Saturday evening I left the conversation really disturbed, feeling that this was some sort of encounter with the burning bush and that I was having a confrontation with God Himself in which He was trying to talk to me. I went straight to Mecartney and then I broke down and started crying uncontrollably. The feeling of just walking right there into the presence of God was overwhelming and I think for the first time in my life I felt that feeling that people describe of being exposed before God and recognizing in horror one's own impurity: "Woe is me, I'm ruined!" Part of it comes from the dawning realization that my heart is a helpless mess that I can't even understand, and the only thing I could do was beg God to help me make sense of it all. I turned to Psalm 139 again and I prayed “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. At this point I think I have truly given up all pretense of knowing myself and have turned completely to God, who in the passage is described as the God who knew me completely before I was even created. My prayer after the retreat and during my time away at Prayer Mountain also began with this Psalm. Through the message about Saul, I became convinced that I had to struggling with my image consciousness and my desire to gain respect and recognition from others Saul began as a boy who sincerely wanted to follow God's purpose for his life, but somehow ended up in rebellion and outright disobedience. against God. He had no intention of doing so, but somewhere along the way his desire for personal glory diverted his service to God and ended up bringing destruction to himself and others. During the reflection time, I realized that I couldn't be sure that I...... halfway down the sheet of paper ......ifs became much more relevant to my life. Psalm 139 has been proven so right that the only one who truly knows me is God, so I should cling to God and trust Him, not me. I am once again convinced that God has placed spiritual leaders and other people around me to speak the truth in my life: ultimately it is wrong and destructive for me to take a rebellious and hardened attitude towards them. I should view their presence in my life as a gift and reject the temptation in my heart to treat the relationship adversarially when I am corrected. Most of all I am grateful to God for this whole incident. Under different circumstances, that conversation on Saturday may not have happened, and while it was torturous and ugly, it proved to be such a wake-up call and catalyst for spiritual warfare in my heart that I know for sure that the hand of God is at work. in my life.