Brutal Transparency

Just a few hours ago, I drove off of the campus of my church having experienced two and a half days of the most powerful, profound, spiritually-awakening days of my life. For nearly 72 hours, C3 2011 welcomed leaders from around the world, creative geniuses from nearly every continent and pastors from more churches than I know.

I have the amazing opportunity to serve on staff at the church that hosts this world-shaking conference. I have for nearly 9 years. And during that time, I have had the humbling opportunity to witness firsthand the leadership, direction, and vision of my pastors Ed and Lisa Young, along with so many others, to open up the veins of our church and welcome in these leaders to see what church truly can be and do.

I cannot put into adequate words the influence it all has on my life. There’s no formula of letters and punctuation that would suffice. But in a moment of honest reflection, I have to be brutally transparent before my God and myself.

I don’t know how to process what just happened.

How do you process the power of an anointing, the overwhelming presence of the Holy Spirit? How do you process the prevailing sense of God’s hand on a place and a people? How do you process weeping tears of repentance and joy knowing that the God of the universe is right there, looking at you eye-to-eye, willing to walk into tomorrow with you.

See, I’m an answer guy. I like to seek out the answer, research the answer, put the answer down in a neat little outline with three main points, each with 2 corresponding subpoints. I’m a linear thinker (that is not to say I’m not creative; I’m just different creative). And standing on this point of my little line, I want to know what lies four, five or six stops ahead. I want to address the questions and get the answers.

And then something like C3 happens. And the answers are so insanely overwhelming that I cannot even begin to fathom their depth and height and width. There are no lines around something like that. There’s no way to define it, no way to truly explain it, no way to…process it.

For me, it was a time of spiritual empowerment. But it was not something I will be able to process in the next week, the next year or even the next decade. I believe what God did over the last two and a half days will take a lifetime to embrace, and an eternity to visualize.

But I do know this. I don’t have to process it. I don’t have to have all the answers. I simply have to stand in awe of the God who is here, standing by me. And I have to obediently and willingly follow him as he continues to enlighten me and empower me on every step of my line.