Retreat at Wildhorse

Multnomah (the Bible College that is) has a retreat for all undergrad students every year now and we just got back an hour ago. The retreat was held at Young Life's Wildhorse Canyon Camp (which was once the infamous home of Rashneeshpuram). This is just an incredible example of God and His people redeeming the place for His glory!

This morning Dr. Garry Friesen (Decision-Making and the Will of God, Multnomah 1981) spoke. He is a very brilliant person (I really enjoyed my NT class many years ago). However, this message fit into the profoundly simple variety. He talked about the importance of simple faithfulness. His point is that God does not desire anything more than faithfulness with what he's given us (see Parable of the Talents Matt 25).

We don't need to be worried about results from our ministry, school-work (this was a retreat for college students) or any other area of life. However, we should really grade ourselves on our faithfulness to follow-through on what God has put before us. For the perfectionist, this is great advice (Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly -- even if you can't do it as perfect as you want, it's worth doing as much as time allows). For someone like myself (a not-very perfectionist!), we may need to look at better than what we'd accept, because only then will we fulfill the potential that God has given.

Quote from George McDonald (bio): Easy to please is he-hard indeed to satisfy." God is pleased with our faithfulness and doesn't require more than that, but His desire for us to be faithful is never satisfied -- He requires the same thing every day.

Thanks for the reminder Dr. Friesen.

-Derek