Great Week!

What a great week we are having here! Last nights middle school service was great! We are really challenging the students to step up and become passionate about following God. We prayed with about 11 students at the end of the service who came forward to move from just living a religious going through the motions type life to a passionate relationship type life with Christ! God is really raising up some leaders with our middle school. Then Sunday night we had some great ministry time with about 18 students who responded to the message and just got filled up with Jesus!!! We have a lot going on right now with our BIG Flag Football day Sunday @ 1pm at the football stadium. Different youth groups from around the community are coming out to play and hang so it is going to be awesome. We are having a HUGE tournament with real officials, chain gangs, flags, all that stuff! Then we are having the Super Bowl party here in the zone @ 5:30 until the end of the game!

We have been collecting food for the Give-A-Way and it is going amazing! We have tons of stuff already and still another week or so of collecting things. Our students have responded to the call to bless others in our community and it is great to see. We are taking a team out February 9th to deliver the items to a family in need and I can't wait to show this family God's love through our students here @ Journey!!!

Just a side note for Christmas I got some Indiana Jones posters to finish my collection. Here is a picture of them hanging up in my office for inspiration throughout the week to live an adventure type life!

Middle School / Revelation

We had a great service last night with the middle school! 5 students got saved and prayed with us to follow Jesus!!! Our middles school students have come so far these last few months. We still have a ways to go, but man it is great!!! We have about 40 middle school students that come out each week. God is really doing awesome things with our youth. They are catching the vision of the Give-A-Way, bringing in all kinds of great items. I am so excited they are understanding what it means to bless others!!! We have just a few weeks left of collecting things until we deliver it in February. It is going to be a great day!!!!

I don't know about you but I have so many ideas and information that I am constantly learning, reading, and coming across and it gets so hard to remember it all. I am always coming across things that are great quotes, illustrations, truth, revelation, etc... I remember hearing that if you don't personally grow intentionally you will never grow, because growth is not automatic. You have to intentionally apply yourself and make sure you are disciplined to keep moving forward. So with that said I am going to try and start filling things away better and really put some systems in place to make sure I don't just forget and drop all the great things God puts in my path. I have started systems in the past but by getting SO BUSY with stuff it is hard to keep up. But I am determined to become better at retaining information and making sure I don't just forget all the things God is teaching me!!!

Habakkuk 2:2 says,
"Then the LORD replied: "Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it."

I want to make sure the revelations God gives me is not forgotten, but used to accomplish all that God has for me and others!

Give-A-Way

it is freezing here in Sallisaw! Lots of ice and cold weather. Hopefully it will start to warm up soon! I like sunny warm days, oh man they are great! I get all excited and motivated on nice days!!!

We started a new ministry with the students called, "Give-A-Way" We are collecting non perishable food items, household supplies, etc... all month. We are challenging the students to go out and get items then bring it in each week under the foot of the cross in the Zone. We have been hooked up with a family in our county that is in great need. A thirteen year old boy is living with his grandparents that were taking care of him then his grandfather passed away leaving just his grandmother and him. They do not have much means for basic needs and they are just in a really hard place right now. So we are going to collect as much stuff as we can then bless the socks off of them and bring them a whole kitchen full of items. We are going to take a team out the 1st or 2nd Saturday of each month and do this to various families that are in need. We are teaching the students multiple things such as: Being a blessing to others, giving, reaching out, elevating your community and those God has put around you, etc... We are super excited about getting into our community with our students and giving a way for people to experience God's provision and love for them.

Great Week!!!

What a great week it has been! We had a great service Wednesday night with the middle school. God was really working on their hearts. We challenged them to step over their fears and become like Jonah and do what God is calling them to do! You could really tell during prayer at the end of the service that the students were getting it! Then some friends came in from Indiana to stay the weekend with us. Josh & Emily Smith who I had the privilege of marrying 2-3 years ago came in to visit us! We had a great time hanging out and showing off our awesome church here @ Journey! They were able to experience a Sunday morning service and the high school service Sunday night! It is so great to have friends come here to visit us cause we love to show off our church and all that God is doing here, we are so proud of it all!

Well, we have a lot coming up with the Super Bowl party/Flag Football Day February 3rd! We are hosting a huge flag football tournament down at the football stadium @ 1pm Super Bowl Sunday. We are having officials, flags, whistles, chain teams, etc... It's the real deal. Students will form teams of 8 with at least 2 girls per team. It is going to be off the hook! Then we have our huge Encounter weekend coming up in February! Where we are going to Dwight Mission for a weekend retreat to get away and encounter God's awesome presence! We have much going on and God is doing great things!!!

Retreat was Awesome!

What an awesome weekend we had at our leadership retreat! We hung out, played games, and hammered out the strategy & plans up through the summer! We have a great team of leaders who God is doing great things through. When we get together things just start falling into place! The cabin we stayed at was AMAZING to say the least! This place was top notch and made the weekend even that much better! It definitely was a youth leadership weekend, there were some crazy dares given to some people like: licking Daniel Hayes' toe, eating ear wax, & drinking a mixture of mustard, coffee, mayonnaise, creamer, hot sauce, salsa, seasoning, & more. So there was some good laughs!!! Someone also put dishSOAP instead of dishWASHER soap in the dishwasher and we had a nice foam leek everywhere! I won't say who but you know who you are and will never live it down. These weekends are so necessary to build relationships and spend time together brainstorming and working out youth ministry details. Check out some of these pics from the weekend.

Leadership Retreat & Sin City Outreach

Well, tonight we are taking our adult leadership team on a weekend retreat. We rented an awesome cabin at lake TenKiller and it is going to be a bast. We are going to have worship, play games, talk about 2008 & ministry, eat, and simply hang out! We got a great deal on this sweet cabin that overlooks the lake. I love leadership and investing into those that are investing back into a generation behind them. The level of your leadership will determine the level of your ministry and we want to raise the bar as leaders, because in turn the ministry will rise inevitably. We looking forward to a great weekend.

I am also putting together the Sin City Outreach packets for our students. We are taking a team of high schoolers to Vegas this August to do a huge outreach in the inner city. This is an amazing opportunity to step out and reach the lost in a VERY lost place. We will be meeting as a team throughout the year and gearing up for this mission trip heavily. There will be requirements for students on the team that they will have to meet in order to go such as: Spiritual requirements, financial, and commitment to JSM! God is going to assemble a strong team to go and make a great impact in this place! We will probably need to rasie around $600 - $800 dollars a person in order to provide plane tickets, lodging, meals, transportation, etc... Which I believe we will be able to do! Hopefully people will invest into these students as they step out and take the gospel out into the world!!! It is going to be a great adventure.

Tuesday

Tuesday morning ready to go! We had an awesome service Sunday night with the high school. We talked about not putting God in a box. Meaning so many times we minimize our view of God to our present circumstances or feelings, but God is soooo much bigger than that. Many times we put place God's power within the confinement of our brain & fear, rather than realizing God is huge and and is able to do more than we could ever imagine. Ephesians 3:20 says,

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us"

That is our God, able to do more than we could even ask for, wow!!! 1 Kings 8:27 says,

"The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you."

We challenged the student to think of some boxes they have put God in like: fear, religion, our brain, emotions, circumstances, sin, doubt, confusion, questions, etc... Then we had the students come up front and rip a piece of cardboard off the boxes we had on stage and write down what some of the things were that they have boxed God into. It was a great night of realizing the greatness of God and getting our view of God out of the box! God is awesome!!!

2008

Wow! 2008 is here and ready to go! Time goes bye faster and faster! Well, we are getting ready for the new year with the church, the themes, leadership, creative things and more. Also, with the youth we are gearing up to kick-off our new theme for January called, "Out of the Box". We will be talking about how BIG, and awesome God is. We can't minimize Him to our formulas, boxes, agenda, feelings, etc... He is the great and mighty King, Ruler of all!!! So we are going to challenge the students to have the right picture of who God really is!!! The most important image you have in life is your image of God! So we want to paint a true picture of God!

We also have tons of events we are going to be doing this year from, retreats, overnights, crazy events, services, bible groups, camps, mission trips, community outreaches and more! This is going to be a great year! One thing the Lord spoke to me was that, "We have been building a youth group but this year God wants us to build an army!!!" So we are going to challenge the students to step up and live out loud for Christ!!!