MYC 2010: Holy Spirit - God in Us

This year's Mid Year Conference (MYC) at Merroo Christian Conference Centre was an absolute blast. We explored God's Word to better understand an often-debated topic: the Holy Spirit. We certainly learnt a lot (and left with more questions!) from Genesis to Revelation over the 5 days of seminars, Bible studies, talks, electives and fellowship with over 500 other brothers and sisters-in-Christ. Here are just a few points learnt over those five amazing days of MYC:

Seminars

• The Spirit is the paraclete who works in us and convicts us of our sin and dwells in us when we become Christians i.e. the Spirit and gospel work hand-in-hand
  
• Living by the Spirit involves putting to death things of the flesh and suffering first before sharing in His glory as we become children of God by the Spirit of adoption and co-heirs with Christ
• All laws are ultimately fulfilled in one word: love

Bible Studies (Colossians)

• Paul expounds the gospel of Christ to the Colossians as a basis for them to renounce self-made religion and earthly things but to instead seek things from above, put on love, and to stand firm in the gospel
• Further exploration of Paul's accompanying letter to the Ephesians reveals that the mystery of gospel is that Gentiles are now included as fellow heirs in Christ through the gospel
• God's Spirit is in man - we can lead a new life with a new God-centred heart

Talks

• Jesus Christ is God's exalted Messiah who is the Spirit-empowered King, prophet and servant - He is how we are to be born of water and Spirit
  
• The Bible has dual authorship: God has written His Scripture through His apostles who are inspired by the Spirit
• Subsequently, it is also the Spirit who provides illumination for the understanding of the Scripture, which would otherwise appear as words of folly for we have a spiritual disability (hardness of heart, blind eyes, ears that fail to hear, darkened eyes of the heart), which is both the expression and punishment of our sin
• In Christ, we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places - we need to understand that suffering comes before glory and there is contentment in waiting for the hope to come, hence the need to beware of spiritual experience traps where we may begin to try and manufacture the experience (e.g. speaking in tongues), interpret the experience incorrectly, or give the experience too much authority (when the ultimate authority lies in the Scripture)
• By God's grace, He has given us all gifts for the common good - the list of individual gifts is endless and should not be our main focus but rather be the means of unification for His whole church as we ask, "What does the body need?" instead of "What are my gifts?"
• Every Christian has been equipped by God to serve so we should not be self-centred in our thinking i.e. "I have nothing/everything to offer..."
• The most excellent way to use gifts is love with the goal of edification and building one another up to maturity in Christ
  
• We need to exercise prophetic enthusiasm in communicating the Scripture to others but also prophetic reluctance in claiming to speak God's Word beyond the Scripture
• Participation in the Spirit (or fellowship of the Holy Spirit) allows us an intimate connection with both Father and Son as we participate in God's promises because the Servant King fulfilled the promises and now pours out His Spirit on us - we are then encouraged to emulate and glorify Christ (just as how the Spirit glorifies not Himself but Christ)
• Suffering comes before glory - we are all united in suffering now but we will also be united with Jesus in glory in the future

As mentioned, this is just a "quick list" of concepts covered (when there is actually so much more than meets the eye). Felt like you've missed out by not attending this year's MYC? Fret not, as MYC will be back again next year with a fresh new other topic from 11th to 15th July, 2011 - mark these dates down in your calendar!! ;)