Legendary.

For those of you who do not know, the title of this post is the title of one of Chris Tomlin’s new songs. It’s importance will be unraveled shortly.

Exactly a week ago, on a Monday, I went to the GEM Youth Winter Retreat. The night before, some unhappiness came about due to my spending money that my mom had given me to save. Also, the after, on the Tuesday, my SAT II Biology scores were going up. I went to the retreat knowing that I had once again damaged my mom’s trust in me, and with this looming pressure and distracting curiosity. Not the best way to start off.

The bus ride over to the retreat site was one of those moments of healing for me, and a time when I could start to forget about certain things and truly “retreat”. Luckily, I had predetermined my bus buddy: Becca. We’re both very passionate about music, and so through sharing music and being surrounded by legitimately “good” music, I started to be at peace. There was also Lids sitting in front of us, taking notes of artists that I spent great amounts of time finding.. Anyway, thanks Rebecca, for being my bus buddy. Your company was appreciated more than you know.

Once I got to the retreat, I took part in all those introductory games and activities, which were fun! Thanks for preparing all that stuff, leadership ‘93! During the first main session service, much felt like Sunday morning church. I don’t know… it just felt like the same thing, but i just sang and prayed a little louder. It felt like I wasn’t “into it”, but one thing God’s been telling me recently is that it’s not about what I feel. His presence is present regardless of any personal, emotional phenomenon.

The next day, I spent a lot more time with my friends and strengthened my friendships. The people of GEM Youth are awesome. They set high standards for all people. All the games, fun times, and prayer walks aside, I was surprised that I was only kind-of looking forward to the last night’s service. Before the service, all the leadership members gathered and BigKorea talked to all of us about how the previous night was a pathetic expression of our passion for God, something he has seen before. In prayer, I just began to get emotionally, mentally, and physically (I was jittery) excited about God.

The time of worship began. I remember jumping up and down in excitement, with a bunch of people from leadership. This was really important, in that it really let others feel comfortable doing whatever to praise God. Then, we sang the second song, Awakening, by Chris Tomlin. The lyrics of this song really impacted me. See, I was struggling with a hardened heart. It seemed as if I didn’t care about anything but my closest friends. I had shut everything and everyone else out. Anyway, one of the lines to this song was: “awake my soul and sing”.

You might be going, Will, how does that even connect to what you were going through? Well, let me tell you. In Korean, the old-fashioned word for soul is the same as mind, or heart. SOUL —> MIND —> HEART —> HARDENED HEART. Light bulb~!

Back to the story: When I realized what these lyrics said, I just broke down in tears. I didn’t understand it then, but I just continued to sing my heart (and voice) out. I regained my composure, but we sang another song later and I started crying again. UNPRECEDENTED!! but awesome.

After one of the most genuine times of worship I’d had in a long time, Pastor Andy came up. I love this guy. He’s so passionate, funny, and all the things you just love in a pastor. His English was amusing, so I never dozed off :) For the two days he talked about prayer. He revealed the importance of prayer, something I had not realized to such an extent! After about 16 years of knowing God, it was about time I learned how to talk to Him. Without proper communication, it was like I KNEW OF Him; I did not KNOW Him.

We then had a time of prayer, when I prayed to God for forgiveness, primarily because I had not been genuinely praying to Him. I either prayed a memorized prayer or, when praying for others, “prayed” things that the recipient would have liked to hear. It was like I was praying to the prayer-recipient. (Make sense? No? It’s k.)

After this, I went over to a good friend of mine who I knew was going through one of the roughest times of her year at least. Before I started praying, however, I tried something new that I am going to continue to do: I prayed to God and promised that when I pray for Roku, I would pray directly to Him for her, and not to her.

I went around praying for other people in the same way, muttering the same commitment for each person I prayed for.

What happened at that retreat was genuine. I pray that nobody ever doubts the fact that whatever happened to each person at that location and at that time was genuine.

I love GEM Youth. I haven’t seen you guys for one day and I already miss you.

Thanks for reading this ridiculously long tumblr post! (But that’s what happens when you try to fit in three incredibly eventful days into several paragraphs)