- I like to think of myself as someone who depends on God’s Spirit, but today I didn’t have an option but.
- Last night just before midnight as I was looking over my notes for today’s message, I heard Lisa yell for me to come to the basement right away.
- Our bedroom is down there and unfortunately water was seeping up through the carpeting.
- We did what we could to make sure nothing was damaged and finally went to bed around 1am.
- The problem was it wasn’t to bed since our new house has two offices for us but no spare bed room.
- So I ended up on the sofa and she ended up on the love seat in my office.
- Of course I couldn’t’ sleep well for various reasons and only ended up with 2 hours sleep.
- How I ended up functioning properly is beyond me.
- How this turned out to be my favorite worship Experience since we launched 6 months ago has to do with the Holy Spirit and the awesome team that we’ve assembled.
- We were doing a lot things differently today so our warm-up time went super long, so big thanks to Chad for filling in at the last minute to lead the team meeting and prayer time. By the way their basement flooded last night as well…ughhh.
- The band as always did an awesome job leading worship.
- After the greeting time we took a brief moment to prayer for the Fox family.
- Their son JT passed away this past week at the age of 32. He was 1 of the 71 people who have made a profession of faith since we launched in October.
- Just goes to show we never know how much time we have on this earth and why evangelism is so important.
- Today was the wrap-up to our “Winning” series where we’ve been learning how to take filter pop culture through God’s Word so it helps us bridge the gap between God and the people in our culture.
- Here’s a video showing how some are applying last week’s message.
- After having looked at a popular movie and TV show the past two weeks, today we did a song that has been near the top of the rock charts for nearly 7 months now…”Waiting on the End” by Linkin Park.
- It was cool having our drummer Steve do some of the vocals…reminded me of how Phil Collins used to sing and play drums at the same time.
- I used this song as a jump off to the thing that is most valuable to God…people.
- The key thought was…”Everybody that I have ever laid my eyes on is somebody for whom Jesus died”.
- It of course helped to reinforce one of our core values at ExponentialChurch.tv….”Lost people matter to God and therefore they must matter to me”.
- I can’t describe it but I knew something special was happening even as I was sharing the message…you’ll just have to listen for yourself.
- The band came right out of my message with one of my favorite songs…”Tears of the Saints”.
- This went right into communion and then back into everyone singing along to the bridge and chorus of “Tears of the Saints”.
- I was a mess by this point and was somewhat relived when I got back on stage to see that most of the crowd was a mess as well.
- God showed up big time and spoke to our hearts about how important people are and the urgency for reaching as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
- To be honest I wasn’t sure how to transition at that point to offering so I just stood there like a deer in headlights for awhile and then had the people applaud for all that God has done and is yet to do.
- During the announcement time I then announced not only what we’re doing next week for Easter (a message called, “Marked”…which I think will be at least as powerful as today) but also our next series starting May 1st.
- It’s called iLife and as a part of the series we’re giving away 4 FREE iPads!
- We had 2500 invite cards/tickets made up that look like iPads and our people can give them away to as many people as they want.
- It was awesome seeing people walking out of the theater with huge stacks in their hands.
- After the awesome Experience today I dreaded coming home.
- Thanks to Larry and Melissa Evans for letting me borrow their shop vac.
- I vacuumed for 6 hours this afternoon…not fun but necessary.
- Hopefully now I can enjoy a relaxing evening and get some much needed sleep.
- This week I’ve got two funerals to attend (including an out of town one), I’ve got to wrap up last minute details for Easter and prepare for the following Sunday as well since I leave early next week for Florida.
- It sounds like an impossible week but as God proved today if I’ll rely on Him, He’ll give me all the strength I need.