It was great to be back at Journey this weekend, but it wasn’t easy. I know the it sounds cliché and a smidge overdramatic to invoke spiritual warfare every time you preach, pray or do anything that is approaches “ministry” and so I don’t. Maybe that’s not good. But I knew going into this weekend that we would be going after stuff that has so many Christ followers hamstrung that there would be some spiritual blow back. At least from where I stood, that panned out.
The weekend was installment 4 of our Beyond Belief series – “Faith Without Guilt”. One of the great misunderstandings that I believe is diabolical in source is that God traffics in guilt, that it is one of the main ways He communicates, that is the air you breath when you draw close to Him. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times: “I used to go to church but it just made me feel guilty.” As I read in a book on education once, things surrounded by unpleasantness are seldom surrounded by people. No surprise that once the cultural “should” about church and religion went away (starting here in Cali) so did a lot of people.
Additionally, a lot of people who come to Christ, begin to find life in Him get sidetracked with crippling guilt, regret, feelings of worthlessness. I am convinced this is a chief “stronghold” of the evil one in many people’s lives. I felt a good deal of that throughout the message. I hope it didn’t show, but I felt like I was working my butt off up there this weekend, but I knew, O I KNEW, that God wanted to free some people.
WORSHIP – I love how much truth is in the worship songs we do at Journey and how absolutely poetic and powerful it is. Our team destroyed, as usual.
GATM PEOPLE’S CHOICE VOITING – Sarah hosted the services this weekend and led the people through the text voting for the “people’s choice” movie in our upcoming God at the Movies series. I think she learned about voting in Chicago – talk about a compromised process!
NOT 1 BUT 2 GREAT SURF SESSIONS – I was so glad that it shook out for me to get in the water with some Journey types on Saturday and to paddle out on my day off. Both days were fantastic. I love spring surfing – combo swell, summer crowds haven’t arrived yet!
NEXT WEEKEND – as a part of the weekend we will have the chance to sign up for the Leadership Summit in August at the lowest possible price. Be ready to dive on that!
