It was a bit of a crazy weekend for me. But in the end I saw some pretty cool “Kingdom Come” moments.
Here are a few highlights:
• MUCHA GENTE – We had overlapping sets of friends from out of town in town this weekend. It was great to re-connect. Even though it felt like a balancing act at time, they are all people we love & I felt like my soul got filled being with them. An old friend from Omaha Jack Arant & his wife Linda were among the crew with whom we hung out Friday & Saturday. Jack was an elder at my Church in Omaha. I love hanging around Jack for a lot of reasons, but chief among them is the freshness of his relationship with Jesus. Despite being a Christ follower for longer than most of you have been alive, he sports a newness & wonder in a life that is obviously a seek 1st the Kingdom adventure.
• “FAITH” – By Sunday, I think I actually had a message that made some sense. Honestly there are some services that you just don’t find a rhythm or where you don’t feel like you are making sense. That was Friday. I’m grateful to God for his grace in helping me figure out a few things for Sunday. It really is such a critical message & I the more I got into the narrative through the week, the more obvious the parallel to our own context. I am praying that we will have the kind of faith that makes it possible to please God.
• WORSHIP – I almost always sense God moving in our services, but this week was one of those times when the Holy Spirit landed on a particular song. It was the last one & Jason had a cool anointing as he lead us deeper toward actual worship.
• JIM & LINDA’S MY JOURNEY – The video my journey was fantastic. It was so real, so filled with faith, so winsome in it’s selflessness.
• HEALING THE WHOLE PERSON part 2 – The second semester of our healing the whole person class started this Sunday. They asked me to come in before the service & kind of say a few things & share some of our vision for seeing God work at Journey in the area of healing. I was so pumped up being with those in the class. They started with a cool testimony of one of the people in the class, raised to believe that God doesn’t do this kind of thing any more when he signed up for the class last fall. Of course he rethought his theology when he was totally healed of a 2-year shoulder problem that doctors told him he was just going to have to live with. I love being around people who are going for it. It got me a little more fired up to go preach on faith.
• PRAYING WITH MEGAN – Megan is new to Journey. She is battling cancer & hasn’t been able to get to church lately. Some of our prayer team went to her house to pray with her last Thursday (another post perhaps). She felt much better & was able to get herself to church on Sunday. I loved meeting her & praying with her.
• NEW FORMAT – I rolled into our college ministry thing on Sunday night (NEW FORMAT). I went because one of the guys I work with, Daniel Benitez was giving the message. I can safely say this was the best message I heard all weekend. It was on authenticity. It was an insightful, motivating & courageous talk. We should do it in the worship service one of these days.
• “NO SURF FOR YOU!” – I’m drying out! Between the rain & the guests I haven’t been in the water over the last couple of weeks. Those of you Nebraska & Iowa, please pray!
• JAY MOHR ON JIM ROME – One of my guilty pleasures is listening to the Jim Rome show. He’s very funny. He’s got great sports takes & is the best interviewer of athletes & coaches I’ve ever heard. On rainy Mondays (my day off is Monday) I like to listen to Rome while tooling around. Today Jay Mohr guest hosted. Hilarious! But he also mentioned that he is “converting to Catholicism” and talked about being in church with his 6 year old yesterday. This was actually kind of cool. I think God is at work in his life. No, I’m not catholic. But yes, I love seeing spiritual movement in people’s lives.
We have one more week of Journey Up. Some of us are fasting & praying THIS WEDNESDAY (basically one day till 5:00) asking that God would move. Want to join us?
This was a weekend where I don’t think I had more than 20 minutes of down time till Sunday night, but it was a good one.
