Hey Gang, I hope everyone had a wonderful CHRISTmas!!
I wanted to put down some reflections that are on my heart from Sunday morning. I hope that you all had the opportunity to be at Real LIfe with us this weekend (www.forreallife.com). If not, we celebrated our successes for 2008 and talked about Change for 2009, give Vanessa a shout if you want to hear the message. As I look back at the morning and the message, I get so excited about 2009 and the possibilites for us as a group of people serving God! We have been given an amazing opportunity(and responsibility) to reach out to people in our communities, and to share with them a message of Jesus.
**Here are a couple of thoughts on our opportunity/responsibility:
What are you doing to get out of your spiritual comfort zone?
- Are you reading: the bible, books, blogs, etc? Are you searching for knowledge to make you better? Remember, it is going to "Cost" you to go to the next level!! We have to get out of our comfort zone to move forward in our spiritual life.
Once out of your comfort zone, are you open to and willing to change?
- Are you ok with putting your personal likes and dislikes asside in order for another person to get a glimpse of God and what a realtionship with Him could be like? As followers of Christ, we must be willing to look at things through the eyes of person who does not know Jesus. We have to be intentional about providing an atmosphere where people can check out the temperature of water, before having to jump in.
Exponential Growth Factor!
- I touched on this a little on Sunday. When we take things on our shoulders and "get things done" on our hard work and effort, we can grow Christs kingdom, only as big as we are able to keep things from falling thru the cracks. When we try to keep working hard on our own and trust and consult God on for the things that are seemingly going wrong, we still can see some kingdom growth. But I think what God has been trying to get us to see is that we have to put His desires first and foremost. We have to let Him use us, instead of Us using Him for our wants and wishes. In order to experience this "Exponential Growth Factor", we have to surrender our wants, desires and wishes to Him. Put Him First always! If we, as a church, can figure this out......."hold on to you fork" as Perry Noble would say!!! There is some great stuff coming our way!
