This weekend my friend Mark Oestreicher spoke in our weekend services. Listening to a message is definitely a different view of things than I normally have. But it wasn’t hard to see that God was moving in our Weekend Services in some really powerful and wonderful ways.
Marko did a message entitled “God-Given Emotions”. To “boring” it up a bit, it was on giving space to our emotions. The point is that God, who is a God of strong emotions, who made us in his image and thus made us with strong emotions, can be met by giving space to and honoring our emotions more than by suppressing, repressing, ignoring or all the other things we tend to do with them. But the message was way different than a typical talk. It was readings form various Psalms that let the emotions just FLY! Then he read from his journal that he kept on a 6-day silent desert retreat shortly after losing his job. It’s only Monday and I’ve heard and read from so many people who were impacted and freed by that message.
THE RETURN OF TREVOR DAVIS – We had our friend Trevor Davis back leading worship and doing some original songs. We love having him at Journey.
SELAH – I had a great conversation with a guy that is new to church, Jesus, Journey etc. He’s been I think 3 times. He was asking me what the deal with Selah was. It was a great excuse for me to think about what it is. The flyer says is your want “MORE”. Selah is
√ More Worship – so often, morning services feel like you are in a restaurant and having the waitress reaching for your place before you are done. Selah features more, lots more worship.
√ More interactivity – I often lose control of the mic. Usually this is good. Not always.
√ More freedom – to enter in to worship, to listen for what God might be saying to us, to pray for each other, to learn what all this is like and the freedom to maybe be wrong.
√ LESS – yes, there is also less involved. Less agenda – I rarely know where it’s going when I get there.
Last night was a very cool Selah. Somewhere in the middle I was getting a word about anxiety. During and afterward several people said they had been hearing that word for Selah all day. Hmmmm.
CONGRATS DOUG & JANET – On Saturday we went to an engagement part for friends from Real Life (our 20something ministry) and who have intersected with our lives quite a bit over the past few year.
It was a fun night. But more importantly, I finally proved my point: Doug looks like a young Bob Weir (guitarist for the Grateful Dead). Someone got a pic of the aforementioned celeb and we showed it around saying, hey, check out this pic of Doug when he lad long hair. Even his future mother in law was in! You be the judge!
Maybe I need more to think about!
