Priority 2023
Hello, Ladies!
Carmen here, and I’m excited to talk with you about this year’s Priority Conference. It’s only four weeks away and we’re in full swing with plans and preparations. As we’ve been meeting I’ve seen Holy Spirit moments again and again as people have come to the table with ideas and messages and Scriptures that are aligning perfectly, in a way that only God can do. I’m seeing God move behind the scenes and can I just say, I’m excited to see what He’s going to do this year, because He’s already been working.
Priority is April 28th and 29th and we’re meeting in the Bank of Springfield Center again and since we were there last year, we’ll feel a little more at home.
This year’s theme is Represent Hope because we are sent and when we go, Christ goes and He is the hope. So we’re sent to represent hope to the lost and the broken and the desperate,,,just like someone did for us once upon time.
Priority is a Discipleship conference and there’s something for everyone because discipleship touches every single one of us, every day. Discipleship is based on relationships, and as women, we’re all about relationships, whether it’s in our homes or neighborhoods or at work or at church. We are relational beings.
We know we’re still struggling with the effects of the pandemic, but Ladies, we need you! We need you to show up at Priority! Come! Join us and bring your friends with you!
When you come to the Priority conference thirsty for God, you’re positioning yourself to soak up God’s Word as it’s proclaimed, so you can leave refreshed. The breakout sessions are times of equipping so you’re ready to go home and make a difference in your world and in your church–so you can better represent hope.
At Priority this year we’re going to explore …
- What does it mean to love God with all my heart and all my soul and all my mind?
- What does it mean to seek Him with all my heart and all my soul and all my mind?
We know that it takes intentionality. It takes rhythms in our lives.
- What does it look like to structure these rhythms to help me in my life so that I’m loving and seeking God with all that I am?
- What am I doing to make me physically, mentally and spiritually strong?
- What do those rhythms look like?
- What does my quiet time look like?
- What am I reading?
- If I’m in a rut, where might I go to shake that up?
- What does my prayer life look like?
It’s just like when I take my car in for a tune-up. I expect them to change the oil and check everything from the fluid levels to the tire pressures, and report back to me the condition of my car. Then I can decide what I want them to do about it.
In the same way, we need tune-ups in our lives. We need times to check where we are and how we’re doing, and then decide what we’re going to do about it.
The Priority Conference is a tune-up. We’ll help you see your condition, point it out to you, and help you come up with tangible things, rhythms, to implement so you can you grow strong physically, mentally and spiritually.
We’ll look at some tune-up type questions…
- How well am I abiding in Christ?
- Have I yielded all areas of my life to Christ and the Holy Spirit to fill? If not, I need to wrestle with why not.
- Do I sit in the silence and ask God to show me the areas I have not yielded?
- Are there areas of unrepented sin that may be breaking fellowship with Christ in my life?
- What are tangible steps we’re going to do to correct things?
Then we’re going to look at what it looks like to live at capacity–how God develops us and how can we work smarter, as God created me to be versus how God created someone else to be.
To keep the analogy of a car going, the Priority Conference is like pulling out your car’s owner’s manual and learning about features in your car that you didn’t know about. As Christians, God has called and equipped you to do things, and Priority helps you learn about features God has put in you that you might not have known about, features that will enable you to live up to your capacity. Priority will help equip you so you can show up to the table with more tools in your tool box and the margin to use them so you’re ready and able to do the work God’s called you to.
Remember, Jesus said in John 14:12, you’re going to do greater things than Me. So how do we learn to do those greater things?
At Priority we’ll learn.
- How do we pull out our owner’s manual?
- What does it look like for us to live up to capacity?
- How does God develop us?
- How do we work smarter?
- How do we learn how we’re created with the gifts God gave us so that we’re…
Because as we learn these things and grow, we’re showing up to the table for God to do the greater thing in and through us.
We understand that as your life transitions, those rhythms will need to transition too. We’ll help you find and see what it looks like in THIS season of your life, what’s going to work for your personality so that you can stick to it and not compromise the desired outcome. It takes evaluating and reevaluating the rhythms so you can keep growing.
How’s God going to do those greater things if we don’t believe He can do them through us? Just like when Moses was in denial, “Not me! I can’t speak, I can’t…”, if we’re going to do that to God, if we’re not going to pull our chair up to the table, if we’re not going to be on the altar, how is He going to do the greater things?
Priority helps us see what it looks like to do our part, to do these rhythms that make us strong mentally, physically and spiritually so that we have the margin to do the work God has called us to, so that God can work through us and so do those greater things Jesus talked about.
Friend, we see you and hear you and understand you, and the breakout sessions are designed to address the things that keep you awake at night, those things that are causing stress in your lives. You’ll find topics from mental health to spiritual health. From juggling everything as working women as well as stay-at-home moms, to creating rhythms of seeking God, and everything in between. Our goal is that you can go home and better share the love of Jesus with your world, so you can better represent hope with your world.
So what can you do now to prepare for Priority?
Ladies, we need you! We need you to show up at Priority! Come! Join us and bring your friends with you! Tell your church about Priority. Tell your association about Priority. There are 32 associations in Illinois and we want all of them represented because we know that when women come to Priority thirsty they leave refreshed and they go home to their churches and they make a difference in their worlds.
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden…” Matthew 5:14
Priority helps women share the love of Jesus with their world. So please, help us spread the word about the conference so other women can come and be encouraged and equipped so they can take it home with them too.
Priority.
Come thirsty. Leave refreshed. Live differently.
Visit our website for more information at: https://www.ibsa.org/priority/
Bypass the website and register here.
