I had him watch an episode of that and now I'm supposed to watch "Castle in the Sky" which is an animated film. He claims that this one actually has a plot ;) I had printed out the bulletins the previous day and then dropped them off at the Noell household Friday evening.

Saturday
The point of the entire week of preparation (almost). The Midwest Presbytery was having a retreat and I was "wheedled" into going. Apparently Mr Yost was going to be the only guy going so he told me I had to go to keep him company. I found out later that he told JD that he had to go to keep me company or else I would be the only guy going. Tricksy. ;)

I was up at 6:00 again and managed to quickly finish everything and be out the door at 6:25, I picked JD up and we met at the Fisher's house. Dan came to pick us up and we headed out somewhere shortly after 7:00.

I was told that the trip was remarkably quiet. JD and Rachel and Betty hardly said a word, Jesse was in the front with Dan because she got carsick. I spent quite a bit of time reading Matthew Henry.

We arrived around 10:20 and registered. There were familiar faces, a few names I remembered, and I got to meet a whole bunch of new people. I would estimate that there were at least 50 CYers there for this retreat, it was a good-sized crowd. We first all sat down and had a "game" where they handed out two starbursts each, and depending on what colour you had, you were supposed to tell something about yourself. Orange was an embarrassing story, pink, was a special talent (demonstrated if possible), yellow was a place you wanted to visit, and red was a pet peeve. It was good to get to know people a bit better but there were so many that I honestly could hardly remember what most people said. There was one chap, Kyle Finley, whom someone handed off a pink to because he liked to play around with voice acting ;) He got up and did a Shaggy and Scooby Doo short skit about the CY trip which was great, I'd like to hear more from him. Later, I also had a pink and I had previously planned to attempt some Homestar Runner voices (because of the multitude of college students) but the Stillwater crowd (A.K.A. Dan and Anna) shouted me down for the Gollum routine instead. There was one girl there who said she wanted to visit the redwoods someday, but though I asked around afterwards, I couldn't figure out who it was, and no one seemed to remember it either, though I asked about 6 separate people.

Midway during all of this, Stan Copeland, who was our speaker, gave a few lectures on Psalm singing. One of the things that he brought out which I thought was a particularly excellent point, was that we shouldn't be out there beating people over the head and saying "you can't sing hymns, you have to sing Psalms" but rather, we should be more demonstrative of the value and beauty and sheer treasure of the Psalms. It's a Desire and not merely Duty. He gave us a handout with some excellent material on it. I had an opportunity to talk to him for a while and ask some questions as well on a couple of passages. Unfortunately, he had to leave immediately following the second lecture so I didn't get to speak with him then.

Some of the things (from my notes) that were brought up during this time:
Do we worship the God of the Bible, or the God of our own imagination?
Do we do what we do because of tradition, or for evangelism? The main focus is to love Christ and then evangelism naturally comes after that.
Do we bash hymns or do we show God's blessings to us?
Do we follow the Regulative Principle out of belief in it? i.e. do we realize that God doesn't give us negatives in worship but positives? Example with Cain and Abel: God accepted Abel's offer and refused Cain's. Why? Because God had not commanded that fruits be offered, it wasn't that He had specifically said "don't offer fruits." God's positive commands are what we are to follow, He doesn't have to tell us we cannot do something, it is enough that He tells us what we should do, and then we should not deviate from that.
Does God ever command uninspired men to create their own songs? No, He does not. Paul could have written new, inspired songs, but he didn't. Jesus could have written new songs for us, He didn't. If these didn't feel the necessity to write new songs, which would have been inspired, then why would we think that we who are uninspired need to fill the gap? Why would God have given the Old Testament saints inspired songs but not the New Testament ones, to those who are considered to be even under more spiritual blessing?

In fact, God has given us a Psalter and we are blessed to sing from it. Those who say the Psalter is insufficient for the Christian need to seriously consider what they are saying. If the Psalter is insufficient, then the Bible is incomplete. If it needs adding to, then Jesus short-changed us. The point of the matter is, that the Psalter is sufficient, and more than sufficient, it is God's inspired songs, given to us to sing.

Afterwards, we went out to a nearby park and while most of the "wimps" played Volleyball (there was seriously about 10 people per team on two courts, about 40 people playing in all) the "REAL" men (and two women) went and played Ultimate Frisbee on some grass nearby. The team I was on ended up being ahead by 5-0 and then later, by 6-1. Eventually we got up to 8-4 and then their team had a comeback and we wound up with 9-8, we were beginning to sweat (er... we'd be sweating for a while actually) and we ended up finishing it off with another point. I think I caught about five or six of our points in the endzone. And seriously folks, I was feeling pretty out of shape, huffing and puffing up and down the field.

The same group of CYers who had played Volleyball went and played some "football" on the grassy spot when we were through. That's soccer for most people but I feel that if anything deserves to be called football, that does. I proposed the idea to Anna that American Football be changed to be called "Eggball" but she didn't seem to think that would go over too well with most Oklahomans or Americans.

I took a walk over to a small island that was on the lake. It had some nice trees and benches on it, so I sat for about 15 minutes watching a swan swim by and took a time of prayer too. It was nearly time to head out so we piled into the van and went back for supper. While supper was finishing, I started to read a little and then Shawn came over and we began talking and I was explaining some of the things I really like about Henry. He said "Wow! Let me go get Nathan, he'd love to hear some of this." So Nathan came over and we all started talking, I have a rather lengthy story of my beginnings in the RP church and God's Providence in my life in leading me there, the things I struggled with and went through. Bob Mann, Keith's father, was sitting at the table and after a while he came over and said "I couldn't catch all of that, what were you talking about?" So I explained it again to him. He's an older gentleman who wears hearing aids but is still a bit hard of hearing, and it was especially difficult in that noisy room. Nathan and I came from similar backgrounds so he had struggled with many of the same issues I had. He had apparently come to some conclusions (on the Covenentalist) side just recently and had some questions to ask, which I answered as best as I could. It was a good time of discussion and afterwards, the whole crowd headed over to the nearby gym and we continued it there for at least another hour, while everyone else was playing some games on the gym floor. It looked pretty fun, some kind of capture the flag and baseball (but with kicking, not with a bat). But it was just as much fun talking to Nathan and Shawn and Bob. Bob had a few questions for me, as far as my background and what I thought on various issues (such as differences between the church as it was in the Old Testament and the church as it is now). Speaking of which, I read an interesting quote from Matthew Henry Sunday morning, on Gideon's fleece:

"Some make this fleece an emblem of the Jewish nation, whih, when time was, was wet with the dew of God's word and ordinances, while the rest of the world was dry; but since the rejection of Christ and his gospel they are dry as the heath in the wilderness, while the nations about are as a watered garden."

But thanks be to God that He has not fogotten the Jews, but is waiting to make them jealous until the fulness of the gentiles shall come in.

We headed back, had a period of Psalm singing, and then JD and I tried to go to sleep in one of the classrooms. All of the general hubub was fine, even the piano and guitar didn't hinder me that much after a while, but when there was a sudden scream (from a guy, since the girls had gone to nearby homes) then that didn't help me to fall asleep rapidly :) I have no idea when it all died down. I was up at 6:30 and reading the next morning. I was walking around dressed when Alex Greene shuffled out of the sanctuary (where a lot of the guys were sleeping) and squinted rather slowly at me for a few seconds. I said something to the effect that he didn't exactly look like a morning glory and he said he wasn't a morning person. It was about 7:30 by this time :D

We sang a number of Psalms that morning and then Andrew Scoby gave a talk on worship. One of the points he brought up that he really didn't talk about (but which caused me to think) was the institution of many of the devices used in worship for the tabernacle, things that were very specific. Especially the annointing oil, which was to be made to a special formula and there was to be none like it, no one should make anything like it. Similarly, I thought, if God has instituted Psalms, then should we not be just as desirous to guard them? That there should be no imitations, or things like them for our own use?

He talked about worshipping in Spirit and in Truth and asked if one could worship in Spirit only but not in truth. Keth Mann said that well, not really because that wouldn't be proper worship, could "half" worship be really called worship? True, no one worships perfectly, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't exhort one another to worship in spirit and truth, spirit and truth, spirit and truth. I said it was like two sides of the same coin, if you've lost one side of the coin, by its very nature, you've lost the other side! Or you might extend the analogy to a handful of coins, each with a part of truth and a part of spirit on it, if you lose the truth to one part of worship, you lose the spirit in it, and vice versa.

During the service, we heard from John 11 when Jesus was going up to Judea and his disciples were afraid that they would be killed. Jesus said that we must work while it is yet day, and that was the main message of the sermon. It was very good.

Afterwards, the pastor pulled me aside saying that he had to show Gabriel my Gollum voice and told me to go into a room. Pretty soon, not only Gabriel, but about six other guys were in there and the Pastor was telling them they had to hear this. I was rather embarrassed :)

We had a wonderful fellowship lunch and then we all started to part ways. Anna listened to John MacArthur's lecture on eschatology on the way back (which I had on my iPod) and she said some of it seemed to be rather inconsistent, even with the hermaneutic he was proposing and agreed that it was a mischaracterization of different views. I was glad to have a second opinion and to hear it wasn't just me that thought it was a bit odd. Though I highly respect MacArthur, I strongly disagree with him in this lecture.

I ended up dropping JD off after the trip and was invited (or rather, coaxed) into staying for supper. I heard about the robotics team and we told about the trip, then I headed home and did a few things before heading to bed.

I'm now in chapter 13 of Henry's commentary on Judges.

And that's about it for now, hopefully the next post will be shorter and will be sooner rather than later :)