I want to encourage each person to step out in faith and invite your friends, neighbor, co-worker, the clerk at the grocery store, the barista at Starbucks, or basically anyone that is breathing air on this planet to church.  They will come, they are programmed to come, they want to come.  The question is, will you ask them to come with you?

Can we seize the opportunity that is before us to reach people for Jesus?  I believe we can.

“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”

What really struck me about this verse was the word DWELL.  In the Webster’s dictionary it means: to live as a resident.  I started to think about my relationship with God and am I a resident of a consistent time with God.  The thing that happens when I am dwelling with God is that I am right there with him, following (hence why I am in His shadow) but yet protected because he is making the way for me, leading out in front.

I find it so easy to be a nomad in my relationship with God.  There are times when I dwell with him but then all of a sudden I will find myself out wandering around looking at other places to be my shelter or residence.  I don’t know why I have this tendency but I do.  I want this year to be the year where I take up permanent residence in God’s house, where I don’t wander out looking for other places to rest or other people to follow.  This is the year where I believe each of us needs to establish our residence with His.

I am jacked up about this weekend because I am sharing a principle that has guided our life throughout the years.  I believe that this weekend can revolutionize where you are going in life and how you are getting there.  I know that God has a purpose and plan for your life.  I also truly believe that God wants you to know that vision more than you or I want to know what that vision is for our life.  I am believing that all of you would get a picture of where God wants to take you.  I can’t wait to share, so be ready for God to show up and do something BIG in your life.

“We live in the pain between the way things are now and the way they are supposed to be. Jesus didn’t teach us to pray, ‘God get us out of this story. This is a bad story. Take us out of here.’  He taught us to pray, ‘Let Thy Kingdom come!  On earth as it is in Heaven. In my body. In my family. In our church. In every dark place on the planet.’”

Check out this video on the Lord’s Prayer, it is very moving

As a staff we are reading a book by Skye Jethani called The Divine Commodity.  The book is about discovering our faith beyond being consumer Christians.  We are just in chapter one but there are some great and thought provoking quotes that I thought I would share.

“Problems cannot be solved with the same consciousness that created them.” Albert Einstein

“Questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined.  The imagination must come before implementation.  Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and imagine almost nothing.”

“The fertile land of imagination is a terrain we pass through, not a field we cultivate.”

“Jesus’ adult followers suffered from a chronic lack of imagination.  Their minds were shackled by conventionality.”

“Art should do more than present reality; it should represent reality by uncovering the truth that is not apparent to the naked eye.”  Vincent Van Gogh

“He didn’t merely present the world as it is; he represented it as one full of God’s presence and love.  But to see this world a person needs more than eyes.  He or she needs a ray from on high, an imagination awakened and illuminated by God.”

“If your imagination of God is starved then when you come up against difficulties, you have not power, you can only endure darkness.”  Oswald Chambers

and the most convicting statement

“The contemporary American church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or to act.”