Today I attended the event in Belton, Texas where John MacMurray was speaking with a focus on the material in his latest book, A Spiritual Evolution. As God always does, I went expecting certain outcomes and was completely surprised by what God seemed to have in store for me personally. I also met some new friends and enjoyed talking with so many people. Community is always my favorite part of these events.

But how RICH we were to have John travel all the way from Oregon to speak with us for over four hours! A spiritual buffet if you will. And we were stuffed with so much goodness. Here are my highlights from thirteen pages of notes taken in my new journal gifted to me by the beautiful Clarice:

People are not going to look for other answers or be open to new information that challenges their current paradigm until life brings them to a point where they consider that their current way of thinking may be incorrect.

Relationship takes a long time. Life is about relationship. Information is not the end goal.

Love is not something God does. Love is who God is. The deepest, truest thing about God is NOT that He is a narcissist.

God is always better than whatever metaphors we try our best to use to explain Him.

The way I used to think said God’s highest aim was to create us for His glory. It is different and totally beautiful if rather God creates to share the relationship experienced by The Trinity.

In The Trinity there is now humanity through Jesus.

We cannot control others. We can only influence others. And we influence through love.

It is a holy privilege to have children.

We can live out of already being embraced by God versus living to be embraced by God.

God is interested in destroying the sin that comes between Lover and beloved. This is versus loving rules over relationship and being focused on punishing sin.

In this way we also should think of sin in relational terms versus moral or legal terms.

No one wants to get into our mess to clean it up. God not only gets into our mess, but He jumps in to heal us – not just clean us.

Jesus comes to give us His knowledge of OUR Father. Our problem is we don’t know our Father.

Eternal life is also relational.

God is completely invested IN and committed to us. To you. To me.

The truth of my being is different than the way of my being. And obviously we aim for the way to eventually match the truth. This is at least a lifelong process. Without a pass/fail final exam.

Reconciliation is a different conversation than forgiveness. You can’t have reconciliation without trust.

Beauty short-circuits intellect. Beauty gets behind our watchful dragons.