Happily Ever After

That was the name of our church women's retreat this past weekend. Sounds too girlie for me but it was not an overnight decision to call it that. Our speaker Mary Lewise Baker speaks specifically on our identity in Christ and how we are united with Christ as believers in Him through is death, burial and resurrection, that not only does He live in us but we live in Him and are seated in Heaven as co-heirs. That took the retreat planning team down a path where scripture talks about we were once orphans, enemies of God and then we became children of God, co-heirs with Christ, daughters of the King and have the eternal hope of Happily Ever After with Him in Heaven through Christ. So there we went with a fairy tale theme.

It was one of those things that God put together. We didn't as we talked about it and how life seems to flow in chapters and the reality that we are daughters of the King, things like the design came together because a friend of mine had illustrated a children's book and already had these "fairy tale" illustrations. It came together quite unexpectedly and quite perfectly as so many people were committed to bathing it in prayer.

For a small church plant of 8 years with a little over 300 people meeting in a middle school on any given Sunday, we had over 70 women in attendance. And God showed up. It was one of those topics that either sends you toward the amazement of how big our Savior is or how big our sin is. But either way, they are both reality.

Here are some photos from the weekend: one is of me with Jenna and Mary Lewise.