F is for Flight to London. {Single-minded}

So excited to land this morning in London and head to {Single-Minded}! We humbly ask for your prayers as Jeff and I embark on this adventure of teaching the conference. We’ve prayed, prepared, and sought Him, and now we wait in expectancy to see what our glorious God will do for His glory.

Happy Friday to you, dear friends. Thanks for reading.

—

Want to know more about Single-Minded? Here’s an overview of our six sessions. I’ll be sharing more on Psalm 27 in the weeks to come. Great stuff!

Single-Minded Conference {Psalm 27}

1:: Confidence: The stronghold of my life. (1-3)

2:: Vision: The one thing I seek. (4a)

3:: Beauty: The fixed and holy gaze. (4b-5: split)

4:: Worship: The joyful sacrifice. (6-10)

5:: Consistency: The level path. (11-12)

6:: Hope: The courageous wait. (13-14)

Session Summaries:

1:: Confidence is hands-down the #1 most attractive quality. It spans generations, cultures, and draws others in more than liposuction and bulging biceps. Moreover, God created us for confidence as true confidence comes from knowing Who He is, who we are, and Whose we are. In a world that bombards us daily with messages that we need to be a certain way, look a certain way, hook-up in a certain way, God’s Word stands in beautiful contrast with a message that cuts straight across the grain. In a media-saturated consumer culture that feeds on our insecurities, the first step to a single-minded life is attaining the unshakable godly confidence that only comes from the one who fashioned our form.

2:: Unless we’re proactive, we can fall into the mindset of simply waiting for life to happen to us. Our world tell us to decide what we want to be and go do it. Our fear tells us to avoid failure at all cost, so play it safe and wait for destiny to knock on our door. God’s Word says neither is enough but instead gives us one pure and holy passion, one magnificent obsession. When we are freed from insecurity and can move forward boldly in godly confidence, we have the courage to pursue this one thing – the glory of the risen King. All of life becomes filtered through this single-mindedness. To live is Christ and to die is gain. A complex world becomes simple as our focus becomes fixed.

3:: Sadly, our world has all but mutilated beauty beyond recognition. Sin always takes good things and elevates them to ultimate things, but wrongly-focused worship destroys the object because it cannot contain the weight of worship. Worship was created for God alone. We have made beauty and sex into ultimate things, when God created them for us as pure, holy, lovely, and glorifying to Him. In order to recapture beauty, and sex, we must fix our gaze back on the one true God – to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD. He is beauty. When He defines beauty, we begin to recapture His intent for beauty in our world and in our relationships. And with most things, this battle of transformation is offensive and defensive. We pursue beauty as defined by God, and we flee fleshly lusts as God “hides us in His shelter in the day of trouble.” He “lifts us up” above the slough of sin and sets us on the solid rock of His truth.

4:: Like beauty, we’ve missed the meaning of true worship. True worship, in Spirit and in truth, should encompass all of life. We worship through our work, our words, and our witness to the world (1 Peter 2). And as God delivers us from every evil, on a daily basis, our response should and will be a joyful sacrifice of praise. A loud sacrifice of praise – one of shouts and singing. We see from Psalm 27 that worship should be 1)Sacrificial 2)Joyful 3) Musical. The greatest battles have been won by worship in God’s Word, and our greatest battles demand that we not forsake this critical spiritual discipline in our daily lives.

5:: Few characteristics are more critical to the Christian life than consistency. In our experience, the single life can sometimes be characterized by extreme ups and downs, difficulty finding balance, and a challenge to develop the kind of structure and consistency so necessary for long-term growth. Certainly married folks struggle here too, but they are often forced into structure and consistency due to the fact that a family depends on it! The “freedom” of singleness can be both blessing and curse. Too much downtime can lead to sin or unhealthy habits. Lack of accountability can lead to laziness. Freedom and flexibility in a schedule can lead to haphazard patterns of life. So we ask, “Teach me your way, O Lord,” and we pray that He will “lead us on a level path.” A level life is a life of joy and stability, the soil where godly fruit can abound.

6:: We all are waiting for something. Not just singles. But it is true that many perhaps deep down still have the ache and longing for that glorious counterpart hand-picked by God. Whether waiting for a wedding or a job or a ministry opportunity or a change of scenery, we spend much of our life waiting. So we must learn how to do it well. God’s word is replete with exhortations to wait, and wait well. Will we wait on God or wait on circumstances? What is the difference and how can we tell? Here we’ll learn how to wait for the Lord with expectancy without expectation. With confidence and security we can be strong and let our hearts take courage and wait, wait for the LORD.