Journey Community Church - La Mesa, California

Sometimes you just got to make up words. With a nod to our friend Scot McKnight and his book, The King Jesus Gospel this week’s message was about “GOOD-NEWSING”. (On a side note, Scot’s book is wonderful and provocative and would make a great read).

The “Good News” triggers the RENAISSANCE that God is brining. One of our problems is that we need a bigger understanding of the Good News (Gospel) that the New Testament is all about. In our language it’s natural to think of the “gospel” as the content of the message. But in the Greek language in which the New Testament is written, Good News is often a verb (euaggelidzo – the verb, euaggelion – the noun). The Good News is something we do, something we embody as well as something we speak.

When we are experiencing the goodness of the Good News, embodying the Good News and extending the invitation, people’s lives are changed. Nick Kwok shared his story of the Good News lifting him out of suicidal despair and calling him into a lifetime of “Goodnewsing” to fraternity and sorority college students with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship (Click http://www.intervarsity.org/greek/ )

Nick also demonstrated a simple way to share extend the invite through “The Four Circles” (Click here to see James Choung share the “Big Story” here http://www.jameschoung.net/2007/09/17/the-big-story/)

But as you should expect by now, we have to take a step of faith. Sometimes the step is simply believing this: “YES, ME”. We closed by reminding each other, “You are an agent of Good News”.

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It’s not a matter of if! God is doing a renaissance! It’s going to be all encompassing. The rocks and trees and dirt will cry out. “Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy before the Lord; for He is coming to judge the earth… (Psalm 98:8-9)

But wonderfully and in a way, surprisingly, it starts with what God is doing in His people. It starts with our recovery and as we looked at this release.

We spent our message time this last weekend in one of my all time favorite parts of the Bible, Romans 8. Right in the middle Paul belts this out:

8:21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

The God plan starts with our freedom. Release!

So the question is how do we live in that release. So beginning last week and continuing this one we talked about what that looked like.

The part that seemed to land so heavily this weekend was our need to “LET GO OF CONDEMNATION”.  Condemnation is not something we do; it’s a way that we are in the world. We need to learn a different way to BE! Many people’s experience with religion and “Christianity” to the contrary, condemnation is not the energy that propels authentic transformation. Grace is!

[The following paragraph is earthy and slightly gross – you might want to skip it]

Apparently that point needed driving home for me. On Tuesday I did a little prayer walk around our facility stopping by the Journey sign looking over the buildings and praying for the various ministries. As I looked at the worship center, I noticed a bird swooping over the parking lot toward the worship center as I was praying. As he got close, with me still praying, he let loose what looked like a very healthy amount of bird poop. (I told you to stop reading). Of course I laughed. But then, this thought flashed brightly in my mind. “That’s exactly what the devil is trying to do to us. He wants to spoil, soil and stink up with condemnation, accusation, guilt and shame.” Not exactly Isaiah’s vision in Isaiah 6, but point made!

The highlight once again was the My Journey. This time Jared and Bob Womack share the son and father story of God delivering from addiction.

Worship as per usual was sweet.

After the services on Sunday our Generations ministry through a family fun day.

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We launched “Renaissance” last weekend at Journey. The events of Easter mean we can experience Resurrection life, Renaissance. It’s something God is doing and is His unstoppable plan! But for us it starts with us experiencing “Birth from above” new birth!
The question is how to experience that. It’s beyond an IN / OUT idea that many of us understand when people starting talking about being “Born Again”. It’s about experiencing and seeing God do Renaissance in my life. That’s where recovery fits in. That was the essence of the message this week.

WORSHIP was sweet and powerful this weekend. We keep pressing into God and it feels like God is growing us as a community that worships!

LINDSAY shared a powerful story of her renaissance in her own life as she found grace and life-giving community in our single parents group! I loved listening to her story in each service. As she shared, I couldn’t help but think, “This is what we dream for Journey! This is who we are and who we want to be!”

This series is going to change us.

Last week we took one step toward that the “recovery” we all need. This weekend we take another as we speak of “Renaissance as Release”. Get ready for another powerful story of renaissance with the My Journey!

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What an amazing weekend at Journey. Easter is always EPIC at Journey. Journey WAS born on an Easter weekend.

Among the many things that blew me away

• We INVITED like crazy! I met so many guests and friends
• Which is probably why the place was PACKED! That was fun to see
• The presence of the Lord was thick! All of us who sense the filling of the Holy Spirit!
• The Good Friday and Easter services were COMPLETELY different (purposely of course) and both were very powerful!
• We asked you to step up an SERVE and you stepped up BIG TIME!

Here’s a bunch of pics! 1^st Good Friday!

We talked about “The Rock of Surrender” that Jesus prayed “not my will but Yours” before going to the cross. Thanks to Greg King for making us a rock!

NOW FOR SOME EASTER PICS

Thanks to everyone who made this such a GREAT WEEKEND!

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I’m blessed beyond all reason in that week in and week out, I feel like God meets me somewhere in the process of prepping the Weekend Message. Sometimes I’ll look over old messages notes and be amazed that I came up with that (knowing that I only kinda did). Usually this is kind a steady semi-predictable process in the course of the week. But every now and then it’s more sudden and direct. That’s the case with the message from last weekend. It actually started as a retreat talk for the High School ministry of my friends at Brookside Church in Omaha, Nebraska. I was flying out early Friday morning. I was up late packing and getting everything ready. I was finally ready to hit the sack and I drug myself into bed knowing that alarm was going to sound all too soon.

As I’m drifting off to sleep I start thinking of John chapter 11 and the story of the resurrection of Lazarus. Not my usual last thoughts of the day, but pretty cool. Then a talk kind of materialized in my head. I felt like the Lord was saying that THIS was the talk I was supposed to do instead of one of the ones I had already sent them (complete with discussion questions). So I got up ran downstairs and wrote up some notes to the talk the main point being – GOD DOES WHAT HE DOES BECAUSE OF LOVE.

It was clearly a God-thing. It totally landed on the retreat. But even as I was sharing it with these High School kids 2k miles away, I sensed it was also a talk for Journey.

Right now at Journey we have 2 things oddly and wonderfully juxtaposed: Lots of people going through excruciatingly difficult things and great joy, faith and hope from those same people. The beauty of this continues to cause me to gape and marvel.

I couldn’t have seen it that Thursday night / Friday morning last fall, but it really was “His Word” for us! I love it when it happens like that!

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This weekend at Journey we launched a short series to help us get our heads and hearts around what we called the MOST REAL, which is RESURRECTION.

We will look at resurrection stories that lead up to Easter over the next few weeks. We began with the story of the raising of Jairus’ daughter and because all 3 of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) weave in the story of the woman healed from the issue of blood we covered that two. It’s the story of fear working against faith, of the idea of “BOTHERING” God with our requests in conflict with the idea of genuine HUMILITY! It’s the story of desperation turning into a Holy Determination!

It seemed ludicrous to speak on this passage to talk about touches from God that heal and not ACTUALLY DO THIS STUFF.

So we restructured the services to allow for us as a community to pray for healings, breakthroughs and for God to release resurrection power in our lives. Throughout the weekend I kept getting a stronger and stronger impression about “FEAR”. It felt like God really wanted to do stuff in people’s lives in the area of fear, anxiety, abandonment, depression… It was amazing to see how God was touching people’s lives in this area, healing people’s bodies and giving faith to step out.

By the way, props to our many prayer people, some of whom cut short out of town trips to make sure they were there for this weekend.

Here’s a thought that I didn’t have time to develop or really even mention. Receiving a touch from God is not the end, it’s the beginning! Experiencing a touch from Jesus doesn’t instantly mature you. It doesn’t by itself build character. Let’s take the area that I’ve already mentioned, FEAR! God, my give us a release, a breakthrough, a healing of our damaged emotions or memories; He may draw near and fill us in a powerful way. We still must “take our thoughts captive” the next day. We still must choose to be “anxious for nothing”. In other words moments of miracle are part of God’s process for growing us, but not all of it. Think of them as the deep passes in the playbook. You still have to play defense, block and tackle. That should clear it up!

I’m already getting excited about next weekend, Palm Sunday. If you want to get a jump on things read the story in John 11.

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It was an epic weekend at Journey! It was a great finale to the EAT THIS BOOK series. As we’ve been reading through the text of the New Testament, it was great to have Rabbi Barney Kasdan speak on the Messiah in the Passover. In addition to being a great message it had the effect of tying the big story of the Scripture together.

He concluded the message and the services leading us through communion. I don’t think we’ll ever take communion quite the same again.

 
What a great conclusion to this series!

We also got the EASTER INVITE season started. Make sure you are praying about all the people we will get to invite. Take the risk!

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