A Stone's Throw

All I can say is “wow!”  What a great Easter Sunday to follow up an extremely crazy week!  God, you are truly amazing to us and we are so thankful!  Just a few things before I head to bed on this Resurrection Sunday…

• Still processing the death of my friend and co-laborer, Luke Grayson.  His funeral was an amazing celebration of God’s powerful resurrection.  He will be missed greatly.
• We saw many professions of faith at our presentation of “Bow the Knee” at our FP Joplin Campus.  There have been hours of rehearsals and 4 performances…all for the glory of God!  When you see professions of faith and get to hear faith stories of people after the performance, it makes all of the hard work worth it!
• Easter Sunday was a great day at FP Carthage!  We saw God move in a mighty way.  We had several decisions for Christ as well as 8 baptisms! We had planned on having 5 people baptized, but one dropped out and 3 added, which left 7 to be baptized in the 2nd service.  I offered the invitation to a new relationship with Christ and then also mentioned that the public profession of faith in Jesus is baptism.  I offered that there might be some here today that had not planned on getting wet today, but that the Holy Spirit was pulling them to go public with their faith.  As I was baptizing our 7 planned people, I noticed one of our teenage guys come down the aisle…he took off his shoes and his outer shirt…he was baptized right there in his jeans!!  I was tearing up like crazy!  Thank you Jesus for this dude’s faith and courage!
• I believe that we had 22  baptisms today in all of the Forest Park campuses!  I know that there will be several more in the coming weeks as well!  That stuff never gets old!
• Praying for some families and marriages right now.  My heart is very heavy for them!
• I am exhausted…Bow the Knee every night this week and twice on Saturday, Duathlon on Saturday, our first baseball practice yesterday, as well as all of the emotional stuff from this morning has really worn me out!
• Met a really cool guy tonight…Nikolai.  Praying God’s blessings on him and his future.  He has lived a lifetime of tragedy in his life in 22 short years.
• It is really cool to read FB and Twitter “tweets” from churches across the U.S. tonight.  God really moved in a might way…of course He always does that doesn’t He?

Have a great week!  Live this week in the power of the resurrection!  He is Risen!  He is Alive!  He lives in our hearts!

Had an awesome “first Sunday” at Forest Park Carthage.  Actually my second Sunday on staff, but my first being “on my own” doing all of the Campus Pastor elements.

I really felt good doing all of them!  It is great to feel like God has really gifted you and placed you here “for such a time as this!”  Pastor John talked about “Loving Your Enemies.”  In the worship response time, I extended an invitation to Christ–basically, there is no way you can truly love your enemies unless you have the love of God in your heart.  The New Testament also talks about those who are without Christ are “enemies of God.”  We all need to realize that Christ loves all of us unconditionally and therefore we need to love the way He loves us.

John had a great idea of putting Post-It notes in the VISION to write down initials of people we have a hard time loving.  We extended the illustration a step further here and had people leave their Post-Its on the altar.  We will be praying over those Post-Its tomorrow at Carthage staff meeting!! It was really cool seeing people at the altar placing their Post-Its, praying, and taking communion.  I love it when we can give someone a “takeaway” to hang the idea on as people leave!  I am working on my “takeaway” for July 27th when I preach!  It is going to be pretty cool!!

We had a Life Group “huddle” tonight and had a great time of prayer, encouragement and dreaming about the future of groups here at Forest Park Carthage.  I can’t tell you how excited I am about groups this year!!  They are going to be AWESOME.  You will definately want to be here AUGUST 17th for the GROUPLINK and jump into Life Groups!!  We had so many great stories of life change that happened because of Life Groups.  I love that stuff!!

Oh yeah!!  We have a CONTRACT on our HOUSE IN OZARK!!! It was on the market 20 days!!  That is stinking awesome!!  What a God thing!!  We close on the 12th of August!!  Yeah God!!  Thank you, LORD!!

Finally got back into town from Neosho, MO around 5:45 p.m. I was the speaker for a Disciple Now at Northside Baptist Church where my lifelong friend Lyndall Jones is Music and Youth Pastor. We had a really good weekend. I haven’t done a Disciple Now weekend in any capacity since we planted Finley Crossings. I used to do several D Nows each year when I was a full time student pastor. I actually had a lot of fun talking to the students and hanging out with the band.

Something that I thought about this morning during the invitation time was the impact that these kind of events has on not just students, but the leaders. There was an awesome group of students from the BSM at University of Arkansas that were leaders at each house. There were several times during the weekend that some of those student leaders as well as other leaders from the church were at the alter praying.

I remember some of the most powerful events in my life were not “for” me, but they were for “the kids,” but the Lord had something else in mind for me. How about you? What were some of the best things in your life to help you spiritually?

Here is a video slideshow I put together to go along with the sermon on Sunday. I love the lyrics to this song! Still work to be done in this city!!