This weekend was the scary weekend of the shift series – because I think faith is always a little scary and kind of fun.
As I’ve said each weekend, in this series each message is designed to launch something – there is a ME SHIFT each week and an US SHIFT – something that WE need to shift a little bit as a community. This weekend it was about a “FAITH SHIFT” where I begin to shift from “WISHING” to “EXPECTING”. When I pray. The tough thing about faith is that it requires us to GO before you KNOW. What I (and I’m guessing you as well) like is as much as possible to know BEFORE I go.
Our aversion to expectation is rooted in a desire to be safe; I think the root of that is a desire to have a “manageable” God.
Part of the unmanageable part of this weekend was that I knew we were going to invite people to come and get prayer for specific needs, especially for physical healing.
WORSHIP – We started with some faith-building worship. It was great to have Jason back leading us!
INTERVIEW – During the course of the message I interviews John Pacillio who will be leading a class on praying for the sick with faith and expectation. He’s been on a fascinating journey with God in this area over the last decade. I encourage you to think about taking the class.
GETTING IN THE GAME – We had LOTS of people come to get prayer. God gave me a couple of words before each service that was fun and awesome! The good news and bad news and then good news again is that lots of people came to receive something from God and our prayer team was overwhelmed. But the great news was that a lot of people took the challenge to just get in the game! Lots of “regular people” came to pray and ask God to move. It was cool.
THE CHALLENGE – Another thought on “SHIFT” was from Luke 9:1-2. There is another shift that you can see in the gospels. It is the shift from “BRING” to “SEND”. It moved from people being brought to Jesus to Jesus sending his people out with “power” and “authority”. They had mixed results, unlike Jesus there were a few failures. But the coolest thing is that God is inviting us in, to get in the game with Him. So our SPECIFIC CHALLENGE was this, THIS WEEK PRAY FOR SOMEONE WITH EXPECTATION. Practically, this means as we meet a need this week, especially an illness, we pray right then and there. Instead of “I’ll be praying for you” we go with “may I pray for you… now?” Scary right? Yeah, faith often is.
