Yes that is a song by Led Zeppelin but that is not what I am going to write this post about. Tonight was friday night, today was friday, thank goodness! By the time I publish this post, the date will appear as Saturday so I guess it was yesterday.
It has been a long week, except for Friday. Maybe because I only had two classes and my two frees were at the end of the day, so i basically was done at 10:50 but I stayed at school till school got let it anyways. Day was pretty good, FISH went well and time passed by pretty quickly.
What I really wanted to write about was Encounter. I had a great time tonight, it felt so nice being at Encounter. Because there is a dodgeball tournament on Saturday. Tim somehow pulled together and talked about how dodgeball is very important to us and how the bible shows us. Doesn’t that sound crazy? It was sweet, there are three important steps to dodgeball. Hit. Dodge. Catch. Those are the three things.. it will take me a long time to explain every one of them according to the bible. I will just mention the one thing that hit me tonight that I wanted to talk about.
When we were singing our last worship song “i can only imagine”, Tim asked us to close our eyes and imagine going up to heaven. According to the lyrics…
Surrounded by Your glory, what will my heart feel
Will I dance for you Jesus or in awe of you be still
Will I stand in your presence or to my knees will I fall
Will I sing hallelujah, will I be able to speak at all
I can only imagine
I just kept thinking of that, I wondered how I would feel when I do go up to heaven. Then I had a picture in my head, I had a picture of how I would feel and that picture was what I felt today on the way to Encounter. When we got to Boston Restaurant, and got into the gate of the building. I was so excited! On the way up the stairs, I heard music, and I had the urge to run up.. and so I did. It was such a great feeling, I was smiling the whole time, running up the two flight of stairs just waiting to worship and be surrounded by my peers. It was the best thing after such a long week. Contentment. That was the picture I had of going to heaven. Going up those stairs, I was content, I was happy and I was excited to be in the presence of God. I can only imagine.. running up those stairs to heaven, to the open door that leads me to God. It is such an amazing feeling.
How do you imagine the first time entering the doors of Heaven?
Another thing that added to my excitement was being able to bring three of my friends to Encounter so that they can experience what I experience at Encounter, in a youth group. It looked like they enjoyed it and that made me even happier. To be able to have them worship God and love God like I do, even if we are in different circles at school, even if we are totally different from each other.
I am pretty exhausted and I have a long day coming up, so I hope what I wrote made sense. I really wish I could’ve elaborated more because I enjoyed Encounter so much tonight. Worship, Tim’s sermon, I was happy, really happy and content. And that is nice after a long week at school.
Have a good weekend and for those going to Dodgeball, kick some butt but don’t get hurt! I’m sorry I can’t be there!
Loving My God,
Joanne Lam.
Joanne Lam 