Last Night & This Week

We had a killer service last night for High School! We talked about Eros Love the romantic intimate type love! It was a great night of getting the right view of sex, love & romance the way God intended it! We had an amazing human video to the Lifehouse song "Everything" that was super powerful! Then we gave ALL the students an envelop, paper & a pen to write down a purity letter to their future spouse! They wrote a letter to give to their spouse on their wedding day that talks about how they have kept themselves pure as their special gift to them! They will have it sealed and dated saving it over the years for that special day! It was an awesome night, everything went great from worship, games, drama, message, ministry. It was one of our best nights yet!

We are here in the office today on our day off getting caught up on so much to do! We are going to Ed Young's church in Texas for the HUGE C3 Conference at Fellowship church on Wednesday! So we have a LOT to do since Encounter Weekend is this weekend! Erin and I will get back on Friday the day of the retreat so...wow! We already have like 50 students signed up and more to come! Our church has been so amazing at responding to sponsoring students financially! We have almost 10 students who needed the amount or else they would have missed it! Since our church responded so well to the need we are able to provide a way for theses students to go and experience life change!!! What a great church we have here at Journey, it is unlike any other! Well I better get back to it, lots to do in a little time!!!

Encounter Weekend

Man I am SOOOOOOOO excited about Encounter Weekend. It is going to be awesome! We are meeting at Dwight Mission Friday, February 22nd @ 6pm for a weekend of having a blast and encountering God's presence. I can't wait to tell you the things we are going to do but I have to wait till after the event so we don't give it away. Then on Sunday we are having the kids picked up at Dwight Mission and asking parents to come to 2nd service with their kids and then stay after for lunch and as we close out the weekend! I can't wait till next weekend!!! The registration form and money are due tonight for the students, so make sure you bring them guys!!! If anyone is interested in sponsoring a student will still have some that need the full amount of $75.00 or whatever you could do. Just let me know a.s.a.p if you want to invest into the life of a teenager. We are believing God for life changing encounters this weekend with His presence. Check out this video promo for the event!

Love in 3D

We started a new series Sunday night called, "Love in 3D"! It went great! We said that we use the world LOVE for everything but God sees love in 3 dimensions. The Bible uses 3 different words for love:
Phileo - The brotherly/caring type love
Eros - The lovely dovey type love
Agape - The unconditional/No strings attached type love

We talked about Agape love Sunday night! We talked to the students about how much God loves them time and time again even when we mess up. We gave all the students a pair of 3D glasses at the end of the service to remind them to see love the way God does! To understand He has amazing things for their life because of His love for them! It was a fun night! We did a drama to the song "Time After Time" which went amazing! The song captured the theme for the night. The chorus says, "If your lost and you look you will find me, time after time. If you fall I will catch you I'll be waiting, time after time." It is great to know that our students our understanding God's passionate love for them even when we feel unlovable and empty! God always forgives and is there for us time after time!!!

Chamber Dinner

Well, we had the opportunity to go to the Sallisaw Chamber of Commerce Banquet tonight with all the staff @ Journey! We had a great meal, saw some great people, and met some new ones! It is great to be connected into the life of the community! Pastor Jeff has done a great job at building bridges with the Chamber and the community at large. We had our very own table since Pastor Jeff is on the board of directors this year! NO other church sponsored or even came to the banquet. I think being a part of the chamber is a MUST in church life! If you want to be a part of raising the standard spiritually, emotionally, physically, financially, practically then you HAVE to become part of the community! For so long churches have just stayed within their 4 walls and hope that what they do IN there changes things OUT there! But that just isn't the way you impact culture! You have to do things OUT there to bring them IN to a relationship with Jesus! If doing things IN the church was all that had to be done then why haven't communities been changed? I don't think the problem is IN the church (although I will say that most churches fail because lack of cultural relevance to the people and communities they are trying to reach) but it is the lack of OUT there that they do not do! I am not saying that one or the other is the way it should be because it is both combined that CHANGE communities. You have to go OUT there and impact them in order to bring them IN to something that is life-giving and impacting. On the same token you have to have something of significance IN the church in order to go OUT and change culture too! So it is both combined that churches are able to experience revival, life change, culture change and success in reaching the lost and raising them up to be ALL that God has called them to be! Anyway, it was great to be part of community life and speaking positive favor over our community here in Sallisaw!

By the way I painted a new painting the other day in my painting corner in the sun room. I kinda like it, how 'bout you?

Flag Football & Other Stuff

Tonight we are going to recap the last series we have been doing, "Out of the Box". We are going to have some fun tonight with the middle school. We have been pretty intense these last few weeks so tonight is going to be a more laid back night before we start our new series next week! Things are going great here at the church God is opening up so many doors for us to impact the community in a HUGE way! It seems like God is just clearing the way and pouring out His blessings on everything! Youth is going great we are having students step up as leaders and students are responding to the move of God!

Last week at the Flag Football day we had 150 students and parents come out to the football field to hang out! It was awesome, Christ Sharp one of our adult leaders did a fantastic job putting together the event completely. It was so great I just got to show up and hang out and our great leaders ran with it and organized it to the "T"! We had several students from different youth groups come out and hang and new students who don't go to any church. I was able to connect with like 5 students who didn't really go anywhere so hopefully we can get them plugged in here @ Journey!!! Next year we are going to even make it bigger!!! Then we had our super bowl party and watched the game here in the zone. We had about 80 people here hanging out, eating in the cafe, playing games, and watching the game. What a good game it was too, the last few minutes were intense in the zone to say the least!

Well, we have some great events coming up with the Give-A-Way, Encounter Weekend and our new theme for this month! God is moving and we are just running with Him as HE leads us!!! God, give us the strength and endurance to follow Your Spirit wherever you may lead!!!

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!