This weekend was unique in several ways – we extended the series, we were addressing a national (global?) economic crisis.
Here are a few of my reflections:
• This was a challenging message to put together. But it was fun to interact with the text & see how parallel the Joseph & the people of God’s experience is with ours. We are not the 1st nor will we be the last to go through the uncertainty of macro-economic shaking.
• As I was preaching, I had this mental picture of Joseph standing for before Pharaoh et al. The only guy who was in touch with the word from God & the only one with nothing to lose. I think that crisis times especially when they are of an economic nature really are gut checks for us as Christ followers. Jesus was remarkably cavalier about money. We need to be the Joseph’s, in a sense we need to be the people with nothing to lose.
• LIFE WALK – props to my daughter Bethany & my son David. They recruited their friends & signed up sponsors for me after each of the services for the Life Walk, which supports Life Perspectives. To learn more about LP click here; also check the Abortion Changes You campaign here. My wife wrote some amazing curriculum called “Whole Life curriculum” check it out here. Anyway, they have raised close to 4k & counting for me.
• PRAYER – there is so much happening at Journey in the area of prayer. People are fasting. There is a great class going called Healing the Whole Person. People are seeing God heal & move as we pray. One cool moment was related to Al (I blogged about him a few days ago). A guy who was earnestly praying for Al & hadn’t heard a report found me & asked how he was doing. I began to relate the story that I was writing about & shared that I’d just seen Al at church and he looked and felt wonderful & believes that God has taken away the cancer. It was cool to see a big burly guy tear up as I shared with him. I love being a part of the people of God sometime!
• FUN WITH FRIENDS – we were at some friends houses both Saturday & Sunday Nights (Sunday watching the Chargers & the Dodgers win – a good night!) .
• ANOTHER FRIEND – On Sunday afternoon we had a friend show up at church formerly of Omaha show up for church. I recruited Roy to work as a volunteer with our High School ministry at Christ Community in Omaha. Roy is very much your typical very smart engineer guy and not your archetypical youth ministry type. Roy is a big guy at some huge company in LA these days – been there about 5 months & landed at Bel Air Presbyterian Church. He wanted to make sure that I would be a reference for him as he volunteered to serve in the High School ministry at his new church. How cool is that! Almost 18 years later he’s still working with students.
• FUN SURF WITH THE CREW TODAY – Today was awesome in the water. It was my 1st time surfing in a week. The waves were small, but there were 4 of us out there & it was pure fun. Thanks Lord, for sanity restoration times!
I can’t wait for next weekend as we begin out next series.
